The Emergence of the Mind: Hayek’s Account of Mental Phenomena as a Product of Spontaneous Physical and Social Orders

hayek

Extracts from Gloria’s chapter:

Friedrich Hayek’s social theory is well known for his articulation of the paradigm of spontaneous orders that challenges the traditional distinction between what is natural and what is artificial. The problem that Hayek saw is that language and other social objects do not fall under either heading completely. Language is, for example, seen as natural since it was not designed by man. At the same time, man has imposed rules of grammar on natural languages as these became formalized and documented. From this perspective, language falls under the category of artificial too. This distinction thus fails in its application not only to language but also to any other object that is, as Hayek puts it, the result of human action, but not of human design. The paradigm of spontaneous orders, which applies to all social objects, has thus become the hallmark of Hayek’s social theory.

However, what is lesser known is that Hayek also presents a similar paradigm of spontaneous orders in his theory of the mind. In The Sensory Order (TSO), Hayek defines the mind as a particular order arising from the cumulative sets of events taking place in the brain in response to stimuli. Although stimuli are also constituted by sets of events, Hayek observes that the relation between these two sets of events is at best one of imperfect correspondence, since stimuli do not always result in sense experiences.

What this means is that the mind does not emerge as a process of mapping of events external to the mind or, shall we say, reality; rather, the mind emerges, in part, from the interconnections that ensue between the electrical and chemical responses to stimuli. Central to this understanding of the mind is the role of memory in facilitating the conversion of these responses into sensations. According to Hayek, we do not first have sensations which are then preserved by memory, but it is as a result physiological memory that the physiological impulses are converted into sensations. The connexions between the physiological elements are thus the primary phenomenon which creates the mental phenomena. (TSO 2:50)

Memory, then, serves as an a priori mechanism that makes the emergence of the mind possible in the sense that it translates physical events of the brain into sense experiences that are unified. In a note for this passage, Hayek explains that this understanding of memory is already present in the Preface to his Beitrage zur Theorie der Entwicklung des Bewusstseins (the Beitrage). What this means is that this apriorism was present in Hayek’s theory of the mind by 1920 and that after he returned to this work in 1952, after more than three decades spent developing his social theory, Hayek did not change his mind in this regard. In TSO, Hayek develops more details to be added to the earlier view. Memory is not localized or passive, as it is understood in modular paradigms of memory, that is, stored in one discrete region until specifically recalled. Instead, it is distributed and dynamic, giving rise to neuronal activity that searches, with each new stimulus, for related networks of connections. This seems consistent with a description of spontaneous orders. A single neuron, for example, can participate in any number of networks, not just the one it is already in or one that engages only in its existing immediate surroundings. These interconnections between physiological events representing stimuli are what Hayek calls linkages. The view that memory is cortically distributed had already been set forth by the time TSO appeared, but it is not clear that Hayek was specifically aware of these findings. Hayek observes that, ‘‘It is difficult to see what other meaning ‘memory’ can have but the retention of connexions or relations.’’ However, an important consideration is that the interconnections between events can be as transient as the events themselves. The question thus arises, how does memory endure? One way to answer this within Hayek’s framework is that not only the structural basis but also the relational code that emerges from it is a continuant. Accordingly, memories endure even if any element of its structural basis is somewhat altered by entering into new interconnections. ‘‘In fact,’’ Hayek adds, ‘‘far from being diminished, the a priori element will tend to increase as in the course of this process the various objects are increasingly defined by explicit relations existing between them’’ (TSO 8.17). In other words, as memory increases, so does the mind. In this way, the mind emerges and continues to develop as a result of the role of memory in converting physical responses of the brain to external stimuli into an enduring and increasingly more sophisticated order of linkages supporting sensations that give us a finer grained picture of any new experiences.

