Thinking And Moral Problems/1. Thinking/Endnotes
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[edit] Endnotes
1. Breaks in the DNA strands of a sperm, ovum or zygote (caused by such factors as carcinogens, naturally occurring free-radical oxidation within cells, energetic electromagnetic radiation such as ultra-violet and X-rays, radon gas, and so on) are, to a large extent, repaired. The few that may not be repaired (or are incorrectly rebuilt) are called mutations; these become reproduced, as are all DNA molecules, in all of the cells formed from the zygote—including those of future generations. Since DNA controls cell formation and growth by affecting protein synthesis and the sequence in which sets of genes are turned on, these mutations can have various wide-ranging effects, from insignificant to fatal.
2. A later different mutation in the same gene caused a fly to nap in the heat of the afternoon, which must also have contributed to that fly’s survival, and to the survival of many descendants, for this behaviour has also become inherited by the majority of fruit flies.
3. Read Jonathan Weiner, Time, Love, Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1999) for an eloquent description of some of the experiments with fruit flies and mice that proved that instinctive behaviour can be genetically inherited.
4. The use of computers and a variety of instruments has greatly expanded our knowledge of the brain in the past few decades. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides detailed, thin, cross-sectional images. (This technology, which uses high frequency radio waves and strong magnetic fields, can also detect chemical changes that occur in the brain during various behaviours.) Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) maps changes in oxygen concentration and shows localized neural activity. (For instance, an analysis of fMRI patterns can tell researchers, to an 85% accuracy, which particular picture, from a selection of several different pictures, subjects were viewing while being scanned.) Positron Emission Tomography (PET), using radioactive tracer chemicals, shows the formation of neurotransmitters as signals disseminate from neuron to neuron. Electroencephalography (EEG) and minute wire probes detect chemical and electrical changes occurring within single neurons. Voltage sensitive dyes show groups of neurons lighting up in sequence following sensory stimulation. Advanced Magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanners show that visual recognition and decision making processes within the brain move from the visual cortex, through memory and speech (i.e., sub-vocalization) regions, to the right parietal cortex, where decisions are consciously made. New ways of investigating the brain’s functioning are continually being introduced, and undoubtedly our understanding of what is occurring will grow rapidly over the next few years. (MEG scanners, which use an array of super-conducting quantum interference devices bathed in liquid helium, are one such recent introduction.)
5. Axon fanouts can have between one and ten thousand branches.
6. Synapses have been photographed growing in rats following stimulation of the optic nerve. New knobs take about an hour to grow.
7. The development of the brain from its simplest beginnings to its current complexity in human beings is ably discussed by John Morgan Allman in Evolving Brains (New York: Scientific American Library, 1999). See also John H. Holland, Emergence: from Chaos to Order (Reading, Massachusetts: Helix Books, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1998). Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel, Memory: From Mind to Molecules (New York: Scientific American Library, 1999) provide a different perspective.
8. Neurons transmit data from body sensors to the brain, and from the brain to body muscles, as well as within the brain itself.
9. Studies have shown that stimuli from the retina move successively through the lateral gemiculate nuclei (which respond to changes of brightness or colour), to the primary visual cortex (which can detect motion and its direction), then on to well over twenty other cortical regions (which detect shapes), and eventually on to more specialized regions such as the inferior temporal cortex (which can recognize objects and identify their form). The sequential detection of optical stimulation shows how vision has evolved over time to become what it is today. Many hundreds of millions of years ago one or more genetic mutations occurred, producing a slight cellular sensitivity to light. Helping the entity to survive, the altered genes were passed on to descendants. Subsequent mutations, perhaps forming several light-sensitive patches, and probably occurring many generations later, gave additional survival benefits, and these were also passed on. Gradually, after many thousands of genetic modifications (the majority of which would not have helped survival, and whose possessors would not have had a greater chance of surviving to reproduce), primitive eyes and the associated decoding memory networks in the brain, would exist. All organisms’ body tissues and systems have been constructed in this manner, with non-lethal modifications being passed to descendants as additions to those already present.
