Judgement And The Handover Of Language

Some forms of amoebae can discriminate between different strains of their own species. Quite how they sense the difference isn't altogether clear, but what should be obvious is that  no judgements are involved. To make a judgement requires reasons and it would therefore be absurd to suppose that single celled creatures have reasons for their behaviour. If microorganisms could reason, then perhaps we too would have reason to replace some of the highest ranking members of our legal system with bewigged protozoa.

Philosophers and psychologists quite commonly talk of "perceptual judgements". Presumably they do not mean to suggest that the capacity to see the difference between ultramarine and cerulean blue relies on the exercise of reason. So one could surely be forgiven for questioning the value of their tacit support of such a misconception.

Judgements are evaluative, and value is a thoroughly abstract notion for which only humans are sometimes prepared to die. It might be argued that many creatures value things — their lives and those of their kin, for example, or the food they eat. Many animals are certainly prepared to do or a great deal to ensure their own survival and that of their offspring. But is this because they know the value of life or is it merely instinct? Are instincts judgements? Judgement must surely be the very opposite of instinct.

Judgements are deliberative and to this extent all judgements require rational grounds. Judges make assessments and take careful (usually) account of evidence. Judgement is a disciplined practice that only the well trained can perform. Nobody is born a judge, but babies are certainly born perceivers — not highly skilled perceivers granted, but perceivers nonetheless and some of their perceptual skills are remarkable. In a study of of the crying "melodies" of French and German newborns it was discovered that babies mimic the speech patterns of their mothers. And a 2009 study found that newborns develop expectations of rhythmic beats that bring about a measurable neurological response when the continuity of the beat is violated.

From where does the capacity to make judgements derive, and moreover, how did it emerge in the first place? The first answer is straightforward. In order to make judgements — to reason — we need the categories and concepts but most especially the logical structures of language. Without these sophisticated procedural techniques, reasoning is impossible. Nonverbal creatures have highly sophisticated perceptual skills but they do not manipulate concepts. We know this because we know how demanding it is to learn concept manipulation: language. Every parent knows that the judgements of infants stand in stark contrast to their perceptual skills.

The emergence of judgement — of the concepts of good and bad for example, is less clear. But here is a speculative hypothesis. Our ancestors were making stone tools as long ago as 2.5 million years. Stone tools are time consuming to produce, they require extremely sophisticated skills and their materials can only be sourced in certain places. Unlike tools, behaviours are ephemeral — they disappear in the moment of production. An utterance can be produced but it cannot be exchanged. Tools, on the other hand, are artifactual tokens that endure and as such they are fungible: they can be exchanged. 

There is nothing about exchange itself that requires anything more than perceptual skills. To be a perceiver is to be capable of offering or accepting one thing that is indiscriminable from another. What makes tools different is that they have a dual identity. A stick used as a weapon is no longer merely a stick. But when a stick is not being used as a weapon it doesn't necessarily revert back to being a stick. If it is kept, it remains as a potential weapon: a tool.

I contend that this aspect of possession of useful artefacts is the very basis of language. It is the instrumental root of all of our skills of symbolisation (as well as numerous handy metaphors). Many animals use symbolic communication, but only humans exchange artefacts and only humans attribute value to them. To value something is not simply to be disposed to protect it. To value something is to know what one would (or would not) be prepared to exchange for it. Language emerged through our practices of exchange, of transactions and betokenings. I suggest that language is a product of the hand.

The Mismeasure of Minds

In order to tell whether something is fixed, one needs something else that is known to be fixed and can serve as a criterion of judgement. But how can one find that first fixed point? We would like some nails in the wall to hang things from, but there is actually no wall there yet. We would like to lay the foundations of the building, but there is no firm ground to put it in.” —Hasok Chang (2009)

When we perform a skilful action like catching a ball, is it necessarily the case that the brain also performs a series of skilful measurements and calculations? Are our skills of perception and intelligent action evaluative? Many theorists confidently assert that they are. I aim to explain why I think such an assumption is both explanatorily extravagant and a hindrance to enquiry.

