natural selection and Direct Instruction

Now for a pithy one liner which also happens to support Direct Instruction:

"Before there can be comprehension, there has to be competence without comprehension"
Dan Dennett, Intuition Pumps and other tools for thinking (2013), p. 105

Comprehension is a latecomer to the evolutionary process.

"Bacteria have all sorts of remarkable competences that they need not understand at all; their competences serve them well, but they themselves are clueless. Trees have competences whose exercise provides benefits to them, but they don't need to know why. The process of natural selection itself is famously competent, a generator of designs of outstanding ingenuity and efficacy, without a shred of comprehension.

Comprehension of the kind we human adults enjoy is a very recent phenomenon on the evolutionary scene, and it has to be composed of structures whose competence is accompanied by, enabled by, a minimal sort of semi-comprehension, or pseudo-comprehension - the kind of (hemi-semi-demi-) comprehension enjoyed by fish or worms. These structures are designed to behave appropriately most of the time, without having to know why their behaviour is appropriate."
- p. 105

Compare with my pithy one liner which critiques Direct Instruction:

"In Direct Instruction there is no script for those who depart from the script or who desire to write their own script"
- fork in the road options and Direct Instruction

You can't begin to write your own script until you have achieved at least a basic competence in whatever domain you are attempting to master.

Can Words Like Belief, Desire, Hope, Fear Be Scientific?

Review and thoughts triggered by “Skinner Skinned” by Daniel Dennett (1978)

PREAMBLE
Many hate Skinner because his behaviourism implies that people are not free, dignified, morally responsible agents. He does this by reducing all behaviour to probabilities based on past regimes of stimulus and response. Since our responses are conditioned by forces outside of our control when young then our responses in later life are automatic, unconscious, not free.

Nevertheless, Skinner's was driven by the admirable goal of explaining behaviour scientifically. So, when we evaluate Skinner we also evaluate our attitudes to science and the role of scientific world view in our whole life. If we reject Skinner then there is an accompanying danger of rejecting a scientific world view, of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Alternatively, a better pathway would be to develop a more robust and broader view of what it means to be scientific. This is what Daniel Dennett is attempting here.

This preamble serves to highlight the importance of accurately identifying the real mistakes of Skinner. In the past I was satisfied with Chomsky's critique. I now feel that Chomsky's critique is inadequate and leads people to irrationally reject all of behaviourism.

THE LITTLE MAN IN THE MACHINE
Skinner's enemy is mentalism, that talking about people's behaviour using terms such as beliefs, desires, ideas, hopes, fears, feelings, emotions is not allowed because it is not scientific.

Dennett, however, sees a positive role for these mentalist idioms in explaining behaviour / psychology / mind. So this essay, while acknowledging there is some point to Skinner's objections to mentalism, is about clarifying where mentalism is useful and where it stops being useful and becomes unscientific.

Skinner gives many reasons for disqualifying mentalism:

1. mental things must be made of non physical stuff (dualism objection)
2. the mental is private (whereas behaviour is public and objectively measurable)
3. mentalism appeals to events that can only be inferred
4. mental events are internal

Chomsky takes (3) as Skinner's prime objection against mentalist psychology but Dennett points out that Skinner is not against inference as such in other passages in his writing. Chomsky Reference: “The Case Against B.F. Skinner”, New York Review of Books (Dec 30, 1971)

However, Dennett points out, through a close reading of Skinner's “Beyond Freedom and Dignity”, that although Skinner uses these arguments occasionally he also qualifies them and contradicts them. So, there must be something else to Skinner's objection to mentalism.

The something else is the virtus dormitiva, the dormitive virtue, defining an effect as its own cause. From Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire, The Imaginary Invalid. What is it in opium that puts people to sleep? Why, it is its sleep producing powers of course!

The key argument of Skinner's objection to mentalism is a little man in the machine, a homunculus.

“The function of the inner man is to provide an explanation which will not be explained in turn” (quoted from Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, p. 14)

We must abolish “the autonomous man – the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literature of freedom and dignity” (Beyond Freedom and Dignity, p. 200)

Dennett is exasperated by Skinner's array of different objections to the little man in the brain: moral agent = little man in the brain = demons. Skinner then sees superstition behind any and every claim of moral responsibility. “Mental” means “internal” means “inferred” means “unobservable” means “private” means “virtus dormitiva” means “demons” means “superstition”.

Nevertheless, Skinner has a point even though he exaggerates his case. There is a real danger in presupposing intelligence when we try to explain intelligence.

