…and this is a 
Cool! A new argument for dualism!
Category: Stupidity
Posted on: September 3, 2006 9:16 PM, by PZ Myers
At least, that is, it's new to me. Austin Cline summarizes a report in The Philosophers' Magazine by Michael La Bossier:
[R]ecent studies of cloned animals reveal that current cloning techniques produce animals that are as distinct in their personalities as animals produced by natural means of reproduction. Texas A&M, which has been on the forefront of animal cloning, has found that cloned pigs differ from each other in, among other things, their food preferences and degree of friendliness towards human beings.…
Given that the clones are genetically the same and are typically raised in similar environments, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility of a non-physical factor that causes the difference in personality. After all, once the physical factors are accounted for, what would seem to remain would be e non-physical. In light of the history of philosophy, the most plausible candidate would be the mind.
Ooh! Ooh! I have to test this!
I have in my hand two identical dice. I throw them at the same time, to the same place, with the same amount of force…whoa. A 5 and a 2. How can that be?
I have two quarters. They are the same, right down to the year. I flip them both and…two heads. That's a relief. I flip them again, and get a head and a tail.
This is amazing! I have just proven that dice and coins have minds! Is there some kind of big rich philosophical prize I can win for this accomplishment? Would the Templeton Foundation hand out a million bucks for proving that there are immaterial spirits haunting objects in the world?
Please—no one mention the concept of chance until I've got the money. And especially don't mention that complex dynamic systems, such as, say, cloned pigs, are highly sensitive to variations in initial conditions, and offer many opportunities for accumulation of subtle, random changes, such as occur during development.
Comments
Ugh. That argument is even worse than David Chalmers'. I'm embarassed by my fellow philosophers.
Posted by: Keith Douglas | September 3, 2006 9:26 PM
Gotta defend my school - the behavioral testing of cloned pigs was done at North Carolina State University (yeah, people who did it were recent acquisitions from A&T and some of the students still had their affiliations in Texas, but the PI was in Raleigh, and the work was done here).
Posted by: coturnix | September 3, 2006 9:35 PM
To be precise - the pigs were cloned in Texas and tested in North Carolina.
Posted by: coturnix | September 3, 2006 9:38 PM
Gosh, you mean two beings don't experience exactly the same stimuli and process them in exactly the same way, even if they're in the same environment? I'm stunned. This clearly overturns all of materialistic cognitive science.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | September 3, 2006 9:39 PM
Hm. You'd think that the Aggies would be cloning sheep, rather than pigs.
Kazuo Ishiguro explores just this topic in his latest novel, Never Let Me Go. Very good book, although quite depressing at the end.
Posted by: Dan | September 3, 2006 9:41 PM
Most of reality obeys Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud.
In science and other modes of responsible inquiry, we have principles that we use to screen out dross and leave the gold. We call these principles 'standards'. Systems of irresponsible inquiry like religion and academic philosophy lack these 'standards', and as a result they follow Sturgeon's Law so enthusiastically that they actually exceed the prescribed percentage of crud.
Posted by: Caledonian | September 3, 2006 9:51 PM
Caledonian,
That was funny.
Posted by: kansas_lib | September 3, 2006 9:53 PM
Anyone ever read Steven Pinker's The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature ? I think it's one of the best books I've ever read (about science). VERY interesting.
Anyway I bring it up because he says that research has shown that when it comes to personality: identical twins separated at birth are extremely similar, even when raised in very different environments. Regular siblings (and fraternal twins) are also very similar even when rasied apart, yet not as similar as identical twins. And here's the most interesting part- adopted children are no more similar in personality to their foster parents/siblings than complete strangers.
...maybe pigs are the ones with souls, we're the soulless ones lol
Posted by: TAW | September 3, 2006 9:53 PM
There's also the fact that identical twins are more similar than clones...there is at least SOME variation.
Posted by: anon | September 3, 2006 9:54 PM
This is fun:
Despite all water molecules being the same, every snowflake is different. Therefore: water molecule have 'mind'.
Posted by: ashmoo | September 3, 2006 9:57 PM
Wow. Maybe some p-stat and quantum physics work should be required for philosophy candidates?
Nature/Nurture is a terribly complicated system, and I don't know if arguments of personality individuation of even identical twins in "similar" or even "identical" environments can be reasonably advanced to argue for or agin a "non-physical" (read: supernatural?) cause. Alexander Calder's mobiles come to mind, as an illustration of a chaotic system.
I have a more pressing question, concerning self: it is fairly easy to advance material explanations for the development of one's body and even (given conversations with my wife, herself an excellent forensic psychologist) one's personality and mental capabilities and short-comings.
But the "self," itself, remains the mystery for me; I know to a certain extent why I grind my teeth, have blue eyes, a prediliction towards alcoholism and a dry sense of humor. But I've still no idea, arguing from the material, scientific world, why I am "I."
It's not like a fish trying to think about water; it's deeper than that. I don't know if there's any analogue short of the silly: a fish wondering why it is that particular fish.
Welp; I got another 40 years or so to figure it out, before the end of the world!
