You Tell Me I Bite So I'll Bite

A vague, taunting challenge to me came in based on this story which asserts:

Researchers convert brain scans into “wiring diagrams” of connections between brain regions to show which parts exert most “cognitive control” over thoughts and actions.

How does the brain determine which direction to let its thoughts fly? Looking for the mechanisms behind cognitive control of thought, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, University of California, Riverside and Santa Barbara and United States Army Research Laboratory have used brain scans to shed new light on this question.

By using structural imaging techniques to convert brain scans into “wiring diagrams” of connections between brain regions, the researchers used the structure of these neural networks to reveal the fundamental rules that govern which parts of the brain are most able to exert “cognitive control” over thoughts and actions.

In the following, I am basing everything I say on the short report linked to above, since that's what was thrown at me.  Which I don't understand why that's supposed to upset me.   Well, other than the phrase "wiring diagrams" which I am on record as calling a bad metaphor about which all evidence shows will be a metaphor mistaken as a literal fact.  

The question assumes far too much, that the brain determines which directions to let its thoughts fly.  I don't think "the brain" determines that and suspect that hard thinking about that idea will produce problems similar to the one I've been issuing as a challenge to materialists about how the brain could make new ideas if those ideas aren't already in the brain.   I think to talk about the brain deciding to do things and making things is about as silly as the idea that a TV determines what the program it runs will contain.  While I suspect the metaphor of a TV is inadequate to describe what the relationship of the mind and the brain are, I suspect it's a lot closer than the bizarre idea that the mind arises from and is the epiphenomenon of chemistry and physics.

I am skeptical of both the brain imaging and the mere translation of those into "wiring diagrams" which are likely not without their entirely arbitrary and reductionist features.  A brain scan shows what the researchers have chosen to look for, it is based on previous choices about what to choose to look for and choices of how that is to be done, of ranges of possible information.   I can easily suspect that a. those choices will be based on what is desired to be found and b. will, to a large extent, determine what the mapping shows.  I suspect that most of the real and essential events of thinking will be more subtle than can be determined in that way, though, in the mean time, before those are found to be inadequate, the interim  report will be purported to be the last word in it and wreak all kinds of havoc, as seems to happen whenever science purports to deal with minds.

This assertion in the article sent up all kinds of red flags to me.

“Surprisingly,” Bassett said, “our results suggest that the human brain resembles a flock of birds. The flock comes to a consensus about which way to fly based on how close the birds are to one another and in what formation. Birds that fly at specific places in the flock can drive changes in the flock’s direction, being leaders in a so-called multi-agent system.


I am assuming Bassett is talking about the oddly formed, large flocks of birds and not the kind of formations that a flock of Canada geese fly in on their migrations.   Flocks that assume an enormous, perhaps infinite number of shapes, conformations, formations and sizes.  I would like to know what that is based on, it looks like a computer model asserted to be an explanation of what happens in nature when I doubt it is even possible to describe a real flock of birds, in flight, in order to put an accurate representation into numbers or some other form that could be manipulated with a computer.   The form and method of the manipulation would, itself, not reliably represent what was happening in real flocks of birds in real life, certainly not even approaching the real thinking of real birds which would not necessarily be any more uniform or constant anymore than the flocking-flying context in which that thinking was done.

If this is not based on computer modeling but on some kind of purported description of a flock of birds in flight, I would like to know how they came up with the information to study that could lead them to those conclusions.   Has there ever been even one comprehensive and dynamic mapping of a large flock of birds in flight, taking all of the likely sensory information that could well determine the decisions of any of the birds into account?   Sensory information that they could perceive accurately or inaccurately with their bird-minds?   And if that enormous body of data has ever been collected for even one flock of birds, why can it be assumed to be relevant to all other flocks of birds, or even just one other one?  I will go so far as to doubt that there have ever been two flocks of birds with the same numbers of members with the same form so that there have been birds in even a close match.  And even if there were two such flocks – among the enormous number of such flocks in the history of bird flight - and that any two birds in such positions in such equal positions that they would have the same pattern of thought.   They would certainly notice different things, be looking in different places at any given time, noticing any terrain or position of the sun, clouds, other birds or forces of wind.

The problem of doing that would be enormous, I fully believe an impossible task to actually do in a real life flock of birds for the course of its existence as that flock.  Not to mention the inability to account for the thinking of all of the birds in that flock, taking in what they may have learned in their experience of their individual lives and their perceptions during the course of the existence of that flock.  Any stories made up about that will be of merely illusory value.

I think that when dealing with a few relatively simple entities which can behave predictably, such as is involved in even the very complex matter of climate change, you can have some assurance that your model making and manipulating has some real relationship to reality.  But when you introduce the choices of conscious agents acting in an effective infinity of contexts any results you get are likely to be an illusion of reality and a seemingly plausible story.   I think the results might be useful for coming up with a more plausible seeming animation of birds in a cartoon, I doubt they've described much about the reality of bird flights.  Though, considering the entire exercise would be governed by the choices made in the modeling and in the manipulation, that they might find what they hope to find.   I think what they've possibly done is come up with a story of seeming, though likely deceptive, plausibility.

From the description of the study, it would seem that they've expressed the multi-color images of brain imaging  with another form of modeling, calling the results confirmation of their preferred results.  I wonder if its really much different from the choice of using color pencils or oil paints to make the same picture.  

But, then, that's what I get from the report of the science reporter in this story and I wouldn't bet on the accuracy of the average science reporter to have gotten it right.   I have a strong suspicion that he didn't really understand what he was reading and being told.