“Psychologies of the Automaton”

David Bates

Department of RhetoricUniversity of California, Berkeley

1. Cognitive Systems in the Age of Reason

... nous sommes automate autant qu’esprit.

Les preuves ne convainquent que l’esprit, la coutume fait

nos preuves les plus fortes et les plus crues.

Elle incline l’automate qui entraîne l’esprit sans qu’il y

pense.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées (ca. 1662)

Mechanism Design for Pascal’s Automatic Calculator

Je parlerai de l'homme en mon Monde un peu plus que je

ne pensais, car j'entreprends d'expliquer toutes ses

principales fonctions. J'ai déjà écrit celles qui appartiennent

à la vie ....

J'anatomise maintenant les têtes de divers animaux, pour

expliquer en quoi consistent l'imagination, la mémoire, etc.

René Descartes, Lettre à Mersenne (1632)

Et véritablement l'on peut fort bien comparer les nerfs de

la machine que je vous décris, aux tuyaux des machines

de ces fontaines; ...

... ses esprits animaux, à l'eau qui les remue, dont le cœur

est la source, et les concavités du cerveau sont les regards

...René Descartes, Traité de l’homme (ca. 1630)

... si par hasard je ne regardais d'une fenêtre des hommes

qui passent dans la rue, à la vue desquels je ne manque

pas de dire que je vois des hommes ...

... et cependant que vois-je de cette fenêtre, sinon des

chapeaux et des manteaux, qui peuvent couvrir des

automates?

René Descartes, Seconde méditation (1635)

Mais je juge que ce sont de vrais hommes, et ainsi je

comprends, par la seule puissance de juger qui réside en

mon esprit, ce que je croyais voir de mes yeux.

René Descartes, Seconde méditation (1641)

L'admiration est une subite surprise de l'âme, qui fait

qu'elle se porte à considérer avec attention les objets

qui lui semblent rares et extraordinaires.

René Descartes, Passions de l’âme (1649)

Ainsi elle est causée premièrement par l'impression qu'on

a dans le cerveau, qui représente l'objet comme rare et

par conséquent digne d'être fort considéré ...

... puis ensuite par le mouvement des esprits, qui sont

disposés par cette impression à tendre avec grande force

vers l'endroit du cerveau où elle est, pour l'y fortifier et

conserver ...

René Descartes, Passions de l’âme (1649)

... objective effects proceed in the soul according to the formal nature of its object. This is the same as what the ancients said ... except that so far as I know they never conceived the soul (as we do here) as acting according to certain laws, like a  spiritual automaton.

Spinoza, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (1661)

... when the soul wills something with success, the machine is inclined and ready to do this spontaneously out of its own natural motions....

Leibniz, “Doubts or considerations about certain statementsin the Theoria Medica Vera” (1709)

L’opération des automates spirituels, c’est-à-dire des âmes, n’est point mécanique; mais elle contient éminemment ce qu’il y a beau dans la mécanique ...

Leibniz, Theodicée (1710), §403

Leibniz’s Automatic Calculator (1671)

Epinglier, Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert (1751-72)

The Understanding is not taught to reason ...

... it has a native Faculty to perceive the Coherence,

or Incoherence, of its Ideas, and can range them right

....

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

... reason is nothing but a wonderful and intelligible

instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train

of ideas, and endows them with certain qualities,

according to their particular situations and relations.

David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature (1739)

... but can any one give the ultimate reason, why past

experience and observations produces such an effect,

any more than why nature alone shou’d produce it?

David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature (1739)

We start with atomic parts, but these atomic parts have

transitions, passages, ‘tendencies,’ which ... give rise to

habits.

Isn’t this the answer to the question ‘what are we?’ We

are habits, nothing but habits – the habit of saying ‘I’.

Gilles Deleuze, preface to the English translation (1989) of

Empirisme et subjectivité: Essai sur la Nature Humaine selon Hume (1953)

L’habitude tient donc à l’état des fibres.

La répétition fréquente du même mouvement dans la

même fibre change jusqu’à un certain point l’état primitive

de cette fibre.

Les molécules dont elle est composée, se disposent les

unes à l’égard des autres dans un nouvel ordre rélatif au

genre & au dégré de l’impression reçuë.