> echoes of the Demon-Haunted World?
Posted by: wrymouth | September 3, 2006 10:04 PM
Nitpick:
It can't. The physics underlying this situation are very well understood, and are deterministic. If you do everything perfectly the same, you will get the same result.
The coin flip was the better example, because you didn't say that everything is the same in the two repetitions.
Posted by: Cyan | September 3, 2006 10:08 PM
Identical twins usually share the same uterine conditions and available resources. Clones are usually implanted in different uteri, and the cloning process seems to be rather traumatic - we can reasonably expect them to be far more different than genuine identicals.
This simple and rather obvious fact seems to have somehow escaped the highly trained and educated brain of Mr. La Bossier. Perhaps before publishing his next paper, he should have it vetted by a five-year-old child?
Posted by: Caledonian | September 3, 2006 10:08 PM
You'd think that the Aggies would be cloning sheep, rather than pigs.
Good one!
It would seem that the public is pretty misinformed about what cloning really is (well, duh), and what it does and does not deliver...
However, isn't this line of illogic ultimately problematic for the questioner? Animals having immaterial minds? Kind of like (gasp!) souls? It still dashes the human-as-center paradigm, doesn't it?
I mean, what's the friggin' point--pork chops are crucifixion?
Posted by: Kristine | September 3, 2006 10:09 PM
Double congratulations for that post. One for the succinct put-down and another for so expertly disproving the notion that some have (here in Europe) that Americans can't do sarcasm.
Nice one Prof!
Posted by: dc | September 3, 2006 10:13 PM
Now destroying your quarters is not only legally questionable, it could be the destruction of a living soul.
Clearly, we will need to legislate respect for the lives of our newfound inanimate fellow beings.
Posted by: Brock Tice | September 3, 2006 10:13 PM
Cline mentions this, but it bears repeating--without defining what they mean by "similar", it's just total handwaving to say that all environmental variables were accounted for. "Identical" (structural isomorphism/one-to-one and onto correspondence of structural features determined to be significant) is one thing, but "similar" without definition of what that means in regard to environment, and how that significance was determined, permits a great deal of floppiness.
Also, I haven't seen the original study, but did all the clones have the same uterine environment? That would not be necessary for clones, and would certainly need to be accounted for in determining how similar (or not) their environments were.
Posted by: RavenT | September 3, 2006 10:17 PM
PZ, were the dice homozygous twins, though?
Posted by: John Wilkins | September 3, 2006 10:26 PM
I notice that no one has yet mentioned epigenetics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics All I have to do is say the word around my molecular biologist and geneticist friends and they start edging towards the door. One ran out of the room screaming. I don't claim any great understanding of it, but epigenetics certainly makes the whole subject of inheritance very much more difficult and much less predictable. PZ, maybe you can help?
Posted by: William Gulvin | September 3, 2006 10:31 PM
I think that's spelled "Michael LaBossiere".
Posted by: 386sx | September 3, 2006 10:34 PM
What, did one cloned pig prefer Mark Steyn colums while the other was into Mike Moore movies?
Just how do you measure personality difference in swine, anyway?
Posted by: pastor maker | September 3, 2006 10:35 PM
"This pig likes me 20% more than its clone does! Look, you can see it in his eyes!"
Posted by: bargal20 | September 3, 2006 10:37 PM
Well, philosophy is a nice subject, even if it is useless for all practical purposes.
Posted by: j | September 3, 2006 10:41 PM
What? My army of cloned super-soldiers won't all be identically, single-mindedly devoted to carrying out my orders?!! Well then it's hardly even worth creating them.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | September 3, 2006 10:55 PM
Well, it would have to be one charmin' muthaf@#&in' pig to get a measurable difference. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, what with the margin of error and whatnot.
Personality goes a long way.
Posted by: dorkafork | September 3, 2006 11:08 PM
PZ, you are my hero.
Posted by: archgoon | September 3, 2006 11:10 PM
This is all very funny. But people like Wilson and Dawkins have been telling us for years that it's all in the genes and that social science will soon wilt into a mere branch of biology. Whether you attribute it to 'extreme sensitivity to initial conditions' or something called 'mind' (which no one has yet bothered to define here) the fact is that cloned animals growing up in the same environment are as different as genetically different ones. So take your 'genes' and 'genomics' and stuff them in Francis Crick's calcium channels. That's the point.
Posted by: Ron | September 3, 2006 11:14 PM
Nitpick Nitpick: Actually it isn't deterministic IF you subscribe to the current models of the physical forces only the scale of the forces that make it undeterministic are so small in the experiment they have little impact but some.
You probably have to repeat the experiment many times throwing the same dice at the same time to get a different result, but it will be a finite number and therefore it is not deterministic.
Posted by: Bo Dixen Pedersen | September 3, 2006 11:30 PM
Nitpick Nitpick Cyan: Actually it isn't deterministic IF you subscribe to the current models of the physical forces only the scale of the forces that make it undeterministic are so small in the experiment they have very little impact on the outcome.
