Chapter 5       Bayesianism: How It Works

Part A

                        Thomas Bayes 

  The best answer to the problem of what human minds and human knowing are is that we are really all Bayesians. On Bayesianism, I can build a universal moral system. So what is Bayesianism? 

   Thomas Bayes' theory of how humans form tentative beliefs and gradually turn those beliefs into concepts has been given several mathematical formulations, but in essence it says a fairly simple thing. You tend to become more convinced of the truth of a theory or model of reality the more that you keep encountering bits of evidence which, first, support the theory and, second, can't be explained by any of the competing models of reality that your mind already holds. (A fairly accessible explanation of Bayes Theory is on the Cornell U. Math department website.) (1.) 

   But under the Bayesianism view, we never claim to know anything for certain. We simply hold some beliefs that we consider very highly probable, and we use them as we make decisions in our lives. In addition, we accept as given that all beliefs, at every level of generality, need constant review and updating, even the ones that seem for long periods to be working well at guiding us to handle real life. 

     

   The more that a new theory enables a mind to establish coherence within its whole conceptual system and all its sets of sense-data memories, the more reasonable the theory seems. If the evidence favoring the theory mounts, and its degree of consistency with the rest of the beliefs and memories in the mind also grows, then finally, in a leap of understanding, the mind promotes the theory up to the status of a concept and incorporates the new concept into its total stock of thinking machinery. 

    At the same time, the mind nearly always has to demote to “inactive” status some formerly held beliefs and concepts which are not commensurable with the new concept and so are judged to be less efficient in enabling the mind to organize and use its total stock of memories. This is especially true of all mental activities involved in the kinds of thinking that are now being covered by the new model or theory. For example, if you absorb and accept a new theory about how your immune system works, that idea will then oversee every health-related decision that you make.  

    In life, examples of the workings of Bayesianism can be seen all of the time. All we have to do is look closely at how we and the people around us “make up our minds”.

    When I was in junior high school, I used to be bused, in June every year, along with the other students of my junior high school, to the all-city track meet at a stadium in West Edmonton. Student athletes from all of the big junior high schools in the city came to compete in the biggest track meet of the year. Its being held near the end of the school year, of course, added to the excitement of the day.

    A few of the athletes competing came from a special school that educated and cared for those kids that today would be called “mentally challenged”. In my grade nine year, three of my friends and I, on a patch of grass off to one side of the bleachers, did a mock cheer in which we shouted the name of this school in a short rhyming chant, acted like we were trying to do some chorus line kicks in step, crashed into each other and fell down. I should make clear that I did not get that cruel an attitude from my home. My parents would have been appalled. But fourteen year olds can be cruel.

    The problem was that one of the prettiest and smartest girls in grade nine at my school was up in the bleachers, watching field events in a lull between track events. She and two of her friends happened to catch our little routine. By the glares on their faces, I could see that they were not amused. Later that day I learned that though she had an older brother who had gone to our school, done very well academically, and scored amazing grades on the provincial final exams, she also had a younger brother who was a Down’s Syndrome child.

    I apologized lamely the next day at school, but I could see that I’d lost all chance with her. However, she did say one thing that stayed with me. She told me that if you form a bond with a mentally retarded person (“retarded” was still what we called them in those days), you will realize that you have made a friend whose loyalty, once won, is unchanging and unshakeable. Probably, the most loyal friend that you will ever have. And that realization will change you.

Francis Galton (originator of Eugenics) 

    It was the proverbial “thin edge of the wedge”. Earlier, I had absorbed some of the ideas of the pseudo-science called “Eugenics” from one of my friends at school, and I had concluded that there was nothing of value that these people could give to the community and a great deal that they would inevitably take out of the community. Anne made me begin to question those assumptions.

    Over years of seeing movies like “A Child Is Waiting” and “Charlie”, and of being exposed to awareness-raising campaigns by the families of the mentally challenged, I began to see them in a different light. Over the decades, they came to be called “mentally handicapped” and then “mentally challenged”, and the changing of the terminology did matter. It changed our thinking.

