Considering the evolved mind: Constraints on transhumanism

1. Considering the evolved mind:Constraints on transhumanism Pascal Boyer, Washington University, March 2007

2. The plot • A few silly pictures, to suggest that… • Transhumanism needs: • A proper, scientific view of human nature • A primer on culture and the evolved mind • Many complicated, specialised, evolved systems… • They explain recurrent human culture • They constrain envelope of possible trends

3. A few silly illustrations

4. Past view of future fashion

5. …and the reality

6. What people really look like

7. What people really look like

8. What people really look like

9. What food should have been like

10. Actual food

11. What houses should have been like

12. Actual houses

13. What cars should have been like

14. … and the sad reality.

15. Why are past futures always wrong? • Beyond the silliness… • Trendism • E.g. exponential curves ⇒ infinity or 'singularity' • Technology in a cultural void • A better way: • Understand technology as cultural production • Understand culture as an evolutionary phenomenon

16. Culture and the evolved mind

17. Culture & MindThe questions • What is culture? • In what sense are there different cultures? • Is culture in the mind? • Is culture accessible to inspection? • Is it true that anything goes in culture? • How do we measure similarity/difference?

18. Examples of cultural stuff • "So great to eat grubs and sit in one’s mother’s brother’s lap…" • "In order to make a good soldier of you, we will first break your toe…" • "We [men] make love to women and they never retaliate…" • Why it’s disgusting to sleep with a potter’s daughter • The individual pursuit of happiness • The place should be run democratically

19. Poverty of culturalism • A not too refined model: absorption • Culture is “out there” • There is an osmosis or percolation process • Problems • “out there” is question-begging • No description of the osmosis process • We need psychology of cultural acquisition

20. How do people acquire culture?Examples • Syntax • Nose maintenance • A fondness for raw grubs • When (whether) to murder your spouse • Differential equations • The gods are watching us • Judging that Germans are simpatico

21. How do people acquire culture? • Pathways as diverse as domains of representations • Different predispositions • Different reliance on external storage • Different domains activate different mental systems • No unified “cultural acquisition”

22. Is culture contagious? • You “catch” culture from other people • Several possible pathways • Coercion • Voluntary adherence • Contagion of ideas and preferences • Contagion as the main driving force • How does it create vast cultural trends? • What is the underlying psychology

23. The “meme” model:Dawkins, Durham • Cultural units: memes as replicators • Examples: tunes, associations • Differential fitness of memes • Yankee-doodle / Schoenberg • Fitness as reproductive potential • Central mechanism: imitation • People acquire culture by imitation • Some memes better for imitation • Cultural selection driven by meme-fitness

24. The epidemiology model:Sperber and others… • Population of minds and representations • Two varieties of representations • Mental representations • Public representations • Causal chains between the two • No replication of mental representations • No replication of culture, similarity • Imitation only explains little • Cue + inferences as main model of transmission

25. Are there cultural universals? • Why the question seems silly: • Apparently great variation • What we find everywhere is not ‘cultural’ • But we find patterned variation: • E.g. SOV vs SVO • E.g. cow dung vs. cheese • Culture as parameters on choices that are universal • Why those choices, why this list of parameters?

26. Intuitive ontologies& cultural input

27. Is learning the oppositeof instinct? • A very wrong and very widespread syllogism • Development is zero-sum • Lots of stuff is learned • Therefore very few prior dispositions • What is wrong here? • The major premise is false • See comparison: snail, turtle, finch, human • See comparison of PCs in 1980 and 2000

28. Human learning as non-zero sum • More information picked up • Humans pick up more than any other species • Also pick up info from other humans • Richer dispositions: • Domain-specific principles • Attention to particular stimuli • Early dependence on conpsecifics

29. Evolution and normal environments • Q: What is a normal environment? • A1: Generic environment? • A2: Normatively OK environment? • A3: Environment of genetic evolution • Summary: prior principles: • [a] evolved • [b] expect normal environment • [c] build structures that go beyond input

30. The relevance of development • Culture is acquired by children… • Placing constraints on what can be transmitted • Children as “cultural sponges” • All language, norms, are acquired effortlessly • All seem natural and normal • But is this a circular reasoning? • We only consider actual cultural differences • What if these are constrained by acquisition?

31. General capacities:  Memory, attention, reasoning…  Each applies to many domains: foraging, mating, coalitions Domain-specificy:  Capacities for mating, forming coalitions, foraging, etc.  Each domain has its way of using memory, attention, reasoning Two ways of looking atmental architecture

32. Domain-specificity:computational claims • Different domains  different requirements • Acquire syntax vs. acquire motor control • Eg interact with animals  species-level, people  individuals • Mate-selection vs. friend-selection • General-purpose architecture problems • Computational overload: biases necessary • Problems of vanishing intersections • Talking to tigers, or Finding Mr Right in ripe old age: evolutionary constraints

33. Domain-specificity incognitive development • Different domains, different principles • Syntax • Living things • Intuitive Physics • Theory of Mind • Many other domains… • Different developmental schedules • Against Piaget, not just structural change • Specific development in each domain

34. Predispositions driveinferences from cultural input • Dramatic examples • Re-inventing syntax: NSL, creoles • Ignoring propaganda: PC versions of stories • More general point • Cultural input is always fragmentary • Needs framing, inferences • These are provided by prior structures

35. Against naïve realismGood tricks of the mind

36. Several “illusions” (aka Good Tricks) of high-level mentation • Narrative coherence and explanatory value • The past really is the same country • Personhood in other people • They do have causal stability • Physics is all about invisible processes • Centres of mass and forces and momenta • Essences in things and beings • Water is watery and giraffes have girafeness

37. Illusion / Good Trick 1:Make physics a theoretical affair

38. Intuitive physics and hidden stuff • Theory of Body (ToBy) • Causal innards • Inner sources of energy

39. Own body as a physical affair • Specific systems for bio-motion • Reactions to perceived bio-motion: • Creating motor plan • Inhibition of motor plan • Impossible bio-motion • Even more inhibition • Represent inner energy source

40. Illusion / Good Trick 2:Treat other people like animals

41. We are all sinners …in living-kind essentialism • From 3 years of age • Stable species • Exclusive categories • From 5 or earlier • Species-specific essence • Causal role of “essence” • Stability of essence

42. What are other people like? • They have causal essence • Internal features called dispositions • Causally efficient • Stable • Causal essence matters more than situation • specially so for other people

43. Good Trick 3:Solid dualisma la Eccles

44. Are we all dualists? • It would seem so • Commitment to non-physical causation • Folk-psychology with vague implementation • But we are much worse than that • Not even consistent dualists • We are multiplists

45. Faced with dead people • Animacy systems: shutoff (Clark Barrett syndrome) • Social intelligence: preserved inferences • Result: A tangible counter-intuitive object

46. Dead bodies as agents • PEOPLE BURIED WITH CELL PHONES IN SLOVAKIA [Pravda] • “A priest had to stop the funeral ceremony because a dead body’s cell phone rang. A call from the coffin had an indescribable impression on the people present at the ceremony.”

47. Good Trick 4:Keep the past relevant

48. Two ways to createnarrative coherence • Method 1 • Register/post states in robust format • Demand path dependence • Use past to explain present states • Method 2 • Register/post states in not so robust format • Modify past states to fit explanations of present

49. Autobiography is strangely biased • Autobio memory favours second method • Anchoring effects • Theory-driven inferences • Is that for functional reasons? • Easy access to present information • Mmmh… seems to presume self-narrative • Is that for adaptive reasons? • Here and now does have fitness consequences

50. Good Trick 5:Turn groups into persons