Why philosophers continue thinking of brain as a black box?

[Leog]

Hello!

I am not a professional philosopher and so may be incorrect in my understanding/knowledge of philosophy. But as far as I understand, all of the philosophers of the past regarded brain as a black box. And this is for reason, as up to nearly 1980-es it was not possible to investigate what really happens inside human brains.

Let me bring an analogy with mechanics (part of physics). Mechanics is divided into two branches: kinematics and dynamics. Kinematics studies motion of objects without relating to what causes the motion. Ancient 'scientists' (astronomers etc.) were really good in describing motions of planets, for example. But without knowing what force and acceleration are, without knowing acceleration is the the speed of changing velocity and that it is proportional to force and mass, a lot of things cannot be understood about motion of bodies. For example, dynamics makes it easy to understand that planets move in ellipses (and not only circles) around the sun. I.e. before I. Newton mechanics was in a pretty primitive state.

Now let me apply this analogy to how philosophers understand human mind/brain. Before neuron networks of human/animal brains were investigated, before fMRI, before microbiology and genetics, before computer modelling of neuron networks and before the computers started solving problems similar to ones human brains solve - before all this the philosophy about human brain seems to me a kind of just speculation.

If we look at the theory of Freud: it is purely speculative, because such things as libido, mortido, conscious, unconscious etc. cannot be verified or disproved. The idea that a bell tower can be associated with penis, cannot be proved or disproved without checking what really happens in the brain. And in fact, the brain scans can reveal if there is a circuit in the brain that automatically binds bell towers and other vertical objects to penises.

It seems to me that nowadays (starting from about 20-30 years ago) the understanding of 'what human mind is' moved from the 'kinematics' to 'dynamics'. By other words we can say that now we can relate brain as a white box, we are able to investigate physical processes that cause consciousness, free will, ethics, aesthetics and that make humans different from other animals.

It seems to me that modern sciences of neurology, computers, genetics and microbiology give so powerful tools to understanding the brains, that all older theories (with all respect we give to them) become very much obsolete.

(This is similar to physics or biology of Aristotle. Once Newtonian mechanics and Darwinian evolution appeared, the theories of Aristotle could not be considered any more as something valuable in understanding of physics/biology).

Even if we speak not of philosophical theories, but of the very subjects that philosophy studies: like free will, ethics, aesthetics, religion, metaphysics, etc., all these subjects look absolutely differently when the brain is treated as a white box.

Because using this approach, aesthetics becomes a neuron network, or even more simple, kind of computer program, that when presented with an image of, say, a human of opposite sex, produces output which is the level of attraction of that person. It is as simple as that: if we observe a person with THIS outline of body, the neuron network give grade 5, and if the person's outline is THAT, the grade is 10. And brain scans can and DO reveal where this neuron network is located in our brain and how it works. And we can even write a computer program that can process photographs of people and assign them grades of attractiveness.

And this program in our brain is partially determined by our genes (i.e. it evolved during millions of years of human evolution) and partially it is built during our personal experience.

Same thing is ethics: it is kind of a program in our brain that decides which actions are good, which bad, allowed or forbidden. Ethics also partially evolved with the human race, and partially formed during our own life. We avoid killing children not because 'it is an eternal law of the universe', but because a neuron network, a program in our brain does not let us doing so. And male lions do kill all lion children if they are not their own, because the program in their brain tells them to do so.

(But the fact that we don't kill children because we have the program in our brain should not be outraging).

What is free will? One of the latest investigation using fMRI (real-time brain scan) revealed that when we decide about something (i.e. making our free will work), even before we feel that we decided, the unconscious circuits in our brain already hold this decision. I.e. the operator of the brain scan could tell what we are going to decide (i.e. choice from two or more options) before we ourselves felt we made the decision.

And another interesting investigation: people with amnesia (failure to remember new situations) use their free will identically in same situation repeated. I.e. when you speak with such person for 5 minutes and then get out of the room, come back and start the conversation with the same words, that person will exactly! repeat his/her words during the whole 5 minutes talk!

(But again, why should we be outraged in the fact that free will is a deterministic neuron network?)