You probably have to repeat the experiment many times throwing the same dice at the same time to get a different result, but it will be a finite number and therefore it is not deterministic.
But then again it's impossible to prove.
On the subject of clones: I am a bit curious what is the measure of difference of personality in animals?
How do you even go about that? And how much is a lot of difference or little difference and what are the differences :D
Posted by: Bo Dixen Pedersen | September 3, 2006 11:34 PM
I'll see your quantum foam and raise you an indeterminant cosmological constant. 8^)
Posted by: JackGoff | September 3, 2006 11:40 PM
Bo Dixen Pedersen,
Meh. That probabilistic variation of the mechanics of dice cause by quantum effect is, in precise scientific terms, one bajillion orders of magnitude smaller than the variability that affects different organisms with the same DNA.
Posted by: Cyan | September 3, 2006 11:54 PM
I'm glad these mental giants weren't the ones who first conducted the Stern-Gerlach experiment. Instead of state equations and quantized spin, we'd have gotten some hoodoo about (pause for dramatic effect) THE MIND!
This is almost, but not quite, as bad as that paper that came out of MIT's economics department last year. You remember it. It was the "Going to church makes you rich" paper. Clowns.
Posted by: Dustin | September 4, 2006 12:16 AM
Identical twins usually share the same uterine conditions and available resources.
I think that's always the case actually :P
Sorry I can't be more helpful, but I think Pinker also said there was research that eliminated that uterine environment hypothesis... Can't remember how, frankly I can't think of any way to do that right now.... I really gotta buy that book.
Posted by: TAW | September 4, 2006 12:18 AM
Dammit, I want to clone one of my cats and have the clone behave EXACTLY like the current cat does, even though many of the environmental factors will be different.
Can't I solve this problem just by throwing enough money at it?
Posted by: Foobarski | September 4, 2006 12:18 AM
You know, I hate to get fringy, but David Bohm backs me up here. The brain is run on electrochemical impulses which, like anything else on that scale, resolve themselves according to the generalized statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics. It's completely possible that the brain, simply as a consequence of its physical makeup, is so sensitive to quantum fluctuations that it's actually likely that genetically identical subjects raised in identical conditions would come out different.
Alternatively, there was a paper published earlier this year that examined the way monkeys made choices. Remember this?
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/04/whats_it_worth_to_ya.php?utm_source=SB-rightcol&utm_medium=linklist&utm_campaign=internal%2Blinkshare
Personality and cognitive functions are all sitting on top of whatever random process possessed those monkeys to act like that. Yeah, things seem to make sense on the level of cognition and personality, but that's on the emergent level. Somewhere, deep in our brains, is a random number generator seeding our maze of neurons with chaos. Considering how complex (in the mathematical sense) the brain is, it is sensitive in the extreme to those perturbations, small as they are.
"The mind" indeed.
Posted by: Dustin | September 4, 2006 12:34 AM
I'd like to defend the honor of the philosophers here. Contra Caledonian's charge, academic philosophy certainly does have standards; although, I agree that Sturgeon's law applies to it, as to everything else. The Philosophers' Magazine isn't a scholarly journal--it's more like popular mechanics. (Although I'm not sure it's that good.)
Posted by: jdkbrown | September 4, 2006 12:43 AM
Although some scientists share the blame, the notion that the contemporary understanding of biology reduces everything to DNA is mostly a journalistic simplification. I think some of the newspapers have been reusing the same boilerplate explanations since the late 60s and a heck of a lot of developmental and cell biology has been figured out in the interim.
Commonsense would like to explain the individuality of particular organisms by reference to some unchanging and specific bearer of an essence. For purposes of oversimplifying things, the genome is functionally analogous to the old notion of soul, albeit the soul notion doesn't do any real explaining at all while DNA is at least (and at most) a partial explantion.
One other nicety: genes are known whose effect is to increase the variability of the phenotype. In paramecia, if I remember the reference correctly, the gene in question results in the production of offspring of different sizes. One can easily imagine a gene in pigs that tends to produce pigs whose friendliness varies from individual to individual.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | September 4, 2006 1:07 AM
Kristine:
Mmmmm. Tasty and sacreligious. Just the way I like it.
Posted by: Dan | September 4, 2006 1:31 AM
This is all reminding me of the classic novel The Boys from Brazil (the novel, not the sucky-ass movie version thereof) where they try to clone Adolf Hitler. Ira Levin (the author) is very specific in saying that many clones (something like 100) are created and placed in family situations similar to Hitler's in the hopes that one -- just one -- of them will be like him.
So, yeah, even in the 1970s, no one seemed to believe that genetics was everything.
Posted by: Mnemosyne | September 4, 2006 1:37 AM
Just how do you measure personality difference in swine, anyway?
>>
Easy, the web above the more charming one reads "Some pig"
Posted by: JB | September 4, 2006 1:42 AM
And the fact that cloned animals have strangely short lifespans - I bet that's because they don't have a soul!
