Brains! Part 1

*these ideas are not my own, except the part about the zombies

Every idea I've ever had belonged to someone else first.
                                                    -James T. Hellcat

In his book How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker wrote, "...the mind is a naturally selected computer." I like this metaphor. For one, I'm a Darwinist/Dawkinsist, so the idea that the brain has evolved to be the crazy thinking machine it is is not so surprising/terrifying, & for another, the brain as data processor seems to me completely plausible given its nature.

What do I mean by its nature? Well, the brain has several data processing functions. It is a counting machine, a language processor, it has an expandable memory, and it is capable of crashing, to name a few. For more on the brain: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1997_09_naturalhistory.html

But it's the misfirings of the brain that I really want to talk about. The other day I experienced a classic blunder (in Statistics, a Type 1 error/false positive). I was sitting on my couch enjoying a visit with a friend, when I looked to my left & noticed my cat hunkered down beside the couch, no doubt stalking a fly or spider or a bit of fluff. I then looked up & saw that the cat was sprawled out on the dining table. A quick double-take back to 'the cat' next to the couch & I realized that it was actually a black bag I had earlier set on the floor. Duh!

Called pareidolia or simulacra, this 'uncanny' phenomenon occurs when the brain fills in false information & recognizes a vague image as a specific one. Sort of like the mind's auto-complete, if you will. Human self-delusion is fascinating, don't you think?! Pareidolia (not aliens, God, ghosts, etc.) is also to blame when we insist that we 'recognize' a familiar face, only to realize upon looking closer that it is not at all the person we had thought, & it is what causes us to see faces on random objects such as the moon or a slice of toast. It also makes us susceptible to the power of illusion/magic.

Traditionally (& still today?!), these misperceptions have most often been attributed to supernatural beings/occurrences. But it's just your mind playing tricks on you ... literally! So why do we insist on perpetuating these supernatural myths? Evolution, baby. Our minds have evolved to take on some pretty herculean tasks, so it makes sense that the brain would try to make things easier on itself, say perhaps by switching off/turning down consciousness when it is not directly necessary in order to accomplish the task at hand. ie. making sense of the black lump protruding from behind the couch. That black lump could have been almost anything, so in order to save time & costly cell activity, my brain made a guess based on a number of things (previous experience/memory, what I imagine it to be, & what I hope it is). So why DID I see my cat & not a dog, or a sweater, or a panther, or a black hole, or the black bag that it really was? 

I'll quote Mr. Pinker again, if only because he says things so much more learnedly & eloquently than I (he's the Psychologist, Cognitive Scientist, Linguist, & I'm the English major): "...the mind is a system of organs of computation that enabled our ancestors to survive and reproduce in the physical and social worlds in which our species spent most of its evolutionary history" (Pinker 2005).

1. Our brains are still evolving & are, therefore, not without imperfections.
2. Our social & physical worlds have evolved much faster than our brain's have.

While the costs of making a mistake in perception may be different (but not less) in the contemporary social & physical worlds, our brains are still hardwired to be on the lookout for both the things we know that are safe & the things we don't that are potential dangers. It may be nothing more than a perceptual error when we misinterpret vague images, but it pays in the long run. The brain's auto-complete function enables us to quickly locate our mates/family in a jungle of faces, locate food & shelter sources & avoid danger. Only sometimes, the brain gets it wrong (like Google?!). I am familiar with the sight of my cat (I've had her for about 6 months now), I do not own a dog, the particular shape & colour of the bag was consistent with that of my cat's (rather large) posterior, I completely forgot that I had set the bag there myself a few hours earlier, & there are no panthers or black holes (that I know of) in my home, so it makes sense that I would infer that the shape I saw was my cat, Vampira. Human perception is a subjective approximation/guesstimation rather than a fundamental, objective truth.  

Everything is a lie.

...

The other day I wrote about my brain. Specifically, how superior I think it is. You may dismiss me as an egomaniac, and to a certain extent, you'd be right. I am genetically hardwired to be selfish (or rather, my genes are). But that does not make me a selfish (and therefore, according to some, bad) human being. As intelligent as I am, as you are, as anyone can ever be (and trust me that person would be a gazillion billion times smarter than me & you put together), there is so much that we don't know, it makes what we do know seem infinitesimal. I may be gifted according to some subjective standardized test, but I am far from being a know-it-all. I am no better (or worse) than the lot of humankind.

In essence, when it comes to the human brain, degrees of intelligence are irrelevant. We're all pretty damn smart (in comparison to protozoa, say) or stupid (compared to superhuman robots, which thankfully, don't exist). Think about it. From an evolutionary perspective, we aren't that much more evolved than primitive man/woman (which explains a lot about our current disordered world!). I may be an intelligent being, but most of the time I find myself shambling about like some ravenous, slobbering zombie. 

And like I always say, I am a self-portrait of you.

...

The human brain, with all of its capabilities, its imperfections, & its limitations, truly amazes & confounds me. It is not only the source of, but quite possibly, the best example of the 'uncanny' there is.

Which brings me to zombies. The words 'uncanny' & 'zombie' are practically synonymous in my world.

I really like zombies. They are my favourite monsters, despite my theory that zombies, vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein, golem, ghosts, demons, mythological monsters such as Medusa & Hydra, succubi, human monsters--serial killers/cannibalists/necrophiliacs etc.--even the Devil himself, are all incarnations of the same thing: the inherent darkness within the human brain. Zombies aren't real, but they are useful as a metaphor for the things we don't understand/like/are afraid of about ourselves. It is much easier to create an 'other' to bear the weight of our troubles, one who is capable of acting out all of the nastiness we can imagine, than it is to accept that we ourselves ARE monsters. Lest you think I am being incontrovertibly pessimistic about humankind (and truthfully, most of the time I am), I also believe that our brains have advanced far enough for us to accept this & move on. We are not merely devils, we are angels, too.

And, although logically impossible, zombies are, nonetheless, quite frightening to anyone with a brain.

...

Welcome to the Age of the Zombie.

...mmmmm brains!

...

The Computation
John Donne

For my first twenty years, since yesterday,

I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away;
For forty more I fed on favours past, 

And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last;
Tears drown'd one hundred, and sighs blew out two;

A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you;

Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life ; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die ? 

...

Sources


Carroll, Robert T. http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html
Chalmers, David. http://consc.net/zombies.html
Dennett, Daniel C. http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/unzombie.htm
Pinker, Steven. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/So_How_Does_The_Mind_Work.pdf
___________. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1997_09_naturalhistory.html