Theories of the Mind

Dan Dennett, Steven Pinker and Judith Rich Harris are all promoters of the idea of the primacy of genetics in any scientific explanation of human behaviour. As I said on Monday, I’m with them on that. Whenever my wife or I hear some piece of pop psychology we subject it to the ‘Pinker test’. If it doesn’t give pride of place to genetics then it is probably worthless. This tends to invalidate almost everything you hear about what causes people to behave the way they do. Of course, I see Dennett and co. simply catching up with St Augustine’s work on the inheritability of personality and the impossibility of completely subjugating our desires. Augustine must qualify as one of the greatest psychologists in history and, unlike lost other people of whom it is said, was well ahead of his time (at least in this respect).

Evolutionary psychology is not the only thing that Dennett, Pinker and Rich Harris have in common. A few years back Dennett brought out a book called Consciousness Explained. More recently, Pinker’s How the Mind Works has been almost as influential. Rich Harris’s new book, No Two Alike, ploughs the same furrow.

Their theory is simply stated. The brain has a number of inter-dependent service modules that each do a particular job. The modules are independent enough that if you disable one, the rest of the brain can continue to work. It’ll try a hot fix around the disabled component so that sometimes the conscious mind won’t even notice that something is missing. The modular theory states that consciousness is an epiphenomenon that results from all these modules getting on with their jobs and talking to each other. The modules themselves are in no way controlled by the conscious self. In fact, the conscious self doesn’t do anything very much beyond getting fooled into thinking that it is in charge.

Needless to say, I find this theory rather implausible. But I am more intrigued as to why it enjoys support from the same sorts of people who are also sympathetic to evolutionary psychology. I think it is because the modular mind is highly amenable to an evolutionary explanation. Each module can be explained by a different evolutionary just-so story which keeps things nice and simple. For instance, the speech organ postulated by Noam Chomsky before he turned into a barking mad nut case, can be made the subject of a story that leads from the ability to grunt to the ability to recite Homer in a few easy steps.

There’s another reason why I think that the modular theory is popular and it has to do with how science works when it is successful. Science is usually reductionistic because we lack the tools to analyse complex systems without breaking them up. The brain is the most complex system of all, so splitting it up into manageable chunks would seem a sensible way to go about understanding it. Almost all experiments on the brain have involved prodding it with stimuli and seeing which bits light up. More radically, when particular parts of the brain stop working due to injury or disease, we can examine the effects this has on its overall function. In fact, there are almost no other useful kinds of experiment you can do on the brain. I’m not denying that all this has been fruitful. Just that it hasn’t taken us a single step towards understanding what consciousness is. But it is not surprising that the theories of mind we do have, while generally rather implausible, have been shaped by the experimental limitations of neuroscience and the success of evolutionary theory.

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Bringing Up the Kids

There was an interesting article in Prospect Magazine this week which created a slight flutter elsewhere in the media. Judith Rich Harris was plugging her new book, No Two Alike, about how the mind works. Her theory (which I’ll take a side long look at later this week) is old and boring – it’s a rehash of the mind as modules idea loved by Dan Dennett and Steven Pinker. Of more interest was the beginning of her article about the relationship between genetics and parenting.

From time to time, science throws up something that is so much in conflict with common sense that practically everyone simply refuses to believe it. The effect that parenting has on children is one of those things. You hear all the time about way you can help your child develop into an intelligent, honest and well-rounded individual. There are lengthy lists of does and don’ts, most recently a panic about the perils of letting children watch TV when they have something called neuroplasticity. Psychologist Aric Sigman revealed himself to be totally ignorant of current science when he advised MPs that young children should not watch too much TV. Predictably, journalists didn't challenge the basis for his ideas.

Thus, we are urged to keep children out of nursery, to read to them, to give them lots of attention and affection, not to argue in front of them or leave them alone to long. And yet, the evidence from proper scientific testing, documented by Pinker in The Blank Slate’s chapter on children, is that none of this makes a blind bit of difference. Whether you are a Victorian Dad or a Modern Parent will have not the slightest effect on how your children are going to turn out. So stop worrying.