The word “calculate” derives from the Latin word "calculus", which once referred to the stones used as counters in abacuses. In standard usage, to calculate something is to determine a value by the use of various mathematical operations applied to quantities represented by symbols. It is possible to perform many calculations without the use of symbols, but the demands of doing so (i.e. the quantities involved), make non-symbolic calculation extremely unwieldy. Certainly we have no evidence of non-symbolic neural calculation even in the brains of simple creatures. So if it is the case that brains perform calculations, then they must be using a symbolic system to encode information. Although there is an enormous quantity of literature on the subject of neural encoding, as yet no code has been identified or unravelled. This alone should make us wary of neurocalculation.

Symbols are highly sophisticated entities. The Roman symbol “IX” bears no resemblance to the quantity it represents. Nor does the equivalent linguistic symbol “nine". Many people in the world who recognise "9" and "IX" do not recognise “nine”. Turn "9" and "IX" upside down and their corresponding quantities change. And if you say “nine” in Germany the meaning is not a number at all. It should be obvious even from these trivial examples that symbolic representation is far from straightforward. Neurosymbolic communication thus carries an extremely heavy explanatory burden. Why, for instance, would brains need symbols if they were already so advanced that they could develop their own symbolic system? As brains evolved, how did the parts that didn't know the code understand the parts that did? Why do we have no evidence of basic symbols amongst simple brains? And why are we denied access to the computational power of our own brains to such an extent that we have to sit through hours of instruction and practice to learn just a tiny fraction of what our brains are allegedly capable? None of these issues refutes neurocalculation but they do help to suggest that we have little reason to be confident about its credibility.

And what of neuromeasurement? 

In 2009 Hasok Chang published a book entitled: “Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress.” In it he provides a detailed history of the many complexities involved in arriving at a system for the measurement of temperature. It seems obvious to us now that water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100. But in fact the variables involved, like chemical impurities and atmospheric pressure as well as the fact that thermometers themselves had no standard measure, made the whole process an extremely challenging one, requiring numerous iterative improvements, insights and innovations.

Chang raises a significant obstacle for advocates of neuromeasurement. In order to measure an unknown distance for example, a standard would first be needed. But in order to establish a standard, a unit of measure would also be required. According to Chang: "This circularity is probably the most crippling form of the theory-ladenness of observation" and is the very problem that has caused well documented difficulties in every region of the science of magnitude.

One thing is certain, brains did not evolve their own inner form of science and technology. But if it took science and technology to enable the invention and refinement of our skills of measurement, then it seems extremely unlikely that brains could evolve similar techniques independently. 

Could there be such a thing as a set of evolved biological standards equivalent to those developed by culture? Are such standards actually necessary, or is there a more simple and plausible explanation for the many sophisticated skills we possess?

Imagine a single celled organism that consistently moves towards one sort of thing rather than another similar sort of thing. In that case we would say that the organism is capable of discriminating between these two similar things. Such differential responsiveness is a commonplace amongst organisms and makes up by far the greater proportion of all organismic behaviour. When the iris of the eye contracts in response to bright light as opposed to dim light or when the liver produces bile in response to fatty food as opposed to carbohydrate we do not suppose that any calculation is going on, nor any measurement. The organism is simply behaving in response the presence of one sort of thing rather than another. No choice is being exercised, no calculation, no judgement, no theorisation, no measurement, merely evolved responsiveness.

Certainly the processes involved in more sophisticated forms of responsiveness are of a higher order of complexity. But the fact of differential responsiveness gives us good reason to first explore the potential of this more fundamental form of sensory discrimination in the actions of sophisticated creatures long before we go attributing skills of neurocalculation and neuromeasurement to brains.

When a child discovers by chance that a stick can be balanced across their hand, is sensory discrimination sufficient to explain their capacity to balance the stick? I don't see why not. To be disposed to move the stick in one direction as opposed to the other in order to maintain its horizontal position would seem to be a far more straightforward answer than neurocalculation and neuromeasurement.

