[FRIAM] Shorthands for Brain-stuff

[Eric Charles]

Wow! Clearly I was negligent in not being online the day after a post...
so.... backtracking quite a bit:

There are a few problems with Nick's example, and those problems ripple
through some of the later discussion.

First, he invented an obscure brain injury, rather than using a fairly
common one, such as frontal lobe damage from head impact, or hippocampal
damage from near-asphyxiation. Frontal lobe damage often corresponds with a
deterioration of the ability to anticipate the consequences of actions
(among many other things). Hippocampal damage typically corresponds with a
deterioration of the ability to form new memories. It would be quite
reasonable for a case to hinge upon whether or not a person could
anticipate the consequences of their actions. It would also be quite
reasonable for a case to hinge upon whether the defendant remembered
certain things that happened leading up to the crucial event.

Second, he imagined that it is easy to tell what a person accused of murder
can or cannot do. Certainly, at the least, we must contend with the
possibility that the person whose abilities we are examining is
not-cooperative. They might be quite good at feigning an inability to
engage in long term planning. Ditto feigning challenges anticipating the
consequences of actions. Ditto feigning memory issues. How long will we
keep them under examination? What are the range of conditions we are
allowed to put them in to test their ability? There are serious practical
challenges to determining a person's abilities.

Third, and MUCH more problematically, he glossed the point that the crucial
logical step is not deduction or induction, but abduction. Brains are much
more flexible and adaptive than most brain-talk gives it credit for.
Labeling a brain area as sufficient or necessary for a given function is,
at best, a statement of what is typically found under a range of "normal"
developmental conditions. The studies Nick proposed did not, in fact,
establish what is necessary for the abilities in question, and no brain
area is sufficient, because a piece of brain in a petri dish doesn't
premeditate. What we established is that a person with a particular set of
lesions *probably *couldn't do a particular thing that the law holds as
important. Given the study of enough people, it would be unsurprising to
find a few people who could do whatever we are interested with a different
part of their brain seeming crucial. A group that is really into dynamic
systems and complexity doesn't get to forget that complicated systems can
have convergent paths to particular outcomes.

And the same applies to any other aspect of the physiology we might be
interested in, such as the "brain chemistry." If the law says that you are
only guilty of murder if you understand the implications of your actions,
but I can provide evidence that people with a certain brain chemistry
(perhaps one flooded with some drug) typically cannot understand the
implications of their actions, AND I can provide evidence the defendant's
brain was in that state at the time (because they'd just taken a shit ton
of that particular drug), we can *infer *that the defendant not able to
undersand the implication of their actions. That could be the difference
between murder and manslaughter.

This process is also --- I might add --- no different than wondering
whether a wheel-chair bound defendant could have made it up the stairs and
down the hall in a given amount of time, or if that could only be done by
some who could walk and run "normally." If we can get a number of
wheel-chair bound people to participate in studies, we might well come up
with a very good guess as to the limits of the defendant's abilities, but
within a certain range it will be impossible to be sure. Yes, obviously we
can learn nothing from such studies that couldn't also be learned by
observing the defendant under the right circumstances, but the defendant
has no motivation to cooperate (cue image of Rodney King not being able to
put on a glove). And just as in the brain-focused cases above, we might
well have a doctor examine the defendant's legs and render an opinion about
what the defendant is likely to be able to do. But all the
medical-examination evidence about their legs doesn't tell us a damn thing
directly about what we are interested in, because ultimately we don't care
about the defendant's legs at all, we only care whether they could have
made it up the stairs and down the hall in the time required to perform the
crime. We are interested in the state of their legs only to the extent it
us make inferences about broader behavioral abilities. IF the defendant's
lawyer convinces the jury that what they *really *care about is the legs,
that would be skillful misdirection.

If the defendant's lawyer in the prior cases convinced the jury that what
they *really *care about is an MRI result, the same error has occurred.

<echarles at american.edu>


On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 6:39 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Russ,
>
>
>
> Categories are the stuff or ordinary logic, right.  We are given the
> category swans.  Knowing that all swans are white, and that this bird is a
> swan, we know that this bird is white; knowing that this bird is a swan,
> and that this bird is white, we infer (fallibly, but with some probability)
> that all swans are white; and knowing that this bird is white, and that all
> swans are white, we infer (fallibly, but with some probability) that this
> bird is a swan.
>
>
>
> But nobody ever tells me where the category comes from.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Russ Abbott
> *Sent:* Monday, October 5, 2020 4:11 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Shorthands for Brain-stuff
>
>
>
> Can't we get fine approximations via apt categorizations? I can witness
> how others, that are similar to this
> individual, behaved in the past.
>
>
>
> Of course we can and do create categories. They will often be useful, but
> they will almost certainly produce wrong answers in significant numbers of
> situations. When applied to people such categories often
> become stereotypes, which can do great damage to both individuals and
> society.
>
>
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> Professor, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 2:02 PM jon zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "It can’t be necessary to adopt what amounts to a religion in order to
> function with one another."
>
> Maybe not a religion, but perhaps to recognize/engage one's beliefs
> relative
> to another's beliefs?
>
> "In many cases, one would have to know the complete history of a
> person--from his childhood family and environment to whether someone gave
> him the finger for no apparent reason earlier in the day--to know how he is
> going react to any particular triggering event."
>
> What about classes? Can't we get fine approximations via apt
> categorizations? I can witness how others, that are similar to this
> individual, behaved in the past.
>
> "So, I think it's Fine and Good to *entertain* the idea of fully closed
> logical abstraction floors and ceilings. But I think it's shaky metaphysics
> to rely on them."
>
> Agreed. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about openness on the left hand
> and closedness on the right. There is no adapting to an ever-changing world
> when we are closed, but at least we can write global theorems. When we are
> open, we are open to catastrophe, and all progress to rectify discrepancies
> between model and experience is inherently local.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>
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