The Human Automaton

In the secular world, at least, the knowledge that we are little but organic machines has become somewhat passé - no surprises there. But what does that really mean, and on how many levels do we consider ourselves machines?

Many would readily agree that our bodies are merely carbon-based machines - of great complexity, to be sure - but machines nonetheless. Fewer, perhaps, would accept that our brains are also mere machines, but many would. But how many would accept that the person, the consciousness, that resides within the brain and acts via the machines surrounding it, could also be no more than a machine?

But, before we continue, some caveats. I'm not particularly skilled at expressing my more abstract ideas, so please bear with me if something I say seems like nonsense or a non-sequitur or somesuch. Perhaps if something doesn't make sense, just ask for clarification in the comments section? Of course, if you think I'm just plain wrong about something, please point that out too. Also, a lot of what I'm going to cover is not exactly novel, but at this point, that is not really my goal. Instead, I'm more interested in setting the stage for more important work later. Nonetheless, if what I'm saying seems so passe as to be not worth the effort to discuss it, please feel free to bring that up too. :)

Let's begin with 'free will', because a clear understanding of what (I believe) that is will be fundamental to this discussion. As the rest of this post will make clear, it is inconceivable to me that the only supportable interpretation of free will is what is knows as the 'hard determinist' interpretation. That is, my belief in Laplacian Determinism as it applies to atomic and sub-atomic interactions - despite what the (clearly lazy) Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics may say - and less microscopically, what neuroscience tells us about brains having distinct structures, leads to the conclusion that while we may effectively imagine ourselves 'free', our personalities and the choices they make are in fact merely the product of exceedingly long, unimaginably complex, and yet completely inviolable causal chains. In other words, while we are 'free' to choose, the choice we end up making was inevitable.

In the above context of the inevitability of our 'choices', it is important to understand that that inevitability also extends to include the precursors of actions and words: thoughts and emotions. For, if our choices are inevitable, then so too must be the precedent causes of those choices. But not to belabor the point; for now it is enough to recognize that our emotions (however irrational they may seem) are also nothing more nor less than an autonomous, predetermined response made by preexisting machinery to a particular set of information.

Above I glossed over neuroscience and personalities, but they are very important here. What I was trying to describe is that it seems pretty clear that the attributes of our 'personality' are a direct result of the way our individual brains are composed, ie. which neutrons are connected to which other neutrons, and so on... but more on that later. In a way that will perhaps need lots more justification later, I think that there is a partial explanation of our consciousness here also. In most situations for most people, the consciousness is essentially idling, ignoring most incoming information and allowing it to be handled in the background by pre-formed structures of the brain, which return a conclusion ('ignore', 'sit down', 'look at source of noise', etc.) that is acted upon. I think the important distinction here is that most choices are not 'conscious choices' in that the options are not thoughtfully considered, but are rather the results of the workings of autonomous, non-conscious parts of the brain.

What proportion of people's lives are lived in this autonomous state vs. a fully conscious state is a very interesting question to me, partly because I've come to believe that consciousness itself is probably little more than an illusion, and in its place is merely a higher level of autonomy. I didn't really want to get into that too much here, but as a quick diversion, an interesting thought experiment is this: without the benefits of being taught a language (a lot of which is built on the concept of "i"), would we still have a concept of self? In other words, would a pure homo-sapien, untainted by external concepts, really be conscious, or, without the benefits of language and concepts that have slowly evolved over the ages (meaning they cannot be intuited by an individual, so must be taught), would he spend his entire life in an unconscious animal state?

I imagine that the above is not a new question to philosophers, but it is nonetheless descriptive enough for my purposes. The point of the thought experiment being, of course, that consciousness may be a concept that has evolved over millennia, which must be learned like any other autonomous response. Anyway, I will have to leave that topic for another time. For now, let's be content with the partial coverage: most of human choice is unconscious, autonomous.

Let's diverge a little, and make sure we're clear on some of the details of what happens in the brain that facilitates this autonomous function. These details are obvious, but important, so they are worth covering: information enters the brain (via the senses) in the form of electrical signals, which are relayed and processed via a preexisting path of neurons (it is actually a hugely parallel system with many paths being taken simultaneously, but that is not relevant for this discussion). The path taken will vary based on the incoming information, but usually (particularly for adults) the neurons themselves won't change in response to the information. So, in the general case for adults, what we have is a system that merely processes incoming information, responding to some of it, but rarely adapting to it. Of course, the situation is different for children, but we'll get to that later.

