Expert: Jeffrey Eldred - 8/9/2011

Question
On the topic of ultimate questions of origins and identity based on religion, science, philosophy and psychology...

What does it mean to be human?

Answer
A big question gets a big answer! Although I cannot claim to have the ultimate, uniquely, correct answer for all the universe, I can give you a brief overview of my thoughts on metaphysics, consciousness, epistemology and ethics.

The human brain is a subject of the world[1]. As a scientific naturalist, I attempt to follow the biological and psychological evidence on the mind-body problem. While I am not an expert of these disciplines([2][3][4]), it does not take much to reach the understanding that the mind is a product of the brain. It occurs to me that all of the properties that we ascribe to consciousness can be traced to the brain. Our senses, memory, mental faculties, emotions, and actions all co-occur with mental states of the brain and can be impaired or removed by damage to the brain. It stands to reasons that it does not make sense to talk about the mind without a brain which means that there is no afterlife and also that conscious states (and choices) are determined by physical facts. I have written previously on the scientific definition of life, and you may be interested in how I draw the line between a chemical reaction and a living thing[5].

I've written about my perspective on compatibilism[6] (or determinism whichever you care to call it) when discussing various free will as a theodicy that protects the idea of God from the Problem of Evil[7][8]. But even many non-believers have this weird notion of free will being an object apart from nature, so much so that Sam Harris has to speak three times in a row on his own blog to explain all the misconceptions about the subject [9][10][11] (which are worth-reading if you want to understand the subject better). And as a physics student I frequently run into still others (usually non-physicists) who are confused about the role that quantum mechanics plays in all this [12]. My main objection to the notion of free will is that is seldom coherently defined. Mathematically speaking, things can be evaluated (therefore caused) by either a function of another variable or a function of a random variable. An individual who is dissatisfied with these choices will find themselves lacking in another option.

But generally, the fact that laws of science exist and govern the world around us is pretty uncontroversial idea until you start applying the same idea to oneself. Some people feel that if their thoughts and feelings were determined by physical laws they'd know it because it would be like being forced to obey the command of someone else. But all it really means is that their thoughts are their senses are more intimately connected than they had realized, because they are both products of impulses from the outside world. In fact, I don't think humans can even distinguish between a voice planted in their head and voice from their own brain (which may help explain some of my thoughts on the divine revelation). Ever since psychology discovered the subconscious, people must realize that it is possible, at least in principle, for the motivations behind their feelings and actions to be known to their brain but not their mind. Misattribution of Arousal[14] is just one of a number of examples in which psychology has proven that people do know know why they feel what they feel. I think that when people are aware of the fact that they cannot be certain how they feel they can make better decisions about how they feel.

So anyway, we can establish that physical states of the brain give rise to mental states of the brain. But can mental states of the brain in turn cause physical states? Yes[15] and no[16]. Mental action are manifestations of a physical process. There is no extra-dimensional space that thoughts occupy which bears down on the physical realm when you make a decision. However the fact that mental states are indicative of the organization of physical states makes them invaluable proxies for studying the physical states of the brain. So it is really a question of how you define terms - whether the "thought" includes the physical states that accompany it or not. It should be noted, however, that neuroscience has found instances in which the brain states associated with thought do not cause the brain states that cause people to take actions (If you are not familiar with the Benhamin Libet experiment[17], it is highly recommended you read about it). In other words, we can do something, decide to do it, then realize that we've done it, then come to the conclusion that the decision caused what we did.

If you follow me this far, we now come to the "hard problem of consciousness": "Why do we have consciousness?"[18]. If the purely mental part of decision-making is unnecessary to the process, why would it be granted to us by evolution? And more specifically, "why is there qualia?" [19] That is, why do our senses come with sensation and instead of just neural input. At this point of the conversation, I must necessarily turn from summarizing my understanding of the empirical science of neurology to explaining my more philosophical ideas on the subject. The best answer I have to the "hard problem of consciousness" is that we cannot have a brain without consciousness because consciousness is a consequence of the complicated physical operations of the brain.