    I became a teacher, and then, in the middle of my career, I saw some mentally challenged kids integrated into the public school where I taught. I also saw what they could teach the rest of us, just by being themselves.

   Tracy was severely handicapped, in multiple ways, mentally and physically. Trish, on the other hand, was a reasonably bright girl who had huge rage issues. She beat up other girls. She stole. She skipped classes. She smoked pot behind the school. But when Tracy came to us, Trish proved in a few weeks to be the best with Tracy of any of the students in the school. Her attentiveness and gentleness were humbling to see. In Tracy, Trish found someone who needed her, and for Trish, it changed everything. As I watched them together one day, it changed me. Years of persuasion and experience, by gradual degrees, finally, really got to me. I saw a new order in the community in which I lived, a new view of inclusiveness that gave coherence to years of observations and memories.    

      Today, I believe they are just people. But it was only grudgingly at fourteen that I even began to consider re-examining my beliefs about the mentally challenged. At fourteen, I liked believing that my mind was made up on every issue. Only years of gradually growing awareness led me to change my view. A new thinking model, gradually, by accumulation of evidence, came to look more correct and useful to me than the old model. Then, in a kind of conversion experience, I switched models. Of course, by gradual degrees, through exposure to reasonable arguments and real experiences, I and a lot of other people have come a long way on this issue from what we were in 1964. Humans can change.

A Doberman Pinscher 

     

     In a more scientific example, I will also mention our Doberman Pinscher cross pup. Rex was basically a good dog, but he was a mutt, a Doberman cross that we obtained because one of my aunts could not keep him. People often remarked that he looked like a Doberman, but his tail was not bobbed. This got me curious. When I found out that Dobermans had almost all had their tails bobbed for many generations, I wondered why the tails after so many generations had not simply become shortened at birth. I asked a Biology teacher at my high school, but his answer only confused me. Actually, I don’t think he understood the crucial features of Darwinian evolution theory himself.

Jean-Batiste Lamarck 

    Once I got to university, several of the courses I took were in Biology. Gradually, at first, and then in a breakthrough of understanding, I came to realize that I had been thinking in terms of the model of evolution called “Lamarckism”. I did not, at first, want to let go of this cherished opinion of mine. I had thought of myself as progressive; I did not believe in creationism. I had thought that I knew how evolution worked and that I was using an accurate understanding of it in all of my thinking. It was only after I had read more and seen by experience that bobbing dogs’ tails did not make their pups’ tails get any shorter, that I, gradually at first, and then in a mental leap, came to a full understanding of Darwinian evolution. 

   Evolution for all species proceeds by the combined processes of genetic variation and natural selection. It doesn’t matter how often the anatomies of already existing members of a species are altered; if their gene pool doesn’t change, the next generation will, at birth, basically look pretty much like their parents. Chopping off a dog’s tail doesn’t change the genes that he or she carries in the sex cells that will govern how long her/his pups’ tails will be.

      In nature, of course, some individuals no longer being well camouflaged in their changing environment, and so being easy prey, or their being unable to adapt to a changing climate or food supply, etc. causes some individual members of the species to die young or to reproduce less efficiently, while their stronger, smarter, or better camouflaged cousins flourish. 

    Then, over generations, the actual gene pool of the local community of that species does change. It contains more genes for short, climbing legs or long running legs or short tails or long tails or whatever the local environment is now paying a premium for. Gradually, the anatomy of the average species member changes. If short-tailed members have been surviving better for the last sixty generations, and long-tailed members have been dying young, before they could reproduce, this changes the gene pool. Eventually, as a consequence, there will be many more individuals with the shorter tail which has now become a basic trait of the species.  

     Pondering Rex’s case helped me to absorb Darwinism. My understanding grew and then, one day, through a mental leap, I suddenly "got" the newer, better model. A model that I hadn’t understood suddenly became clear, and it gave a deeper coherence to all of my ideas and observations about living things. For me, Lamarckism then became an interesting footnote in the history of Science, sometimes still useful because it showed me one way in which my thinking, and that of others, could go wrong.