So if most of what we say, do, think and feel is the result of autonomous function of our brains, then it follows that much of what people would consider to be our 'personality' is also the result of that autonomous function. This raises a lot of interesting questions, but for now I want to focus on just one: what shaped the brain's autonomous functionality to cause it to respond the way it does? The answer to that question - our childhood experiences - is both obvious and old, but I think some of the important details are lost in the cliché.

To start with, given the vast similarity amongst the personalities of people across the globe, it seems that there must be some form of template upon which autonomous functionality is built. Whether this template comes from our DNA, or is perhaps the result of the anthropomorphic effect applied to societies, I have no idea. Either way, it is upon this template that our brains are constructed, so each individual brain is structured similarly, yet they are not identical, and it is these differences that must be wholly responsible for the differences between people's personalities.

In English, at least, childhood is often referred to as "the formative years", and for good reason: it is during these early years that the brain forms into adult shape, and although change later in life is not impossible, it happens at a much slower rate than during childhood. All that is well understood, but I mention it in this context to illustrate the causal chain that runs from childhood environment and experiences --> (functionally) invariant brain structure --> an adult's personality. More specifically, the experiences that affected a human during its childhood have a direct causal effect on the thoughts and emotional responses that that human experiences during adulthood.

To put it another way, human brains are adaptive, and in a highly deterministic way, the adaptations that a human makes due to its childhood environment become a part of the mechanisms that autonomously direct that human during adulthood. Again, in a general form, this is well known, but the important point here is the autonomy: most people do not often exist outside of the "sensory input" --> "autonomic response" cycle, and if they do, it is seemingly only for small parts of their lives, meaning that the autonomy, and hence the environmental conditions during childhood, have enormous control over the majority of the behavior of the adult. (Unfortunately, discussions involving humans as automatons can be misunderstood or misrepresented to support elitist ideologies, but that is not my intent. In fact, all that elitist rubbish becomes obviously false when it is realized that the above applies to *all* of us.)

Anyway, all this leads to some interesting conclusions. For example, I've come to think that humans actually anthropomorphize each other: when we look at one another, we see a "person", but the above seems to indicate that what we really should "see" is a (highly complex) automaton. This would be especially apparent if I could manage to properly support my belief that consciousness itself is just another form of automation, but that will have to wait for another time.

Another conclusion: considering that our emotions are also just autonomic responses that were conditioned during childhood, how much can we trust them now? Our environments are certainly different to how they used to be, so can we be sure that our autonomous responses have adjusted appropriately? The answer is of course that we can't, so the thought that so many of us are essentially slaves to emotion saddens me greatly.

At this point it should be obvious what I'm trying to achieve with all this: I'm hoping that by clearly demonstrating the causal chain between childhood environment and autonomous emotional responses in adulthood, it will help light the path which might allow people to see more clearly how our past affects us, and perhaps help us to step outside our autonomous responses and take control over whatever issues we still carry.

The world is laid bare before me

Although I'm well versed in mathematics and physics, the building blocks of the universe, there are others who's perception in those fields is far deeper than mine - and being so far surpassed there is nothing for me to add to human understanding of the universe. Luminaries abound, and the world listens to them.

Human understanding of Ethics, on the other hand, seems muddied by perpendicular perspectives and an acceptance of opinions as incontrovertible. While it is true that all are entitled to their opinion, the fact that different opinions exist does not mean that one cannot be demonstratively, objectively better than others.

I am a child of my time, no doubt. And while this demonstrates that I too am merely a single voice amongst many, the secular and rational womb that nurtured me freed me from the twin tyrannies of superstition and obedience to dogma that haunt so much of human ethics.

With clarity and vision, the world is laid bare. The causes of the confusion and conflict that repress humanity become visible, as are their solutions. In this blog I will work through the baggage of current ethics, and present an alternate approach to ethics from the ground up that will allow us to see ourselves as we truly are, and finally build upon that knowledge for a better future for mankind.