10. One of these memories would likely be its name, for animals having language abilities. See section three of this chapter for more details.
11. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is able to show brain activity when mental tasks are performed. When a subject is shown pictures of places visited, memories of those places cause particular brain areas to activate. Pictures of places not visited do not elicit such a response. The techniques which detect this mental behaviour can be used to examine people suspected of taking part in criminal activities. This creates an interesting moral problem: should such a technology be developed? See Brad Evenson, “The guilty mind,” National Post, February 8, 2003, A1 and A6.
12. Brains of rats raised in stimulating environments possess many more synaptic knobs, are heavier, and have a better blood supply than the brains of rats raised in uninteresting conditions. See Susan Greenfield, The Private Life of the Brain: Emotions, Consciousness, and the Secret of the Self (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000). Rats (and mice) raised in enriched environments also learn better. See page 42 of “New nerve cells for the adult brain,” in The Hidden Mind, a special edition of the Scientific American, May 2002, 38-44.
13. Plants also do this; for instance, gravity orients stem growth upwards, roots develop toward nutrients, and branches shape so that their leaves gather maximum sunlight.
14. William H. Calvin, in The Ascent of Mind: Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence (Bantam Books, 1990) discusses this topic in a straight-forward manner. He explains reflex actions as due to “sensory schemas” being firmly linked to “movement programs” (see page 39 of his book). Computers can be programmed to carry out similar functions, i.e., to oversee and care for the well-being of machines, vehicles and factories. Although many expect computers to eventually be able to think, these care-giving electronic chips certainly do not. The parallels between the human brain and a computer have been interestingly developed in Chapter Seven, “The Evolution of Consciousness,” of Daniel C. Dennett’s book, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991).
15. See Andrew Whiten and Christophe Boesch, “The Cultures of Chimpanzees,” Scientific American, January 2001, 61-67, for intriguing descriptions of chimpanzee behaviour. Neighbouring communities of chimps apparently occasionally battle each other to the death. (Ah! Perhaps we can blame a common ancestor for contributing the same trait to us.)
16. Crows in the New Caledonian rain forest are as advanced in their ability to use tools as were Stone Age humans. The birds strip bark from a twig, cut the twig just below an offshoot to create a hook, and then insert this hook into tree cavities to remove insects and larvae. They also use a barbed type of leaf which they peck into a tapered point for similar functions (showing a left-handed preference when tailoring pine needles). They make several different types of tools, each for its own specific purpose, and even produce tools in assembly line fashion—that is, they finish a number of tools before using any of them. Man did not reach this stage until the Lower Palaeolithic era, 2.5 million to 200,000 years ago. Readers with an interest in the intelligence of birds, crows in particular, will enjoy Bernd Heinrich’s book, Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds (New York: Harper Collins, 1999).
17. Marc D. Hauser, Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000), 209.
18. Hauser, 257.
19. Calvin, The Ascent of Mind, 24.
20. However, Wilder Penfield, in his experiments that electrically stimulated points within the brain, may have been close to finding out. (This kind of investigative work is considered unethical and is not practiced today.)
21. It may help some to use the word “consciousness” instead of the word “thinking” when reading this section. I have chosen to use “thinking” because I wish to emphasize differences (“levels” of thinking) that are harder to separate when using the word “consciousness.” (Consciousness is further, although briefly, discussed in a postscript to this chapter, Consciousness And Conscience.)
22. Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth, translated by Susanne K. Langer (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1953), 57.
23. Savants (see later) are likely exceptions to this generalization; many explanations of their exceptional capabilities depend upon their being able to access an almost perfect memory of things seen or heard.
24. It also occurs as a stress-relieving activity, as will be discussed later.
25. This is why information from the eyes is first routed to pass through networks that check for changes—see this chapter, endnote 9.
26. Penfield, more than seventy years ago, noted that electrically stimulating tiny areas of the temporal lobes of a patient produced sensations of different smells, accompanied by associated memories and feelings.