When you use a certain vocabulary ( the mentalist words which refer to beliefs, desires, ideas, hopes, fears, feelings, emotions) then does that presuppose intelligence or rationality?

Yes it does. Dennett agrees with Skinner here.

These mentalist terms are called intentional idioms by philosophers.

Quine also is opposed to intentional idioms in psychology. But his objection is different to Skinners. He does not argue that intentional idioms presuppose rationality or offer no explanation. His argument is that we can't translate sentences containing intentional idioms into sentences lacking them, they can't be reduced to the sentences of the physical sciences.

Quine Reference. Word and Object, #45 The Double Standard, pp. 198-203

The issue becomes more complicated because Skinner, unlike Quine, believes, at least in some of his writings, that intentional idioms can be translated into the language of physical science. Dennett argues that Skinner is inconsistent (“sloppy”) in his arguments on this point. More on this later.

Dennett's advice is that we can agree with Skinner that no satisfactory psychological theory can rest on any use of intentional idioms, for their use presupposes rationality, which is what psychology is supposed to explain.

However, Dennett advises us to disagree with Skinner when he takes the further step that intentional idioms therefore have no legitimate place in psychological theory at all.

Dennett argues that we can use intentional idioms as a starting point of explanation provided we are aware of the dangers (of virtus dormitiva, defining an effect as its own cause or the little man in the machine). It is ok to speculate first and explain later in more scientific language.

Returning to Skinner's allegedly sloppy arguments / inconsistency about intentional idioms. Dennett demonstrates through quotations from Skinner that sometimes he eschews intentional language such as “beliefs” and instead argues in terms of changing probabilities. But at other times Skinner argues that intentional words such as belief can be translated into behaviourist (“scientific” in Skinner's view) terminology. But, on balance, Skinner concludes that “scientific', which for him means behaviourist or probabilistic explanations can't co-exist with intentional explanations which cite beliefs, desires etc.

The reason many don't like or hate Skinner is that he wants to take away our personal moral sense, that we, as individuals, possess freedom, responsibility and dignity. By reducing all behaviour to probabilities based on past regimes of stimulus and response this is what Skinner ends up doing.

In contrast, Dennett argues that intentional idioms and scientific language, include stimulus response language, can co-exist in our thinking and description of psychology. Specifically, Dennett is saying that intentional idioms, expressions of belief, desire etc. can be reduced or translated into other more scientific terms, as a consequence of study, research, theorising etc.

Dennett's claim here, as mentioned in this essay is disputed by Quine, who says translation from the intentional to the scientific is not possible. It is also disputed, I believe, by Hilary Putnam, although I need to study more of Putnam before I could accurately state his position.

TAKING A GOOD IDEA TOO FAR
In the rest of the essay Dennett provides some examples of situations where intentional explanations can co-exist with more reductive scientific explanations. One of Dennett's favourites is the chess playing computer. … “... we know that there is a purely mechanistic explanation of the chess playing computer, and yet it is not false to say that the computer figures out or recognises the best move, or that it concludes that its opponent cannot make a certain move, any more than it is false to say that a computer adds or multiplies.” (p. 64)

This and other examples provided by Dennett (such as someone handing over their wallet when threatened) demonstrate that the only type of explanation allowed by Skinner of always having to provide back to basics, stimulus-response probabilistic reasons is taking a good idea and stretching it too far.

This issue of the limits and usefulness of intentional idioms is one I need to study more. As noted above Quine and Putnam put a more sophisticated argument against than Skinner.

minsky 5: levels of mental activities

Overview of Chapter 5 of The Emotion Machine (summary, online draft, buy)

Minsky proposes a 6 level model of mind, which is described in some detail (for a little more detail see the wiki):


Psychologist: I find it hard to see the difference between your top most three levels
Student: No theory should have more parts than it needs

Minsky: The boundaries are indistinct but psychology is not like maths or science. When you know that your theory is incomplete then leave some room for other ideas you might need later!

Individualist: Where is the Self that makes our decisions? What decides which goals we'll pursue?

