Motivation for acting

When we talk about what people do, especially in the third person, we tend to treat actions as the products of a unified decision-making machine that is supposedly what the human body is. In reality, our lives and our actions are more complicated than this.

Actions are the product of what is called in artificial intelligence a value system. Basically a value system is a system that makes use of a network of action concepts and places value on them, in many cases the value is contingent on a certain place and time. A primitive value system might make use of the concepts of hungry/full and get something to eat/rest, linking these up in a way that leads the creature to go and get food when its hungry and rest when it's not.

Human beings are complex creatures, but we too have value systems like the simple one described above. The difference between us and a simple creature is that we have several value systems existing side by side which compete with each other. At certain time, certain conditions may lead to a certain value system being given precedence over others, and with changing conditions through time, this may change, leading to a different value system to assume control. The experiential product of this is our continual feelings of ambivalence about whatever activity we're pursuing. When we sit down to study for a test, the value system that values scholarly achievement has taken control, and is pushing other value systems (such as the "have sex" system into submission.

The description above was meant to illustrate what I mean by coexisting value systems, and it overlooks a few things. First of all, the value systems in our lives are not completely discrete. Different value systems work together in such a way that the activities that are pursued under the guidance of one value system may be rationalized by another (if they initially produce conflict with the goals of that second value system). In some cases, of course, two value systems maybe be unable to resolve their differences and one will eventually be pushed completely into submission.

The focus of this post is not on these intricate interrelationships, but on the broad fact that we are subject (in our daily pursuit of activities) to guidance from an array of different value systems. When trying to understand another persons actions, it is therefore incorrect to try to create a unified schema for why they act as they do. Instead, it is beneficial to try to understand another's actions as the product of several competing value systems.

Experience and the organization of neural networks

One of the main areas of focus in this blog has been the relation between phenomenology and biology. I've explored this theme from many different angles, and, I'm afraid from the same angle many different times in an attempt to organize my thoughts and create a coherent foundation upon which they may develop. Today, I'm revisiting this topic again from a slightly familiar angle, but I believe that this time the ideas are more coherently organized than in the past, and that a new reader of this blog can find the core ideas well expressed in this post, without having to reread all previous posts.

The issue I want to talk about today is the question of the place of phenomenology (experience) within science, specifically psychology and cognitive science. Traditionally, phenomenology has been the classic example of the kind of domain that is unsuitable for science. It's been my position that although some phenomenological data are inappropriate for scientific work (especially clear scientific work that others can understand easily), there are certain kinds of phenomenal "facts" that are appropriate and actually very helpful for the progress of science.

In a project last year, I focused on exploring the connection between the phenomenal experience of bodily control and the anatomy of the nervous system (and the body as a whole). I thought, and still think that exploring connections such as these is a fruitful way to explore the way that biological systems are associated with consciousness.

A major conclusion of this work was the emergence of the idea that biological systems can never be completely adaptive. By virtue of their existing in the physical world, and being bound by the constraints therein, no living system can ever be completely adaptive since being completely adaptive would require having complete control over its own functions. In a physical world, such an idea makes absolutely no sense. A system can have control over its parts, and can use this control (with the aid of perceptual systems and the interpretation of sensation) to act adaptively, but the operations of the entire system cannot all be controlled adaptively since every mechanism of adaptive control is itself uncontrolled until an additional structure controls it. The quest for complete control ends up with an infinite regress of additional control structures.

Now, a central feature of our embodied existence is this conscious divide between control and no control. We have no direct control over the environment, and no control over many parts of our body, but we of course have control over some. What I'm trying to say here is that the constraints on physical systems that I talked about in the last paragraph show up conveniently in our own embodied experience. This comes as no surprise if one accepts the view that there is a complete correlation between phenomenal states and biological states in any given living system.