I think the only reason why consciousness is so baffling to us is that we can talk about it to each other without making any reference to physical reality. This is what makes the illusion that it is non-physical. This feature of consciousness, however, I'd say is precisely the evolutionarily reason we have it. The evolutionary reason for consciousness is communication. I have not read anything by linguistic and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker [20], but I have been told he advocates a similar link between language and the mind. If you think about it, our thoughts are almost exclusively verbal descriptions of concepts that are packaged in the same way we would convey the sentiment to someone else. Our other primary mode of communication is through our face and body expressions, which also tend to respond when we think about something that has emotional content. In order to convey language, one must have the cognitive machinery to symbolically associate a pattern of sounds with another sensation or with a more abstract concept. To understand language by others we have distinguish this pattern of sounds from another so that it is associated with correct concept in our brain. So the fact that we have qualia, a fundamental intuitive way to distinguish two things from each other, does not seem to be a far leap from language capabilities, our natural ability to partition concepts that are associated with sensations. The phenomenon of change blindness[21] (and any kind of distraction, really) would seem to indicate a dependence of our perceptual abilities on the cognitive organization we invest into it. Of course, in evolutionary terms, our senses predate our language-forming capabilities, but I would say that the descriptive significance that our senses have to us is what makes up consciousness and that is what comes with symbolic thinking and language. Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, V.S. Ramachandran, describes a similar idea in this video [22].

I should mention here that humans are not unique among animals in having language, but simply have greater cognitive capacity for language than any other. Clearly any kind of pack hunter can benefit from enhanced communication at some level and language is simply the mental machinery for conveying a large number of concepts. The "amount" of consciousness an organism must fall along a continuum, with monkeys and dolphins presumably having the best non-human consciousness (not that we could ever experimentally determine that[23]). It is hard to imagine what exactly "less" consciousness would mean or what the smallest possible consciousness would like, however. I don't think that it is necessary that we are able to imagine it because a difference consciousness would seem strange to us even if we could see it directly.

I do have one example, however, of how a continuous change in magnitude that can have dramatic consequences. Imagine a walking robot with a battery powering the motors in its legs. If it does not have enough power to its legs it cannot move anywhere and can at best rock back and forth. But at some point it would gain the ability to propel itself forward. At that point it goes from having the ability to travel nowhere but where it stands and having the ability to travel nearly anywhere (given enough time and a lack of external obstacles). This notion of dramatic returns for a little bit of intelligence seems to fit what we expect from the problem-solving abilities that have made us the dominant species of the planet. More intelligent animals also seem to be more capable of self-reference[24], while I also think is a ground-breakingly important cognitive development.

The same language and symbolism skills that allow us to communicate withs others also allow us to communicate with ourselves. This is essentially what it means to think, (so Descartes was mostly right when he said I think therefore I am [25]). Much of the things that we communicate to ourselves have to do with learning and the organization of our memories. When we learn something new or reexamine something old it initiates a process in which we have to decide how things are, what they are related to, and whether or not they were relevant. This buffering, addressing, and compressing mental data is a type of feedback loop[26] in the algorithm that our brain runs to make decisions. In this way we can be considered natural Goedel machines[27][28]. I've not yet hard the chance to read[29] what I am told is the most important book to read on the deep meaning of self-reference, "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter[30][31], but you may be interested in it.

The ability to analyze one's memories collectively and to improve one's data-gathering methods is what makes induction possible. I give a complete accounting of induction as well as my system of epistemology here[32].

We also communicate many things to ourselves as preparation for how we would communicate something to others. This not only includes communicating how things work but justifying our actions in ethical terms. Notice how ethical language arises most naturally when discussing communication. I take this as evidence that we all implicitly accept the Golden Rule[33] and universal human values, but someone more pessimistic[34] would take this as evidence that conformity is valued more highly than truth. In any event, I can't help but notice that all of the words that we have about morality are social words. What is "meaning" without someone to whom meaning is conveyed? "Purpose" without intentionality? "Value" without exchange? Furthermore, as Sam Harris observes[35], our moral rules deal almost exclusively with the well-being of sentient things. We literally cannot conceive of morality without living beings and it is difficult, but not impossible, to conceive of morality with only one living being in existence. This may also contribute to the widely held belief that the universe (or the forces that created it) must have an opinionated authoritative component to it (i.e. God) in order for the universe to contain any meaning at all. But because we can only comprehend such a being as either a universe, a person, or something in between, it seems like this view still relies on an accounting of how the universe imbues the living things with meaning in the first place.

To get to a notion of morality common to all living things, I must first dispel this notion of the self. Between the controlling distrust of Christianity[36] and the pseudo-intellectual rants of Ayn Rand[37], much of Western thought seems to take it from granted that individuals are expected to be fundamentally selfish. But I think that when humans are selfish, it is nothing more than a special case of ignorance. If one truly understands that the individuals that one meets are the same in all the important ways, then one could not justify valuing something for oneself without relying on one of those important commonalities. We tend observe humans at their most selfless when they are making a sacrifice for someone that they know very well and deeply empathize with. A thought experiment, that would support this idea, would be to connect two people's brains so that their thoughts and sensations were shared. As I implied before, I do not think that the joint-mind could tell who was who and instead be aware of two bodies, two memories, and one stream of thought. We would expect the joint-mind to act for the benefit of the collective in a completely selfless manner. On the other hand, we can equivalently think of it as one of the two individuals with a "sixth sense" which includes all the information about the other individual. To me this makes it clear that a preference for oneself over others can only arise from a limited understanding of the world. This also makes sense of why people who are selfish also tend to think in terms of instant gratification - both the notion of happiness for another person and happiness for oneself at a later time are too abstract to be understood on an emotional level. Notice also that the concept of self-reference that I discussed is not actually reliant on the self, because the larger system of sentient beings shows self-reference whenever someone thinks to themselves or communicates with another person.