Minsky: It would be dangerous to locate all control in one single place because then all could be lost from a single mistake. Our minds use multiple ways to control themselves. Freud anticipated this with his ideas of superego, ego and id

Imagination:
"We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are" - Anais Nin

... most of what we think we see comes from our knowledge and our imagination

Abraham Lincoln (vague patches of darkness and light)

We don't know how our brains achieve this. "Seeing" seems simple because the rest of our minds are blind to the processes that do it for us. Perception is complex and invisible

More abstract, higher level descriptions are more powerful and efficient. Minsky is arguing for the importance of higher level semantics here as compared with inefficient processing of visual images

We internalise prediction machines. Nevertheless, such a system will never be very resourceful until it knows a great deal about the world it is in. This leads into the next chapter (Common Sense)

Related:
Dennett's Creatures is a bit similar to Minsky's model of mind
Skinnerian creatures ask themselves, "What do I do next?"
Popperian creatures ask themselves, "What do I think about next?"
Gregorian creatures ask themselves, "How can I learn to think better about what to think about next?"

thoughts on reading "we earth neurons"

Thoughts after reading We Earth Neurons (1999) by Daniel Dennett:

Some years ago a friend of mine in the Peace Corps told me about his efforts on behalf of a tribe of gentle Indians deep in the Brazilian forest. I asked him if he had been required to tell them about the conflict between the USA and the USSR. Not at all, he replied. There would be no point in it. They had not only never heard of either America or the Soviet Union, they had never even heard of Brazil! Who would have guessed that it is still possible to be a human being living in, and subject to the laws of, a nation without the slightest knowledge of that fact? If we find this astonishing, it is because we human beings, unlike all other species on the planet, are knowers. We are the ones–the only ones–who have figured out what we are, and where we are, in this great universe. And we are even beginning to figure out how we got here.

There are plenty of students in schools who have about as much idea as why they are there as those Indians know about the state of Brazil. Also there are lots of adults around who think the knowledge state of those Brazilians who don't know they are Brazilians is just as valid and valuable as our western knowledge.

Have we lost the will to educate because we haven't understood what makes us special as a species?

Humans are knowers.

If we see the purpose of education as more to do with entertainment, socialisation or vocation then our students won't see the main point.

If we capitulate to the post modern view that "all viewpoints are relative and equally valid" then our students won't get it, either.

If teachers think they have to compete with celebrities and sporting stars then will our students "get it"? No.

If we spend more time celebrating diversity and personal identity then understanding how the world actually works, then our students won't get it.

If schools are controlled by people who think child safety is more important then child learning then will our students get it? (al upton blog closure)

If society continues to treat educators like second rate citizens - if knowledge is not valued as that special, important human thing - then will our students get it?

There are plenty of students who think and some who say, "school is shit". Do we know what to say back to them?

Are we afraid of facing the future?

... if you want to find anxiety, despair, anomie today, look among the undereducated young people scavenging their dimly understood heritages (or popular culture) for a comfortable identity. Among intellectuals, look to the fashionable tribe of postmodernists, who would like to suppose that modern science is just another in a long line of myths, its institutions and expensive apparatus just the rituals and accouterments of yet another religion. That intelligent people can take this seriously is a testimony to the power that fearful thinking still has, in spite of our advances in self-consciousness. The postmodernists are right, of course, that science is just one of the things we might want to spend our extra calories on. The fact that science has been the major source of the efficiencies that created those extra calories does not entitle it to any particular share of the wealth it has created. But it still ought to be obvious that the methods and rules of science–not just its microscopes and telescopes and computers–are the new sense organs of our species, enabling us to answer questions, solve mysteries, and anticipate the future in ways no earlier human institutions can approach. The more we learn about what we are, the more options we will discern about what to try to become. We ... have long honored the “self-made man” but now that we are actually learning enough to be able to re-make ourselves into something new, many flinch. Many people would apparently rather bumble around with their eyes closed, trusting in tradition, than look around to see what’s about to happen. Yes, it is unnerving; yes, it can be scary. After all, there are many entirely new mistakes we are now empowered to make. But it’s the beginning of a great new adventure for our knowing species–and much more exciting, as well as safer, if we open our eyes. (We Earth Neurons)

minsky's attempt to explain hard problem solving

Some thoughts about a recent artichoke blog ("I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair...") which I thought oversimplified learning theory. This includes an excursion to a Stephen Downes article which was linked to by arti. Some thoughts about the virtues and deficiencies of Skinner's behaviourism are revisited. By degrees this leads me into a borrowed review of Marvin Minsky's book, The Emotion Machine, not necessarily as a solution to the problem but as an illustration of the complexity of learning ...

We learn things by practice and repetition. Very true. This is simple behaviourism. The law of effect. A response to a stimulus which is rewarded tends to be repeated. (behaviourism and the inner environment)

Stephen Downes says he is not a behaviourist but when he talks about learning he sounds behaviourist to me:

When you learn, you are trying to create patterns of connectivity in your brain. You are trying to connect neurons together, and to strengthen that connection. This is accomplished by repeating sets of behaviours or experiences. Learning is a matter of practice and repetition.