Posted by: BC | September 4, 2006 2:07 AM
Here's a copy of LaBossiere's article. I'm not sure if he's getting a bum rap or not. His conclusion:
"If all these factors could be controlled adequately in a cloning experiment and the clones still had distinct personalities, then it would be even more reasonable to suspect that a non-physical mind exists."
Hmmmmmm...
Posted by: 386sx | September 4, 2006 2:13 AM
I don't know, 386sx. Here's a case study of identical twin boys, living in the same environment, who developed the same cancer at different ages, with very different outcomes.
[1] Sahdev I, James-Herry A, Scimeca P, Parker R. Concordant rhabdoid tumor of the kidney in a set of identical twins with discordant outcomes. J Pediatr Hematol Oncol. 2003 Jun;25(6):491-4.
It would seem that the question of "mind" would be orthogonal to this case, although it is a similar situation--different onset and outcomes of pathology to twins in the same environment. "Mind" plays no role here, but the physiological discrepancy exists, despite the genotypic and environmental similarities.
So why mind would necessarily be "even more likely" in the cases he cites, I'm not sure. He still seems to me to be assuming his conclusion.
Posted by: RavenT | September 4, 2006 2:34 AM
Why is it so fashionable here at Pharyngula to use the word orthogonal as though it meant "entirely unrelated"?
Anyway, I think I'm done picking at the possible causes of the difference in personality. The fact remains that the mind and personality are physical. It bothers me a lot that there are so many people out there who refuse to believe that, even in the face of centuries of lobotomies and well-documented personality changes following head trauma. What exactly is it that they're looking for? We have more than enough neurology to know that memory is physical, personality is physical, cognitive abilities are physical. Is it consciousness? Is it so hard to digest the fact that it's probably just a result of our high degree of metacognizance? It certainly isn't unique, outside of the matter of degree to which we are conscious. Chimps, dolphins, and African Grey Parrots all show signs of being self-aware. It's simply a matter of being intelligent enough to become aware of the fact that you're thinking.
So, this nonphysical mind isn't memory, personality, intelligence, and it probably isn't consciousness. Evidently, in the end, it would seem proponents of the soul believe exactly the same thing about it as I do: It's nothing. It's not there.
Posted by: Dustin | September 4, 2006 3:52 AM
Dan, don't you mean sacrelicious?
Posted by: JackGoff | September 4, 2006 6:03 AM
Hey stop bashing philosophy. Just because there are sine "philosophers" out there that say it is this way or that, does not mean all philosophers do so. I myself am (inerestingly enough) an atheist philosopher on my way to a degree in my chosen field. i debate matters of existance in ways many have done before me, though I tend to look at things at an angle not as commonly covered, such as all that exists technically being a rather subjective thing considering that as far as what can be considered a universal "fact" of "reality" is that all we see, hear, etc. are merely electronic imputs to our brain, so ultimately, none of us "know" squat. As the buddha (or was it Lao Tzu, help me out here) said, "True knowledge comes from knowing you know nothing".
However, that's enough on philosophy at the moment, as much as I like asking these questions, I still keep myself planted in reality, just got to check out the alternatives just in case, never know what could happen. I think that this is just more so a matter of probabilities and may actually do something in understanding ourselves, that development isn't a matter of being "prefectly" similar (which, if done by humans, cannot happen seeing perfection from imperfection generally doesn't fly) but more so a matter that regardless of our genetics and upbringing we can ultimately become different beings than what are gentics or upbringing say we shall be. Like all things in life certain outcomes are more likely, but just because there's a 99% chance of rain, doesn't mean it won't be sunny.
Posted by: Che | September 4, 2006 6:08 AM
Oh, so we have an observation of difference, but no correlation, no class separability, no correlation between classes and minds, and identical twins are more identical than clones.
I wish philosophers would stop cloning around.
Caledonian:
LOL!
wrymouth:
"But I've still no idea, arguing from the material, scientific world, why I am "I.""
My own idea is that subjective experience is a representation in the mind, as much as programs and data are representations in a computer. We have evolved a capability to model others minds to make sense of their behaviour, and we can use it on our own mind to try to make sense of our own behaviour, feelings and verbalised thoughts. In my own case I'm not successful at all times. :-)
Cyan:
"The physics underlying this situation are very well understood, and are deterministic. If you do everything perfectly the same, you will get the same result."
Yes and no. In this case you need to show that dice or coins that falls from a possible edge situation have deterministic outcomes in your model from the necessary coarsegraining of the forces and geometry in your observations. I think it is impossible in practice. In other cases, there are worse deterministic chaotic systems that defy any finegraining, and even so ultimately you run into genuine quantum randomness.
pastor:
"Just how do you measure personality difference in swine, anyway?"
Throw pearls at them. Some will fight, some will run, some will eat, and some will make a necklace.
Dustin:
"The brain is run on electrochemical impulses which, like anything else on that scale, resolve themselves according to the generalized statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics."
The scale of nerve impulses are IIRC several millivolts, well above the noise threshold. Same for the chemical (synapse function) and geometrical processes (dendrite growth and death). AFAIK the brain operates in the classical regime. Not that anything forbids evolution to use any occuring quantum processes it could stumble on, but nothing seems to support this occuring.