Modern neuroscience advanced much. It is well known, for example, where in brain the speech centre is located and that this speech centre has three regions: first responsible for remembering words, second for grammar, third for meaning. And persons with the grammatical part damaged still can understand speech and produce meaningful speech (even though without grammar, just stream of words, but with meaning). And two persons with the meaning part damaged can talk hours one with the other, while their speech is just a meaningless flow of words, but they don't feel this and continue talking.

Of course, some religious people don't believe in evolution and in the fact that the brain is a computational machine. But for the rest of philosophers (it seems to me that) continuing the old way (i.e. regarding brain as a black box) is like trying understanding motion of planets without using the laws of Newton.

Please forgive my ignorance in the fields of philosophy. I am interested to hear opinions of modern philosophers on this subject.

[Wyman]

Can a computer program conceptualize? I.e. Go from a series of similar (not identical) particular things and pull from it a concept that applies to all of them? Then use said concept to identify future particulars as falling within that class?

I've read that AI scientists have had awful problems with completing simple tasks, such as collecting a group of blocks and stacking them.

Also, I don't see why you can't kill babies if it is in your interest, under your analysis. I understand that you are repulsed by such an idea, as your genes dictate. But revulsion can be overcome. Present revulsion can be overridden in favor of future benefits - that's a basic definition of rationality. So, if a cart full of babies is about to go off a cliff and the only way to save them would be to kill one baby, then you might consider doing it. How does this rational part of the brain override the more primitive part? And if another person had much less revulsion and the power to do so (no laws to stop him, such as a Stalin or Hitler), what argument could you put forward to say they ought not kill babies?

[jackles]

the human brain is intellegent energy and energy moves one way or another in a relative way. the consciousness how ever that the brain is in is not energy and therefor does not move in a relative way to anthing it is independent of the brain.in much but not the exact same way as a photon is independent of its source.so we have a factual purely consciouscious existance combined with a fictional temporary local event existance.evil is taking the event existance to be real over and above the factual and unmoving conscious existance.thats the way i see it regs jackles.

[Leog]

Can a computer program conceptualize? I.e. Go from a series of similar (not identical) particular things and pull from it a concept that applies to all of them? Then use said concept to identify future particulars as falling within that class?

I've read that AI scientists have had awful problems with completing simple tasks, such as collecting a group of blocks and stacking them.

Also, I don't see why you can't kill babies if it is in your interest, under your analysis. I understand that you are repulsed by such an idea, as your genes dictate. But revulsion can be overcome. Present revulsion can be overridden in favor of future benefits - that's a basic definition of rationality. So, if a cart full of babies is about to go off a cliff and the only way to save them would be to kill one baby, then you might consider doing it. How does this rational part of the brain override the more primitive part? And if another person had much less revulsion and the power to do so (no laws to stop him, such as a Stalin or Hitler), what argument could you put forward to say they ought not kill babies?

Well, I just brought some examples above in order to explain my main concern: philosophical concepts of the past are much outdated because their creators did not have means to investigate how the brain really works.

But for your specific questions:

1. Of course computer program can (and do) conceptualise (that's what I did in my Masters in AI . For example, GPS navigator knows the concept of 'traffic event' which it can identify by different traits. Supervised machine learning algorithms need to be taught the concept by a human teacher, unsupervised algorithms can create their own concepts and later apply them. Google search engine knows very well what is 'adult content'.

2. You don't kill (babies or adults) because your brain is programmed so. And much of this programming came from the evolution. Of course our brains are not primitive like a simple computer of washing machine. They can be re-programmed. But the program of not killing is not an eternal law of the universe. Perhaps some day it will change. Imagine that in the future it will be possible to save backup copies of people and if some one killed, just re-create her. Then killing a person (by purpose or accidentally) will not be crime, as you can re-create her. Perhaps the murderer will just have to pay costs of the re-creations plus a small fine.

So what I am saying is that ethics and aesthetics are not universal (for all living and imaginary creatures) but are products of evolution (biological and social) and are installed as kind of programs in our brains.

And so in order to study them one needs to study the brain as a white box and not as a black box (as philosophers of the past use to do).

[Leog]

the human brain is intellegent energy and energy moves one way or another in a relative way. the consciousness how ever that the brain is in is not energy and therefor does not move in a relative way to anthing it is independent of the brain.in much but not the exact same way as a photon is independent of its source.so we have a factual purely consciouscious existance combined with a fictional temporary local event existance.evil is taking the event existance to be real over and above the factual and unmoving conscious existance.thats the way i see it regs jackles.

