hello. Welcome to Office Hours. I wanted to start by answering a question that's on everyone's mind, which is, are the dogs in the office? This week, they are, as it happens. My wife is out of town. They really prefer to be in with her, but when she's gone, they'll settle for me. That's Frasier in the chair. He's gotten his spring haircut. So, he's looking a little, little more doggy I think. A little doggier than when he's fluffier. And then there is. Where's Milo? Hello, Milo. How are you doing, buddy? He seems happy. Okay, the dogs are actually not totally unrelated to one of the questions we got in Office Hours this week. You know we talked about the modular theory of the mind, the modular model of the mind, this week. And one of the questions was asked by Carston Qvist, Q-V-I-S-T. In relation to the modular theory, the mind and its evolutionary origin, it would seem to make sense to expect that similar modules exist across reasonably related species. Is there any research to support that? well, my dogs have been barking at the mailman. Module, eating module and so on. And they also, but more seriously, they must have some source of status related equipment. There, there is clearly a hierarchy. You saw that Frasier had the choice spot there in the chair. That's the way the world works, and Milo accepts that. Although, Milo does challenge Frasier sometimes to kind of semi-playful fights. In what maybe an attempt to unseat him, but Frasier usually handles them with with, with kind of successful nonchalance. [NOISE] I want to get back actually, in a more serious way, to this question about animals and modules. But first, I want to say a bunch of other stuff about modules, because there was much talk of modules amongst students in the forum and on Facebook, and on Twitter and so on. So, for example, Rui Gil, R-U-I, Gil G-I-L, wrote in the discussion forum, the videos from this week's lectures have put me in a state of dukkha. To quote the great Buddhist Mick Jagger, they didn't get me no satisfaction. He says I felt the explanatory power of the theory of modules a little unsatisfactory. Now at first I felt kind of guilty about, about feeling Rui with, dukkha. But then I remembered, A, Dukkha is a pervasive part of life. So, you know? Don't blame me. B, the source, ultimately, according to the four noble truths of Rui's dukkha is actually his thirst for knowledge. So Rui, if you would just surrender your thirst for knowledge, abandon the thirst for knowledge, you will not be unsatisfied with anything I say. And ironically, you will attain enlightenment. No, but seriously, I owe Rui an answer. Rui's not the only one in the discussion forum who has doubts about the modular view of the mind. So and I'm going to tackle a series of such challenges to the modular view of the mind. But first, let me talk about a couple of comments about the modular view of the mind that weren't challenges, as far as I could tell, unless there's a subtext that I missed. And maybe there was. [LAUGH] Actually. Paula Duvalle wrote, in the discussion forum, she, she started a thread titled, what mental module wrote your discussion post? And yeah. Come to think of it, that could be kind of like, a little, a little subtle ridicule of the model, right? But I don't think so. I think it was. I think it was, I think she comes in peace. She writes just asking myself and you it's fascinating to think about it is fascinating to think. But I mean the first thing I would say is there must be, when your posting in the comment in the discussion forum, there must be a module play that we didn't even talk about, which is like a language generation module right, the you know, these kind of, some of these, a lot of these strictly cognitive modules we didn't, we didn't talk much about. There's got to be that. But then there's the question, what do you say with your language module? What do you express in the discussion forum? And here I think we do get to some of those kinds of modules that were laid out, and the one module theory that we kind of used as a modular theory. The one the Seven Sub Cells posited by Doug Kendrick and his co author, and in fact Paula elicited a reply that drew on that model, Jennifer Hawkinds replied to Paula saying my guess it either affiliation or status. Either the affiliation module or the status module, By participating, you know in the discussion forum, you get a little happiness spike associated with any social interaction. She said the forums also give people a chance to show off, in quotes, what they know. That's true, I think either of those modules could get triggered in the discussion forum, and it's actually an example of the point of this particular model which is that information comes in, into the environment, and, and kind of determines which module gets triggered. In this case it would depend on what your post you are reading says right I mean, if you see a post that's, that, that agrees with your view and even endorses your view expressed in the forum then you are like oh, an ally, you're going to say nice things that's yeah it's all about affiliations. On the other hand if someone, challenges and even especially if they belittle something you have said on the forum, well that's a threat to your status right. And that elicits a whole different way of conceiving of a person who wrote the post, and a whole different kind of response. because then you've gotta figure out a way to undermine their credibility and restore your credibility. Right? And I don't mean you consciously think this. That's the interesting thing about modules, right? It works so much more subtly than that. It's like someone challenges you, and, and you know, yeah, if you pay attention, you can feel the kind of antagonistic feeling that's welling up but, what you may not realize is that then you immediately start looking at their, their argument you