"Why is it so fashionable here at Pharyngula to use the word orthogonal as though it meant "entirely unrelated"?"
Probably because in mathematics two vectors are orthogonal if their inner product is zero. And that means they are independent of each other. Which means none of them can be written as a linear combination of (finitely many) other vectors in the collection of independent vectors. One can't be described by the others, so it is expressing something new or unrelated. (And they are important, since orthogonal vectors, or rather their orthonormal basis, describes the inner product space.) The new dimension can be another dimension in a state description, for example another degree of freedom.
jdkbrown:
Caledonians point is that science checks against observation, so it performs better. It also choose best theories. In philosophy, ideas lives until they are debunked or unpopular.
Sturgeon's 90% law is interesting. 80/20 (or 90/10) observations are made on complex systems, which are described by power laws. 20 % of factors describe 80 % of outcomes. If it's true for constrained ideas, it seems there is some connection between our guesses and the real world. :-) Not too bad.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | September 4, 2006 7:30 AM
What about the mitochondrial DNA is it the same between the cloned and non-cloned pigs? Throw that on top of that everything else everyone is mentioning and you really can't draw that many conclusions other than cloned pig is not identical to the pig it was cloned from, which we already knew to be a given. We know that from studies on identical twins, who developed in the same womb and are genetically closer than any human designed clone and its nuclear DNA "donor". Those identical twins raised in the same homes are not identical in every way and develop their own personalities.
Posted by: kstrna | September 4, 2006 7:42 AM
Dustin:
"The scale of nerve impulses are IIRC several millivolts, well above the noise threshold."
Eh, considering the room temperature degree of freedom kT/2 is about 13 mV, the nerve impulses needs to be at least more than that I suppose. But they are more robustly than mere electronic impulses electrochemical (ion) changes in membrane potential, and has a driving force of about 130 mV according to wikipedia.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | September 4, 2006 7:56 AM
"But they are more robustly than mere electronic impulses electrochemical (ion) changes in membrane potential"
Which BTW mean that they are nearly neutral considered from the outside (ions change places radially, and don't travel longitudinally) so I guess they don't contribute much to each others noise.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | September 4, 2006 8:10 AM
I performed a human experiment on memory and the brain a couple years ago. Smacking a human cranium against the pavement resulted in the subject having no recall of the accident or the hour following. Or so I'm told.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | September 4, 2006 8:40 AM
Identical twins don't have indentical fingerprints. So considering that the pattern of synapses in the cortex is at least a couple of orders of magnitude more complex than the pattern of whorls on the thumb, I don't see why this result is so surprising.
Ron, could you please point me to where exactly Dawkins has been saying for years that social science will wilt into biology.
Posted by: The Science Pundit | September 4, 2006 8:59 AM
Grrr, one of the most frustrating ideas that I yell at my students, friends, colleagues, and especially evolutionary psychologists, about... namely, the idea that "genetic cause" and "biological cause" are synonymous. Why do people think that? If that were the case, then why do people bother to put their kids into the best possible schools, the overly-scheduled after-school programs, music classes, karate classes, basketball camps, etc? If it's all "in the genes", then why bother with all the hassle? The next Michael Jordan or Pavarotti will just appear, fully formed, straight out of the womb, with no input from experience. Why do people turn off their most basic observations of the world when it comes to an idea like "cloning"?
Posted by: rjb | September 4, 2006 9:36 AM
What's with the whole quantum mind thing? Quoting Max Tegmark:
See also an interesting paper by Litt et al., entitled "Is the Brain a Quantum Computer":
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 4, 2006 10:24 AM
OK PZ -- Bournelli supposedly disproved the Law of Pythagoras and created statistics in one foul swoop yet his Golden Theorem basically renewed the whole mysticism of the logarithmic spiral. Still you have to read Professor Sudsharan's "Doubt and Certainty" (1998).
When ever I see someone reference Demons of a Haunted World I cringe! I remember reading that book in summer of 1997 while working on an organic farm. Carl Sagan was so wrong it was amazing!!
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse/bookreviews/11-4/sagan.html
Now there's a good debunking of Sagan's sloppy book.
EPIGENTICS is optimized by the equilateral triangle resonating into the 4th dimension of space that is nonlocal consciousness. Just as Nobel physicist Brian Josephson.
Posted by: drew hempel | September 4, 2006 10:56 AM
As a Mom, barely following what you are all talking about, this is all very encouraging. Things are even more complicated than I ever imagined and, somehow, I find that very comforting when I think about my children's future.
Thanks! :)
Nance
Posted by: Nance Confer | September 4, 2006 11:10 AM
But people like Wilson and Dawkins have been telling us for years that it's all in the genes and that social science will soon wilt into a mere branch of biology.
All Dawkins did was locate the replicator at the level of the gene (which, not unlike the subatomic particle, seems to have a fuzzy boundary). I think that the whole "genetic determinism" idea comes from a Judeo-Christian heritage, which still infects our thinking despite our best efforts. Genes "program," i.e., dictate, and blah blah. This "evolved to" do that, etc. Language that is used as mere shorthand gets siezed upon by nonscientists who take it literally. I get tripped up by it all the time.