     Now how would the Bayesian way of choosing between the Lamarckian and Darwinian models of evolution, or of re-shaping one’s views on the mentally challenged, compare with the Empiricist and Rationalist ways of dealing with these same problems?

Notes 

1. http://www.math.cornell.edu/~mec/2008-                           2009/TianyiZheng/Bayes.html 

Chapter 4.   Part D  

  Rationalism appears to be a regular precursor to intolerance. Rationalism in one stealthy form or another – oh, those secret truths that only the members of the secret in-group know! – has too often been a dangerous and even pathological affliction of human minds. The whole design of democracy is intended to remedy, or at least attenuate, this flaw in human thinking. In a democracy, decisions for the whole community are arrived at by a process that combines the carefully sifted wisdom and experience of all, backed up by references to observable evidence and a process of deliberated, openly-discussed, cooperative decision-making. One of the main intentions of the democratic model is to neutralize secret in-groups. In the sub-culture of democracy called "Science", for example, no theory gets accepted until it has been tested against reality, and the tests have then been peer-reviewed.

  

    Of course, while some of my argument against Rationalism may not be familiar to all readers, its main conclusion is familiar to Philosophy students. It is David Hume's conclusion. The famous empiricist stated long ago that merely verbal arguments which do not begin from material evidence, and yet later claim to arrive at conclusions which may be applied in the material world, should be “consigned to the flames”. (5.) Cognitive dissonance theory only gives modern credence to Hume's famous conclusion.

   Rationalism cannot serve as a firm and reliable base for a full philosophical system; its method of progressing from idea to idea, without reference to physical evidence, is at least as likely to end in rationalization as it is in rationality. Or, to be exact, trying to find a beginning point for a complete, life-regulating system of ideas – a philosophy – is far too important to my well-being for me to risk myself, my kids, and my everything on a beginning point that so much historical evidence says is deeply flawed. In order to build a universal moral code, we are going to need to begin from a better base model of the human mind. 

 Rationalism's failures lead us to conclude that Rationalism's way of ignoring the material world, or trying to impose some pre-conceived, theoretical model onto it, doesn't work.

  But beginning from sensory impressions of the material world, which is Empiricism's method, doesn't work either. It can't adequately describe the thing that is doing the beginning. Besides, if we lived by pure Empiricism, i.e. if we just gathered experiences, we would be transfixed by what was happening around us. At best, we would become “collectors” of sense data, recording and storing bits of experience, but with no idea what to do with these memories or how to do it or why we would even bother. We would have no larger model or vision to work under, and therefore, no strategies for avoiding the same catastrophes that our ancestors fell into and had to learn, by pain, not to fall into.

  Even the most dedicated of empiricistic/scientific researchers need concepts and theories, that is, general systems for organizing their ideas, to enable the researchers to formulate hypotheses that they then can test in their scientific research. Otherwise, what would they do with a lab but stumble in and stare at the equipment?

    Meanwhile, in the practical affairs of real, daily life, a purely empiricist, naive, unsophisticated, innocent outlook – one with no theories or models to begin from – actually wouldn’t be that pleasant. Without concepts and models of reality learned from the mentors of our cultures to guide us, we would inevitably have to build some, in order to survive the hazards of the real world. Hunger, disease, and wolves lurk. In that scenario, we would have to recapitulate all of the painful mistakes of human history. 

    So. Where are we now in our larger argument? I have to have a comprehensive system that gives coherence to all of my ideas and so to the patterns of behavior that I design and implement by basing them on those ideas. But if both of the big models of human thinking and knowing that traditional Western Philosophy offers – namely, Rationalism and Empiricism – seem shaky and unreliable, then what model of human knowing can I begin from? The answer is complex and controversial enough to deserve a chapter of its own.   

Notes 

    5. Hume, David; "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding"; cited in the wikipedia article "Metaphysics".     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics#British_empiricism

Chapter 4.        Part C 

       Other than rationalizations, the rationalists have nothing to offer.

