Seeking the Source of Reason

If animals could reason they would not run out in front of cars and get killed, and dogs could figure out how to unwind their chains from trees. Most animals operate primarily on instinct, pre-programmed instructions that activate leg muscles when a large shadow is perceived, eating subroutines when food is sensed, mating in response to pheromones, and so on. They do not conceptualize and reason, they simply react without thinking. There is some natural variation in instincts, and individuals whose instincts are more suited to the situations they face have a survival and reproductive edge. Life experiences also modify brain pathways to enhance or inhibit responses (conditioning), and over millions of years fairly complex behaviors can evolve.

However, some animals, such as apes, DO have the ability to conceptualize and reason. Some predators (especially those that work in teams) probably can. Being able to predict the result of your actions and the reactions of other animals (both prey and members of your social group) would save on costly trial-and-error. Reptiles and lower animals failed to evolve the necessary brain structures. Robots cannot conceptualize anything, but sophisticated programming can mimic reasoning.

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Reasoning requires the ability to conceptualize and the ability to infer. It appears to me that any creature that moves in space must have the neural structure necessary to conceptualize and infer in order to survive, i.e. such creatures have the capacity to reason. It is this capacity that is the source of the human capacity to reason.

Just as a fish fin does not resemble the human hand but is in fact the source of the human hand, so too is the reasoning ability of the creature I depict the source of human reason.

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coberst wrote:

Reasoning requires the ability to conceptualize and the ability to infer. It appears to me that any creature that moves in space must have the neural structure necessary to conceptualize and infer in order to survive, i.e. such creatures have the capacity to reason. It is this capacity that is the source of the human capacity to reason.

Just as a fish fin does not resemble the human hand but is in fact the source of the human hand, so too is the reasoning ability of the creature I depict the source of human reason.

Perhaps your definition of reason seems so similar to others definition of instinct because they're both the same. We think of ourselves as having a mind capable of thought - of "reason" - that is at a higher level than other animals. Yet we only think this because there are no more advanced animals for us to study and compare ourselves to. For that matter, even if there were, it would stand to reason that we wouldn't be able to recognize such a creature for what it was, precisely because it was more advanced.

What we consider reason, thought, and sentience could very well be a highly evolved instinct. Perhaps our biology is responsible for more of our thoughts and actions than we give it credit for.

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Let us imagine how human reason might have been born. The question seeking an answer is: how can natural selection (evolution) account for human reason?

1) fins evolved in the ocean
2) fins evolved into 4 legged creatures
3) the front legs evolved greater dexterity allowing the use of tools
4) using tools requires intelligence, and so intelligence was selected for
5) under the influence of intelligence, social "evolution" began

it's all pretty straightforward

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A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters.

Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.

Our understanding of biology indicates that the body has a marvelous ability to do as any handyman does, i.e. make do with what is at hand. The body would, it seems logical to assume, take these abilities that exist in all creatures that move and survive in space and with such fundamental capabilities reshape it through evolution to become what we now know as our ability to reason. The first budding of the reasoning ability exists in all creatures that function as perceiving, moving, surviving, creatures.

Cognitive science has, it seems to me, connected our ability to reason with our bodies in such away as to make sense out of connecting reason with our biological evolution in ways that Western philosophy has not done, as far as I know.

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Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.

That's complete bullshit, it's not true.

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I would say that the basic facts that we have to start the search for the cusp of instinctive and reasoned behavior might be:

1) Somewhere in the chain of life from its mysterious beginning to the present there exists a point when behavior is influenced by something we call reason rather than something we call instinct.

2) Using computer lingo we can classify instinct as behavior caused by hardwired algorithms and reasoned behavior to be caused by real time evaluations giving real time instructions controlling behavior.

3) Reason is a means to control behavior based upon real time assessment of real time circumstances.

4) Reason requires that data from the senses be ordered into some fashion that will facilitate real time inferences, this is called conceptualization; followed by inferences made from these concepts.

5) We have, from computer modeling technology, empirical evidence that the neural system that control perception and mobility have the capacity to conceptualize and to infer. In other words, the essential elements of sensorimotor control are also the essential elements of reasoning. The algorithms developed by computer software are similar to the real time commands issued by the neural system that is reasoning.

6) If biology has created the structure that has the elements for reasoning it is logical to conclude that such a system would not be duplicated for reason but that this very same system would be modified in whatever manner is necessary for it to function also as an instrument that can reason.

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Wow, great, sounds like you've been busy in the Coberst Lab. You should publish this astounding research in the National Journal of Coberst (which is peer reviewed by Coberst) and accessible only to members of the Coberst Society of Intellectuals.

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Coberst:

1) Agreed.

2) Yes, instinct is hard-wired, but it responds in real-time to real-time sensory data. Reason delays response by taking time to evaluate data, plan and mentally test responses before executing them.

3) Reason relies on memory and learning as well as real-time assessment, and is used to plan future actions as well as to modify immediate instinctive responses.