Mmmmm. Tasty and sacreligious.
Doesn't the Old Testament forbid the eating of pork? Have we come up with a Templeton Foundation grant idea here? And a really sacrilicious research project?
Posted by: Kristine | September 4, 2006 11:43 AM
This means that although the current state-of-the-art in neural network hardware is clearly still very far from being able to model and understand cognitive processes as complex as those in the brain, there are no quantum mechanical reasons to doubt that this research is on the right track
Does anyone besides me see a contradiction in that sentence?
Posted by: Mooser | September 4, 2006 12:16 PM
Haven't these people heard about complexity? Maybe more sexy terms like chaos theory might remind them. With their logic any brain is totally illogical, after all only some of the 5 billion base pairs in the genome "describes" it, but more than 10 billion neurons with more than ten trillion connections form. The permutations of the connections is more than all the ATOMS in the whole UNIVERSE. I mean do they believe that there is something mystical about two cloned plants looking different when one is kept in a box. (Hint the one in the box is dead.) With brains the slightest variation can produce, huge effects(Also known as the butterfly flaps it's wing in brazil resulting in ...) because it is so complex. When all you need is partial differential equations all the mystical clap-trap is just so qaint!
Posted by: Dan | September 4, 2006 12:39 PM
I'm not sure what you're objecting to, Dustin. "Orthogonal" means a component that varies independently of other components, which is how I'm using it.
From Merriam-Webster online:
In other words, there is no causal relationship, as my example demonstrated.
You wrote:
Exactly. There is no "mind" statistically connected to the factors we have been discussing (genotype, environment). Since we're saying the same thing, I'm still puzzled why you object to the use of the term "orthogonal".
Posted by: RavenT | September 4, 2006 1:46 PM
"Sturgeon's 90% law is interesting. 80/20 (or 90/10) observations are made on complex systems, which are described by power laws. 20 % of factors describe 80 % of outcomes. If it's true for constrained ideas, it seems there is some connection between our guesses and the real world."
Hmm. By coincidence I happened on a paper that says much the same from another angle. It is BTW about physicists trying to apply statistical physics onto biology haphazardly. They answer by modelling the modellers. :-)
"Finally, the astute reader of this note will also see that we have not ourselves taken a statistical mechanics approach to modeling the dissemination and diversification of physicists' evolutionary models, but have rather left this as an exercise for subsequent modelers of models of models, though we suspect a multiplicative noise process would be both appropriate and apt. We are strengthened in this suspicion by a recent investigation Redner (1998) into the distribution of citations of papers, independent of their subject matter, found that they conform to Zipf's law with an exponent of ≈-0.5, and the classical explanation of such phenomena, first provided by Simon (1955), is, precisely, multiplicative noisy growth." ( http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/adap-org/pdf/9910/9910002.pdf )
Turns out that Zipf's law is experimental statistical distributions, that are Pareto distributions after a variable exchange. Pareto distributions are of course power law probability distributions. Multiplicative noise is related to Markow processes and so diffusive Wiener processes. They are stuff like simple Brownian dust/drunken walk. But pure diffusion is exponential, of course.
So Sturgeon's law are indeed related to stumbling around...
Blake:
Nice references! I will as always enjoy reading Tegmark - here he seems to kill Penrose's QM speculations by noting that Penrose uses QG decoherence. It is of course is much weaker than QED decoherence, which makes microtubules and other organelles classical many order of times faster than the brain works.
And his analysis of myelin sheets reminded me of my error in "ions change places radially, and don't travel longitudinally". It is even more wrong than that the ions need to find an ion channel. They do travel longitudinally some distance, even for unmyelinated dendrites.
Live a little, learn a little, sleep a little. Repeat until interrupted.
Mooser:
"Does anyone besides me see a contradiction in that sentence?"
Err, no?! Tegmark gives a good explanation why QM implies classicality here, by estimating decoherence due to EM interactions such as dipole-dipole moments interacting in organelles. He says that classical models, such as neural networks, should suffice. What is the contradiction in that?
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | September 4, 2006 2:49 PM
Both Caledonian and Torbjorn Larsson talk about philosophy as if it is somehow in competition with natural science, as an alternative but inferior mode of inquiring after the same quarry. It isn't. Philosophy usually isn't in the business of determining facts about the world (no matter what impression TPM gives); its in the business of exploring and evaluating the strength of different arguments-- cast in varying shades of formality-- and understanding the rational links or tensions that exist between different currents of our understanding. This explains why ideas (apparently) have a tendency to stick around for a long time in philosophy: if there's a chance an argumentative strategy can be redeemed in a new variant, it is-- for all intents and purposes- still alive in the conversation. This conception of the discipline also explains why the conclusions of most academic journal articles in philosophy are cast in conditional form. Philosophers are by and large interested in pursuing conclusions of the form "If x is true, then y follows" and the like (at least, they are when they're being level-headed). When they're being level-headed, philosophers are typically motivated to determine what can be inferred from what, as opposed to what the facts actually are in any particular case.