I propose to use well defined notions. Energy is ability of an object to perform work. Units of energy are the units of mass times squared units of length divided by square units of time. Energy can pass from one form to another, but it is conserved. The chemical energy is transformed into electro-magnetic energy in neurons of the brain. But I don't think that we need to use this term 'energy' in order to understand how the brain works. Similarly we don't use energy when talking of computers (apart from their power source).

The term 'consciousness' was invented long before people could even guess how the brain works. And this term cannot be well defined (like 'energy of the brain') and it is also irrelevant, similar to 'libido' and other terms of the past.

It is like Physics of Aristotle: his terms cannot be used for studying physics nowadays. In modern physics we use terms: velocity, acceleration, force, mass, energy. Similar to this when approaching the brain we need to use the terms: neuron, neuron network, program, algorithm, complexity, image processing, information etc.

[jackles]

it was aristotle for one who used the term unmoving mover.where the nonlocal unmoving thing is reponsible one way or another for the local moving things movment.and is the relativity in that moving things relativness that is the primal mover as in the big bang.so the big bang would have its origin inside consciousness.consciousness would not be a byproduct of energy.

[Wyman]

unsupervised algorithms can create their own concepts and later apply them.

Can you point me to any literature on the subject? I am not arguing here, just genuinely interested.

So what I am saying is that ethics and aesthetics are not universal (for all living and imaginary creatures) but are products of evolution (biological and social) and are installed as kind of programs in our brains.

And so in order to study them one needs to study the brain as a white box and not as a black box (as philosophers of the past use to do).

I'm with you, except that I think philosophers are aware of this. In so far as unknowns remain in the field, that part of the box is black, but we continue to search for answers.

In the meantime, we need to know how to act, what laws to enact and behavior to prohibit, how to treat those who harm others, etc.. For instance, the brain makes us feel revulsion at harming a baby. It also makes some feel revulsion towards homosexuals. The higher conceptual part of the brain often needs to override the older, emotional part of the brain. It is harder to see how looking at brain scans can predict the behavior of this part of the brain. It may just be a matter of complexity, I don't know. In the meantime we need an effective theory that provides some guidance.

[HexHammer]

OP is right in many aspects, but there's more to the "free will" part, which is true in itself, but it's only 1 aspect out of many.

[Blaggard]

Hex the OP never made any firm conclusions. He just related the history of mind wherein others ideas from history may have been encompassed. If the tooth fairy told him about the history of mind, well that's another matter, but once again you have misunderstood the post, talked nonsense, and really not at all engaged anything to do with the subject. Hex study something, philosophy or not, psychology, hell anything, then and maybe only then will anyone care for what is and has been to date, some of the most useless, tedious self agrandizing garbage in the form of so called "argument" from a person, I can only assume, likes to read his own words back to himself, whilst wafting gently towards his anus, so he can pick up his argument in a more offactory way. Your argument style is the worst that I have ever had the displeasure to come across, and I have seen some people who are bad at argument and or dicussion in my time, but by no means am I an expert, but, no 1 with a bullet on the whole process of dialogue and discussion is you Hex.

Hex you are and possibly have no doubt always been a place holder when it comes to discussion, we can only hope at some point in your self involved I am right always life, you stop being just a place mat, with the words: bollocks should sit here written in bold but strangely unobtrusive font. Make an argument, for once, something that means something to anyone or ever might...

Hex make an effort, engage in the discussion process or don't, if you don't want to or can't no one cares. Not even you if you are honest. You are just a wearysome person who knows nothing, but imagines he knows everything, so that entering into discussion is just you expanding on your lack of knowledge, erudition, or ability in argumentation or discussion, with such a lack of style that if you looked up inept discussion in a manual of how not to do it, your picture would be there, probably with a caption saying, this man was not at home to anyone, but himself, see also vacuous monologue.

Was this an ad hominem, probably, it certainly attacked his argument and the person as relates to argument. It's like you can attack the person and it not be an ad hominem, and you can attack the person and the argument in relation and it be an ad hominem, and you can just attack the person it being clearly an ad hominem, or just the argument and it still be an ad hominem. It's a fine line. I should start a thread about semantics and ad hominem. Isn't the finer detail of human language just grand.