Charles Bonnet, Essai de psychologie (1754)

L’éducation est une seconde naissance, qui imprime au

cerveau de nouvelles déterminations.

Charles Bonnet, Essai de psychologie (1754)

Pour expliquer le mécanisme de la mémoire il faut

regarder la substance molle du cerveau comme une

masse d’une cire sensible et vivante, mais susceptible de

toutes sortes de formes, n’en perdant aucune de celles

qu’elle a reçues, et en recevant sans cesse de nouvelles

qu’elle garde.

Voilà le livre. Mais où est le lecteur ? Le lecteur c’est le

livre même.

Denis Diderot, Elémens de physiologie (1774-80)

Voluntary and semi-voluntary powers of calling up

ideas, of exciting and restraining affections, and of

performing or suspending actions, arise from the

mechanism of our natures.

David Hartley, Observations on Man (1749)

Indépendamment de toute provocation extérieure, le

centre cérebral peut entrer en action ....

Indépendamment de toute détermination acquise,

l’organe de la pensée tire quelquefois de son propre

fonds ....

Maine de Biran, Influence de l’habitude sur la faculté de penser (1802)

Rien n’est susceptible d’habitude que ce qui est susceptible de changement.

Félix Ravaisson, De l’habitude (1838)

2. “Are We Automata?” (ca. 1870s)

... mental conditions are simply the symbols in

consciousness of the changes taking place automatically

in the organism.

We are conscious automata ....Thomas Huxley, “On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its

History” (1874)

Consciousness ... is only intense when nerve-processes

are few. In rapid, automatic, habitual action it sinks to a

minimum.William James, Principles of Psychology (1890)

If we take the actions of lower animals and the actions

of lower ganglia in higher animals, what strikes us

most in them is the determinateness with which they

respond to a given stimulus.

... the most perfected parts of the brain are those

whose action are least determinate. It is this very

vagueness which constitutes their advantage.William James, “Are We Automata?” (1879)

If the highest centers were already organized, there

could be no new organizations ....

... all being organized, there would be no possibility for

correct adjustments in new circumstances ....

John Hughlings Jackson, “Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous

System” (1884)

Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed

with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity ... ;

... the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the

plasticity of the organic materials of which their bodies are

composed.William James, Principles of Psychology (1890)

Routine habits, and habits that possess us instead of

our possessing them, are habits which put an end to

plasticity.     

John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916)

... schooling must not model itself upon the automatic

repetitiousness of machines.John Dewey, “The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Economy”

(1916)

Avec une machine parfaite il n’y a ... jamais de

déception, mais jamais aussi de surprise.

Aucune de ces miracles qui sont, en quelque sort, la

signature de la vie.Vladimir Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson (1931)

... si la situation ... n’étaient pas nouveaux, il ne s’agirait

pas d’intelligence, mais de processus tout autres:

mémoire, habitude, répétition, en un mot, automatisme.Edouard Claparède, “La genèse de l’hypothèse: étude expérimentale”

(1934)

... la rupture d’équilibre, lorsque des réflexes ou les

habitudes ne sont prêts à intervenir, ne se rétablit

automatiquement, et nous sommes momentanément

désadaptés.

C’est alors l’intelligence qu’incombe la tâche de nous

réadapter.

Edouard Claparède, “L’invention dirigée” (1938)

L’homme est surtout adapté à ce qui n’est pas.Henri Delacroix, Les grandes formes de la vie mentale (1934)

... let me challenge the notion that automation is in any

sense a final good.

If the human organism had developed on that principle,

the reflexes and the autonomic nervous system would

have absorbed all the functions of the brain, and man

would have been left without a thought in his head.

Organic systems [have]... the margin of choice, the

freedom to commit and correct errors, to explore

unfrequented paths, to incorporate unpredictable

accidents ..., to anticipate the unexpected, to plan the

impossible.... Lewis Mumford, “The Automation of Knowledge: Are We becoming Robots?”

(1964)

3. Cognitive Science and the Technologies of Thinking

... intellectual power, like physical power, can be amplified.

W. Ross Ashby, Introduction to Cybernetics (1956)

Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” Atlantic Monthly (1945)

Memex System for Information Management

... creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things.For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.

Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think” (1945)

J. R. C. Licklider

... in large computer-centered information and control

systems, the human operators are responsible mainly for

functions that it proved infeasible to automate. Such

systems (‘humanly extended machines’) are not symbiotic

systems.

J.C.R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis” (1960)

... to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs.

Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions....

Preliminary analyses indicate that the symbiotic partnership will perform intellectual operations much more effectively than man alone can perform them.

J.C.R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis” (1960)

... the human brain is a far more efficient control

apparatus than is the intelligent machine when we come

to the higher areas of logic.

[The brain] is a self-organizing system which depends on

its capacity to modify itself into a new machine rather

than on ironclad accuracy and speed in problem-solving.

Norbert Wiener, “Some moral and technical consequences

of automation,” Science (1960)

Douglas C. Engelbart (1925 - 2013)

The system we want to improve can thus be visualized as a

trained human being together with his artifacts, language,

and methodology

The explicit new system we contemplate will involve as

artifacts computers, and computer-controlled information-

storage, information-handling, and information-display

devices.Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

H–LAM/T System (Human using Language, Artifacts, and Methods in which he is Trained)

We refer to a way of life in an integrated domain where

hunches, cut-and-try, intangibles, and the human ‘feel for

a situation’ usefully co-exist with powerful concepts,

streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated

methods, and high-powered electronic aids.

Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

If we then ask ourselves where that intelligence is

embodied, we are forced to concede that it is elusively

distributed throughout a hierarchy of functional

processes...

If there is any one thing upon which this 'intelligence

depends' it would seem to be organization ...

Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

When the course of action must respond to new

comprehension, new insights and new intuitive flashes of

possible explanations or solutions, it will not be an orderly

process.

... part of the real promise in the automated H-LAM/T

systems of tomorrow is that the human can have the

freedom and power of disorderly processes.Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

From Donald Broadbent, Perception and Communication (1958)

Norman and Waugh, “Primary Memory” (1965)

As recently as a generation ago, processes of control had

to be thought of as homunculi, because man was the only

model of an executive agent. Today, the stored-program

computer has provided us with an alternative possibility, in

the form of the executive routine.[Two kinds of mental

processing = parallel and sequential]

Ulric Neisser, Cognitive Psychology (1967)

... novel and surprising stimuli which spontaneously attract attention require a greater effort of processing than do more familiar stimuli. … voluntary

attention is an exertion of effort in activities which are selected by current plans and intentions.

Involuntary attention is an exertion of effort in activities which are selected by more enduring dispositions.Daniel Kahneman, Attention and Effort (1973)

The benefit of such a dual system is multitasking: The

unconscious system can execute background tasks,

leaving the conscious system to perform more difficult

tasks.

J. Lisman and E. Sternberg, “Habit and Non-habit Systems for Unconscious

and Conscious Behavior: Implications for Multitasking” (2012)

This new notion of the adaptive unconscious is thought

of ... as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly

processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep

functioning as human beings.

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking (2005)

The zombie challenge is based on an amazing wealth

of findings in recent cognitive science that

demonstrate the surprising ways in which our

everyday behavior is controlled by automatic

processes that unfold in the complete absence of

consciousness.

Decomposing the Will (2013), edited by Andy Clark et al.

... if you live in a total stereotypical world where nothing changes, then for the most part you could be totally unconscious, because you wouldn’t need consciousness.  Your body could perfectly do all of those routine things.

Christof Koch, interview

Why isn’t the brain just a bunch of specialized zombie agents? … The unexpected happened and you have to think before you act. Christof Koch, Consciousness: Confessions

of a Romantic Reductionist (2012)

It has been proposed that the division of labor between

the frontal lobes and the basal ganglia is along the

lines of ‘exploration’ (dealing with novelty) vs.

‘exploitation’ (discharging overlearned behaviors).

Elkhonon Goldberg, The New Executive Brain:

Frontal Lobes in a Complex World (2009)

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or

no effort and no sense of voluntary control.

System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental

activities that demand it, including complex computations.

The operations of System 2 are often associated with the

subjective experience of agency, choice, and

concentration.Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (2010)

When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to

support more detailed and specific processing that may

solve the problem of the moment.The division of labor is

highly efficient.Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (2010)