The One That Isn't There

17 Annoyance 20 November 2009 08:10PM
Q:  What's the most important leg of a three-legged stool?
A:  The one that isn't there.
- traditional joke-riddle

A specific neurological lesion can sometimes damage or impair specific neurological functions without touching others.  In the condition famously known as "Ondine's Curse", for example, automatic control of breathing is destroyed while conscious control remains, so that without modern medical intervention nerve-damaged patients can survive only as long as they can remain awake.  Such conditions are nevertheless unusual exceptions to the more general principle that complex, recently-developed, and 'meta'-functions (those that monitor and control others) are first to be impaired and lost when the nervous system is stressed, damaged, or altered.

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Pound of Feathers, Pound of Gold

2 Annoyance 23 October 2009 05:48PM

Which weighs more:  a pound of feathers, or a pound of gold?

Close consideration of this riddle - and the conditions under which people tend to get it wrong - is helpful in understanding the limits of human rationality.  It is a specific example which leads us to general principles of rationality failure.

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The Featherless Biped

1 Annoyance 02 September 2009 05:47PM

The classical understanding of categories centers on necessary and sufficient properties.  If a thing has X, Y, and Z, we say that it belongs to class A; if it lacks them, we say that it does not.  This is the model of how humans construct and recognize categories that philosophers have held since the days of Aristotle.

Cognitive scientists found that the reality isn't that simple.

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Book Review: Complications

13 Annoyance 01 July 2009 06:39PM

Atul Gawande's Complications:  A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science is a mixed bag for rationalists. Written as a series of essays organized into three sections entitled Fallibility, Mystery, and Uncertainty, the book as a whole is of questionable value, but the sections need to be considered individually for their worth to be accurately recognized.

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Guilt by Association

1 Annoyance 24 June 2009 05:29PM

The formal concept of the fallacious argument was born as the twin of logic itself.  When the ancient Greeks first began to systematically examine the natural arguments people made as they sought to demonstrate the truth of propositions, they noted that certain types of arguments were vulnerable to counterexamples while others were not.  The vulnerable were not true - when it was claimed that they justified a conclusion they could not rule out the alternative - and so were identified as fallacious.

Although the validity of logical arguments can be determined through logic, that doesn't particularly distinguish one fallacy from another.  It is a curious fact that, despite this, some fallacies are more frequently made by human beings than others.  Much more.

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The Laws of Magic

16 Annoyance 15 June 2009 07:13PM

People are always telling you that "we have always done thus", and then you find that their "always" means a generation or two, or a century or two, at most a millennium or two.  Cultural ways and habits are blips compared to the ways and habits of the body, of the race.  There really is very little that human beings on our plane have always done, except find food and drink, sing, talk, procreate, nurture the children, and probably band together to some extent.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, "Seasons of the Ansarac", Changing Planes

Human cultures vary wildly and dicursively, so it is worth noting which things all known human societies have in common.  Several generations ago, anthropologists noted that cultures' beliefs about a suite of concepts crudely describable as 'magic' had certain principles in common.

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Would You Slap Your Father? Article Linkage and Discussion

2 Annoyance 02 June 2009 06:49PM

I said that my next post would discuss why IQ tests don't measure frontal executive functions, but I've found something tangential yet extremely topical which I think should be discussed first.

A reader sent me a link to this Opinion column written by New York Times writer Nicholas D. Kristof:  Would You Slap Your Father?  If So, You're A Liberal.

The title is clearly meant to grab attention; don't let its provocative nature dissuade you from reading the article.  Most of it is remarkably free from partisan bias, although there are one or two bits which are objectionable.  Far more important is that it addresses the relationships between 'emotional' reactions, political positions and affiliations, and reason.

It's a short article, brief enough that I don't think I need to sum it up, and of sufficient quality that I can recommend that you peruse it yourself with a clear conscience.  Take the two or three minutes required to read it, please, and then comment your thoughts below.

The Frontal Syndrome

18 Annoyance 01 June 2009 04:10PM

Neuroscientists have a difficult time figuring out which parts of the brain are involved in different functions.  Naturally-occurring lesions to the brain are rarely specific to a particular anatomical region, the complications involved with the injury and treatment act as a smokescreen, and finding a patient who's damaged the particular spot you want to learn about is frustrating at best and nigh-impossible at worst.

Fortunately for researchers, inappropriate surgical interventions of the past can shed light on neurological questions.

The strange and horrifying history of psychosurgery is a topic beyond the scope of this site, and certainly beyond this post.  Interested readers can easily find a great wealth of relevant discussion on the Net and in libraries, even (in more extensive collections) works written by the physicians involved in such surgeries during the era in which they were popular.  Even a casually-curious individual can find lots of non-technical analysis and history to read - for such people, I particularly recommend Great and Desperate Cures by Elliot Valenstein.