Ultimately it's not technically an ad hominem because Hex will never read it, what it is is a post towards, technically it can't be an attack of a person who is unaware he is being attacked, although that is something that might be better explored on a more apt thread but a) the lurkers who don't know hex need to know he's a dingus lit. a person who is uninformed b) the op who posted 3 posts and then needs to know why he is subject for abuse, on something he did not do for no reasonable chastisement can be ignored, only unreasonable ones. In that sense it is merely public information. I for one think the intent was pure, although I for one will suffer for my sins.

[NielsBohr]

Hello!

I am not a professional philosopher and so may be incorrect in my understanding/knowledge of philosophy. But as far as I understand, all of the philosophers of the past regarded brain as a black box. And this is for reason, as up to nearly 1980-es it was not possible to investigate what really happens inside human brains.

Let me bring an analogy with mechanics (part of physics). Mechanics is divided into two branches: kinematics and dynamics. Kinematics studies motion of objects without relating to what causes the motion. Ancient 'scientists' (astronomers etc.) were really good in describing motions of planets, for example. But without knowing what force and acceleration are, without knowing acceleration is the the speed of changing velocity and that it is proportional to force and mass, a lot of things cannot be understood about motion of bodies. For example, dynamics makes it easy to understand that planets move in ellipses (and not only circles) around the sun. I.e. before I. Newton mechanics was in a pretty primitive state.

Okay,

I brought only the first part because there is already much to say, what can give an orientation to the later discussion...

I think that the understanding in dynamics is only an illusion.

You have only an equality telling that if you see one newton on a dynamometer fixed to a one kilogram mass, it will accelerate to one meter pro square second...
you repeat the experiment three time in your life, and suppose it to be as a "law" - understand an equality - constant.

However, to understand really dynamics, you should know what is the cause of the dynamics you observe, and then, the cause of the cause...

Seeing apples falling, you sais "It is due to the gravity", but what is the gravity ? -Somme particles called gravitons ? And them, what are they ?

-In the case of the brain, it seem to be - for me - even more obvious. Following an analogous point of view, you can detect some neuro-transmitors, but unless you detect what - or rather how - create neuro-transmitors, and the cause before and again and again, you can't, I think, tell that the brain will ever be a white box...

And I am not sure about the bound considering the topics as all different in the case of white box, to be honest - I don't see what is the relation.

[Ginkgo]

Hello!

I am not a professional philosopher and so may be incorrect in my understanding/knowledge of philosophy. But as far as I understand, all of the philosophers of the past regarded brain as a black box. And this is for reason, as up to nearly 1980-es it was not possible to investigate what really happens inside human brains.

Let me bring an analogy with mechanics (part of physics). Mechanics is divided into two branches: kinematics and dynamics. Kinematics studies motion of objects without relating to what causes the motion. Ancient 'scientists' (astronomers etc.) were really good in describing motions of planets, for example. But without knowing what force and acceleration are, without knowing acceleration is the the speed of changing velocity and that it is proportional to force and mass, a lot of things cannot be understood about motion of bodies. For example, dynamics makes it easy to understand that planets move in ellipses (and not only circles) around the sun. I.e. before I. Newton mechanics was in a pretty primitive state.

Now let me apply this analogy to how philosophers understand human mind/brain. Before neuron networks of human/animal brains were investigated, before fMRI, before microbiology and genetics, before computer modelling of neuron networks and before the computers started solving problems similar to ones human brains solve - before all this the philosophy about human brain seems to me a kind of just speculation.

If we look at the theory of Freud: it is purely speculative, because such things as libido, mortido, conscious, unconscious etc. cannot be verified or disproved. The idea that a bell tower can be associated with penis, cannot be proved or disproved without checking what really happens in the brain. And in fact, the brain scans can reveal if there is a circuit in the brain that automatically binds bell towers and other vertical objects to penises.

It seems to me that nowadays (starting from about 20-30 years ago) the understanding of 'what human mind is' moved from the 'kinematics' to 'dynamics'. By other words we can say that now we can relate brain as a white box, we are able to investigate physical processes that cause consciousness, free will, ethics, aesthetics and that make humans different from other animals.

It seems to me that modern sciences of neurology, computers, genetics and microbiology give so powerful tools to understanding the brains, that all older theories (with all respect we give to them) become very much obsolete.