know, for holes that you can exploit in replying right. They must be wrong in challenging me. They must be wrong whereas, this person it, the other person who endorsed your views, you know, you're probably not going to be so picky, right? Like he may read, why is there endorsing your views. And if you think they got some things wrong, well hey, that's forgivable, right? and, and I mean, we don't necessarily think about this, but that is the way. That's just a good example of how triggering one module or another, like steers your subsequent kind of cognitive activity, right? Are you or are you not going to really assiduously analyze this person's argument for a logical flaw and then convince yourself that it's a fatal logical flaw, right? Okay, I also want to say though, you know, that said, that I think this in a way bears out the module of the mind, it's also true as I said I think in the lecture, that things like this affiliation module status, module, they interact so fluidly. Right, like so for example, somebody could endorse your view, but they do it kind of in a patronizing way. And so it's kind of like wait do they think, like, they're better than me? I mean, if they think their status is higher than. I mean, this is a tricky situation. Right? And. And. And. And in general the interaction between, you know, kind of status maintenance stuff and affiliation stuff is so kind of fluid that, you know, sometimes I think, you know, module. It's an unfortunate word because it give, it, it, it, it, it does convey this idea that these are like, you know, blocks, you know and like, where's the whole, the real thing is much more fluid and continuous and so on, but anyway. That said, now let's get to all those posts that were a threat to my status, right? I mean, these have to be dealt with. People like Rui, who doubted a modular theory of the mind that I think pretty highly of. And again you know the, the, the one we tried it out was just a conversation starter. I, I don't, I don't like I'm not endorsing the particular seven sub-cells or anything you know, as I said it's going to be super complicated if we ever get to the bottom in this but some version of modular theory in the mind I have high hopes for, so it is a profound and great threat to my status when students doubt it. And so, my status module, you know, read that Rui's post, other posts, and like, it's like, what are we going to do about this? And here's the plan that my status module came up with, see what you think of this. Or actually, strictly speaking it's, well, I don't know, did my status module like steer some cognitive module in a direction and then turn the job over it. I don't know. That's what I mean about how complicated this is. Anyway, here's the plan. I'm not going to argue that these people are wrong. I'm just going to argue, that the models of the mind that they are positing as alternatives to the modular theory of the mind are not in fact incompatible with a modular theory of the mind. Okay. So that way, this is my status module thinking now, that way I can restore my status without undermining their status and then they'll you know, then they'll be happy. It won't you know, there will be no round of counter attacks presumably, but let's see if this works, you be the judge. Okay, let's start with Margo Warner, who said on Facebook, why can't we just convert the notion of modules into something simpler? Say that the brain has various parts which function in different ways. Margo this may not surprise you given the preamble I just did but, I don't think that's compatible, incompatible with a modular view of the mind. The modular view of the mind does say that the brain has various parts which function in different ways. But that alone could imply a number of alternative models, of which the modular view that I trotted out is only one. So, for example, what you've said here, various parts function in different ways. That could be a very top down CEO diagram, right? Like an actual corporation with the CEO, that's a conscious mind. It's always consciously allocates tasks to the different functionally specialized modules. That would be one kind of model consistent with what you've said, but I think the modular view is another kind. It does say that the brain has various parts which function in different ways, but it says it's a more kind of decentralized system I, I want to make sure that I'm in focus when I restore my status to its rightful place. Okay, I think I'm focused now. Where was I? [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh. Modular view is kind of, the, it, it. The key things are. It's. It's decentralized, and in the sense that the, the the, the determination of which module is kind of running the show for a while is not generally consciously determined. Okay? Okay. Now onto Chriss, that's two s's, Pagani, who wrote, I believe on Facebook. The modular, the modular view is interesting, but couldn't the examples given, be better explained by nuero-biology? Now first of all, I want to emphasize, the module, any modular view of the mind, we assume, will some day be explained neuro-biologically, it's not an alternative to a neurobiological model. So, Chriss we're on the same page. We both, we both assume that the explanation is going to be at the neurobilogical level. Now Chriss goes on to say, in example such as the person coming into you with a machete, stimulus from the visual sense activates the limbic system that's associated with like, you know, feelings and, and, and stuff. Which activates fight or flight response and so on, all very explicable through these well known processes with very specific specialized portions of the brain, without adding a layer of modules on top of them. Okay, so there's maybe the, the thing. We're not laying modules on top of the known physiology of the brain. We're saying that a given module consists of a particular way of orchestrating these known parts of the brain for a specific task and any given part of the brain may be orchestrate, may, may be involved in a number of different modules, right? So a kind of example is you know, the, you mentioned fight or flight. And, and Milo is fleeing right now. I don't know if you can see him, but that was Milo. Milo is fleeing. Milo's not really buying the the modular model of the mind apparently. He's had enough. Frasier, Frasier is his usual responsive self. Hi, Frasier. They may sense a threat downstairs. But it's Sunday so it's not, it's not, the mailman. [BLANK_AUDIO] So, but I want to emphasize that, well I think it's illuminating to look at this particular example. Okay. So how about we just say limbic system, fight or flight response. We knew about that stuff. fine. right. Those could be involved in what Kenrick calls the self protection module, but I want to emphasize that Kenrick is talking about self protection from humans, and sometimes when you're dealing with humans it's more complicated that fight or flight, right? It's like, sometimes, okay they may be ready to kill you, but maybe if you give them some money, they won't, or maybe if you apologize they won't. So it's more that fight or flight, you, you, you've, there may be you know, negotiation, talking. That is going to mean that you're going to have to use the theory of mind module. The theory of mind module, remember, the module that helps you infer what people are thinking, try to figure out what's actually going on in their head. So that's going to, so when the threat comes from a human that may well get triggered and, and I, we saw a brain scan of the theory of mind kind of network, or module in the, in the last lecture, which is evidence that, yes, we're talking about neurobiology, talking about physiology but you may have noticed that even the theory of mind module, was itself drawing on different parts of the brain. So so anyway, yes. It, it's neurobiological. But, you know, and modules aren't like whole blocks that are being added that I'm claiming are on top of the stuff we already knew about. Modules consist in distinctive you know, patterns of orchestrating different parts of the mind, and it's because evolution is so thrifty, that a lot of these parts of the brain are going to be used in more than one module. So for example you know, oxytocin is a chemical that we know bonds mothers to infants right after birth. Oxytocin also is involved in cementing the bonds in a friendship apparently. And in trust generally in a social context, well we know that maternity Preceded the friendship, in our species by a long, long time, okay. Friendship is reciprocal altruism. Well that, that came along much more recently than, than maternity. But when, and that would come under the general heading of what can cause the affiliation module, presumably. You know, friendship, reciprocal altruism, but it drew on preexisting stuff. This oxitosin that has this, this effect it being modulated differently and so on, but, but you know modules are, anyway I, maybe I've made my point. Maybe I haven't. Anyway next, on to Margorie Forbes, who said in the discussion forum, I cannot see how we got from delusions of ourselves, that was the title of the first segment, I think, of that lecture. To this rather obscure modular view of the mind. She says well, she mentions this alternative model of Daniel Dennett's. Which is called the fame in the brain hypothesis. I'm not that conversant with it. He says, then it says that in our heads, there's a turmoil going on. A turmoil going on, there's many different elements vying for attention. Something always wins and the one's that win are the ones that we are conscious of. Actually that sounds like a modular theory of the mind. Certainly could be. And, and, as he fleshed it out I might say well, that's a little different. But, that's, modular minds. The modular, the standard, the common modular models of the mind imagine something like that going on. Now, here, earlier, in Margorie's post, there's something that may explain why she thinks Dan Dennett's theory's different. She says no one knows what consciousness is yet, but there are other hypotheses, other than the modular view of the mind, that explain the issues raised in the first segment more simply. The first segment being about delusions about ourselves. And therefore more consistently with the principle of lightness. well, or she means Occam's Razer, she says. I just want to be clear. I'm not sure if she's presupposing this, but the modular view doesn't purport to explain consciousness in, in some kind of metaphysical sense, right? I mean, it doesn't mean to address the most challenging question about consciousness like what is it? Why does it exist? I know Dennett thinks he has an explanation. Just between you and me, he doesn't. But he, I know that is on his agenda and maybe that's why she saw, what actually sounds like a modular view of the mine. As as different from modular view of the mind. I don't know. But in any event, I want to emphasize, this in not about explaining consciousness in the philosophical sense. It's not. That's not what the modular view of the mind is for. So some. Another commenter I know said, well, why don't we use complexity theory, which explains, like, emerging properties like consciousness? Something like. We're not trying to explain consciousness here, we're trying to explain, well we're trying to explain a lot of things. One of them is given that the conscious mind seems not to have a clear idea of what is actually going on, well what is actually going on? You know, there is various ways can explain a system where the conscious mind doesn't get the full picture, module model is one of those explanations. Okay now we get back to Rui Gil, now here's my chance for revenge, remember now Rui is the trouble maker here. And so I'm going have to do whatever is necessary, all, by any means necessary I will defend my status. Rui, says he prefers rather than a modular view of the mind, he would like us to adopt Gregory Bateson's thing. [LAUGH] Okay, I think this is another thing, Gregory Bateson's kind of view in mind. I think this is another example. Something that you know remember my general agenda here take, take things that people say are inconsistent with a module view in mind, argue that they are not. I think this is, I think Bateson is not. Now I, I read the book Mind and Nature oh literally 33 years ago, I have almost no recollection. But I think, both by perusing quickly Rudy's recapitulation of Bateson and based also on my memory of it. You know, I just remember Bateson emphasizing the interaction between us and other organisms in the world generally. The, the, the, the feedback loops of information being so pervasive that, that you kind of have to think of it as a whole system. And by the way that's actually a very Buddhist way to think of it. But you can think of a modular view of the mind that way. You can think of any, any model of the mind that way, I think. It, it's just a it, it's you, you can take any account of what's going on in the mind internally, I think, and plug it into Bateson's view that there's this larger cybernetic system we're part of. But maybe I'm wrong. I may be straining here to hold up my status and I may fail. okay, so enough of things that purport to be alternatives, but I think aren't. Doug Karo mentions, Marvin Minsky's book, Society of Mind, and, and, and Doug says, this is on the discussion forum, says from my faulty, in parentheses, memory of the material. I suspect it's a higher level of abstract. It's. I suspect it's higher level of abstraction will be a more useful model than modules. But there may be very little difference between the two. I think the latter. I think there's very. I think Minski's model is an example of a modular view. It's a very good, entertaining book, by the way. There's, like, no chapter longer than about a page, you know? It's just, it's a big, it's almost like a coffee table book and worth tracking down, Minski was very smart, but I know that Rob Kurzban who showed up in, in a couple of lectures in his course of primary proponent of the modular view of the mind. Was a student of [UNKNOWN] who's another primary proponent, is a big fan of this book. So Rob thinks it's like totally modular. The book itself is actually modular in structure, but that's. Speaking of other thinkers who may or may not be related to this. Wu Suan asks I wanted to ask if the Bundle Theory, the mind from Hume directly affected the development of the modular ideal mind. I don't know the Bundle Theory of the mind very well. I do know that Hume, is a fascinating thinker of course you know, Scottish enlightenment philosopher. A very Buddhist he has an argument against the existence of the self that is structurally very much like the Buddhist argument against the self so much so that scholars have speculated, on whether he actually encountered Buddhist thought via his encounters with Jesuits who had been to, China or something, somewhere in Asia. Hume's worth. It's really seen a number of ways. I mean without being explicitly oblivious but the nature of his world view. So you know, I, I again want to emphasize on modules. The, the [UNKNOWN] model just a conversation starter. You know, I think when we get to the bottom of, of modules it's all going to be pretty darn complicated. And you know, at some level you know, I think the term module has to be an oversimplification in a way. But that's almost, you know, I think a,a good Buddhist would say that's true of lots of things you say about the world, right? That ultimately these things we think about as things are all kind of processes. There's, there, it's like all very fluid. We put these, we use these nouns. But everything is a process in flux. I think there's some truth to that. And I, and I think, you know, the point where, like you take status, and affiliation. It's like, you know, the point where one hands the ball off, hands the torch off to the other one. It's like, is it, you know, is it so clear always. Or is it more like, you know, thinking of like kind of networks that, you know, kind of move around. Networks of activation that move around, and sometimes merge, and sometimes are kind of semi-merged. I don't know, I think the key thing for our purposes, or one key thing, is that this is a model where things in the environment, often in the environment. Although, as we'll see in the lecture, we haven't already seen. I think it's going to be posted this Thursday. There is other ways modules can get activated, but anyway, we shift from module to module without consciously deciding to do it, we shift from emphasis to emphasis, oh I'm in friend making mode now ,I'm evaluating this person as a friend, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt to like enemy mode to various modes. Often without really thinking about it, it fundamentally alters our view of reality and I would argue that, just, you know, it's very rare that actually we're seeing the true view. We're always coloring the view in one way or another. It kind of happens unconsciously without our awareness, and in this lecture that's going to be posted on Thursday we will get into the get more into a connection between mindfulness meditation and this. How mindfulness meditation relates to, to all this. I think there's a few more things I wanted to get into but since I don't see the questions right here, I think I should turn off camera. I'll be right back. Okay, I wanted to get back to this question from Kirsten Vivist about whether there's evidence of modules in species closely related to us. I'm not aware of much evidence of modules, per se. However, I think it's interesting to look at the behavioral parallels between humans and chimpanzees, who are very closely related to us as closely related as any species. You know, they chimps, they, they have what you might call friendship. They have alliances, reciprocal altruism. And they you know, they swap favors with their, their friends, their allies. They also pursue status and, and that has great consequences and in fact the alliances themselves, the coalitions are used in the pursuit of status. So it's a pretty complex behavioral repertoire with some apparent parallels with human behavior. Now you know, and you would certainly, you would certainly assume that there's, you know, some functional specialization in the brain governing these, these behaviors, right? I, I, I don't think these things are all like cultural inventions on the part of chimpanzees, right. Just invented the institution of friendship. Now I want to emphasize, we are not descended from chimpanzees, okay, these are not our ancestors. Rather, we share, we both descended from a common ancestor and so do bonobos, they are as closely related to us as chimpanzees and they are in some ways different from chimpanzees and that's a caution against inferring too much about what this common ancestor of all three of us was like, we just don't know. At the same time I do think if you look at, at chimps, it's a pretty good guess that You know, in our lineage, you know, whatever our ancestors were like it's a pretty good guess that this functional specialization in the brain governing things like friendship, the pursuit of status, and the interaction between the two probably started evolving quite a while before we were capable of really complex reasoning. Before we were capable of complex language, before we were doing much in the way of conscious reflection. And you know, that may help explain certain features about the relationship of consciousness to the, the, the, the, to these modules. And how much of the motivation is and is not conscious? And so on. But in any event I think it also illustrates that, you know, just in a certain sense, I mean, modules, at least taken broadly to mean functional specialization in the brain to coordinate certain kinds of activities, also cannot help, you know, but have evolved, right. I mean, it, it, it just, if you really take natural selection seriously, and you realize that in our lineage we encountered different challenges at different times and evolved responses to those challenges. It's just kind of hard to imagine that something like modules didn't, in some sense, kind of, you know, pile up, which isn't to say that that, the theories we have been talk about are, are you know exactly on target or that we have figured out exactly you know, how the modules are orchestrated or anything else, but modules per se I think are a likely outcome of evolution. Margo Warner just quickly asks the theory of modules seems deterministic. Does it leave any room for free will and responsibility for our actions. Well I would just say briefly and cryptically, I would say it leaves no more room and no less room, than other psychological theories. I mean, psychological theories tend to be kind of deterministic on paper because they you know, purport to come up with mechanisms to explain things mechanistically. But, you know, I to me it's just all a mystery. I am agnostic on the question of free will and determinism. I think the human mind is really incapable of grappling successfully with that question and why would it be capable? We didn't evolve to be philosophers, right? I think there's a lot about there are things we just may have trouble comprehending. Consciousness may be another one and that may be related to free will. Okay, another kind of free will-related thing. Fritz Kreisler or Kreisler says, can't wait to hear how meditation impacts the modular mind without choice, in quotes, entering into it. Okay, so this is in anticipation of a lecture that will be, will air this week. And it's a prescient anticipation because that choice does kind of come up. I don't address it all that, that explicitly. I mean, I don't, I don't address the free will question all that explicitly, but it certainly is the case that one thing this lecture's about is how we can use meditation to influence which modules are in charge. Fritz also says, I hope this course is the core inspir, core or inspiration for your next book. I actually am working on a book that's very much related to the course. And that's one reason that you know, it's valuable to get all of this feedback. You know, it, it, it can help me, you know, rethink how to, how to frame things, how to explain things. You know, am I explaining them successfully? Sometimes it gets me to rethink the ideas themselves, you know? Certainly in the case of this lecture, the feedback has made me wish I'd emphasized more than I did that, you know, the kind of seven sub-self model that's in this one particular book I cited. Mm, that's just a conversation starter. I think it's a, it's a reasonable way to think about the taxonomy of modules. In other words, in the realm of affiliations, say, yeah, there must be some modules. Whether that means there's an affiliation module per say, is another question. You know, and so, it is all very complicated. I try to emphasize that in the lecture, I want to reiterate it by way of addressing the various, you know, valid forms of skepticism about the model that have emerged. So, thank you all. For this thank you, Rui, who started it all off. I'm sorry about your dukkah, Rui, but you know, that's life. And [SOUND] I will see you [SOUND] next office hours about a week from now. And also then, in this week's lecture. Couple days from now. A few days from now and believe it or not that's the second to last lecture. So, you don't have long to wait until you attain nirvana. See you next time.
