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Mind atLarge: Knowing in the technological age
Mind at Large: Knowing in the TechnologicalAge, by Paul Levinson. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1988, xviii + 271 pp., $63.50 ($31.75 indiv.) (cloth). Reviewed by David G. Hays 25 Nagle Avenue New York, NY 10040
The main title accurately suggests the wide scope of this book, but not the level of technicality. Without the subtitle, one may have an impression of light-heartedness, even frivolity. Although Levinson sometimes chooses a word or phrase frivolously ("We hope our readers will enjoy Paul Levinson's style . . . as much as we have."--series editor, p. xi), his purpose and approach are philosophically serious and, I should say, solid. The author, who is also editor of JSBS, is an optimist, a rationalist, a Kantian, and a McLuhanite ["Works like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or McLuhan's Understanding Media, which we profit from reading over and over again, and enjoy turning the pages of by hand . . . . " (page 137)]. He is also a Popperian fallibilist and an evolutionist [45 references to Popper in the Index, 36 to Kant, 28 to McLuhan]. These, roughly speaking, are the positions that he argues for in Mind at Large. Now, I hold positions not far from these, although I have too strong a sense of the possibility of intellectual, cultural, or sociopolitical failure to be an optimist (I settle for neutrality), and I have been called a neo-Kantian, more psychologist than philosopher. All in all, I have little reason to attack any of the positions that Levinson defends, but I can disagree with some aspects of his defensel The book does not lend itself to summation in a sentence or a paragraph. Evolved knowing is necessarily fallible, and fallible knowing can evolve without limit. Rationality and technology transform the mechanism of evolution. Technology makes visible the working of mind. These and other themes are developed, but it remains for some later book to resolve them into one single theme. I am not aware Of any extant book that accomplishes that purpose; the world is not there yet. About rationality, the issue is whether the adoption of rationality is itself an irrational act. After at least two readings of Mind at Large, I remain unsure just what Levinson conceives rationality to be. The most specific indication is a reference to Aristotelian logic, the law of the excluded middle. His conclusion (p. 34) is that from the evolutionist's position (1) rationality is the biological "mediator" among the various senses; etymologically, this is what "common sense" is about; (2) rationality originates by transcendence, not by choice, so the issue of irrational adoption is, historically at least, moot; and (3) the universe, having no purpose or design, tolerates rationality.
Journal of Social and Biological Structures 14(1):97-110. ISSN: 0140-1750
Copyright O 1991 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
97
98
DAVID G. HAYS
But if transcendence can occur once, it can occur as often as you like, and Levinson asks "whether rationality can transcend itself" (p. 35). He concludes (p. 37) that it has not, and cannot. My own view (Benzon & Hays, 1990) is that rationality has already transcended itself more than once. Levinson led me to ask myself, yet again, what I conceive rationality to be. My conclusion is that rationality inheres in explicit critique of argument and premises. One can argue, coherently but not rationally, from the premise that a god has let loose the dogs of war; the premise cannot stand under modem criticism. Benzon and I argued that the processes of thought transcended themselves with the introduction of systematic observation and calculation in the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, and again with the introduction of computers in the twentieth century. Levinson knows, as do Benzon and I, that "the first system is nonetheless not obliterated in the transformation, and continues as a sort of substratum to the second system" (p. 27). One who learns to write does not cease to speak. How, then, does the permanent need for "classic logic" (p. 36) warrant the conclusion that classic logic cannot be, or has not been, transcended as speech has been transcended by writing? Levinson agrees with Russell, Popper, et al., that "the abandonment of rationality and the institutionalization of irrational doctrines do indeed often result in an increase of real human suffering." Being myself more psychologist than philosopher, I am not ashamed to assert that only mental illness can explain the abandonment of rationality; what healthy person would resist critique of premises and argument? Should we conclude, by intense and prolonged analysis of all our premises and arguments, that examination of premises and arguments is wrong-headed and must be stopped, then we should be prepared to live lives "solitary, nasty, brutish, and short." And y e t . . , and yet. I am unable to convince myself that we have achieved such sophistication as to be able to understand completely all of the useful activities of our brains. And I am therefore as wary of the one who says, "Only the rational!" as of the one who says, "Abandon critique!" And in the end, I find argument against philosophical irrationalists a dull game. To one who says, "Stop thinking!" (and that is the ultimate irrationalist position), a sufficient answer is, " I think not by choice but by nature," and that is perhaps very close to what Levinson says. The bases of Levinson's optimism are, f'nrst, that we can continue to eliminate error, and, second, that we can transform error into success: "The festival of metaphor, brainstorm, and blind and blinding insight yields knowledge that may be wrong for the problem or aspect of reality at hand, but right for the future" (p. 55). Well, the frrst simply misses the nature of scientific revolution. The transition from natural philosophy to classic physics, and the later transition from classic physics to quantum physics, are neither of them matters of eliminating error (Penrose, 1989). Rather, each is an example of replacing an old framework with a new one, requiring (in my opinion) more powerful methods of thought. But I can agree with "The f e s t i v a l . . , yields knowledge" without accepting the remainder of the sentence just quoted. I think that Levinson is closer to the mark in saying (p. 36), " w e are analogous both phylogenically to our prerational hominid ancestors and ontogenically to our 1-year-old selves and their capacity to envision rationality when we try to discern the outlines of some future postrational level." The future is impossible to foretell, and neither optimism nor pessimism is justified (I am a neutralist).