(This is similar to physics or biology of Aristotle. Once Newtonian mechanics and Darwinian evolution appeared, the theories of Aristotle could not be considered any more as something valuable in understanding of physics/biology).

Even if we speak not of philosophical theories, but of the very subjects that philosophy studies: like free will, ethics, aesthetics, religion, metaphysics, etc., all these subjects look absolutely differently when the brain is treated as a white box.

Because using this approach, aesthetics becomes a neuron network, or even more simple, kind of computer program, that when presented with an image of, say, a human of opposite sex, produces output which is the level of attraction of that person. It is as simple as that: if we observe a person with THIS outline of body, the neuron network give grade 5, and if the person's outline is THAT, the grade is 10. And brain scans can and DO reveal where this neuron network is located in our brain and how it works. And we can even write a computer program that can process photographs of people and assign them grades of attractiveness.

And this program in our brain is partially determined by our genes (i.e. it evolved during millions of years of human evolution) and partially it is built during our personal experience.

Same thing is ethics: it is kind of a program in our brain that decides which actions are good, which bad, allowed or forbidden. Ethics also partially evolved with the human race, and partially formed during our own life. We avoid killing children not because 'it is an eternal law of the universe', but because a neuron network, a program in our brain does not let us doing so. And male lions do kill all lion children if they are not their own, because the program in their brain tells them to do so.

(But the fact that we don't kill children because we have the program in our brain should not be outraging).

What is free will? One of the latest investigation using fMRI (real-time brain scan) revealed that when we decide about something (i.e. making our free will work), even before we feel that we decided, the unconscious circuits in our brain already hold this decision. I.e. the operator of the brain scan could tell what we are going to decide (i.e. choice from two or more options) before we ourselves felt we made the decision.

And another interesting investigation: people with amnesia (failure to remember new situations) use their free will identically in same situation repeated. I.e. when you speak with such person for 5 minutes and then get out of the room, come back and start the conversation with the same words, that person will exactly! repeat his/her words during the whole 5 minutes talk!

(But again, why should we be outraged in the fact that free will is a deterministic neuron network?)

Modern neuroscience advanced much. It is well known, for example, where in brain the speech centre is located and that this speech centre has three regions: first responsible for remembering words, second for grammar, third for meaning. And persons with the grammatical part damaged still can understand speech and produce meaningful speech (even though without grammar, just stream of words, but with meaning). And two persons with the meaning part damaged can talk hours one with the other, while their speech is just a meaningless flow of words, but they don't feel this and continue talking.

Of course, some religious people don't believe in evolution and in the fact that the brain is a computational machine. But for the rest of philosophers (it seems to me that) continuing the old way (i.e. regarding brain as a black box) is like trying understanding motion of planets without using the laws of Newton.

Please forgive my ignorance in the fields of philosophy. I am interested to hear opinions of modern philosophers on this subject.

The "black box" you are referring to would be consciousness explained in terms of classical physics and involves an explanation in terms of a particle universe. In such a universe matter is solid, discrete, disconnected, predictable and precise measurement is possible. Knowing the initial conditions makes it possible to predict the future. In this respect the classical model, when applied to consciousness leaves very little room for free will.

When it comes to consciousness studies philosophers prefer to talk about a "materialist" explanation for consciousness, rather than a "physical" explanation. This is a subtle distinction that some philosophers of mind insist upon, while others are happy to use the terms interchangeably.

The "white box" you refer to is a philosophy of mind theory that allows for both free will AND a scientific explanation. The best candidate at this stage is quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, this is a very long story so there is not enough room to go into details but you have recognized a dichotomy that was explained by Roger Penrose in the 1970s. Before Penrose the assumption had always been that consciousness emerges out of complexity. The more neuronal networks you can establish the greater chance of consciousness emerging from this complexity. In this respect there is really no difference between neurons and silicon chips.

Penrose and Hameroff proposed a quantum theory of consciousness using Godel's incompleteness theorems as a starting point. The idea is based on the assumption that microtubules contained within the neurons of the brain carry quantum processing. Without going into detail, this theory allows for both determinism and free will to operate at the same time. In other words, the "black box" is only half the story, there is also a "white box" quantum factor at work as well.