Cognitive scientist Hofstad argues that the secrets of free will, consciousness, and self cannot be unraveled simply by analyzing the brain's most primitive physical components.
We need to do a better job of integrating high-level spiritual attributes into the interpretation of reality.
In his 2007 book "I'm a Strange Circle", Hofstad addresses the thorny question of the ego:"Me"What is it?
In a universe governed by the laws of physics,"Me"How does it exist?
How do self-consciousness, perspectives, thoughts, and feelings arise from the quantum microcosm?
Of course, to answer these questions, one cannot fail to ** the essence of the brain, the brain is"Fear and dreams of crumbling bulbs"。
The brain is a philosophical hotspot for many difficult problems, and free will, consciousness, and the ego are among them.
Over the past few decades, advances in neuroscience have given people unprecedented opportunities to understand the inner workings of the brain.
While neuroscience has made great strides in mapping the brain and studying neuronal behavior, brain researchers must be careful not to let neuroscience research lose its more abstract side.
It is generally accepted that the level of the most primitive physical components of the brain must also be the level of the brain's most complex and elusive mental properties.
But this kind"Neuroreductionism"Brain research should not include just the study of things like neurotransmitters, synapses, neurons, and the visual cortex.
Mental attributes such as thoughts, concepts, and analogies are cerebral"Structure", just like the left hemisphere.
But magnifying the tiny physical components of the brain doesn't reveal them because they operate at a level of abstraction above those components.
There is no point in trying to locate a concept, a feeling, or a memory to a single neuron.
Even if it is localized to a higher-level structure, such as a column in the cerebral cortex, . .It is also meaningless in all aspects of thinking, such as analogies or spontaneous emergence of events from long ago.
If we were to analyze things like perception, concepts, thinking, consciousness, etc"Me"etc"An elusive spiritual phenomenon"to make progress, we must think of the brain as a multi-layered system.
The brain is a thinking machine, and if we are interested in understanding what thinking is, we cannot just focus on the trees and ignore the forest.
The big picture becomes clear only when we focus on the large-scale architecture of the brain, rather than a more granular analysis of its building blocks.
By Hofstad, we don't just mean our physical architecture, but our large-scale mental constructs, such as concepts, ideas, and self-awareness.
It's hard enough to map the physical structure of the brain, but modeling how the brain works in a way that encompasses mental attributes such as thoughts, concepts, and ideas, and how these attributes might arise from, or interact with, the physical structure of the brain can seem like an almost impossible challenge.
How can mental attributes possibly play a causal role in our physical model of the brain?
We are right on"Dogs"How is it possible to incorporate concepts into our descriptions of neurotransmitters, synapses, and neurons?
Is there not a chasm between the physical and the spiritual that cannot be bridged at all?
In response to this concern, Hofstad proposes two analogies that may help us reconstruct our minds and make it clear to us that mental properties can and do play a causal role in the physical world and can therefore be incorporated into our brain's working model.
To put it simply, it is a question of who pushes whom among the various causal forces that occupy the skull.
It is a matter of straightening out the pecking order hierarchy between intracranial motilities.
There is a world of causal forces within the skull; In addition, in any other half-foot cube in the universe as we know of it, there are cases where there is force in force and force in force.
If we climb up the command system of the brain, we will find at the very top the overall organizational strength and dynamics of the large patterns of brain excitation related to mental states, or mental activity, and near the apex of the brain's command system, we find thoughts.
Man has more ideas and ideals than chimpanzees. In the brain model presented here, the causal power of thought is as true as the causal effect of molecules, cells, or nerve impulses.
Ideas beget ideas and help evolve new ideas. They influence each other and interact with other psychic forces in the same brain, neighboring brains, as well as distant foreign brains.
They also interact with the external environment, producing leaps and bounds in the process of evolution that far surpass any event in evolutionary history, including the emergence of living cells.
Do fears and dreams, hopes and sorrows, thoughts and beliefs, interests and doubts, infatuations and envy, memories and aspirations, the throes of nostalgia and the flood of resonance, flashes of guilt and sparks of genius, play any role in the world of tangible objects?
Do these purely abstract concepts have causal power?
Can they push behemoths around, or are they just impotent fiction?
A vague, intangible"Me"Can you give orders to specific objects such as electrons or muscles?
Hofstad tries to open our minds with these enlightening questions, but ultimately he wants to show us why the answer to all of these questions should be yes"Yes"。
Abstract concepts such as thoughts, concepts, and ideas do have causal powers.
Hofstad argues that mental properties are not detached from matter, they govern matter.
Thoughts, concepts, and ideas can take place"Higher"At the level of abstraction of the physical components of the brain (in Hofstad's view, they represent the great abstract patterns that emerge from these components), but this does not mean that they are empty additions or appearances.
Instead, they have real causal power in the brain's physical systems.
To help us figure out why this is the case, Hofstad proposes two simple but powerful analogies.
1.What best explains the behavior of the fallen dominoes?
First, Hofstad asks us to imagine a series of falling dominoes, but with some modifications, to convert this sequence into a basic mechanical computer (the dominoes are divided into different groups, each domino has a spring, so it can be righted when it falls, and we can send signals to tell the dominoes when to fall, when to right, etc.).