               

      What in heaven's name are Plato's ideal "forms"? Can I measure one? Weigh one? If I claim to know the "forms" and you claim to know them, how might we figure out whether the "forms" you know are the same ones that I know? If, in a perfect dimension somewhere, there is a form of a perfect horse, what were eohippus and mesohippus, who were horsing around long before anything Plato could have recognized as a "horse" existed?

   Similarly I have to ask: What are Descartes' "clear and distinct ideas". “Clear and distinct” to whom? Him? His contemporaries? They do not seem to me to be so clear and distinct that I can base my thinking on them and thus stake my sanity and survival on them. I know that there are many people now living and many who have lived who do not, or did not, know what he was talking about. Not in any language. Yet they were, and are, fully human people. Many of Descartes’ favorite “clear and distinct ideas”, namely the basic ideas of arithmetic and geometry, are unknown in some cultures.

               

       This evidence suggests very strongly to me that Descartes' categories are simply not that "clear and distinct". If they were inherently obvious to all human minds, all humans would develop with these ideas built in, a point first noted by Locke. Looking at a lot of humans, especially ones in other cultures, tells us that Descartes’ clear and distinct ideas are not built in. We acquire them by learning them; we are not born with them built in. To me, arguing that they are somehow real, and that, in the meantime sensory experience is illusory, is a way of thinking that can then be extended to arguing for the realness of the creations of fantasy writers. Tolkien describes ents and orcs, and I go along with the fantasy for as long as it amuses me, but there are no ents, however much I may enjoy imagining them.

        J.R.R. Tolkien

               

       On the contrary, all concepts are merely mental models that help us to organize our memories in useful ways, ways that make it easier for us to plan and then act. Even ideas of numbers, Descartes' favorite “clear” ideas, are merely mental tools that are more useful than “ents”. Counting things helps us to act more strategically in the material world and thus to survive. Imagining ents gives us temporary amusement - not a bad thing, though not nearly as useful as an understanding of numbers.

  But numbers, like ents, are mental constructs. In reality, there are never two of anything. No two people are exactly alike, nor are two trees, two rocks, two rivers, or two stars. So then what are we actually counting? We are counting approximate conceptions built up from memories of experiences. Concepts far more useful in the survival game than the concept of an ent. And even those concepts that seem to be built into us (e.g. basic language concepts) are built in because over generations of evolution of the human genome, those concepts have given a survival advantage to their carriers. Language enables teamwork; teamwork works. Thus, as a physically explainable phenomenon, the human capacity for language also comes back into the fold of empiricism. 

   Geneticists can locate the genes that enable a developing embryo to build a language center in the future child's brain. And later, perhaps, MRI scanning can find the place in your brain where your "language program" is located, and, if you have a tumor there, a neuro-surgeon may be able to fix the "hardware" so a speech therapist can then help you to fix the program. The human capacity for language is an empirical phenomenon all the way down. (2.)  

  

    In the meantime, counting enabled more effective hunter-gatherer behavior. If the leader of the tribe knew that he had seen eight of the things his people called "deer" go into an area of what they called "bush", and if only seven had come out, he could calculate that if his friends caught up and circled around in time, and if they could execute well, work as a team, and kill, this week the children would not starve. Both the ability to count things, and the ability to articulate detailed instructions, boosted a primitive tribe’s odds of surviving. 

    Thus were the rudiments of arithmetic and language built up in us. And if the pre-cursors of language seem to be genetically built-in (human toddlers all over the world grasp that nouns are different from verbs, for example), while the pre-cursors of math are not, this fact would only indicate that basic language concepts are far more valuable in the survival game than basic math ones are. It would not indicate that either basic language concepts or basic arithmetic concepts are coming to us by some mysterious, inexplicable process out of the ideal dimension of the pure Good.

   

   We do not have to believe – as the Rationalists say we do – in another dimension of pure thought, with herds of “forms” or “distinct ideas” roaming its plains, in order to have confidence in our own ability to reason. By nature or by nurture, or subtle combinations of the two, we acquire and pass on to our kids those concepts that enable their carriers to survive. In short, reason’s roots can be explained in ways that don’t assume any of the things that Rationalism assumes.

