Psybertron Asks

Whilst being a fan of both Blackmore and Dennett, one of their claims I have trouble with is the idea that consciousness (and free-will) is an illusion. I’m never sure if that’s a claim that it isn’t therefore real, which would clearly be preposterous, or simply that it shares some attributes with illusions, which is clearly true.

At the Skeptic’s Society 2005 conference Sue replicated the Libet experiment, whereby the movement of a hand appears to preceed any conscious decision to do so … reported here …

The most animated speaker of the day, Blackmore orchestrated an audience participation activity that replicated Libet’s experiments demonstrating that motor action potentials appear before a decision to move is made. That is, free will is an illusion. Something in your brain makes a decision to, say, move your hand. A moment later, you consciously decide to move your hand. But the decision to move it and the impulse was already well under way. My own take here is that there could be a ‘will you, won’t you’ cell that transmits its decision simultaneously to both ‘consciousness’ (which then realizes, “This is my decision”) and the motor neurons concerned (which quickly execute the decision). Consciousness appears to be a little behind the process (dynamic illusions of reverse depth can be particularly revealing here). Blackmore made the strongest case for consciousness being an illusion of sorts, and she did so in a very entertaining and informative manner.

I don’t buy this explanation either, other than the parallel aspect of the processing involved. My take is that the Libet effect is simply a matter of exposing the many levels of consciousness involved, and the fact that a relatively simple response type decision can be “conscious but delegated”, as a causal result of conditioned free-will / decision making, that doesn’t need to reach the level of active conscious thought to model the inputs / outputs / constraints / alternatives / risks etc, but can be left to the hard-wired genetic / physiological and soft-wired memetic / memory aspects to sort out with only parallel supervisory involvement of the conscious level in the process. In general the conscious level could kick-in to countermand the lower level action, if aware of other significant issues, but the workings vary from the wholly reflex to the wholly considered, and all points in between.

Can’t tell whether this is serious, a spoof or some kind of thought experiment, but interesting none-the-less. Designing an informative sign that will survive and remain both meaningful and credible for 10,000 years (to mark a nuclear waste disposal site.) Interesting design problem. Seems the result is literally monumental. Figures.

Link from Earle Martin’s “downlode” e-text library [via Rivets]

Also amongst the e-texts this 1987 essay by Timothy Leary and Eric Gullicson “Huxley, Hesse and the Cybernetic Society“. Some background to Siddhartha (1922), The Bead Game, and other gems, a truly excellent essay, linking so many sources.

The great convergence goes on. I picked up this link from a cross-hit; Lectures at the Rafael Escola chair of Ethics. The inaugural 2004 presentation by Jeffrey Pfeffer is straight into the morals of CEO remuneration and immediately picking up on the perverse drive of purely objective, logical measures of company performance (See “why reward success” posted 3 days ago, and my general thesis)

Robert Jaedicke is a former accounting professor and the former associate dean and dean of the Stanford business school. He was also the chairman of the audit committee of Enron and served on the Enron board since the mid- 1980s. The question posed by those who know Jaedicke well is how could this ethical, honest, and decent man have been caught up in such a massive financial fraud? There are many possible and plausible answers, including a) the complexity of the transactions that ultimately brought the demise of Enron, b) Jaedicke’s long association with the company and its CEO, Ken Lay, that may have made him complacent and reluctant to challenge a long-time colleague, and c) the fact that responsibility can become diffused when many people are present and observing an action (e.g., Latane and Darley, 1968), in that no single individual may feel particularly responsible or comfortable with disagreeing with the others. But there is another possibility as well. Suppose Enron, with its high stock price, needed to show growing earnings or earnings of a certain amount as expected by analysts in order to maintain and even increase that share price. A transaction is presented with the following possible outcomes: approve the possibly questionable deal and permit the company to continue to report favorable financial results and maintain the stock price, or refuse to approve it and potentially face a calamitous decline in shareholder value. If maintaining shareholder value is the only thing that matters�”if it is only the short-term results that count�”it is clear that there will be enormous pressures to approve the deal and, in fact, doing so is probably the logical thing to do.