The expression ‘‘we-mode intentions’’ is part of the growing scholarship on collective intentionality. The term ‘‘collective intentionality’’ has been made famous by John Searle and it first appeared in his 1995 book The Construction of Social Reality. But the investigations of this phenomenon are of much older lineage.18 Collective intentionality refers to the social phenomenon in which a number of individuals target the same intentional object in a coordinated way that is not necessarily deliberate. A bunch of people in a city theater watching a film, for example, all have the same intentional object, but they do not exemplify collective intentionality because they do not have a shared context in directing their attention to the film. For some, the film is a means for entertainment, for others an excuse to be near a particular person, and for yet others, it may just be an airconditioned escape from a hot summer’s day. However, a bunch of students in a classroom watching a film may exemplify collective intentionality since they have a shared context for their action. The students do not have to have a deliberate plan to arrive at a shared goal as perhaps the members of a string quartet would have in aiming at a flawless performance as their intentional target. Such collective intentions that we find in both the classroom and the string quartet examples Searle calls we-mode intentions.

According to one study, the discovery of mirror neurons may now provide evidence of a neurological basis for such we-mode intentions. Neurons identified as mirror neurons not only fire when an individual acts but also when an individual observes another individual performing the same action. Although mirror neurons were discovered in monkeys, scientists report that neuropsychological studies have shown that they exist also in the human brain. It must be clear that we-intentions can be understood at best as one aspect of the phenomenon of intersubjectivity but not as identical to it since the latter is not merely the experience of sharing intentional targets. Rather, it is the sharing an experience stream, which involves having a first-person experience of what another is experiencing, and this is not achieved by aiming at the same intentional target as the other person but, instead, by aiming at the experience of the other person. So, the we-mode intention interpretation of mirror neurons does not provide the missing explanation.

However, according to another interpretation of mirror neurons, they may constitute the neural substratum of a mechanism that enables us to resonate with others of our own kind, which would undoubtedly favor survival. This is more in line with the phenomenon of intersubjectivity as it offers an explanation for the realm of shared experiences so common in  human experience. Moreover, empirical data shows that mirror neurons match representations not only of actions but also of pains and emotions. In one experiment, the mirror phenomenon occurred in a pain-related neuron that responded to the patient’s pinprick in the same way as an observed pinprick on the examiner’s hand. In another experiment, mirror neurons responded to facial expression and sounds of disgust in the same way as if the experience of disgust had been a first-person experience.

What these studies show is that ‘‘mirror phenomena are not to be seen as limited to a particular group of motor neurons in the ventral cortex, but as a modality of functioning which is widespread in the brain’’ (Becchio & Bertone, 2004, p. 131). Or, as Hayek explains in TSO, ‘‘mental functions need not be localized in any particular part of the cortex’’ (TSO?). The applications AU :12 of these discoveries of modern neuroscience with regard to these linkages (to use Hayek’s term) not only offer evidence of the phenomenon of intersubjectivity and its mechanics in brain functions but are also potentially fruitful for studies that concern the phenomenon of empathy. Moreover, our understanding of mirror neurons can help to fuel interdisciplinary research on values, which is perhaps the next frontier in human social phenomena.

Frederick Rolfe a.k.a. Baron Corvo

philosophical literature

Given a papal change is underway, Rolf’s Hadrian the Seventh is as timely as ever, and in my view happens to be one of the top five novels of the 20th Century. Here is David Bradshaw’s reliable Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry. Part and parcel of the Corvo legend is Symons’ classic biography of Corvo, Corvo brought to Symons’ attention by another “character” Christopher Millard, sensitively acknowledged in Symons’ “Quest” (Millard lived around the corner from me in NW8 at 8 Abercorn Place). In the preface to “Quest”  (the ’66 edition) Julian Symons (A.J.A.’s brother) in turn characterizes AJA as a character “continually being seduced  . . . by wine and food” (my kinda man!). Anyway, read “Hadrian” and you’ll want to read Symons and those of you who share my enthusiasm for The Confederacy of Dunces will probably find Hadrian very much to your taste.