Reviews
99
Technology is ontologically creative: "artificial material is something new under the s u n . . . " (p. 80). Here Benzon and I (1990) are in very close agreement. And "The sum total of our technologies is in many ways the ultimate Library of Congress" (p. 92). More precisely, "technological performance . . . [is] knowledge which has survived a material confrontation with the external world" (p. 93). Furthermore, "technology applied to the pursuit of knowledge [telescopes, computers] is a meta-or second-order technology: technology acting toward its own creation" (p. 94). And communication technology improves the possibilities of criticism and dissemination, which are as important for science, according to the fallibilist-evolutionist, as original formulation (p. 119). The topic of communication draws Levinson's attention to what he calls "abstraction": " a selecting of features from an original perception of a physically real event, and a playing back of these features in the mind at a later date" (p. 120). His statement is verylike the one that I would attach to "generalization," rather than to abstraction, which I take to be the process underlying formation of Gestalts. "When the hunter converts or abstracts the perception of the lion into the word 'lion' . . . , however, this abstraction may be easily transported through speech to anyone within earshot of the h u n t e r . . . " (p. 121). Since de Saussure at least, linguists have held a more elaborate view of the sign process than this; "converts or abstracts" is too crude. But certainly abstraction is linked with communication, as Levinson says. "Thus in the first two great communication revolutions of humankind--speech and writing--very high degrees of abstraction carded the day" (p. 122). To call speech and writing revolutionary suits me, and I also (following Charles F. Hockett) count them as the first two--although I would say "information-processing revolutions," since more than communication is involved• But I think that saying that the alphabet is abstracted from speech is simplistic. But again I agree that something new is going on when we begin to talk about justice; abstract ideas do indeed upset" Kant's insistence that the only appropriate objects of cognition are the data of our immediate sensory experience" (p. 123). I am not quite sure about "As these mental creations joined the immediate physical world as part of our selecting environment, the cognitive structures of our species began to be selected for their ability to make sense not only of the physical world, but of highly abstract concepts as well" (pp. 125-126)• For the brain may have changed genetically almost not at all since that minute but remarkable change that made possible, at one stroke, both language and thought. Back to Kant: One effect of increasing intellectual power has been the invention of methods for criticism of abstract ideas• We can check the assertion, "That's a horse," by simple methods. We can also check assertions about molecules, or abstract conceptions of quantum mechanics, but not so easily. Computer simulations and the like are significant here. Levinson discusses the alphabet and its intellectual consequences, noting the difficulty of discussing "an omnipresent yet invisible deity" in hieroglyphics (p. 131). But his main attention fails on the increased dissemination that writing, alphabet, and printing press give to ideas. I think that the skill of reading and writing alphabetic language led to new skills of cognition in general, and Levinson has nothing to say about that. And I give some credit to the printing press, but more to the new cognitive powers following on the learning of algorithmic skills. Levinson's conclusion "that the technological distribution of information is as central to the growth of knowledge as is the technological enhancement of perception and mental c a l c u l a t i o n . . . " (p. 146) may be exaggerated, but it is not false. And the present ultimate enhancer of intellectual communication is computer conferencing (pp. 197-219). •
.
