Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Provocative Idea For The Day

While washing up, I've been listening to Dr. Matt Walker of the U.C. Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory Arts and Lectures, going on about sleep even as he admits that very little is known about it.  In passing he quoted someone whose name I didn't catch, he called him "the father" of his field, who said that if dreaming didn't have any biological function it was the greatest error of evolution.  

Well, how would you know that if you don't understand dreaming in human beings?  And, since he goes on to talk about animals who can't articulate anything of their experience of dreaming, how much less does he know what's going on in animals' experience when we assume they are dreaming?  Even in humans about all we know about dreams is based on people reporting their experience and their reports are not exactly uniform.  Perhaps there are a range of things that happen that we, in our inability to access other peoples' experience, we classify as "dreaming".  

But, and this is far more provocative, how does he know that dreaming has anything to do with evolution? Maybe it is entirely divorced from evolution, especially if, as most of the scientists I've heard talk about evolution, he really means natural selection.  If, and this is a crucial "if" to make my point, dreaming is entirely neutral in terms of evolution, the temptation would be to try to force it into an explanation based in some invented benefit in terms of natural selection.  I doubt, given the total hegemony that natural selection has on our thinking about biology, that it is presently possible for us to even entertain possible alternative ideas about it.  But what if more understanding of dreaming, or any other aspect of our experience, would depend on radically different ways of thinking about it, we wouldn't be able to understand it.  But we might believe the lore that develops due to the cyclical explanatory system of trying to fit phenomena into natural selection and that being taken as confirmation of the selective explanation.  I have to say that a lot of this looks exactly like begging the question to me. 

I wonder what chance any other explanation could have in the orthodox culture of biology and, especially, in fads like neuro-imaging.   I suspect that any real advances will depend on unorthodox thinking about it. Though I strongly suspect that human consciousness is not, ultimately, susceptible to scientific methods. We've seen the frameworks around that rise to a glorious hegemony only to witness their crashing into ruin over and over again.   Beginning with natural selection and trying to push consciousness into it has not been a successful strategy.  It's been the basis of a lot of it, from Freud to today.   After three or four major schools tumbling into discredit sort of feeds my skepticism on that count.  Given the discussion that is all over the map, both the interview (where's the lecture?) and the questions, it doesn't sound much different from the things I suspect these same folk would call "woo" if Walker had an Indian or Chinese instead of a upper crust British accent.

Oh, yeah, I've procrastinated enough, back to the dishes. 

2 comments:

  1. I've read arguments about parental bonds to children (which are not instinctive, by any means; they are abrogated in individuals all the time. Instinct is behavior which cannot be altered except by organic brain damage, if then.) that are reductio arguments which essentially negate the reality of the experience of parental love for the empirical "knowledge" that needs to hammer that round peg into the square hole science has designed for it.

    The same is true of any loving relationship between two adults: men are supposedly "wired" to chase skirts (a good excuse for the "Don Drapers" of the world, who are usually the ones making these "scientific" excuses) and women to stay home and nurture the children. Yes, couples do divorce for any number of reasons; but couples remain happily married, too, also for any number of reasons. Where is the Grand Unifying Theory of Marriage?

    Or of Human Behavior, for that matter? Every time I read/hear a neuroscientist explain human behavior, I want to introduce them to an anthropologist, a priest, a practicing psychiatrist, a pastor with long experience, etc.

    Far more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy (and don't you dare call it a philosophy!).

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  2. I wonder if women were wearing skirts in the past sufficiently remote to be able to produce that alleged genetic trait. I did note a long time ago that it's possible that the promiscuous men may have the ones who actually left fewer successful offspring, that this theory may tell us more about the time that psych profs spend among college aged women than it does about the human genome. I strongly suspect that a strong couple is more likely to produce children who have strong relationships, though I don't know if that automatically leads to more successful offspring.

    I have always heard that when a child is murdered the parents are generally among the prime suspects if they don't have alibis.

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