Thus, when learning anything - from '2+2=4' to the principles of quantuum mechanics - you need to repeat it over and over, in order to grow this neural connection. Sometimes people learn by repeating the words aloud - this form of rote learning was popular not so long ago. Taking notes when someone talks is also good, because you hear it once, and then repeat it when you write it down.

I agree with that, as far as it goes:

Learning can be viewed as self design. There doesn't appear to be a more powerful way to think about design than thinking of it as an evolution wrought by generate and test!
- behaviourism and the inner environment

Arti links to Stephen's article and then goes onto suggest that:

Enhancing student “engagement”, “authenticity of task”, and or “belonging” does not cause improved student learning outcomes anymore than “just washed hair“ prevents you kissing someone you desire
- "I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair..."

My position: Behaviourism works. We are all behaviourists even though it has been unfashionable to admit it because Skinner took it too far and annoyed everyone by making us feel non creative.

But that is only the beginning of the story

It is way premature to take “engagement”, “authenticity of task”, and or “belonging” out of the learning loop just because their connection to learning is not as obvious as the simple behaviourist case.

I believe that when we begin to tease apart the inputs that arti rejects that problems arise. "Engagement" and "belonging" could be described as being more in the "emotional" category and “authenticity of task” might be more in the "cognitive" category. If you understand a topic more deeply then you can teach the important things first - or setup a task which assists this. I would argue that those with the superior concept map of a problem domain could be capable of teaching that domain better, provided they know how to teach, of course. How to take a learner from point A to point B. They would be capable of developing more authentic tasks because they understand the more important (and less important) parts of the problem domain. When I studied quadratics deeply - by writing a logo program to teach quadratics behaviouristically - I was able to teach them more effectively. See quadratics and behaviourism.

I still like Papert's idea of "objects to think with" (isdp) and that some materials (such as the logo programming language) are better with regard to the following criteria:

• appropriability (some things lend themselves better than others to being made one's own)
• evocativeness (some materials are more apt than others to precipitate personal thought)
• integration (some materials are better carriers of multiple meaning and multiple concepts)

For these sorts of reasons I believe it is premature to throw away "engagement", "belonging" and “authenticity of task” even though the connection of these things to learning is not simple and still poorly understood.

Skinnerian behaviourism does not explain complicated human learning. It only explains simple animal learning, including some human learning.

I discussed this in Dennett's creatures:

• Darwinian creatures - random mutation and selection by environment
• Skinnerian creatures - favourably actions are reinforced and then tend to be repeated
• Popperian creatures - have an inner environment that can preview and select amongst possible actions
• Gregorian creatures - import mind-tools (words) from the outer cultural environment to create an inner environment which improve both the generators and testers
• Scientific creatures - an organised process of making and learning from mistakes in public, of getting others to assist in the recognition and correction of mistakes

So, how do we explain more complex human behaviour such as recognising that a problem is hard, that we can't solve it and then selecting alternative appropriate strategies to try in different ways?

This is my context for introducing Marvin Minsky's book, The Emotion Machine. A draft is also available online. Not because Minsky is correct but because he looks at the harder questions. It's preferable to be wrong about the harder questions than to oversimplify human learning (which I think perhaps arti and stephen are doing)

I've read parts of Minsky's book and would recommend this summary from amazon readers reviews, which I reproduce in full:

1. We don't recognize a problem as hard until we've spent some time on it without making any significant progress. For if you can diagnose the particular type of problem you face, then you can use that knowledge to switch to a more appropriate way to think.

2. Critic-selector model of thinking: Each critic object can recognize a certain species of problem type. When a critic sees enough evidence, the critic will activate a "selector", which tries to start up a set of resources that it has learned is likely too act as a way to think that may help in this situation.

3. If a problem seems familiar, use reasoning by analogy. If it seems unfamiliar, change the way you're describing it. If it seems too difficult, divide it into several parts. If it still seems difficult, replace it by a simpler problem. If none of these work, ask someone for help.

4. If too many critics are aroused, then describe the problem in more detail. If too few critics are aroused, then make the description more abstract. If important resources conflict then you should try to discover a cause. If there has been a series of failures, then switch to a different set of critics.