27. Stimuli propagate in two ways: as electrically charged ions, which flow along and between neurons; and as chemical discharges (e.g., the release of adrenaline or endorphin) which move about in body fluids. Neural transmissions are relatively fast, and some of them may give rise to feelings (e.g., pain). Chemical transmissions are relatively slow to act and take longer to fade; they may give rise to the longer-lasting emotions (e.g., happiness). Emotional responses are considered to be inherited from ancient learned responses. Animals employing such devices have inherited them from ancestors who first developed these as solutions to survival or reproductive threats. Thus human males react emotionally (particularly in early adulthood) to other males entering their territory or attempting to usurp females. Overt emotional displays act as warnings, and may obviate the need to use potentially self-harmful force. For a well-organized and informative discussion of the mind’s psychological development and functioning, see David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999).
28. Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996), 25.
29. Temporary ion-flow loop formation is similar to storing data in random access memory (RAM) in computers; this information is retained only as long as its supporting medium is energized. Permanent link storage, on the other hand, is similar to storing data on a computer’s hard disk, where it remains even after the power is switched off. (This suggests that it may be possible, one day, to retrieve the long term memories stored in a “dead” brain.)
30. However, additional synaptic knobs may form, lessening the neural pathway’s resistance to future ion flows and thus somewhat increasing the probability that this path will be chosen above neighbouring others.
31. The brain enlarges rapidly in volume, from about 350 cc (cubic centimetres) at birth to double that at six months, doubling again to approximately adult size (some 1400 cc) at four years old. (See Susan Greenfield, The Human Brain: A Guided Tour [New York: Basic Books, 1997].) Dendrites form most rapidly after this neuronal growth has occurred—from four to ten years of age. The majority of association-forming neural connections are made during these early years. Newborns and very young infants initially experience stimuli devoid of context. Stimuli produce feelings and emotions—pleasure, pain, satisfaction, rejection, joy, anger, and so on—with initially no understanding that a link between stimuli and emotion, or between past cause and future effect, exists. Understanding only begins to arrive after experiences have become stored as memories, when neural links between them, or between them and new stimuli, can be made. (Although the retrieval and use of some of the information already held in the mind is often under rational control, the storage of information coming to our brains from our body’s sensors is usually not. However, when we want to sure we will remember something of importance, we can consciously direct our minds in the way it stores thoughts. Thus, for example, as a reminder to telephone Bill early tomorrow, we can picture ourselves drinking a breakfast mug of coffee, then picking up the phone. The next morning this task comes to mind while coffee drinking, just as desired. We remember to call because we have associated or linked it to another action, an action that needs no reminder to occur. Mnemonics, used in memory training, employ the same trick.)
32. Christian de Duve, Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 241.
33. Memory-building in infants must progress from knowing nothing, to becoming vaguely aware of a shape, noise, or other sensation, then on to storing this as an unrecognized neural pattern that seems to have some significance. Subsequent detection of similar stimuli, because it is of a comparable nature, follows the now-existing neural pathway and thus reaches the first neural patterns stored. Any extra information brought in by the new stimuli may then be stored as additional neural patterns linked to (i.e., associated with) the earlier stored patterns. In this way, memories slowly build in complexity and data completeness, until they become what adolescents and adults experience—full-blown mental representations of objects and events that have existed (or exist) in the outside world. (It is because many repetitions of an event must occur before it can be meaningfully linked to create an understanding, that fully one-third of all blind-from-birth adults, whose ability to see has abruptly been restored, revert initially to closing their eyes to navigate and generally make sense of the world.)