Hypocrisy rules, as I’ve said many a time. Anyway, so nothing new under the sun continues as a theme, but the real reason I was drawn to this link is that hero Charles Handy gave the 2005 lecture, and in expounding his ten moral dilemmas to address in modern business life, he uses “Eudaimonia” as his archetype for the duty to “flourish”. Good read actually, Handy’s usual folksy style advice, including a good reminder that for Adam Smith these personal duties came before capitalism. [Previous eudaimonia references.]

Continuing the thread on psychedelics place in the study of consciousness, here is a bang up to date “scientific” study on the use of Peyote – OK so it’s from the media school of “Today US researchers announced …”, but it’s current and credible. [BeliefNet via Scott over at MoQ Discuss.]

Damned by faint praise in the headline …

“Peyote Doesn’t Damage Brain”

… the article acutally focusses on

“Quite the contrary, these individuals [Sacramental Peyote Users] scored higher on several indicators of mental health … etc … “

Twas ever thus.

Post Note : This blog is about knowledge, not “drugs”.

My opening remark, about the school of journalistic scientific reporting ….
is the same school as “lies, damn lies and statistics”, geddit yet ?

Nowhere in my post, nor in the article actually, are there any positive assertions of causality, reason or responsibility, though there are some disclaimer (truism) negative assertions in the interests of political correctness – well don’t blame us, we didn’t say xxxx was the cause, etc.

Causality (how and why) is a whole other ball game;
Beyond journalism, and most of science for that matter.

Not content with announcing a new on-line service rather than shrink-wrapped s/w sales strategy, Microsoft are pushing ahead with this Open Content Alliance project to scan out of copyright books. I hope the “content” doesn’t become some pawn in the megalomaniac competitive game. [Most recent Google news here.]

I blogged a month or so ago about re-discovering management guru Peter Drucker, and being interested to discover his Vienna Circle history. I notice in this post from Piers Young at MonkeyMagic, whilst stumbling across Drucker, he lets slip his first degree in Philosophy. Kept that quiet Piers.

Incidentally, being 50 next birthday was not the reason that I followed this link. I too have only recently begun reading Gibbon.

No, the reason I followed it was for this Mark Bernstein post next door, on US news priorities. [via Oliver Wrede] Made me smile.

Interesting. Posted several times and exchanged comments with Georganna, that Google is truly amazing in indexing seemingly insignificant little blogs like ours, totally in minutes flat, 24, 7, like amazing, however you look at it.

Matt Mower seems to have dropped off their radar. I wonder how that happens. Is there a blacklist 😉 Conspiracy theorists need not apply.

I posted “dont you just love ’em” (Americans) earlier this week. Here is the opposite view from an American travelling in the UK or rather, exactly the same view from the other side. [From Virginia Postrel via Mark Lerner.]

The usual annual slanging match between directors and unions as the survey of directors remunerations show that directors average pay has “risen steeply” n x inflation for the nth year in a row, etc. They disagree, yet they agree “We must reward success” say the directors, “Yes, we mustn’t punish success” say the unions, blah, blah, blah.

The meaningless news story struck me because I’d just been browsing Tom Peter’s who puts all his presentations up on his web site, even though at this very moment, you could be paying $1750 a head to hear him strut his stuff at Birmingham NEC (Sharing the stage with Michael Porter, Charles Handy and Gary Hamel mind you.)

Tom is still preaching “excellence”, with the same passion as ever, judging by the colour schemes in his powerpoints. Excellence; The relentless pursuit of difference. Innovate or die. The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle. Do we employ enough weird people these days ?. etc ..

Anyway the problem with the management vs employees debate above, is that whilst they are talking success, they are meaning “my slice of the pie” – that objective, measurable, accountable, financial pie of earnings, and in doing so they (or the media reporting them) miss what matters :

Reward excellent failures
Punish mediocre successes

ie Don’t forget the quality.

It’s all slogans, and most of Tom’s are lifted from others, (with acknowledgement, to Phil Daniels in the quote above) but that doesn’t mean they are wrong. Far from it. It’s “pathetic” as he says, that people still need reminding of this stuff. Keep pushing that meme Tom. Of course, that’s why Tom’s slides are freely available, memes rely on replication. Copy and use freely. Aristotle has one hell of a head start on us.