With enhanced dominoes, we can do some basic calculations, such as figuring out whether 641 is prime or not.
If 641 is determined to be a prime number, then the domino chain"Results"A certain segment of the domino will remain the same.
However, if 641 is not a prime number, then these"Results"Some of the dominoes will fall.
Now, let's say someone is observing a chain of dominoes without knowing these background calculations.
After a while, they pointed to the chain of dominoes"Results"Part of a certain domino asked"Why does this domino never fall? "
We can give two very different answers.
The first answer refers to the dominoes themselves and then says:"Because the predecessor of this domino has never fallen. "
Of course, this answer, while correct, doesn't get us any further – it simply puts the blame on the next domino in the chain of dominoes.
The second (and better one) answer is:"Because 641 is a prime number"。
Hofstad observes that while this is a deeper explanation of why dominoes behave this way, there is something strange about it: it doesn't actually mention physical dominoes at all:
The second answer bypasses all physical knowledge about gravity and domino chains, mentioning only concepts that belong to a completely different discursive realm.
Hofstad wrote,"Perhaps even the only explanation as to why some dominoes fell and others did not"。
Thus, although the primitiveness of 641 is not a physical force per se, and although it operates on an abstract level above the relevant physical components (in fact, the same is true of thoughts, concepts, and concepts), it can still be reasonably described as exerting a causal role in a physical system.
Why? As Hofstad said"Because the most effective and insightful explanation of the behavior of titanium depends largely on this concept"：
In a word, 641 is the driving force. So I want to ask: in the dominoes, who is pushing whom?
And who pushes whom in the human brain?
2.What best explains traffic jams?
Hofstad's second analogy involves a car in a traffic jam.
caused"The reason why your car can't move, in a limited sense, is that the cars around you can't move; But to effectively describe the situation, global abstractions such as population density and rush hour are much more useful than an analysis of individual cars.
No amount of mastery of automotive mechanics can help you grasp the essence of this situation; What you need is an understanding of the abstract forces that can act on highways and traffic.
Cars are just pawns in this big chess game, and their physics don't play a significant role in traffic jams, except that they can't cross each other and emerge intact after crossing (like ripples and other waves).
In fact,"caused"Your car can't move that"Traffic flow"、"Peak hours"with"Population density"and other high-level abstractions, and while they don't mention the individual cars around you, these are the deeper reasons why your car can't move.
Again, Hofstad warns, we can unpack the nature of the physical components of the brain as we please, but if we focus only on these"Lower level"Something、
Then you are doomed to take a long detour, and you can only understand things partially, but you cannot perceive them.
True explanatory power, true comprehension, will come from understanding and modeling the higher-level abstract patterns that emerge in the brain.
Hofstad's purpose in making these analogies is to show that the brain is understood as a complex, multi-layered causal system that requires multiple levels of explanation, but the more abstract we are"High"(i.e., the more we pay attention to the patterns that emerge), the more effective and insightful our explanations will be.
To understand cause and effect in depth, it is sometimes necessary to understand very large patterns and their abstract relationships and interactions, not just the interactions of microscopic objects in microscopic time intervals.
In fact, Hofstad wants us to recognize that causal and explanatory forces are transmitted downward through our levels of description and abstraction.
For example, in an internal combustion engine, we speak of the temperature of a gas (an emerging high-level abstraction)."caused"Piston motion, albeit a low-level, fine-grained picture involving billions of individual molecules colliding with each other.
Again, the primitiveness of 641"caused"Dominoes fall or stand tall during peak hours"caused"Your car can't move, mind or belief"caused"We act in a certain way, despite the myriad physical components involved in the low-level, fine-grained picture.
It is important to emphasize that although Hofstad attributes causal forces to patterns and abstractions, they do not exist here"Outside of the physical"power.
At a lower level, the laws of physics solve everything on their own, as a single domino, a car, a molecule, or even the physical component of the brain.
But it is these lower-level holistic arrangements that really determine what happens, and it is precisely by using high-level abstract concepts such as"Primitiveness"、"Transportation"、"Temperature", as well"Thoughts"with"Concept") to explain and simulate this arrangement, so that we can really gain insight into what is going on.
Brain research"To truly give us an understanding of philosophical issues such as free will, consciousness, and the ego, we can't just focus on the lower components of the brain such as neurotransmitters, synapses, and neurons.
On the contrary, in order to come closer to understanding such philosophical puzzles, we need to better integrate high-level mental attributes, patterns, and abstract concepts into our interpretation of reality.
For a puzzle like free will, explanations at the neuronal level are almost irrelevant.
It's like trying to explain a chain of dominoes by focusing on a single domino, dismantling each car to explain traffic jams, or looking at individual molecules to explain an internal combustion engine.
The related question is not"Our neurons are:'Free'Yes?
It's like asking"Are dominoes bound by the laws of physics? "
No, the real question is,"Our thoughts, ideas, and desires are:'Free'Yes?
This is the descriptive, abstract, and causal level associated with human macroscopic behavior.
Ultimately, Hofstad argues, unless we have a workable theory capable of incorporating bursting high-level abstract concepts, thoughts, beliefs, and concepts into our brain models.
Otherwise, research fields such as neuroscience will not be able to help us unravel the philosophical mysteries of the mind.