Perhaps the most parsimonious account of how individual access moral values in the universe is moral realism[38]. Moral realism simply states that when humans feel attracted to positive emotions and repelled by negative emotions that all they are doing is sensing real moral facts (or the conscious representation of moral facts) and responding appropriately. The only problem with this idea is that there is no way to test it, because all of the people who have access to these feelings are biased to be motivated by them independent of their true value. Nevertheless its worth making the point that any ethical theory that relies on moral realism should rely on how moral facts impact the whole and not just the individual. If one wants to be happy, one necessarily wants everyone to be happy. Certainly any individual who values experiencing existence, values the ability of everyone to experience existence.

To be more thorough then that, Existentialism[39] claims that the desires of human beings don't need to have intrinsic value but instead have purpose imbued into them. Traditionally speaking, existentialists claim that the indeterministic part of the universe is the origin of moral values and explicitly reject determinism. However, I think we can keep determinism (or compatibilism) by substituting the indeterminism for deterministic self-reference. The self-reference capabilities of the human brain make it capable of meta-ethical thinking[40]. Not just "How do I follow this system of morality" but "What system of morality is the moral choice and why?". Because of this conundrum, we could say the "existence of humans precedes the essence (purpose) of humans" and therefore mankind is separate from nonliving things in this way. Whether or not the choices that humans make in the face of this existentialist freedom reveal deep truths about the moral structure of the universe, it makes a good case that this is the only kind of moral analysis that the universe is capable of. Absurdism[41][42] takes this a step more abstract and claims that even if humans do not imbue their action with purpose, the attempt to do so can itself be meaningful because it shows understanding and acceptance of the "absurd" situations humans find themselves in.

So what does it mean to be human? It means being a part of the portion of the universe that is meaningful. You cannot choose to be separate from the universe and you cannot choose to live a meaningless existence but you do get to choose what to make of the life you have.

Links & Notes:
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Subjects-World-Darwins-Rhetoric-Agency/dp/0226137627 (Book by the same title, by a Philosophy professor I had)
[2] http://www.allexperts.com/el/Biology/
[3] http://www.allexperts.com/el/Neurology-general/
[4] http://www.allexperts.com/el/Psychology/
[5] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2009/10/living-things-non-living-1.htm
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
[7] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2010/8/soul-making-theodicy-follow-1.htm
[8] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2009/12/Best-best-1.htm (use ctrl+F free will)
[9] http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/morality-without-free-will/
[10] http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free-will-why-you-still-dont-have-it/
[11] http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/you-do-not-choose-what-you-choose/
[12] As a BS in physics I feel determined (no pun intended) to make a brief statement on the role of Quantum Mechanics in metaphysics. There are multiple interpretations of Quantum Mechanics (which cannot be distinguished from each other by experiment) and some of those interpretations, most notably the Copenhagen interpretation, entails indeterministic events. We can find the probabilistic distribution of these events but other than that we cannot know any more about them. Because they must follow the rules of probability they make a poor candidate for housing free will. In addition they must follow the Central Limit Theorem[13] as we consider their effects on a macroscopic scale (called the classical limit), so they are not decisive it determining how neurons operate, much less how a very large and complicated network of neurons operates together.
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem
[14] http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/07/07/misattribution-of-arousal/
[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology
[16] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/
[17] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#The_Libet_experiment
[18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
[19] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#Books
[21] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness
[22] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTWmTJALe1w
[23] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
[24] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-recognition
[25] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum
[26] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback
[27] http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.LO/0309048
[28] http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/01/05/build-optimal-scientist-then-retire/
[29] It turns out that studying physics comes at the price of too much of my time. I will have to schedule a multiple year break in my physics career to become acquainted with all the worthwhile literature I have missed.
[30] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
[31] http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567
[32] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2011/2/Scientific-epistemology.htm
[33] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rule
[34] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzche
[35] http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
[36] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity
[37] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_%28Ayn_Rand%29#Ethics:_rational_self-in
[38] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism
[39] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre
[40] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-ethics
[41] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus
[42] http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm