[Scott Bakker]

Hardwired sounds to me as if you are saying predetermined. When a computer is hardwired to perform a task, you need to change the mother board wiring in order to allow it to perform a different task because the function would not be alterable. It would not be software driven but hardware driven. A computer that's hardwired cannot adjust to a different task no matter what the network circumstances.

The old computation metaphor is now generally regarded as faulty. It turns out there's no real hardware/software distinction in the brain - it simply doesn't perform coded operations. This is the secret of its enormous processing power (instead of executing digital instructions at the speed of light, it activates links between neurons, to the tune of 10 quadrillion a second).

This is what I thought your initial problem was: our every behaviour is 'hardwired' in a sense that they're the output of neural circuits. But those neural circuits are plastic in the sense that they continually rewire themselves in response to environmental inputs - but this plasticity occurs within a fixed architecture of 'modules,' specialized neural structures devoted to the generation of specialized experiential and behavioural outputs (whose particular expression will often be environmentally conditioned).

Thus our 'hardwired tendency' to cry when grief-stricken, though not all of us do so. To be attracted to the opposite sex, though not all of us are so. And so on.

[Gary Wassner]

Okay Scott, if our behavior is the result of neural circuits which are plastic circuits, circuits that rewire in response to environmental interaction, and even if they have a predisposition or fixed architecture as you call it, to react in a certain way, there is obviously leeway for abberation. How much? What accounts for it? How dramatic must the environmental change be for the shape of these circuits to alter?

If you stimulate certain parts of the brain, you get certain responses. Some people have genes that dictate distinct behavioral patterns in specific categories. They say that visual perception may be chromosomal and sexlinked and that men and women actually see spatially in different ways, and they thereby describe things differently and even give directions differently thereby.

How many studies have been done though to verify what the hardwiring actually results in? You seem so certain that belief formation and inference are areas that are controlled by these plastic circuits. Still, look at how drastically the environment has changed over the centuries and yet there is consistency in our inclination to believe. Does that support this thesis or not? What will it take to alter our disposition to rationalize and can it be done intentionally?

[alison]

I think the problem with "hardwiring" Scott is simply in the metaphor. The image is computational and as Gary says, to us literalists suggests something other than what you mean by it. Also, it's often used/abused in the media in just the simplistic sense I described...

[Scott Bakker]

Okay Scott, if our behavior is the result of neural circuits which are plastic circuits, circuits that rewire in response to environmental interaction, and even if they have a predisposition or fixed architecture as you call it, to react in a certain way, there is obviously leeway for abberation. How much? What accounts for it? How dramatic must the environmental change be for the shape of these circuits to alter?


My suspicion is that these factors would vary across individuals and behaviours.

How many studies have been done though to verify what the hardwiring actually results in? You seem so certain that belief formation and inference are areas that are controlled by these plastic circuits. Still, look at how drastically the environment has changed over the centuries and yet there is consistency in our inclination to believe. Does that support this thesis or not? What will it take to alter our disposition to rationalize and can it be done intentionally?

How many studies? I don't know. Lots, and counting, I suppose. This is actually a rapidly growing area of research, especially given the growing affordability of noninvasive imaging technology like PET and fMRI scans. The biggest recent discovery is that of so-called 'mirror neurons': it turns out that we understand the activities of others by firing the same neurons involved. Our brains literally mimic one another.

The environmental change you refer to is incredibly important in a number of ways, I think. We have brains adapted to thrive and survive in small, highly interdependent paleolithic communities. In such communities, there would be a high surivival value in keeping track of other members - in gossip, basically. So what happens when you drop those brains into a modern, technologically mediated, social environment?

These are very important questions.

[alison]

So what happens when you drop those brains into a modern, technologically mediated, social environment?



Internet bulletin boards. Hi-tech paleolithic gossip!

[Gary Wassner]

The term brainwash was quite perspicacious! Our primary means of communication has changed so dramatically in the last few years, and more imporatant I think is that our perception of relationships has changed. We easily become aware of others in intimate ways without ever meeting them. Physical contact is no longer the basis for friendship since the advent of instant messaging. And the immediacy of it all is astounding. Our perception of time has to have changed just as dramatically. Our brains have to function faster and come up with answers and developed thoughts so much more quickly. We don't wait for letters to arrive or for the boat to cross the Atlantic. We can all multitask thanks to technology.

So what does all of this have to do with belief formation and interpretative underdetermination? The more we say hardwired and the more we talk about the massive changes in our environment, and the pace of acceleration of these changes, the less likely it is that I can figure out what we are hardwired to do anymore! :confused:

[Scott Bakker]

The term brainwash was quite perspicacious! Our primary means of communication has changed so dramatically in the last few years, and more imporatant I think is that our perception of relationships has changed. We easily become aware of others in intimate ways without ever meeting them. Physical contact is no longer the basis for friendship since the advent of instant messaging. And the immediacy of it all is astounding. Our perception of time has to have changed just as dramatically. Our brains have to function faster and come up with answers and developed thoughts so much more quickly. We don't wait for letters to arrive or for the boat to cross the Atlantic. We can all multitask thanks to technology.

I still can't multitask.

The profundity of the change can't be overestimated, I think. In paleothic communities, every personal relationship is also a dependency relationship - we personally knew the people responsible for our food, shelter, clothing, and so on. Because of this, we had no real choice but to get along, and the opportunities for 'free riding' were severely limited. Now, our personal relationships are quite distinct from our dependency relationships - we live in the age of 'friends' - and our dependency relationships are, in some cases, almost entirely anonymous. Thanks to the concentration of production made possible by technology, we no longer know those responsible for our food, shelter, and clothing (in the 'virtual paleothic community' we all build, deceptive corporate images occupy that position), which means we no longer live in the tight web of personal interdependancy our brains are adapted to. It's now entirely possible to have no personal relationships whatsoever - to become a shut-in. By the same token, it is now possible to believe that one has no real dependancy relations, since we no longer see or know the people we depend on. If we're hardwired to be attentive to the ethics of consumption in tight knit interpersonal contexts, then it should come as no surprise that we assume consumption to be ethically inert in impersonal contexts. We simply not hardwired to think in the large-scale systematic terms required to understand or appreciate our social position (none of us understand our social role). This is perhaps also the reason for the paradox of individialism: that we believe ourselves the most 'self-sufficient' generation in history, when we are in fact the least.

I'm personally becoming more and more convinced that our social system can be best interpreted along 'paleothic brains + technology + markets' lines. Think of the TV cable menu, and how its overwhelming dominated by obvious trivialities. Given the market system, corporations compete to give us what we want, and given our paleolithic brains, our attention is captured by things crucial to our reproductive success in paleolithic communities of 200 or so members: gossip, status, physical competition, sex, technical virtuosity. In other words, 'entertainment.' The problem is that so much of this stuff has no real relevance in modern communities of billions.


So what does all of this have to do with belief formation and interpretative underdetermination? The more we say hardwired and the more we talk about the massive changes in our environment, and the pace of acceleration of these changes, the less likely it is that I can figure out what we are hardwired to do anymore!

The human dilemma. Modern alienation in a nutshell, and another possible reason why so many find fantasy so appealing.

Now that our personal relationships are largely divorced from our dependency relationships, no one really has to admit they're wrong anymore. This at once frees us, and leaves us in a quandary, because our hardwired tendencies to advocacy or 'cognitive selfishness' are playing themselves out in an entirely different context, one without, we might presume, the checks and balances it originally developed in.

[Gary Wassner]

I don't know Scott. You are way too pessimistic for me. I think that developing relationships in these new ways many times strengthens the bond and reinforces some of the more essential aspects of it. So much of our beliefs are fostered by appearance, sense perceptions in general, such as smell and mannerisms, before a person speaks a single word. Now we have the opportunity to establish a sense of an individual by what they say, their thoughts, and only little bits and pieces of sensory information. The perceptions may not be accurate but if not, then they are biased in a totally different way than previously. How much of our opinions of a person's thoughts are influenced by the way that person speaks, appears, carries themself etc. All the little nuances of behavior help us to form our conceptions of individuals, and those conceptions color our interpretation of their words.

There are of course two sides to this coin, at least two, but this one does have some merit to it.

[Scott Bakker]

I'm not sure where the pessimism lies. New difficulties always accompany new opportunities, don't they?

[Gary Wassner]

Always. And thus we stumble forward.

But, what does this all mean in terms of our perception of God? Are we becoming more or less prone to believe in things we don't verify sensorily now that so much of our communication is done that way? What if God was a person on the internet? How would we ever know?