Recently, I've been thinking about the extent to which (and the ways in which) we have control over our mental processes. While we can of course control our arms and legs, we can also control our thoughts-but there are limits to this. While we can bring images into our mind at will, we cannot control other aspects of our mental states-such as awareness, otherwise people like me would never suffer the embarrassment of falling asleep in class.

What this means is that our phenomenal awareness of those mental processes that are and aren't under our control is a reflection of the organization of the nervous system. The fact that I can bring certain images into my mind at will reflects the fact that my nervous system has mechanisms of control over the production of mental images. In contrast, the fact that I can't always make myself fully aware or bring myself into deep concentration when I want to is reflective of the fact that full awareness is not amenable to conscious control-or very much conscious control (maybe biofeedback could change this).

By exploring the issue of control with regards to our mental processes, we can make valuable use of phenomenology to make sense of the biological organization of the brain at a very high level. By understanding our phenomenological states in terms of these constraints we are in fact creating an understanding of the underlying neural organization. This is especially helpful given the complexity of the nervous system-a complexity that bars us from seeing the kinds of organization I'm talking about by looking at the neurons themselves (this would be a herculean task).

How much control can we get over our thinking?

In today's post I want to talk about the kinds of influence that we can have over our thoughts. This is by no means a conclusive look at this subject, but merely a first glance intended to clear up very obvious dilemmas, as well as to see how far can be gotten by just thinking some issues out.

What I'm concerned with here is the extent to which we are able to influence the kinds of thinking that we do as human beings. This subject came to interest me after car ride that I took last week. During the car ride, I had what I considered to be a really interesting thought. The content of the thought itself is not important here, suffice it to say that the thought was interesting, and I was excited that my mind was working in a way that led to the thought emerging in my mind. Reacting to this nice surprise, I began to wonder if my positive reaction to the thought might in any way lead to more thoughts of that type in the future. How nice it would be, I thought, that by appreciating a style of thinking, one could guide ones self toward more of that type of thiking, or influence the future probability of it.

Since that day, I've thought about this a good deal, and have made some important progress in understanding it.

First of all, finding that what one is thinking about is interesting does encourage us to think the same thought again. The result of this is that it becomes easier overtime to think about a particular idea, and, I would wager, to think about ideas that are similar in structure to that idea. This is just a matter of classical conditioning: Actions/thoughts lead to either positive negative reactions, and these reactions influence the future probability that we will execute a particular thought/action.

As soon as I began thinking about this, a new issue came to dominate my mind. Although a positive reaction to a certain thought may lead us to rethink that thought in the future (thereby strengthening the connections resposible for that and similar thoughts), a reaction to the processes that led to a thought ("oh that was so clever!) would not be able to influence the future occurrence of those processes. In the example of my thinking in the car, I was excited not just by how interesting I thought the idea I had was, but also by the fact that it was a really creative idea: it was a spontaneously emerging idea that was grounded in concepts I had been thinking about. The question is: By reacting positively to the fact that the idea was creative, could I support the emergence of more creative thoughts in the future?

Operant conditioning accounts for how a positive reaction to one idea can lead to rethinking it and similar ideas more easily. But I'm not sure that it could help us to think more (e.g.) creative thoughts if that's what we want to do. The conditioning mechanisms above worked because the idea itself led to an affective reaction, and therefore, the idea itself was strengthened. The creativity of the idea did not lead to the positive reaction, though it can be held accountable for why the idea was interpreted as creative.

Therefore creativity can not be linked to the affective reaction, it remains untouched by the conditioning process. Broken down, this is what this looks like: A creative process leads an idea to pop into a persons head>>they interpret the idea as the outcome of a creative idea generating process>>>This is something they value, and consequently they are happy to have had the idea>>>They have good feelings about the situation and the idea.

This sequence shows that, although a person can value creativity, as well as interpret ideas as being creative, there is no direct link between the actual creative processes themselves and the positive feedback-Unless the creative processes are reactivated every time the (originally) creative idea is re-thought-which doesn't make logical sense.