And in the instances where philosophers are out to determine facts about the world, the facts concerned are typically of the sort that would not be of much interest to scientists (as such).
There is, of course, another broad category within the discipline, under which I would place Mr. LaBossiere's recent article, marked by the heading, Really Bad Philosophy. Here you find philosophy that mistakes the boundaries between philosophy and empirical inquiry, or-- what distinguishes Mr. LaBossiere's argument-- philosophy that features baldly offensive reasoning.
I hope, for Mr. LaBossiere's sake, that his choice of conclusion was motivated, e.g., by his desire to sell magazines, rather than by his commitment to honestly evaluating the strength of arguments in the philosophy of mind. I'm encouraged in this hope by the fact that a few paragraphs before he draws his ridiculous conclusion, Mr. LaBossiere cites the consideration that should have saved him-- namely that the two clones, being different individuals, occupy different places in the spatiotemporal causal nexus and therefore-- inevitably-- are subject to slightly different experiential inputs, regardless of the underlying similarities of environment. There therefore seems to be at least equally good reason to suspect that these differences in input will ultimately result in corresponding differences in behavioral output (which, I presume, is the relevant measure of personality). LaBossiere countenances this possibility but gives it only very modest lip service. I sincerely hope this is less of an oversight or an instance of tendentiousness than a rhetorical decision aimed at providing the conclusion more agreeable to the lay public, and thereby boosting magazine sales. But I must say I'm not optimistic.
Posted by: noema | September 4, 2006 4:35 PM
No, those are mathematicians. Philosophy is distinguished from mathematics by the fact that spurious or invalid arguments are rapidly eliminated from the latter but conserved for generations in the former.
Posted by: Caledonian | September 4, 2006 5:01 PM
RavenT said: So why mind would necessarily be "even more likely" in the cases he cites, I'm not sure. He still seems to me to be assuming his conclusion.
Good point. Even if we could account for all the natural causes there would be no reason to assume some invisible "mind" when we could just as well assume pretty much any other invisible "thingyness" thing. I suspect Mr. LaBossiere knows full well that it would be impossible to account for all natural causes, and thus is engaging himself in some idle speculation just for kicks. Naturally everybody here is jumping all over him for it. Man these guys can be testy when they haven't had their coffee. Wow.
Posted by: 386sx | September 4, 2006 5:10 PM
Rudy Rucker in his book "Infinity and the Mind" goes to visit Kurt Godel during Godel's "solitary" years. Godel is found to be practicing inference of the I-thought to achieve nonlocal consciousness. Socratic self-enquiry or vichara in jnana yoga.
No math is necessary -- just repeat I-I-I over and over as a logical experiment to see where does it come from. Not a brainless mantra but an investigation of inference. As Chomsky states I-language is the basis for all logical axioms and even Chomsky admits that no one understands C.S. Pierce's logic of abduction yet it's valid and based on intuition.
By the way faster-than-light superliminal SIGNALS are now a proven fact (not just after-the-fact coherence). Just do an I.S.I. web of science citation index search under quantum electronics and superliminal or faster than light.
Decoherence as a macro quantum molecule is possible through WAVEFORM -- the secret again is the equilateral structure of the tetrahedral binding in macro quantum water molecules. (See "What's so special about water" by physics professor J.L. Finney, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, 2004).
Protons are superconducting at room temperature!
The secret to "exceptional human functions" as the Chinese call them is that the magnetic momentum is greatly increased by altering the potassium-sodium ratio in neurons -- just read CIA mind control scientist Dr. Andrija Puharich's great book "Beyond Telepathy." (1975)
So if we get rid of logarithmic-based mathematics we can understand that the magnitude as the hypotenuse in a 3:4:5 triangle resonates with 3:4 transmuting into 2:3 and the infinite spiral of musical fifths (2:3 as the Law of Pythagoras or the 80-20 Power Law of the Tetrad) causes the equilateral triangle to collapse through pressure as antigravity.
Pressure is just longitudinal sound waves as phonons (except again you have to have statistical logarithmic measurements to accept the concept of phonon and photon). To get beyond the time-frequency uncertainty principle you need to through out amplitude and frequency concepts because of phase distortion -- just use waveform to create asymmetrical time reversal.
Read "The Symphony of Life" by chemistry professor Donald Hatch Andrews (author of numerous standard college textbooks). He gives the secret of macro quantum chaos transmutation -- or read Louis Kervan's book "Biological Transmutations" (it's found at U of Minnesota Macgrath Library so you can drop by there next time you're in town PZ).
Posted by: drew hempel | September 4, 2006 5:44 PM
noema:
"Both Caledonian and Torbjorn Larsson talk about philosophy as if it is somehow in competition with natural science, as an alternative but inferior mode of inquiring after the same quarry. It isn't."