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Philosophy: confusion and wishful thinking

wittgenstein

I’m with Ludwig on this.

Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible “from the armchair” through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking.

Life as Literature

literature

I’ve been thinking a lot about my instinctive predilection for writers whose life and work bleed into each other, an attraction I felt long before I was fully aware of their biographical details. The first was Kafka; the second Rolfe; the third Musil; the fourth Mishima and the fifth, Toole. I’ve come to the conclusion that these philosophical novelists speak to me more deeply than the greatest pure philosophers. What’s the theme binds their work? The “spiritual impoverishment” of their age, a phrase I’m loathe to use since its meaning would be vulgarized both by so-called “new atheists” and by their enemies, doctrinal fundamentalist followers.

Here are some Mishima quotes culled for the Paul Schrader’s film (here is the finale), beautifully rendered with Philip Glass’ brilliant score:

In its essence, any art that relies on words makes use of their ability to eat away – of their corrosive function… Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words will be corroded too.

… (There were always) two contradictory tendencies within myself. One was the determination to press ahead loyally with the corrosive function of words, and to make that my life’s work. The other was the desire to encounter reality in some field where words should play no part at all.

So if you do not acknowledge in your heart the values that surpass yourself, you are in a psychological state where your sole existence is meaningless

A sea of clouds spread out below, devoid of any conspicuous irregularities, like a garden of pure white moss… The silver fuselage floated in the naked light, the plane maintaining a splendid equilibrium. Once more it became a closed, motionless room. The plane was moving at all. It had become an oddly shaped metal cabin floating quite still in the upper atmosphere…

There was no suffocating sensation. My mind was at ease. My thought process lively. If this stillness was the ultimate end of action – of movement – then the sky about me, the clouds far below, the sea gleaming between the clouds. Even the setting sun, might well be events, things, within myself. At this distance from the earth, intellectual adventure and physical adventure could join hands without the slightest difficulty. This was the point I had always been striving towards.

Oakeshott on Civil Association

a companion to michael oakeshott

Here are some extracts from Noel’s essay, the penultimate chapter (also check out two new pieces by Noel found here).

The distinctive achievement of Western political thought since the seventeenth century is the ideal of the limited state. Despite extensive theorizing about this ideal, however, there has always been profound disagreement about its precise nature and implications. The full extent of this disagreement has been especially evident during the decades since World War II, in the course of which sustained efforts have been made by a variety of thinkers to construct a coherent alternative to totalitarianism. In Friedrich Hayek’s view, for example, the limited state is principally characterized by a free market economy that facilitates human progress. For Karl Popper it is characterized by commitment to creating an open society that rejects absolute truth and asserts the conditionality of all knowledge. In the early writings of John Rawls, the limited state is characterized by commitment to rational principles of distributive justice. For Robert Nozick it means the minimal state. For Ernest Gellner it is the political structure appropriate to what he termed “modular man.” For Jürgen Habermas, echoing Rousseau, it refers to a political order based on rational will formation. For Václav Havel what characterizes the limited state is the promotion of spiritual integration instead of the spiritual fragmentation associated with totalitarian regimes. Still other interpretations of the ideal of the limited state are found among theorists of globalization and the European Union. In light of this disagreement, Michael Oakeshott’s interpretation of the limited state as civil association is of special interest, seeking as it does to give a degree of conceptual coherence to the ideal that is otherwise lacking. The principal obstacle to achieving this coherence, Oakeshott believes, is a deep division of opinion among modern political theorists about the nature of political science. To understand Oakeshott’s identification of the limited state with civil association, it is therefore necessary to begin by considering his understanding of political science.

Oakeshott rejects the view that an answer can be given simply by referring to specific “persons, places, or occasions” as was the case, for example, in ancient Greek political thought, where the concept of the public was tied to the agora (OHC, 165). Instead, he identifies what is public in the political sense with “a focus of attention and a subject of discourse” (165). What is public refers, more precisely, to the “public concern” of cives (citizens), for which Oakeshott adopts the Roman term respublica. Putting the same thing slightly differently, a respublica exists only when a state is “constituted in such a way that it can be considered as belonging to the governed, and not an alien power” (VMES, 104).