       And now, Rationalism’s really disturbing implications start to occur to us. Wouldn't I love to believe that there is some hidden dimension in which the "forms" exist, perfect and eternal? Of course, I would. Then I would "know" that I was "right". Then I and a few simpatico acquaintances might agree among ourselves that we were the only people truly capable of perceiving the finer things in life or of recognizing which are the truly moral acts. Our training and our natural gifts have sensitized us; we are able to detect the beautiful and the good. For us to persuade the ignorant masses would be nothing more than rational. Considering how incapable they really are, why it would be an act of mercy! Quality people do exist. Of course, they do. 

          This view is not just theoretically possible. It was the view of some disciples of G. E. Moore almost a century ago and, even more blatantly, of some of the followers of Herbert Spencer a generation before that. (Accessible explanations of the views of Moore and Spencer can be found in wikipedia articles online.) (3.) (4.) 

          G.E. Moore

     Herbert Spencer 

         I am being sarcastic about the sensitivity of those aristocrats, of course. Both my studies and my experience of the world tell me that there are more than a few of these kinds of “sensitive” aristocrats roving around in today's world, in every land. (The "neocons" of the West?) We underestimate them at our peril. The worst among them don't like democracy. They yearn to be in charge, they have the brains to get into the positions of authority, and they have the capacity for life-long fixation on a single goal. Then, they have the ability to rationalize their way into sincerely believing that harsh and duplicitous measures are sometimes needed to keep order among the ignorant masses, i.e. everyone else.

           The conclusion that I came to about rationalism, as a young man, was that it was far too often a close companion of totalitarianism. The reason why was not clear to me until I was in my mid-thirties when I learned about cognitive dissonance and how it works and finally figured the puzzle out.

      I see how inclined toward rationalization other people are and how easily, even insidiously, they give in to it. On what grounds can I tell myself that I am above this very human weakness? Shall I tell myself that my mind is somehow more aesthetically and morally aware, or more disciplined, and is, therefore, immune to such self-delusions? I am aware of no logical grounds for that kind of conclusion about myself or anyone else whom I have ever met or whose works I have ever read.

         In addition, evidence which reveals this capacity for rationalization in human minds, even some of the most brilliant of human minds, litters history. How could Duhem, the brilliant French philosopher, have written off Relativity Theory just because a German proposed it? (In 1905, Einstein was thought of as, and thought of himself as, a German.) How could Heidegger or Heisenberg have endorsed the Nazi's propaganda? The "Fuehrer" principle. "German Science" yet!! Ezra Pound, arguably the best literary mind of his time, on Italian radio defending the Fascists! Decent people today recoil and even despair.

       George Bernard Shaw

Jean-Paul Sartre      

    How could George Bernard Shaw or Jean-Paul Sartre have become apologists for Stalinism? So many brilliant minds falling into this same trap. We have to wonder how so many geniuses of the academic, scientific, and artistic realms could have made such mistakes in the practical, everyday one. Once we understand how cognitive dissonance reduction works, the answer is painfully obvious. Brilliant thinkers are just as brilliant at self-comforting thinking – namely rationalizing – as they are at clear, critical thinking. And the most brilliant specious terms and fallacious arguments that they construct (i.e. the most convincing lies that they tell) are the ones that they tell themselves. Yes, even these brilliant minds! Look at the evidence!

     The most plausible, cautious, and responsible reasoning that I can apply to myself leads me to conclude that the ability to reason skillfully in abstract, formal terms has been a guarantee of nothing in the realm of practical affairs. Brilliance with formal thinking systems has been just as quick to advocate for totalitarianism and tyranny as it has for pluralism and democracy. We are going to have to work out a moral code that counters at least the worst excesses of the human flaw called “rationalization”, especially the forms found in the most intelligent of human beings if we want to survive. 

Notes 

2. Stark-Vance, Virginia and Mary Louise Dubay; "100 Questions      and Answers About Brain Tumors"; Josh and Bartlett Publishers;    2011.