Skills like balancing sticks are comparative. They trade both on sensory discrimination and — crucially — its lack. To be disposed to respond to two things (or two parts of one thing, in this case) in the same way because we fail to discriminate between them in one or more respects has significant efficacy. To know how to make a stick balance across your hand is to know how to make one side of the stick behave in the same way as the other side. In essence the skill is based upon an ability to make one side of the stick match the other in respect of the forces acting upon it: to make both sides of the stick indiscriminable from one another in respect of their tendency to fall. From the point of view of artificial intelligence this is an extremely complex skill, but from a haptic point of view it is child's play.

Thanks to Jason Streitfeld for the FB discussion that led to this post.

Acquisitions of Brain and Body

Like most adults I have a fair quantity of scars on my body, mostly on my hands. The majority of these marks and disfigurements are minor, nonetheless it often strikes me as surprising that so many of us manage to retain all of our fingers through life. Considering the many dangerous things we do with our hands, it is a testament to our skills and foresight (and no small amount of first aid and general hygiene) that our hands are often in such good shape.

We commonly speak of scars as acquisitions, as things we obtain through mishap and misadventure. Scars are additions, and sometimes, in the more extreme cases, evidence of subtractions from the body – from what we would otherwise have.

It is common also to speak of skills as acquisitions – as abilities we gain through practice and experience. Knowledge also, is a capacity we tend to think of as an acquisition.

To acquire something is to gain, or to form, a certain kind of possession, typically of an object or else a demeanour, attitude, disposition or tendency. In these latter cases the term “acquisition” is used in a technical sense that could just as easily be replaced with adopting an attitude, forming a disposition or developing a tendency.

In ordinary usage, acquisition most commonly pertains to objects or other forms of material wealth. To acquire a trophy is usually – trophy-scars notwithstanding – both to acquire an object as well as the admiration, acclaim or appreciation for which it stands. But to gain recognition is not actually to acquire anything so much as it is an increased likelihood to be treated preferentially by people in the know. It is very common for such social achievements to be recognised through the use of material tokens: trophies, epaulettes, titles etc.

So, like our less extreme scars, acquisitions are most commonly additions to what we already possess and whilst such possessions may take up little space, they do nonetheless need to be accommodated. Even digital information needs to be stored.

It is no surprise therefore that we tend to describe skills and knowledge in terms of content, as things we bundle away in our heads ready for later use. It’s as if our brains were vast repositories of information which we routinely access in the same way we retrieve books from a library or artefacts from a museum. If we acquire stuff, then it follows that we need somewhere to store it. And what better place than the brain? But what seems obviously the case is not necessarily the case.

Consider our hands again. When we learn to play the piano we do not speak of acquiring new additions to our hands. Our hands are not repositories. They do not store their capacities, even though they clearly have capacities, or at least they participate to a very large degree in the capacities of the person as a whole. When we learn a new technique requiring dexterity, we may develop the musculature of our digits etc. but there are no new hand acquisitions as such – not, of course, unless we inherit another scar or two. And if we are unfortunate enough develop carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis or ganglion cysts these are not strictly speaking acquired – they develop or arise. The capacity was already there.

Many critics of the notion of mental content continue to speak of “skill acquisition” or “knowledge acquisition” as if there were no ground to be lost as a consequence. I’m not so sure the term helps us. In fact I think it may be a hindrance. Perhaps it would make more sense to speak of knowledge and skills in the same way that we regard the changes that occur in our hands when we learn a new technique. Perhaps we should make a point of regarding skills and knowledge as developmental changes rather than as acquisitions. You cannot acquire a development but you can develop a skill and you can develop your knowledge. Organisms and organs are things that develop. There is no room in a brain for any acquisitions. All the space is already taken. Knowledge and skills are develop-mental.

Tools in the Workshop of Language

Do nonhuman animals form and use concepts? Is their negotiation of the world informed by abstract ideas of causality, agency, dominance, submission, absence, etc? Do animals theorise? I intend to use this post to explore the view that conceptualisation is possible only in direct proportion to the capacity of creatures to use symbolic communication and to the degree that they have an evolutionary history in which valuable objects – tools in particular – are  commonly manufactured and exchanged.