In fact, as Judith Rich Harris explains, the only contribution you can make to your children’s personality is to give them your genes. Intelligence, behaviour, emotional complexion and much else are 50% genetically determined. Although the source of the other 50% is unknown (more on that some time soon), it is definitely not based on parenting practices. Twin studies, adoption studies and much else have proved this almost beyond doubt. Yet we still refuse to believe it because it conflicts with our in-built ideas about causation.

Personally, I find the idea that I can’t screw my daughter up, any more than I can turn her into a genius, is of some comfort. It’s enough trouble keeping her fed, fit, healthy and, above all, happy, without worrying about how, by letting her watch The Night Garden and Balamory, I’m turning her into psychopath.

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Bede is Back

I'll be reactiving this blog from next week so pop back then to see what I have in store.

Best wishes

James

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The God Delusion and Goodbye

I've consumed it, digested it and well, you know what comes next...

Here's my review.

And for the moment, that's it. This blog will be going into hibernation mode for the foreseeable future. I have a new job starting Monday. My three years and five months as a PhD student are over and the real world beckons.

If there is any news on my book, Before Science: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, I'll let you all know here and on the yahoo group. The group remains active and I'll be posting there more regularly now I'm not posting here.

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Lewis

I was a great fan of Inspector Morse, the morose but cerebral Oxford police inspector whose long running TV advantures ended with a heart attack (and the sad death of John Thaw who played him), a few years back. ITV have resurrected the franchise by giving Morse's batman, Lewis, a series of his own after a successful pilot last year.

Last night's first episode of Lewis was, I thought, excellent. The old ingredients of college politics, wronged women and nasty posh murderers were all in place. While nothing could replace Thaw's masterclass in understated acting, I thought that Kevin Whately as Lewis was as excellent as ever.

The reason for the note on this blog is that Lewis's sidekick is one of the very few (the first I can remember for years) unremittingly positive portrayals of a Christian on British television. Hathaway, the police sargent who helps Lewis, is an ex-theology student. He is clever, young, good-looking and morally upright. The writers of the series do not roll out the cliche of his becoming a policeman because he lost his faith. Rather, he simply wanted a career where he could right wrongs and make a good living. Lewis himself lost his faith when his wife was killed by a hit and run driver. His inability to forgive and move on is shown to eat him up and warp his moral judgement. Never before have I seen the loss of faith portrayed as a damaging event on British TV.

Compared to the BBC's Waking the Dead, which bashes the Church every week and treats the faith of the Catholic policewoman as an object of scorn, Lewis is a breath of fresh air.

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Tis but a Flesh Wound Part 2

There is a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur comes across a knight guarding a path. The knight refuses to allow anyone to pass unless they first defeat him in single combat. Arthur accepts the challenge and cuts off the knight's arm. "Tis but a flesh wound!" the knight cries and insists that the battle continues. He refuses to accept defeat even after all his limbs have been hacked off. Arthur wonders off bemused as the knight slithers behind him trying to bite his ankles.

Arguing on the internet is often like this, especially when dealing with Jesus Mythers and other conspiracy theorists. One of the prime exponents on the Internet Infidels' board even claims to have a PhD in philosophy. No matter how often you point out his enormous errors, he keeps coming declaring that anything he doesn't like is a fraud or an interpolation added by Eusebius.

I should not be surprised that A.C. Grayling is behaving in the same way. Despite being shot down countless times, he continues to insist that he is right that Christianity has made not a single contribution to science. The Guardian wisely closes all threads after three days, but Grayling has promptly opened a new one where people can pile on his agony. I cannot understand why a well known and respected academic is trying to besmirch his own reputation like this.