34. We must again differentiate between simply recalling memories and second-level thought. The example of European blue tits all over England opening tinfoil caps on milk bottles to obtain the cream is widely known. But only the first bird to discover this was “thinking”; the others simply copied what they saw another bird do. (The first bird associated or linked memories of cream at the top of bottles and memories of pecking to make holes; it was “thinking.” Birds copying this behaviour were simply demonstrating “learned” behaviour, or memory recall, not original thinking.) A related observation involves Imo, a macaque monkey, who discovered the benefits of washing sweet potatoes in the sea before eating them. This could have been due to second-level thinking (for instance, if Imo had associated memories of eating sweet potatoes found in the sea and sensory perceptions that these potatoes lacked grit or were saltier, etc., and were more enjoyable to eat). The many other macaques who later adopted this practice did so because they had seen and memorized, then recalled and imitated, what Imo did. Thinking was not involved in these subsequent behaviours. (Similarly, much of what any animal does, including humans, does not require conscious thought.) (Note that each of these behaviours have come into common use, and thus might be considered to have become part of the animal’s culture, to be passed through repetition from generation to generation, and to die out when their practice is recognized as being no longer beneficial. Human cultures build in exactly the same way.)
35. Plants, also, react to changes in their environment. For example, stomata close in dry weather, rootlets grow toward nourishment, flowers typically open in sunlight, etc. Although no one would claim that plants are thinking when they respond to changes in the environment, this kind of behaviour is genetically encoded, and was probably passed on to animals when they later evolved. Thus, plant reaction to environmental variations may be regarded as being a precursor to animal responsiveness and even to human thinking.
36. Much more than this may have been needed. For instance, recent research suggests that the gene FOXP2 mutated some 100,000 years ago, giving humans a genetic sequence that differs from apes in this area. In humans, a deficiency in this gene severely affects how language is both expressed and understood. See Wolfgang Enard et al., “Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language,” Nature, 418, 869-872.
37. For example, a 14-year old bonobo chimpanzee called Panbanisha, first refused, then “granted” and participated in, an interview with a reporter. Panbanisha lives at Georgia State University, and has been taught the meaning of about 3,000 words by scientists at the university’s Language Research Centre. Another chimp, Washoe, living at Central Washington University, has a working vocabulary of 240 signs and has taught other chimpanzees to sign.
38. Robin Dunbar, in Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, postulated that ape and monkey groups are necessarily limited in size to less than about 150 animals because they socialize through grooming. He extended this theory to state that languages developed to permit larger groups to bond via social gossip. I favour a different explanation. Group bonding requires intelligence to observe, analyze (i.e., associate relevant memories) or recognize behaviours that promote bonding rather than distancing. In other words, social intelligence incorporates the results of a great number of problem-solving activities. Thus problem solving predates bonding. In my opinion, languages developed to facilitate problem solving.
39. We are not the only hominids to possess the low-lying larynxes required to form a full range of sounds: 200,000 year old Neandertal bones show that they also possessed such an anatomical feature.
40. Cassirer, Language and Myth, 28.
41. Klaus Zuberbüler, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, may have found monkey-communication syntax. If so, then some monkey tribes may have developed relatively advanced linguistic abilities. (See James Randerson, “Call of the wild?” New Scientist, 30 March, 2002, 10.) This issue of the New Scientist also contains an article that describes how robots, programmed only with “goals, agendas and the desire to form relationships” developed languages employing around 8,000 words. See Helen Phillips, “First Words,” pages 24-27.
42. William H. Calvin, The River that Flows Uphill: A Journey from the Big Bang to the Big Brain (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986). This very readable book interlaces a fact-filled description of the evolution of life and the universe with anecdotes about a trip down the Colorado River.
43. This, if valid, nicely illustrates how a skill that evolved due to its survival value in one area can be put to use in quite a different area. Another, perhaps better known, example of this phenomenon (termed “exaptation”) is the transition of feathers, which are thought to have first evolved as light-weight insulating material to keep the body warm. Animal bodies have been built from, and consist of, numerous adaptations. Their convoluted origins frequently cause them to be more cumbersome and less efficient than those an intelligent being might design from scratch. The retina of most animal species, for instance, receives photons of light only after they have been filtered through several layers of non-active cells. Contrast this with the eyes of molluscs—light falls immediately upon the retina of an octopus, for example, a much more efficient and sensitive arrangement. Generally, body organs are effective, but probably all might be modified and made more efficient—something scientists have deliberated, and are beginning to attempt.