Language is, in large part, a highly sophisticated form of symbolic communication. By "symbolic" I mean the ability to exchange thing A for thing B despite the fact that thing A and thing B need share no properties in common. For example, we commonly exchange material goods and services for mere pieces of paper despite the fact that the pieces of paper concerned have practically no intrinsic value of their own. We can only do this because we collectively agree to abide by the rules of monetary exchange.

Now, it might be claimed that I am simply setting the bar unreasonably high for qualification as a concept-user and moreover that concepts must surely be prerequisites of the skills that enable tool-use. I hope to show otherwise. Firstly, it should be clear that language is by no means the only thing that sets us apart from other animals. Our skills in the manufacture and use of tools and composite tools outstrip those of other animals by many orders of magnitude and we have clear evidence that our ancestors worked with skillfully crafted stone tools for at least 2 million years with untold years of prior use of sticks, bones, leaves and other raw materials. It would be strange in the extreme if this long history of cultural and biological co-evolution had only a minor influence upon the development and acquisition of our skills as language-users.

Secondly, the assumption that certain sophisticated behaviours can only be explained by concept-possession is only justified if every other explanatory alternative has been ruled out. It might be argued, indeed I would support the view, that nonverbal capacities in particular deserve to be examined much more extensively regarding their potential to explain intelligent behaviour. Elisabeth Camp (2009) contends that some very plausible explanations of complex behaviours can be provided by nonlinguistic compositional capacities, and on the basis of this research she rejects the claim (Cheney and Seafarth 2007) that baboon behavior can only be explained by a “language of thought” (Fodor 1975). Nonetheless Camp’s research, whilst important, is a mere synapse in a vast cortex of research that directs its primary focus towards what animals might plausibly think rather than what animals intelligently do.

There are two problems that seriously impede progress in this area. The first is the overriding reliance upon representational theories of mind and the second is an almost universal paucity in understanding of the nature and role of capacities of nonverbal representation in the story of intelligent behaviour. Theorists like Jerry Fodor clearly realise that there are certain kinds of representation that are simply impossible in the brain. So inner displays and inner models of the perceived world are straightforwardly ruled out. (Grid cells and place cells are held by many to be evidence if inner representation but other theorists – Hutto and Myin (2011) for example – convincingly argue that correlation and/or covariation do not amount to representation). Similarly, inner pictures have so far evaded the probes, electrodes and scanners of neuroscience. Only inner symbols seem safe from the scrutiny of fMRI and for this reason Fodor’s Language of Thought continues its merry march across the pages of books, conference papers and PhD theses (although its weakening stranglehold seems to be allowing a little more blood to reach the neurons of some thinkers).

Like Davidson (1982) and Chater and Heyes (1994), I hold that language and concepts are inextricably intertwined, and I know of no instance of claimed animal concept-possession that cannot be more plausibly explained by the possession of nonverbal (i.e. non-conceptual) skills. However, unlike Davidson, I think we can reasonably ascribe the capacity for surprise to animals, and once again the explanation derives from an account of the nonverbal capacities involved. To be a conscious creature and to act deliberately is to have expectations, but these expectations are not concepts. To expect a ripe apple to be sweet is not predicated upon a concept of sweetness. To expect the ground to be solid under one’s feet is not a theorisation. We do not need concepts to be surprised when the song we are listening to on the radio suddenly stops. Expectations are skills, but they are not conceptual skills. They are practical, not ratiocinative. They are nonverbal.

For advocates of inner representation, the act of perception involves the production of internal representations that correlate with the world. I agree that representation plays a vital part in perception, but I do not agree that brains manufacture representations in any shape or form. A much simpler, and I think more plausible explanation, conceives of perception as a cluster of skills in the production of public representations, as a readiness or preparedness to substitute the thing seen, touched or heard etc. for its duplicate in one or more respects.

Experience leads to the development of expectations about the regularities of the universe and of unfolding events. I propose that we first attempt to rule out all possible nonverbal explanations before we attempt to ascribe capacities of conceptualisation to nonverbal creatures.