When I was younger and less integrated, I was both doing science and interested in philosophy. When I started to revisit these areas, it was natural to start with science. Philosophy seemed confused in comparison - especially without the education. :-)
Now I have come a bit further, and has another picture. I compare with mathematics, since I think both philosophy and mathematics started out as modelling idealisations of nature, and are still informed that way. Areas of logics and mathematics in physics are strongly influenced by practical applications.
Yes, pure philosophy like pure mathematics explores speculative 'what-if' models. But it is the practical applications and interrelations with such verified models that constrains and tells us what is the interesting areas. Obscure math with little connections to 'hot' areas is abandoned, and I can imagine that it is so in philosophy too.
Unfortunately debunked ideas such as dualisms keep coming back. This is a difference, and it is due to lack of rigor. Mathematicians doesn't accept theories with contradictions - why does philosophers accept such theories? (AFAIK universal dualisms trivially gives contradictions - it is the special pleaded ones that doesn't.)
I'm interested in applied philosophy, and that is mostly a rather thin skin or weak glue between areas of science. As such it is also best when guided by minimalism compatible with science method. I can but note that there has been little interest in modelling the logic of facts (intuitionistic logic, frames, linear logic, quantum logic) and knowledge (knowledge bases, knowledge consolidation) before computer science made this a necessity.
A concrete example related to this discussion is Tegmark's multiverses. His level 4 multiverse is the closed ensemble of physically possible worlds. Yet the modal 'realistic' multiverses discusses a seemingly different closed ensemble of logically possible worlds, as if they are real.
The lowest level multiverse is the level 1 infinite ergodic universe of the type we seems to live in. (Infinite Lambda-CDM cosmology is observationally prefered, and it is supposedly ergodic.) Here we have an infinite number of identical copies. So when I remarked that philosophers should stop discussing clones it was in jest - physicists discuss principally identical clones and what they mean.
They won't save LaBossier, since in an infinite ergodic universe anything will eventually repeat for an indefinite time. And if that isn't enough, the next level 2 multiverse makes an infinite number of copies of level 1 universes indefinitely in time, and it is currently the observationally prefered natural extension of Lambda-CDM.
Why would identical human clones be a problem? They don't meet each other, and if they do they would individualise since they are classical objects. Identical and indistinguishable clones already exists - they are called bosons.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | September 4, 2006 5:49 PM
A prize to anyone who can find any logical, factually based or coherent statement in any of the above.
Posted by: Michael Geissler | September 4, 2006 5:52 PM
Sorry, my remark was directed at Drew Hempel (I refuse to use your so-cool lower case), not Torbjörn.
Posted by: Michael Geissler | September 4, 2006 5:53 PM
For the record, I am studying molecular biology, and I am running out of the room screaming at the mention of epigenetics. The histone code is horrible enough (I mean: to learn by heart), and that's just the start!
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"Good debunking of Sagan's sloppy book"? And then this "debunking" uncritically praises Benveniste? Benveniste is the only person to ever have received two IgNobel Prizes, and he richly deserves it. One of his "experiments" consisted of his assistant looking at the results, counting the surviving white blood cells, thinking "this cannot be", and counting again and again till the desired result was reached. Benveniste is a pseudoscientist. A crank.
However, I'm sure that the lower "potencies" of homeopathy do have an effect. Often they consist of very heavy poisons (really naughty platinum compounds and the like) in very small concentrations.
Sagan's book is absolutely great. Go read it.
Posted by: David Marjanović | September 4, 2006 7:38 PM
Anyone who takes something in The Philosopher's Magazine as indicating problems for academic philosophy generally is making a bit of a fool of themselves, really. As far as I can tell it is, for the most part, a place for people who probably should know better to publish utterly ridiculous papers.
Also despite what some above seem to think dualism is neither (1) automatically absurd, (2) a position (it is, more or less, about seven thousand different sorts of positions, some reasonable and others ones that only show up in as much as one can accuse others of holding them), (3) relevant to any religious positions (despite what some religious writers might claim) or (4) "debunked", whatever that might come to when talking of large groups of theses. Was Descartes right? His position was more or less unsalveagable barring significant changes, but the notion that this is really relevant to any of the rather dramatic claims about it above is to make a significant error.
And, seriously people, arguing that an since an unqualified theory contains (when phrased stupidly) contradictions (which dualism, note, does not even when phrased as Descartes does - "problem" is not "contradiction") does not indict qualified versions of that same theory. That is, of course, the point of qualifications: they may not be hedge moves at all, and to pretend otherwise is like pretending that since Democritus was wrong about the makeup of physical objects then atoms couldn't possibly exist.
Posted by: Dr Pretorius | September 4, 2006 7:59 PM
Michael:
"Sorry, my remark was directed at Drew Hempel (I refuse to use your so-cool lower case), not Torbjörn."
Of course. :-) I would like to say that drew refutes any cloning process, but Tegmark argues against. OTOH there is no doubt that drew is good at clowning around. He is a Turing test for the gullible.
I thought there was a glimmer of sense in "Pressure is just longitudinal sound waves", but unfortunately taking the wavelength to infinity merely gives zero pressure since sound is a pressure differential. (The reversed statement had worked: "Sound is just longitudinal pressure waves".) So no