Of especial relevance is the prefrontal leukotomy, more commonly (if somewhat imprecisely) known as the lobotomy.  There are several features in particular that are of interest to people interested in the nature of effective thought:

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Inhibition and the Mind

7 Annoyance 21 May 2009 05:34PM

Babies have a curious set of reflexes: lightly brush their palms, or the soles of their feet, and they will immediately grasp whatever caused the contact. In the case of feet, it’s more of an attempt than a successful grasping; human feet, while far more flexible and manipulative than most creatures’, are no longer the virtual hands possessed by our tree-dwelling ancestors and relatives.

These and a few other basic responses are commonly called the “primitive, or infantile, reflexes“, and are unusual for a variety of reasons. For one thing, they’re not permanent. As babies age, the reflexes disappear.

But they’re not gone.

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The First Koan: Drinking the Hot Iron Ball

-4 Annoyance 07 May 2009 05:41PM

In the traditions of Zen in which koans are common teaching tools, it is common to use a particular story as a novice's first koan.  It's the story of Joshu's Dog.

A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: `Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?'

Joshu answered: `Mu.'  [Mu is the negative symbol in Chinese, meaning `No-thing' or `Nay'.]

What does this koan mean?  How can we find out for ourselves?

It is important to remember certain things:  Firstly, koans are not meant to be puzzles, riddles, or intellectual games.  They are examples, illustrations of the state of mind that the student is expected to internalize.  Secondly, they often appear paradoxical.

Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it.  If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes.  The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even -- dreadful thought -- educational.

Thirdly, the purpose of Zen teaching isn't to acquire new conceptual baggage, but to eliminate it; not to generate Enlightenment, but to remove the false beliefs that preventing us from recognizing what we already possess.  Shedding error is the point, not learning something new.

Take a look at Mumon's commentary for this koan:

To realize Zen one has to pass through the barrier of the patriachs. Enlightenment always comes after the road of thinking is blocked. If you do not pass the barrier of the patriachs or if your thinking road is not blocked, whatever you think, whatever you do, is like a tangling ghost. You may ask: What is a barrier of a patriach? This one word, Mu, is it.

This is the barrier of Zen. If you pass through it you will see Joshu face to face. Then you can work hand in hand with the whole line of patriachs. Is this not a pleasant thing to do?

If you want to pass this barrier, you must work through every bone in your body, through ever pore in your skin, filled with this question: What is Mu? and carry it day and night. Do not believe it is the common negative symbol meaning nothing. It is not nothingness, the opposite of existence. If you really want to pass this barrier, you should feel like drinking a hot iron ball that you can neither swallor nor spit out.

Then your previous lesser knowledge disappears. As a fruit ripening in season, your subjectivity and objectivity naturally become one. It is like a dumb man who has had a dream. He knows about it but cannot tell it.

When he enters this condition his ego-shell is crushed and he can shake the heaven and move the earth. He is like a great warrior with a sharp sword. If a Buddha stands in his way, he will cut him down; if a patriach offers him any obstacle, he will kill him; and he will be free in this way of birth and death. He can enter any world as if it were his own playground. I will tell you how to do this with this koan:

Just concentrate your whole energy into this Mu, and do not allow any discontinuation. When you enter this Mu and there is no discontinuation, your attainment will be as a candle burning and illuminating the whole universe.

I'll give you a hint:  Joshu's reply isn't really an answer to the monk's question, it's a response induced by it.  Joshu answers the question the monk didn't ask but should have - the question whose answer the monk is taking for granted in what he asks.

This morning I passed by a gym with a glass-walled front, and I saw within the building many people working at machines, moving weights back and forth.  What was being accomplished?  Superficially, nothing at all.  Their actions would appear to be wasted; nothing was done with them.  The real purpose, of course, was to exercise the body, to condition the muscles and strengthen the bones.

The point of the koan isn't to find the 'right answer', the point of the koan is to struggle with it, and by struggling, develop one's own understanding.  Contradiction and apparent contradiction is a powerful tool for this purpose.  Trying to understand, we usually perceive a contradiction and let the process terminate.  But if we keep struggling with the problem, even though we cannot expect to achieve anything, we build within ourselves ever more complex models, ways of seeing.  Eventually the complexity will be useful in dealing with other problems, ones with solutions we didn't see before.

One warning:  the fact that a problem is used as a source of contradiction does not mean that it doesn't actually have an answer.  Don't mistake the use for the reality.

Has a dog Buddha-nature?
This is the most serious question of all.
If you say yes or no,
You lose your own Buddha-nature.

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