Without the existence of a public concern or respublica, then, a state lacks a moral basis and is consequently indistinguishable from power or domination. It can accordingly be dismissed, as it was in the ancient world by the Greek Sophist Thrasymachus, as embodying the interest of the stronger, or it can be described, as it has been by modern Marxists, as merely a committee of the bourgeois capitalist class. Exactly how the respublica necessary to rebut these charges is to be structured, however, has been a matter for intense disagreement among modern political thinkers. At one stage of his intellectual development, Oakeshott attributed this disagreement to a tension between individualist and collectivist ways of thought in modern politics. At another, he attributed it instead to a tension between rationalist and pragmatic politics. At yet another stage he theorized it in terms of a tension between the “politics of faith” and the “politics of skepticism.” In his mature presentation of the tension in On Human Conduct (1975), however, he finally identified it as lying between an essentially formal, nonpurposive concept of the respublica embodied in civil association, on the one hand, and what he described as an enterprise conception, on the other, which seeks to create a public concern by imposing a substantive vision of the social good on all members of society. It is this final statement of Oakeshott’s position that is the main focus of attention here. Before considering the civil form of respublica, it is illuminating to begin by considering Oakeshott’s analysis of the enterprise version, according to which what is public is identified with a shared purpose in which all citizens are compelled to participate

But why, it must be asked, does Oakeshott maintain that freedom is always incompatible with an enterprise conception of the state: surely freedom is possible provided that the enterprise is a worthwhile one like social justice? In reply Oakeshott gives several reasons for rejecting the enterprise conception of respublica as incompatible with a free society. The most fundamental is that enterprise association lacks the moral basis of a free society, which is recognition of others as ends in themselves. As Oakeshott puts it, subjects in an enterprise state are reduced to the status of objects, because they are understood by the enterprise state as merely “the property of the association, an item of its capital resources,” to be disposed of in whatever way the state believes best serves its purpose (OHC, 317). This remains true even if the enterprise state enjoys extensive popular support for such goals as economic growth or distributive justice, since the subjects who support them remain objects in the eyes of the state.

What links these thinkers is the recognition that civil association consists of a complex of “rules and rule-like prescriptions to be subscribed to in all the enterprises and adventures in which the self-chosen satisfactions of agents may be sought” (OHC, 148). Hobbes, above all, is praised by Oakeshott for exploring the ideal character of civil association most profoundly. Nevertheless, Oakeshott criticized Hobbes on several counts. Hobbes failed, in the first place, to explain how self-seeking individuals could regard it as rational to make a covenant according to which each surrenders to all the other participants (as Hobbes requires) his natural right to interpret and enforce the law of nature as he sees fit. As Hobbes admits, to be a first performer in the kind of covenant he envisaged is feasible only for a few “magnanimous natures” such as Sydney Godolphin, to whom Hobbes dedicated Leviathan— wholly exceptional individuals willing to honor their promises even when a sovereign has not as yet been created to enforce laws that provide redress if others fail to keep theirs.