.
100
DAVID G. HAYS
Pursuing a thought that he attributes to Ernst Kapp in the 1870s (p. 148), Levinson examines technology as a mirror for the mind. His examples are motion pictures and artificial intelligence, the one neglected and the other hyperbolized. " A full investigation of precisely how and why certain sequences of images on a screen e l i c i t . . . [various] sorts of perception would, I think, tell us epics about the workings of our perception and cognition" (p. 172). On the other hand, the attempt to make computers seem intelligent has thus far been a matter of false starts; the best one can say of artificial intelligence to date is that "in goading us to explain why these machines which seem to think in some ways also elicit in us . . . [doubts]," AI "obliges us to come face-to-face with the organic, evolutionary nature of our intelligence and h u m a n i t y . . . " (p. 182). Fair enough. But I think Donald Barthelme put it more effectively: "think for a while about delayed gratification, it's what distinguishes us from the printed circuits, Daniel, your printed circuit can't delay a gratification worth a damn" (Sixty Stories, New York: Dutton Obelisk Paperback, 1982, p. 201). The turning point is marked by the notice that "human rationality and technology are manifestly less fallible or error-prone than the undirected processes of evolution in dealing with the objects of the real world" (p. 100). "The technologically implemented plan departs not only from previous types of existence, but also from the rules that governed their e m e r g e n c e . . . " (p. 223), because earlier evolution was unplanned. We cannot be sure that our plans will work, but we have the conscious goal of learning to formulate workable plans. "In a universe constantly evolving; occasions when the rules of this evolution change are of profound importance" (p, 221). The two major occasions for Levinson are the appearance of life and the appearance of intelligence (and simultaneously technology). I am prepared to argue that the enhancements of cognitive power that accompanied writing, calculation, and computation make those revolutions also major occasions. What I did not have before reading this book was the concept of change in the rules of evolution, and learning it repaid the effort of reading.
References Benzon, W.L. and Hays, D.G. (1990) "Cognitive Evolution." Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 3(4), 297-320. Penrose, R. (1989) The Emperor's New Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
The main title accurately suggests the wide scope of this book, but not the level of technicality. Without the subtitle, one may have an impression of light-heartedness, even frivolity. Although Levinson sometimes chooses a word or phrase frivolously ("We hope our readers will enjoy Paul Levinson's style . . . as much as we have."--series editor, p. xi), his purpose and approach are philosophically serious and, I should say, solid. The author, who is also editor of JSBS, is an optimist, a rationalist, a Kantian, and a McLuhanite ["Works like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or McLuhan's Understanding Media, which we profit from reading over and over again, and enjoy turning the pages of by hand . . . . " (page 137)]. He is also a Popperian fallibilist and an evolutionist [45 references to Popper in the Index, 36 to Kant, 28 to McLuhan]. These, roughly speaking, are the positions that he argues for in Mind at Large. Now, I hold positions not far from these, although I have too strong a sense of the possibility of intellectual, cultural, or sociopolitical failure to be an optimist (I settle for neutrality), and I have been called a neo-Kantian, more psychologist than philosopher. All in all, I have little reason to attack any of the positions that Levinson defends, but I can disagree with some aspects of his defensel The book does not lend itself to summation in a sentence or a paragraph. Evolved knowing is necessarily fallible, and fallible knowing can evolve without limit. Rationality and technology transform the mechanism of evolution. Technology makes visible the working of mind. These and other themes are developed, but it remains for some later book to resolve them into one single theme. I am not aware Of any extant book that accomplishes that purpose; the world is not there yet. About rationality, the issue is whether the adoption of rationality is itself an irrational act. After at least two readings of Mind at Large, I remain unsure just what Levinson conceives rationality to be. The most specific indication is a reference to Aristotelian logic, the law of the excluded middle. His conclusion (p. 34) is that from the evolutionist's position (1) rationality is the biological "mediator" among the various senses; etymologically, this is what "common sense" is about; (2) rationality originates by transcendence, not by choice, so the issue of irrational adoption is, historically at least, moot; and (3) the universe, having no purpose or design, tolerates rationality.