One further point. Nonverbal expectations cannot be conceptual because, as Gareth Evans pointed out in 1982, perception is fine grained in a way that concepts simply are not: “Do we really believe the suggestion that we have as many colour concepts as there are colours in the rainbow.”

Many animals use symbolic communication, from dolphins and prairie dogs to bats, birds and honey bees. We observe such forms of communication in a great variety of quantities and degrees. But what we do not observe is anything like the degree of tool-use that we find in human culture. Nonetheless, if it is true that conceptualisation is in part enabled by the skills of symbolic communication then it should be possible for symbol-using animals to acquire one or two very basic components of concept use. It should be noted though, that a capacity to acquire one or two basic components of a broader set of skills and the acquisition or possession of the rudiments of that skillset are by no means the same. A fistful of clay does not a sculptor make. Nor is it necessarily the case that the mere acquisition, even of a large number of proper or common nouns for example, enables these to be manipulated and recombined in intelligible ways. And the question of how the skills of combining and contrasting concepts – of conceptual reasoning – could be practiced, refined and evaluated in the absence of social feedback would seem to present a insurmountable explanatory obstacle for advocates of private concept formation.

Concepts are tools in the workshop of language. But without the techniques that enable the skillful use of these tools, concepts are as purposeless as mere sticks, stones, leaves and bones.

The Certainty of Good and Evil

Bertrand Russell writes: "Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." But, to be consistent, the reverse must also be true: most of the greatest goods that man has bestowed upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was true. What otherwise is true love? So, it would be mistaken to conclude from Russell's remark that certainty is intrinsically malign or contradictory.

To say that there are no absolutes is itself a straightforward truth claim — an absolute. The argument should really end there, but clearly this has not convinced the doubters. So let me try to explain why I think relativism is an error of reasoning.

What is it to be certain of something? Is a gibbon certain that the branch is really there? What advantage would doubt confer on the gibbon in such a case?

Is this breath I take an instance of certainty? Is the evolutionary exploitation of universal regularities driven by certainty? Or is it more true to say that certainty is merely a characterisation; one of a catalogue of what we take (often mistakenly) to be our commitments?

It seems to me that the relativist begins with the possibility of doubt and extrapolates into barely plausible fantasy and then takes this as sufficient cause for radical doubt. 

But doubt, like certainty, is a concept. Does the gibbon doubt? Does a fly? Nonverbals do not reason. They have no propositional faculties. That is largely why they are called "nonverbals" after all.

Sure, a gibbon might hesitate (not a fly). But the gibbon's hesitation is not due to intellection. The supposition that facts (knowing-that) underlie all knowledge is the ruin of intellectualists BTW. No, the gibbon hesitates because it has insufficient knowhow.

The fact that we can conceive of doubtful things, that we can be ambivalent, equivocal and uncertain is no ground for rejecting all certainty. Likewise, the fact that we can take some things for granted is no justification for supposing that our extrapolations are also true. That, I propose, is the root of all evil.

Nonverbal creatures are never evil. Evil is the product of language users. It is a cultural contrivance—ideas and ideologies—that require systematic planning and, in their worst manifestations, the recruitment of others. Nonverbal creatures can be malign of course, but they cannot plan systematically. Nor can they recruit others because they cannot persuade.


Thanks to Brian and John for questioning my unshakable faith in realism and to Ashok for the quote from Russell.

Neurofundamentalism

Simply put, neurofundamentalism is the belief that brains are creators. Where traditional theists believe in an all powerful God, neurofundamentalists believe in all powerful brains. But where traditional theists struggle against scientific materialism, neurofundamentalists fully embrace science in the certain conviction that it will eventually be confirmed that brains create images, models and symbols. Whilst neurofundamentalists await revelation from the gods of neuroscience, they draw attention to their sacred neurological equivalent of the Turin shroud ("grid cells" and "place cells") and declare these as solemn proof of the capacity of brains to generate their own tools. Yes tools. For what are models and images if not tools? But neurofundamentalists go much further than this. Not only do they claim that brains construct models and images, but according to neurofundamentalists, they also trade in some of the most sophisticated tools ever to have been devised by culture: symbols, signs and codes.