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.e._Moore

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer

         Chapter 4.          Part B  

         Aronson was Festinger's student, who went on to win much acclaim in his own right. What they both worked on the most was cognitive dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance theory says something fairly simple, but its consequences are profound and far-reaching. Basically, it says that the inclination of our human minds is always toward finding what sound like good reasons for doing what we want to do anyway, and even more vigorously argued reasons for the things we've already done. (See Aronson's "The Social Animal".) (1.)   

               

        What it says essentially is this: a human organism tends, actively, insistently, and insidiously, to think and act so as to perceive and affirm itself as being consistent with itself. The mind shows in every action that it directs the body to do, and especially in every phrase that it directs the body to utter, the desire to remain consistent with itself. In practice, what this means is that humans tend to find and state what appear to themselves to be good reasons for doing what they will have to do anyway in order to maintain the conditions of life with which they have become comfortable. The mind strives constantly inside the individual human brain to make theory match practice or practice match theory – or to adjust both – in order to reduce its own internal "clashing", i.e. what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance".

       The novice investment counselor who used to speak disparagingly of all sales jobs will soon be able to tell you with heartfelt sincerity why every person, including you, ought to have a carefully selected portfolio of stocks. The physician adds another bank of expensive tests and therapies – both of doubtful effectiveness – every year or so to his repertoire. The plastic surgeon can show with argument and evidence that all of the cosmetic procedures he performs should be covered by the state's health care plan because his patients aren’t spoiled and vain, they are "aesthetically handicapped".

     The divorce lawyer is not setting two people who used to love one another at each other's throats. He is merely vigorously defending his client's best interests, while his client's misery and despair – at the depths of cruelty to which he and his former spouse have sunk – grow more profound every week. The cigarette company executive not only finds what he truly believes are fundamental flaws in the research; he smokes over two packs a day. The general does indeed send his own son to the front. Even his mother-in-law's decent qualities (not her rude ones) become more obvious to him on the day on which he learns that she owns over ten million dollars worth of real estate. (All that worry! No wonder she’s rude.)

     And the Philosophy professor, whose mind is trained to seek out inconsistencies? He once said that he believed in the primacy of the rights of the individual citizen over any group rights. He sought to abolish any taxes that might be used to pay for social services. Private charities could do such work, if it needed to be done at all. But then his daughter, who suffers from bipolar disorder, sometimes secretly goes off her medications, and periodically runs away from all forms of care, no matter how loving, ran off and became one of the homeless in the streets of a distant city. She was spotted and saved from almost certain death by alert street workers, paid (meagerly) by the state government. Now he argues for the responsibility of citizens to pay taxes that can be used to create social welfare programs and to hire workers whose job it is to look out for, and to look after, the destitute and unfortunate in society.

     He once considered euthanasia to be totally immoral. But now his aging dad with Alzheimer's disease has been deteriorating for over five years. Professor X is broke, sick, and exhausted himself. He longs for the heart-ache to be over. He knows that he cannot keep caring personally, day in and day out, for the needs of this now unrecognizable, pathetic, gnarled creature for very much longer. Even Dad, the Dad he once knew, would have agreed. Dad needs and deserves a gentle needle. Professor X is certain of it, and he tells his grad students and colleagues so during their quiet, confidential moments.

      

     Do we, in our endlessly subtle rationalizations, see what is not there? Not really. Out of the billions of sense details, the googuls of patterns that we might see among them, and the near infinite numbers of interpretations that we might give to those details, we tend to give prominence in our minds to those that are consistent with the view of ourselves and our way of life that we find psychologically most comforting. We don't like seeing ourselves as hypocrites. We don't like living with nagging feelings of anxiety (cognitive dissonance). Therefore, we tend to favor, and be drawn to, ways of thinking, speaking, and acting that will reduce that dissonance, especially in our internal pictures of ourselves. In private, inside our heads, we need to like ourselves.

           There is nothing really profound being said so far. But when we come to applying this theory to philosophies, the implications are a little startling.

        Other than rationalizations, the rationalists have nothing to offer. 

        

             Notes 

1. Aronson, Elliot; "The Social Animal", pp. 99 to 106; 

   W.H. Freeman and Company; 1972, 1976, 1980.