5. Emotional reactions: cautious vs. reckless, unfriendly vs. amicable, visionary vs. practical, inattentive vs. vigilant, reclusive vs. sociable, and courageous vs. cowardly; each such emotional way to think can lead to different ways to deal with things-either by making you see things from new points of view or by increasing your courage or doggedness. If too many critics are active then your emotions would keep changing too quickly. And if those critics stopped working at all, then you'd get stuck in just one of states.

6. The best way to solve a problem is to already know a way to solve it. Searching extensively. When one has no better alternative, one could try to search through all possible chains of actions. But that method is not often practical because such searches grow exponentially.

7. Reasoning by analogy: when a problem reminds you of one that you solved in the past, you may be able to adapt that case to the present case situation.

8. Divide and conquer: if you can't solve a problem all at once, then break it down into smaller parts.

9. Reformulation: find a different representation that highlights more relevant information. Understand in a different way.

10. Planning: consider the set of subgoals and examine how they affect each other.

11. Techniques for problem solving: simplifying, elevating, and changing the subject.

12. More reflective ways to think: wishful thinking, self-reflection, impersonation.

13. Other modes of thinking: 1) logical contradiction: try to prove that your problem cannot be solved, and then look for a flaw in that argument. 2) Logical reasoning. We often try to make chains of deduction. 3) External representation. Drawing suitable diagrams 4) Imagination. What would happen if by simulating possible actions inside the mental models that one has built.

14. Creating higher level selectors and critics help to reduce the sizes of the searches we make.

15. Modes of thought: preparation, incubation, revelation, and evaluation.

16. Creative ideas must be combined with the knowledge and skills already possess-so it must not be too different from ideas with which we're already familiar.

17. If too may critics are active then you notice flaws to correct and spend much time repairing them and never get at the important things and people perceive us as depressed. If too many critics are turned off then you ignore alarms and concerns that would help you concentrate allowing errors and flaws. The fewer the critics active, then the fewer goals pursued, making one intellectually dull.

an atheist celebrates

I try to keep my religious view (atheism) out of educational lists but it is hard when others introduce them there. To respond is likely to cause offence but to ignore it, to not challenge it, seems like complicitly in mythology and also wrong. Atheists have as much right to propagate their world view as Christians. I'll compromise by posting to my blog rather than the list.

Recently, some educators have asked me to pray for the recovery of Seymour Papert, who was seriously injured in Hanoi, Vietnam, when hit by a motor cycle.

I didn't pray. Fortunately, Seymour is now making a slow recovery. I hope that those who have been praying don't claim the credit because in all likelihood Seymour is an atheist. I don't know that for sure and it's really up to him but I would be very surprised if a pioneer of AI was not an atheist. Certainly, his close collaborator Marvin Minsky has attracted hate mail for describing the human brain as a "meat machine"

I think the flowers for Seymour project is much better way to go. Check out the fractal fern, done with logo.

At any rate I was inspired by Daniel Dennett, my favourite living philosopher, who also had a recent near death experience and said this (Thank Goodness!) about those who prayed for him:

What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility. I translate my religious friends' remarks readily enough into one version or another of what my fellow brights have been telling me: "I've been thinking about you, and wishing with all my heart [another ineffective but irresistible self-indulgence] that you come through this OK." The fact that these dear friends have been thinking of me in this way, and have taken an effort to let me know, is in itself, without any need for a supernatural supplement, a wonderful tonic. These messages from my family and from friends around the world have been literally heart-warming in my case, and I am grateful for the boost in morale (to truly manic heights, I fear!) that it has produced in me. But I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.

But isn't this awfully harsh? Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I'm not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about. For another, we now have quite solid grounds (e.g., the recently released Benson study at Harvard) for believing that intercessory prayer simply doesn't work. Anybody whose practice shrugs off that research is subtly undermining respect for the very goodness I am thanking. If you insist on keeping the myth of the effectiveness of prayer alive, you owe the rest of us a justification in the face of the evidence. Pending such a justification, I will excuse you for indulging in your tradition; I know how comforting tradition can be. But I want you to recognize that what you are doing is morally problematic at best. If you would even consider filing a malpractice suit against a doctor who made a mistake in treating you, or suing a pharmaceutical company that didn't conduct all the proper control tests before selling you a drug that harmed you, you must acknowledge your tacit appreciation of the high standards of rational inquiry to which the medical world holds itself, and yet you continue to indulge in a practice for which there is no known rational justification at all, and take yourself to be actually making a contribution. (Try to imagine your outrage if a pharmaceutical company responded to your suit by blithely replying "But we prayed good and hard for the success of the drug! What more do you want?")