Journal of Social and Biological Structures 14(1):97-110. ISSN: 0140-1750
Copyright O 1991 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
97
98
DAVID G. HAYS
But if transcendence can occur once, it can occur as often as you like, and Levinson asks "whether rationality can transcend itself" (p. 35). He concludes (p. 37) that it has not, and cannot. My own view (Benzon & Hays, 1990) is that rationality has already transcended itself more than once. Levinson led me to ask myself, yet again, what I conceive rationality to be. My conclusion is that rationality inheres in explicit critique of argument and premises. One can argue, coherently but not rationally, from the premise that a god has let loose the dogs of war; the premise cannot stand under modem criticism. Benzon and I argued that the processes of thought transcended themselves with the introduction of systematic observation and calculation in the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, and again with the introduction of computers in the twentieth century. Levinson knows, as do Benzon and I, that "the first system is nonetheless not obliterated in the transformation, and continues as a sort of substratum to the second system" (p. 27). One who learns to write does not cease to speak. How, then, does the permanent need for "classic logic" (p. 36) warrant the conclusion that classic logic cannot be, or has not been, transcended as speech has been transcended by writing? Levinson agrees with Russell, Popper, et al., that "the abandonment of rationality and the institutionalization of irrational doctrines do indeed often result in an increase of real human suffering." Being myself more psychologist than philosopher, I am not ashamed to assert that only mental illness can explain the abandonment of rationality; what healthy person would resist critique of premises and argument? Should we conclude, by intense and prolonged analysis of all our premises and arguments, that examination of premises and arguments is wrong-headed and must be stopped, then we should be prepared to live lives "solitary, nasty, brutish, and short." And y e t . . , and yet. I am unable to convince myself that we have achieved such sophistication as to be able to understand completely all of the useful activities of our brains. And I am therefore as wary of the one who says, "Only the rational!" as of the one who says, "Abandon critique!" And in the end, I find argument against philosophical irrationalists a dull game. To one who says, "Stop thinking!" (and that is the ultimate irrationalist position), a sufficient answer is, " I think not by choice but by nature," and that is perhaps very close to what Levinson says. The bases of Levinson's optimism are, f'nrst, that we can continue to eliminate error, and, second, that we can transform error into success: "The festival of metaphor, brainstorm, and blind and blinding insight yields knowledge that may be wrong for the problem or aspect of reality at hand, but right for the future" (p. 55). Well, the frrst simply misses the nature of scientific revolution. The transition from natural philosophy to classic physics, and the later transition from classic physics to quantum physics, are neither of them matters of eliminating error (Penrose, 1989). Rather, each is an example of replacing an old framework with a new one, requiring (in my opinion) more powerful methods of thought. But I can agree with "The f e s t i v a l . . , yields knowledge" without accepting the remainder of the sentence just quoted. I think that Levinson is closer to the mark in saying (p. 36), " w e are analogous both phylogenically to our prerational hominid ancestors and ontogenically to our 1-year-old selves and their capacity to envision rationality when we try to discern the outlines of some future postrational level." The future is impossible to foretell, and neither optimism nor pessimism is justified (I am a neutralist).