Like their traditional counterparts, neurofundamentalists come in various creeds, from idealists who are unshakeable in their conviction that everything we experience is a construct of the brain, to those of a more moderate persuasion who claim that brains only construct models if and when the need arises.

As preposterous as any of this may sound, it is a matter of demonstrable fact that neurofundamentalism is the current orthodoxy in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of mind. The opponents of neurofundamentalism, on the other hand, are a small, fragmented and largely ignored minority. And like any reasonable people these thinkers also look to science and reason for evidence. Unlike neurofundamentalists though, they know that the search for what-was-never-there is a futile enterprise. In more than half a century of careful searching, not a single symbol has ever been found in any of the countless brains examined in this quest for the holy grail of neurofundamentalism.

It should be perfectly obvious that tool-use only evolves where intelligent agents are surrounded by raw materials and are fully embedded within fluctuating and often hostile environments populated by other intelligent competing organisms. Brains are not agents, their environment is relatively stable, they have no access to raw materials and they are in no direct competition with other intelligent organisms. There is no way in the world that brains are capable of constructing models, forming images or of generating and encoding symbols. These are the exclusive products and techniques of cultural evolution, not biological evolution. The necessary evolutionary antecedents of culture are completely different from those of biology. 

Whenever a theory assumes that biology can do what culture has become capable of doing under very different circumstances we should be on our guard because it is very likely that a vital distinction has been missed. Let's hope that neurofundamentalism is not as tenacious as its more traditional equivalents.

"Get a Life" by Donald Brook: A Review

This review was originally published in Artlink Magazine Vol.34 No.3 here.

Get a life is a deceptive book, not because its author seeks to misdirect the reader, nor because he is in any way naive about the implications of his theories, but because the ideas it contains are so entertainingly and unthreateningly presented, yet on close examination they turn out to have teeth — sharp ones.

This new ebook by the British-Australian art theorist Donald Brook is a compendium of papers, articles and biographical recollections that trace Brook's developing thought from the mid 1960's to the present day. The various "perls" (a pun on the computer programming language), as he calls them, are strung together with chronological recollections of Brook's many involvements with the Australian artworld during the same period as well as several descriptions of other formative, informative, extraordinary, exasperating and sometimes poignant episodes and encounters.

For the last 50 years Brook has been weaving together various closely interrelated strands of conceptual analysis leading to the formulation of a body of theories with significant implications for our understanding of art, culture and perception — issues that are as relevant today as they ever were. Whether a modest ebook is the most appropriate or impactful means of disseminating these ideas remains to be seen, but it would be a mistake to conclude that the contents of this offering apply merely to the production, theory and consumption or artworks or even to the wider machinations of the artworld. Even a brief scan should be sufficient to persuade even the most skeptical reader that this book is packed with ideas, thought-provoking challenges to orthodoxy and even several powerful conceptual tools that could easily keep a diligent theorist employed for a very long time indeed.

Such glowing remarks beg a glaring question: if Brook has been a prominent and widely published member of the Australian artworld and his ‘perls’ have frequently been dispersed in international waters then why is he almost completely unknown outside Australia? It is tempting to jump to some scathing conclusions here about the narrow focus of the Anglo American outlook but whilst there is probably some truth in this conclusion I suspect that the factors involved are more complex than such a superficial response would suggest. 

The period of Brook's principal activity coincides with one in which Continental philosophy in general and Post-Structuralism in particular have held considerable attractions for many artists and art theorists. The clear reverberations of this cultural trend can still be discerned amongst much contemporary art and art criticism, yet throughout this period Brook's allegiances have remained firmly within the Analytic tradition, a tradition known more for its asceticism and restraint than its ability to enthral, entertain or even to mystify. The artworld isn't exactly renowned for its preoccupation with clarity, conceptual precision and disciplined enquiry and this presents a difficulty for any theorist aligned more with Wittgenstein, Ryle and J. L. Austin than Barthes, Derrida or Merleau-Ponty. This is not to say that Brook's writings are arid tracts with humble ambitions, quite the reverse, but what it does mean is that his rejection of much that is held sacred both within the Continental as well as the Analytic traditions of philosophy leaves him with few allies in the philosophy camp. Little wonder then that he continues to describe himself an artist and art theorist. But this also inevitably puts him into conflict with advocates of the transcendence of art or its intrinsic alterity and ineffability. Brook's claims are at once more substantial and more insightful and by diligent means he takes the careful reader on a journey that leads to some extraordinarily revealing realisations about the intimate and inextricable relations between representation, perception art and culture.