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AC Grayling Suffers a Flesh Wound

A.C. Grayling's embarrassment on the Guardian continues. Although he has plenty of anti-Christian headbangers coming to his defence, the fact is that his initial article has been exposed as rubbish. The learned professor has spent the last couple of days frantically rearranging goal posts. Grayling began with an article challenging another Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting, by writing, "She tells us that Christianity has "fostered learning and science" in Europe for 'hundreds of years'. I challenge her to name one - even one small - contribution to science made by Christianity in its two thousand years; just one."

Easy. The challenge was quickly met, by me among others. Grayling replied to me by name (while also tarring me with the American fundamentalist brush) and then realised that his first attempt didn't really cut it, so tried again the next morning. I replied to his post in great detail and the professor wisely shut up. He is now asking for something rather different to his original challenge.

Incidently, I got outed as a Christian by one of the other posters that I refuted. Not hard, given I was using my real name and Google finds me very fast. Still, I got free advertising and the poster got to feel that his revelation abrogated him from acknowledging what he had got wrong, so everyone's happy.

Another article appeared this morning on the same question but I doubt we'll see much progress.

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Bede v Grayling

A. C. Grayling is a regular commentator at the Guardian's Comment is Free. He surpassed himself yesterday and I felt compelled to reply. You can scroll through the comments below his article to get to mine (in my own name) and Grayling's responses.

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"The Human Touch" is Out of Touch

Michael Frayn is the UK's foremost comic playwright and a distinguished novelist. Occupying this position is more risky than it sounds because it means that if he were to write something that is utter garbage, it would probably get published. Then his reputation for being very clever and very entertaining would suffer. Sadly, Frayn has fallen into just such a temptation with his foray into philosophy The Human Touch. This book was not published because it was any good, but because Michael Frayn wrote it.

It is best characterised by the word 'prattling'. It just prattles on with a series of unconnected ideas, occasionally raises itself to a rant and then subsides back to prattling again. No doubt, all the ideas are brought together triumphantly at the end, but frankly I just didn't care. The philosophy in question is the sort of solipsism that undergraduates indulge in for a term or two until they grow up. Frayn still seems to believe in it. Although he includes the entire human race in the hive-mind that generates reality, he really seems to think that if our planet blew up tomorrow, the rest of the universe would go with it. Why? No one left to look at it. You know the one about trees falling over without anyone hearing them...

The London intelligentsia who reviewed Frayn's book were generally kind. After all, they were having him over to dinner next week so they could hardly insult him. Even Simon Blackburn didn't feel he could wield the knife, although his TLS review gave the impression that he'd like to. But the American Jerry Fodor tore The Human Touch to shreds in the LRB. Even he, though, didn't utter the most damning criticism. Frayn's book is boring.

Put it this way. I'm now reading The God Delusion, and it is much, much better than The Human Touch.

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Tolerance

I'm a fan of tolerance and I have to admit that historically it has not been the strong suit of religions. In Europe, different flavours of Christian only decided to try to live together after failing to wipe each other out (and they tried pretty hard). Our modern culture of tolerance is the one unambiguous achievement of the secular left.

So what happens now that the secular left have become the country's biggest bigots themselves? And why has this happened? Some lefties have noticed that it is all going wrong and are disturbed. Foremost among them is Nick Cohen whose new book What's Left? asks what happened. Other journalists have their own tales of left-wing bigotry. If you really want to see the secular left cover themselves in muck, then check out the discussion boards of Richard Dawkin's new website. I've already been described as 'lying scum' there and I haven't even posted (although someone else kindly recommended Bede's Library).

The cause of the secular left's descent into intolerance and prejudice might well be that it now has the whip hand. Throughout history, persecuted minorities have pleaded for toleration which they have not extended to other minorities when they become top dogs themselves. In the UK, the left control the government, the broadcast media, half the print press and most of the public sector. This allows them to dictate to the rest of us, which they do with abandon, even as they continue to preach about discrimination. Only one question remains. If the secular left has abandoned its one great achievement, its one contribution to human wellbeing, what is the point of it?

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