4) Reason requires that new data be evaluated and compared to previously stored data. Conceptualizing is forming a concept: "2: an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances". Inference is "a: the act of passing from one proposition, statement, or judgment considered as true to another whose truth is believed to follow from that of the former b: the act of passing from statistical sample data to generalizations" (definitions from Merriam-Webster). Neither needs to be real-time (we can ruminate for hours about past events and what we should have said or done).

5) The neural systems that acquire sensory data and control muscles are not the ones that form concepts, reason and infer. Robots and reptiles can perceive and move. They do not reason. (OK, some robots use fuzzy logic and advanced programming that could be considered reasoning, but I'm talking about the kind that roam around, avoid obstacles, and accomplish basic tasks using fairly simple rules.)

6) Lots of things get duplicated, and nature does reinvent the wheel periodically. But we evolved whole new structures on top of the original reptilian brain (see Triune brain theory).

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It is glaringly obvious that the "role of language" is missing from this discussion.

Even Dennett, a reductionist of "thought" to "neural processes" advocates language as the significant factor in what we might term "human intelligence". The fact that language resides (is generated) in the social domain implies that evolution of neural structures alone is insufficient to account for major aspects of intelligence such as conceptualization and reasoning. Neurons don't "naturally do" set theory any more than fingers "naturally count" !

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Our human brains, and only human brains, have been armed by habits and methods, mind-tools and information, drawn from millions of other brains to which we are not genetically related. This, amplified by the deliberate use of generate-and-test in science, puts our minds on a different plane from the minds of our nearest relatives among the animals. This species-specific process of enhancement has become so swift and powerful that a single generation of its design improvements can now dwarf the R-and-D efforts of millions of years of evolution by natural selection. So while we cannot rule out the possibility in principle that our minds will be cognitively closed to some domain or other, no good "naturalistic" reason to believe this can be discovered in our animal origins. On the contrary, a proper application of Darwinian thinking suggests that if we survive our current self-induced environmental crises, our capacity to comprehend will continue to grow by increments that are now incomprehensible to us.

Daniel Dennett

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Terry

Reason can do many wonderful things that my imaginary water creature cannot do but that is not the issue. The issue is where in the chain of life does the first simple act of reason happen.

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fresco

I do not see the relevance of the Dennett quote. I do not think that language was a nessary condition for any part of the first act of reason

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Define "an act of reason" !

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...in your "water creature example" there are no "decisions". The creature is "hard wired" to respond in specific ways to certain shadows. Such wiring was "naturally selected by evolution"
Note that a frog surrounded by dead flies will starve to death because it is "hard-wired" to perceive only moving flies...a male stickleback will pursue any red object in its visual field (such as a pencil or a post van) as a rival male.

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Re: Seeking the Source of Reason

coberst wrote:

It seems obvious to me this simple creature must have the ability to reason in order to survive.

You might find certain writings of Adorno interesting, if you aren't already familiar with him. He voiced similar thoughts about the origins of human reason (with a similar reliance on mostly abstract imagining). But far from "shouting with joy," Adorno condemned (with the noisy frothing-at-the-mouth intensity that makes his prose intolerable to read) this aspect of human nature for leading to the evils of "Western capitalist commodity culture" that you frequently discuss in your threads.

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bookmark

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Coberst wrote:

Reason can do many wonderful things that my imaginary water creature cannot do but that is not the issue. The issue is where in the chain of life does the first simple act of reason happen.

I agree with Fresco that you need to tell us what YOU mean by "act of reason." Merriam-Webster defines it as "the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways" but defines "rational" as "1 a : having reason or understanding b : relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason." Your assertion that "the neural system that control perception and mobility have the capacity to conceptualize and to infer. In other words, the essential elements of sensorimotor control are also the essential elements of reasoning" does not jibe with this definition since sensorimotor control does not require comprehension, inference, or thinking.

Presumably the first simple act of reason occurred when an organism formed a mental concept and used it to deliberately choose one action over another. I don't know when primate, cetacean and avian brains each evolved the necessary brain structures, but it would have involved the ability to compare an image of what was desired to what was actually perceived and comprehend that specific actions were required to achieve goals. Homo habilis certainly used reason to make tools 2 million years ago, if that helps.

Fresco, when is language thought to have evolved?

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Terry,

This time line suggests the origins of spoken language.

http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/01origin/prehist.html

It may be also the case that "tool usage" involved a combination of vocalization and sign language. We can imagine a hunt accompanied by particular "communal pursuit cries" and "stick carrying". The stick and the cry become associated such that the cry stands for the stick...different cries for different sizes of stick...etc. Once we have nominality (naming) and ordinality (sizing) we are on the way to abstract reasoning. However such scenarios are difficult to substantiate because "speech leaves no fossils". Here's a much more comprehensive article.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5393/1455

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fresco wrote:

Define "an act of reason" !

An act of reason occurs when a living creature performs an act of conception and makes an inference from that concept. Conceptualization and inference are the necessary and sufficient conditions for reason.

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Seeking the Source of Reason

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