One of the most important additions to the toolkit of any bona fide pearl hunter is a implement for levering apart the two halves of shells that stubbornly conceal their contents. Over the years Brook has developed an uncanny knack of driving a critical wedge between what are commonly regarded as indivisible entities, of making distinctions where only ambiguity reigns. In the 1960’s he began to focus his attention on a curious division commonly encountered in commentaries on sculpture. In the paper "Perception and the Critical Appraisal of Sculpture" (1969) Brook describes how commentators often adopt one of two distinct forms of descriptive strategy that he defines as "Object Accounts" or "Picture Accounts". It turns out that these two approaches are the linguistic face of two radically different procedures of nonverbal representation, procedures that inform our everyday speech to a significant degree. Moreover, Picture Accounts are the result of cultural innovations of the kind exemplified by the 15h Century discovery of perspective and—incidentally—are centrally implicated in the perplexities of many optical illusions. Many such techniques that we now take for granted were completely unknown in ancient times, for example the knack of using blue pigments to depict aerial perspective. Only in recent years has it been confirmed — thus corroborating Brook's thesis — that colour perception for example is significantly informed by the cultural emergence of skills and materials capable of enhancing our genetically inherited capacities.

The emphasis on cultural innovation in Brook's thought is crucial and leads to several other important insights, perhaps the most prominent of which is a theory of what art actually is: an old canard perhaps but one that finds new life under Brook's discriminating lens. Brook argues that the artworld has a vested interest in claiming that art is a unique commodity that inheres only in works of art, whereas art is in fact the emergence of previously unexpected skills of human ingenuity that, once discovered, can subsequently be repeated and refined. Computer games, perspective, nicotine patches, photographs, particle accelerators, sculptures and even new forms of crime are all products of art. Whether these artefacts of art will be accepted by the artworld as works of art is, of course, a question that actually has very little to do with art. Furthermore, what follows, as Brook is quick to clarify, is the realisation that there is no such thing as art history, only the "construction of a rag-bag of stories about the ways in which certain loosely related cultural kinds have emerged, have changed, and have eventually been superseded."

Inevitably the arguments are more subtly nuanced than a brief summary can possibly elucidate but it should be apparent that this ebook has a lot to offer anyone interested in getting to grips with issues that have stymied philosophers and art theorists for centuries. Theories of all kinds should be measured by their ability to enable insights and to explain puzzles that have so far eluded our best efforts. Ideally they should also be clear and the examples they provide, vividly accessible. Get a Life succeeds admirably in doing so and into the bargain we also get several other gems including one of the most ludicrously funny yet shockingly chilling recollections ever to have graced the pages of a book of theory. "Depravity in Wharfdale" is a masterpiece of storytelling that will leave you breathless with its laughable grotesquery.

Brook can certainly spin a yarn, but even though Get a Life is frequently entertaining his intention is clearly not to regale us nor to showcase his linguistic or critical prowess but to provide an opportunity for close scrutiny of radical ideas that are in genuine need of serious critical attention. Inevitably there are times where the measured discussion betrays a hint of irritation at the paucity of critical reception of his work but it is clear that Brook has more pressing repercussions to explore than to become embroiled in petty bickering or bitterness.

Get a Life is an immensely intelligent book. It is witty but never cocky, eloquent but never showy, insightful but never boastful, and challenging but never laboured. Of course, you will want to draw your own conclusions. I can only recommend that you get a copy (here).