The model of civil association, then, is intended by Oakeshott to provide the only conception of the public realm, or respublica, that can reconcile order and freedom in a modern Western society whose citizens want to live self-chosen lives and reject any state that wishes to impose an overall purpose on them. A variety of theoretical objections to the civil model have been raised, however, by critics who claim that Oakeshott’s theorization of civil association fails to make good his claims on its behalf. Some of the objections arise from confusion, but others are well-founded. An attempt must therefore now be made to distinguish the confused from the well-founded criticisms. The first step in this process of clarification is to note the confusion about the nature of civil association that has arisen during the past three decades as a result of attempts made by Eastern European intellectuals to underpin their opposition to Soviet despotism by adopting the concept of civil association to describe the alternative for which they were fighting. The meaning they gave to it, however, usually had little connection with Oakeshott’s version and was indeed incompatible with it in some crucial respects. Precisely how the Eastern European ideal differed from Oakeshott’s may be illustrated by considering the political writings of Václav Havel, who is generally regarded as one of the leading Eastern European defenders of civil association. The grandeur of Havel’s vision is unquestionable. The important point, however, is that he is committed to what Oakeshott terms an enterprise model of the state. Havel’s enterprise, to be precise, is to promote spiritual renewal in what he regards as an age of dehumanization. From this, Havel says, it is “beside the point” to discuss topics such as socialism and capitalism, since the real concern is nothing less than salvation—“the salvation of us all, of myself and my interlocutor equally”—above all in the alienated relation to nature that has been created by modern industrial societies. Elevated though Havel’s words may be, a vision of this kind is incompatible with the formal, nonpurpose concept of civil association favored by Oakeshott. The confusion caused by the Eastern European model of civil association, however, is only one of several that have resulted in the misinterpretation of Oakeshott’s position. Another consists of the identification of civil association with the minimal state. This is the identification made, for example, by libertarian theorists such as Robert Nozick. Civil association, however, is not committed to upholding the minimal state; its concern is to eliminate the arbitrary state. It is concerned, in other words, not with the quantity of government intervention but with the mode of intervention. Provided the mode of intervention does not conflict with the civil model, extensive government intervention is in principle not excluded by it. Precisely how much, however, and precisely which areas it occurs in, are matters for debate among citizens of civil association. They are not, that is, matters that can be determined by reflection on the civil ideal in the abstract.

Tradition is a Temple

new orleans

Here are a couple of trailers from this eagerly awaited documentary or a hymn to the life blood that infuses NOLA.

TRADITION IS A TEMPLE  explores New Orleans’ unique musical culture and the fragility of tradition in the modern world. Intimate discussions with contemporary New Orleans musicians highlight their history, upbringing and how tradition has shaped their identity and continues to inspire young musicians today.

A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 1

A Confederacy of Dunces

For no particular reason save for the idea that it amuses me (and might amuse you) each week I will post a quote or an extract from JK Toole’s masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces. But if you haven’t read the book, I urge you to do so. And if you do, you will be impelled to follow up on the tragic backdrop to the novel’s existence. The version I’m working from is the 1981 Penguin edition. I’ll try and use a different graphic each time from the many translations and editions and other renderings of the novel’s characters (pardon the phrase). I’ll be going sequentially, so here goes:

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person’s lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one’s soul (p. 1).

The Neurosciences and Music

neuroscience

Just received my hard copy of this issue:

This volume stems from the conference “The Neurosciences and Music IV: Learning and Memory,” held in Edinburgh, Scotland from 9–12, June 2011. The volumes focuses on four themes: infants and children, adults: musicians and non-musicians, disabilities and aging-related issues, and therapy and rehabilitation. Featured papers cover a range of topics including the cultural neuroscience of music, memory and learning in music performance, the impact of musical experience on cerebral language processing, and mechanisms of rhythm and meter learning over the life span. Contributions will be of interest to not only from neuroscientists, psychologists and students but also clinical neurologists, clinical psychologists, therapists, music performers and educators, as well as musicologists.

And here is a musical interlude:

Life Story: Personal Identity

metaphysics

The latest release in the superb series from the Institute of Art and Ideas – thanks Alex! Hilary Lawson does a terrific job in moderating, one of the best if not the best I’ve come across.

We all create internal narratives of our lives. From moment to moment, but also spanning a lifetime. Do these stories of ourselves simply reflect our lives, or do they determine who we are and what we can achieve?

Philosopher of personal identity Marya Schechtman joins award-winning experimental psychologist Bruce Hood and critic and philosopher Galen Strawson.

The featured picture is from artist Megan Greydanus’ Personal Identity Installation.