44. Richard Rudgley, The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age (New York: The Free Press, 1999), 224-233.
45. Merritt Ruhlen, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (New York: John Wiley, 1994).
46. Johanna Nichols, Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
47. Ian Tattersall and Jay H. Matternes, “Once We Were Not Alone,” Scientific American, January 2000, 62. For a slightly more recent discussion of the significance of language, read Ian Tattersall, “How We Came to be Human,” Scientific American, December 2001, 56-63.
48. Cassirer, Language and Myth, 38.
49. For instance, when the connection between the inferior temporal cortex (which handles the signals that allow us to recognize faces) and the limbic system (which deals with emotions) is severed, familiar faces (relatives, for instance) can be recognized, but this recollection is devoid of all emotional associations, making it impossible for affected persons to decide how to appropriately greet an approaching visitor.
50. Magnetic resonance imaging provides evidence suggesting that emotions play a part in every decision made, even decisions that might be considered to be entirely based upon reason. (These emotions may be arising from the role our personal or private goals play in all decision making—see Chapter Three, section one Practical Decisions.)
51. The reason why this kind of subconscious activity takes place is explored more fully in section four of Chapter Five The Source Of Revelations.
52. E. MacPhail, “Vertebrate Intelligence: The Null Hypothesis,” in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1985, B308:37-51, declares that language is the “big step” to becoming intelligent. I disagree, for “intelligence,” to me, includes that which animals demonstrate when challenged by a problem of concern to them. (For example, tool-invention by animals or barrier-circumvention by squirrels demonstrates intelligence.) Intelligence (see section seven of this chapter) and second-level thinking are one and the same thing; neither requires language. However, language greatly improves the ability to associate findings and ideas; thus language use increases the ability to solve problems, and so acts to increase intelligence.
53. Reality differs from person to person, and greatly depends upon the accuracy of each person’s sensory perceptions. This is unquestionably demonstrated by people suffering from synesthesia (who often see black letters, words, and numerals as coloured differently, or as coloured symbols, or who may experience loud noises as bright lights, and so on). See Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Edward M. Hubbard, “Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes,” Scientific American, May 2003, 52-59.
54. The concept of “truth” is convoluted and personalized precisely because each of us uses our own experiences to interpret what different words mean. And as Ullian (W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief [Random House, 1970]) argued, everything we think we know about the universe is subject to revision. Mathematics comes closest to being the “truth” (as we shall see in Chapter Two, Mathematical Problems), and religion frequently claims to be absolute, but both give way in light of new knowledge (mathematics more readily than religion). Try as we may, our mental deliberations and verbal expositions can never represent the whole, real, or perfect truth because we can never know it, and because we can never find words precise enough to think or express it. Furthermore, different people will always interpret their personal experiences of the same event in different ways. The “pure and simple truth” can never be expressed. Quine pointed out that no statement is necessarily true except those we ourselves decide to be true. In fact, extending the discussions presented in earlier sections of this chapter, since the words we use must necessarily be selected from our own mental dictionary of meanings, each one of us defines our own truth. This truth can never be conveyed to another. The best anyone else can do is to try to assimilate the general idea, then, using their own frame of reference, guess at what is meant. It is interesting to note that a “Theory Of Everything” (see “The Conservation Laws,” a postscript to Chapter Seven General Systems Theory and The Conservation Laws), if ever formulated, is expected to be only expressible mathematically. It would be impossible to sufficiently define words to represent all that this theory would be capable of telling us. A Theory of Everything would devolve to other less-comprehensive theories (e.g., quantum mechanics or a theory of gravity), which could be more or less understood through defining words, but the Theory of Everything itself could not be linguistically defined.
55. For a discussion of consciousness see the postscript to this chapter, Consciousness And Conscience.
56. This is why we expect our religions and their teachings to be rational and are disappointed when they appear to be irrational. (More about this in later chapters.)
57. Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994).
58. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, John P. Bethal, General Editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriman Co., 1959).