I Act Therefore I Am

Rene Descartes famously declared "Cogito ergo sum" — commonly translated as "I think therefore I am." This belief—or article of philosophical faith even—that our agency exists as a purely private affair altogether disconnected from public interaction, continues to sponsor many misconceptions about the nature of mind. Whilst Descartes' theory of the immaterial mind may have been abandoned for more materialistic accounts, the vestiges of Cartesianism linger on in the widespread assumption that brains are somehow agents equipped with their own skills and techniques such as modelling, imaging, computation etc. as well as sophisticated semantic or semiotic forms of signal encoding. So far all of these have been entirely impervious to all attempts at decryption.

Philosopher Peter Hacker and neuroscientist Max Bennett use conceptual analysis to examine and highlight many of the conceptual errors that arise as a consequence of attributing to the brain skills that only a brain and body can perform. In response, many theorists and scientists simply dismiss their work as stipulative assertions and as the exhortations of language police. These theorists and scientists see no contradiction in supposing that brains have capacities of detection, despite the fact that brains contain no sensory organs. And they assume therefore that brains produce their own representations in order to go about their business. But what if these theorists and scientists are mistaken in dismissing Hacker an Bennett? Is a new paradigm called for? From my own Brookian point of view, an analysis of the evolutionary emergence of representational skills adds significant weight to Hacker and Bennett's challenge to neurotheism and suggests that whilst many of the findings of neuroscience are important, much of the theory is significantly less perspicacious.

Representation is a social skill. It is something that we learn through communicative transactions with other similarly endowed creatures, most notably other members of our own species. Fundamentally representation is a co-operative exchange. According to Constance Classen (1993) "'Cogito ergo sum', literally means 'I put in motion together (coagitare) therefore I am'." The etymology is revealing: Co=together + Agitare= to act upon. 

Mindedness emerges through social interaction — through our varied skills as communicators.

On The Indivisibility Of Brain And Body

The other day my four-year-old son mentioned his brain. I asked him if he had any idea where it was and he said he didn’t know. I was on the verge of explaining that the brain is where we do our thinking when I hesitated.  Saying that the brain is where thinking goes on is like saying that the heart is where circulation goes on or an oven is where food preparation occurs. The astrophysicist Carl Sagan once famously said: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” The same could be said of thought.

This doesn’t mean to say that we cannot understand thought, or that the brain is a black box forever closed to neuroscience. It simply means that thought is not something that can intelligibly be attributed to brains or neurons. Thought is something that skilled organisms do in virtue of tools and techniques that they acquire to a very substantial degree from culture – just like the tools and techniques etc. that enable food preparation.

Either thinking is an action or else it is not. If it is an action then it is mistaken to suppose that brains think, because brains are not agents and cannot act. Only embrained bodies – persons – are agents and only agents are capable of doing things.

If we want to insist that thinking is not an action, then we face multiple difficulties and objections. For example, it would no longer be coherent to respond to the question “What are you doing?” by saying “I’m just thinking,” and we would face the formidable challenge of distinguishing between ongoing brain processes that are clearly not actions and the thoughts that we have decided do not qualify as actions either.

Similar absurdities arise when we entertain sci-fi fantasies about brains in vats. A brain in a vat wouldn’t have experiences, not even memory experiences. Strictly speaking, memory recall is not an experience. Whilst we have ways of recounting the past and these capacities – consciously entertained – often elicit emotional responses, these responses are not in the brain, they are embodied (including the brain of course). Not only are brains incapable of actions but they have no feelings either. They have no sense receptors. Nor do brains memorise feelings – they don’t have to. When we recall a memory the associated emotional responses are generated anew in the body including the brain. So a brain stripped of a body wouldn’t have feelings of any kind – either emotional or sensory. It would be a thing with a notional capacity to initiate actions but no opportunity to do so, nor to feel the embodied frisson of recall. And if the trauma of surgery did not kill it outright, the trauma of desperate isolation would almost certainly lead to a very rapid demise. Even people with locked-in syndrome are not “cut off” from sensation, and the accounts of those who have survived paint a unimaginable picture of desolation and despair.

Your brain is your body and your body is you.