Reviews
99
Technology is ontologically creative: "artificial material is something new under the s u n . . . " (p. 80). Here Benzon and I (1990) are in very close agreement. And "The sum total of our technologies is in many ways the ultimate Library of Congress" (p. 92). More precisely, "technological performance . . . [is] knowledge which has survived a material confrontation with the external world" (p. 93). Furthermore, "technology applied to the pursuit of knowledge [telescopes, computers] is a meta-or second-order technology: technology acting toward its own creation" (p. 94). And communication technology improves the possibilities of criticism and dissemination, which are as important for science, according to the fallibilist-evolutionist, as original formulation (p. 119). The topic of communication draws Levinson's attention to what he calls "abstraction": " a selecting of features from an original perception of a physically real event, and a playing back of these features in the mind at a later date" (p. 120). His statement is verylike the one that I would attach to "generalization," rather than to abstraction, which I take to be the process underlying formation of Gestalts. "When the hunter converts or abstracts the perception of the lion into the word 'lion' . . . , however, this abstraction may be easily transported through speech to anyone within earshot of the h u n t e r . . . " (p. 121). Since de Saussure at least, linguists have held a more elaborate view of the sign process than this; "converts or abstracts" is too crude. But certainly abstraction is linked with communication, as Levinson says. "Thus in the first two great communication revolutions of humankind--speech and writing--very high degrees of abstraction carded the day" (p. 122). To call speech and writing revolutionary suits me, and I also (following Charles F. Hockett) count them as the first two--although I would say "information-processing revolutions," since more than communication is involved• But I think that saying that the alphabet is abstracted from speech is simplistic. But again I agree that something new is going on when we begin to talk about justice; abstract ideas do indeed upset" Kant's insistence that the only appropriate objects of cognition are the data of our immediate sensory experience" (p. 123). I am not quite sure about "As these mental creations joined the immediate physical world as part of our selecting environment, the cognitive structures of our species began to be selected for their ability to make sense not only of the physical world, but of highly abstract concepts as well" (pp. 125-126)• For the brain may have changed genetically almost not at all since that minute but remarkable change that made possible, at one stroke, both language and thought. Back to Kant: One effect of increasing intellectual power has been the invention of methods for criticism of abstract ideas• We can check the assertion, "That's a horse," by simple methods. We can also check assertions about molecules, or abstract conceptions of quantum mechanics, but not so easily. Computer simulations and the like are significant here. Levinson discusses the alphabet and its intellectual consequences, noting the difficulty of discussing "an omnipresent yet invisible deity" in hieroglyphics (p. 131). But his main attention fails on the increased dissemination that writing, alphabet, and printing press give to ideas. I think that the skill of reading and writing alphabetic language led to new skills of cognition in general, and Levinson has nothing to say about that. And I give some credit to the printing press, but more to the new cognitive powers following on the learning of algorithmic skills. Levinson's conclusion "that the technological distribution of information is as central to the growth of knowledge as is the technological enhancement of perception and mental c a l c u l a t i o n . . . " (p. 146) may be exaggerated, but it is not false. And the present ultimate enhancer of intellectual communication is computer conferencing (pp. 197-219). •
.
.
100
DAVID G. HAYS
Pursuing a thought that he attributes to Ernst Kapp in the 1870s (p. 148), Levinson examines technology as a mirror for the mind. His examples are motion pictures and artificial intelligence, the one neglected and the other hyperbolized. " A full investigation of precisely how and why certain sequences of images on a screen e l i c i t . . . [various] sorts of perception would, I think, tell us epics about the workings of our perception and cognition" (p. 172). On the other hand, the attempt to make computers seem intelligent has thus far been a matter of false starts; the best one can say of artificial intelligence to date is that "in goading us to explain why these machines which seem to think in some ways also elicit in us . . . [doubts]," AI "obliges us to come face-to-face with the organic, evolutionary nature of our intelligence and h u m a n i t y . . . " (p. 182). Fair enough. But I think Donald Barthelme put it more effectively: "think for a while about delayed gratification, it's what distinguishes us from the printed circuits, Daniel, your printed circuit can't delay a gratification worth a damn" (Sixty Stories, New York: Dutton Obelisk Paperback, 1982, p. 201). The turning point is marked by the notice that "human rationality and technology are manifestly less fallible or error-prone than the undirected processes of evolution in dealing with the objects of the real world" (p. 100). "The technologically implemented plan departs not only from previous types of existence, but also from the rules that governed their e m e r g e n c e . . . " (p. 223), because earlier evolution was unplanned. We cannot be sure that our plans will work, but we have the conscious goal of learning to formulate workable plans. "In a universe constantly evolving; occasions when the rules of this evolution change are of profound importance" (p, 221). The two major occasions for Levinson are the appearance of life and the appearance of intelligence (and simultaneously technology). I am prepared to argue that the enhancements of cognitive power that accompanied writing, calculation, and computation make those revolutions also major occasions. What I did not have before reading this book was the concept of change in the rules of evolution, and learning it repaid the effort of reading.
References Benzon, W.L. and Hays, D.G. (1990) "Cognitive Evolution." Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 3(4), 297-320. Penrose, R. (1989) The Emperor's New Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.