Complex Human Behavior and Evolution;
Exploration of the Evolution of
Intelligence
Introduction
Background
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Examining the brain
o
Creates a model of the world
o
Intelligence
and consciousness take place
o
All bodily functions are monitored
Define/Explore Terms
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Evolution
o
Darwin
§
Natural Selection
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Adaptation
§
Comparative Psychology – comparing the behavior
of different species.
§
Animal species changed over time with later
generations displaying characteristics that helped earlier generations survive
§
Believed it was logical to trace the development
of intelligence in different species, leading to the development of
intelligence in humans.
§
“It is...highly probable that with mankind the
intellectual faculties have been mainly and gradually perfected through natural
selection... Undoubtedly it would be interesting to trace the development of
each separate faculty [intellectual skill] from the state in which it exists in
lower animals to that which exists in man. (Darwin, 1874, pp. 128-129)” The Descent of Man
§
Tendency to anthropomorphize (project human
qualities upon animals) is still common. We find it natural to project our own
experiences into animal minds.
o
Deny the idea of “phylogenetic scale”
§
Aristotle’s notion of Scala Naturae, ranking
according to complexity and ability
§
George Romanes (Animal Intelligence) using “ejective inference” the assumption of a
similarity between animal minds and human minds.
§
Can not trace intelligence as it moved up the
phylogenetic scale from primitive animals to complex animals
§
Many different forms of intelligence, each
species unique forms of intelligence
ú
Bloodhound would rate as far more advanced than
a human on a test of odor recognition
§
Animals are not ancestral to each other and do
not represent a single evolving lineage
§
Currently existing species have been evolving
for millions of years and do not grow into each.
ú
No reason to expect their mental capacities to
fall into a smooth progression
o
Neo-Darwin
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Philosophy
o
Ontological Background
§
Can not attempt to give complete answers to metaphysical
questions and define ideas such as “real” or “exist” at the risk of becoming
esoteric.
§
Complete branch of philosophy dedicated to questions
of the mind. Philosophy of mind examines the nature of the mind, its
relationship with the body and explores dualism, materialism and other
o
Account for everything that is in existence and
in our experience
o
Interactionist
§
There is a physical world and a mental world
that interact
ú
Acts upon and is influenced by
§
This is true in the workings of the brain
o
Three Worlds (Sir Karl Popper) “Trialist”
§
1. Physical Objects and States
ú
Physical World of matter and energy
·
Inorganic – materials and objects
o
Tools, machines, books, art, music
o
Biology – living beings
§
2. States of Consciousness, Conscious Experience
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Subjective “knowledge”
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Experiences of perception, thinking, emotions,
memories, dreams, creativity, imagination
ú
Levels
·
Outer Sense – sense organs
o
Hearing, Touching, Seeing, Smelling
o
Vision with light and color
o
Range of odors and tastes
o
i.e. Sound, Light, Smell, Taste, Touch
·
Inner Sense
o
i.e Thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories,
dreams, imaginings, intentions
o
Private world
§
Can reveal through expression
§
i.e. linguistic, gestures, art forms
·
Pure Ego
o
Self
o
Sense of who you are
o
“Basis of our unity as an experiencing being
throughout our whole lifetime.”
§
3. Objective Knowledge
ú
Records of intellectual efforts
ú
Whole world of culture
·
Environment/World that was created by man and in
turn shapes man
·
Human Behavior
o
Francis Crick in his “Astonishing Hypothesis,”
posits, “that ‘you’, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and you
ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more
than the [behavior] of a vast assembly of nerve cells.”
o
Tinbergen
§
Ethology
§
Animal behavior
o
Evolutionary Psychology
§
Interprets human behavior as a manifestation
of underlying neural circuitry modified by evolution
§
Analyze adaptive value
ú
Mate selection
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Nonverbal forms of social communications
§
Simulations and models of evolutionary processes
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Mathematic, computer models to predict how
individuals with particular traits could interact in large populations
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Effect of genetic costs or benefits on the
population numbers of a species can be simulated on a computer and the effects
of varying assumptions about the ecosystem tested.
ú
Game Theory to study cooperation, competition,
negotiation, predation, different strategies
o
Most behavior is polygenic
§
Result of multiple genetic influences
o
A single genetic change almost always results in
multiple behavioral changes
§
Pleitropy
§
All the changes produced by a genetic alteration
(not just the most obvious) can affect evolution
o
A behavior that evolved in the past to serve one
function may serve an entirely different purpose at a later time.
o
Universality
o
Cultural Variations
·
Marr Levels
·
Micro and Macro Level Exploration
o
Ultimate and Proximate Causes (animal behavior)
o
Cultural Evolution
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Human behavior on group level
§
Development of Memes
o
Psychological Perspective (development,
multicultural, etc)
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Human behavior on individual level
·
Systems Analysis
·
Intelligence
o
Explore inner workings, not just the output
o
Different Definitions
§
Sternberg
§
Gardner
§
Hawkins…
o
Different forms of intelligence, therefore they
most likely evolved differently
o
Connection with Language
o
Problem solving capacity of the system
o
Prediction
and Memory (Hawkins 2004)
o
Memory in the DNA, in the genes?
§
Tells bacteria to move to higher concentrations
of nutrients
§
Tells trees to move towards areas with greater
sunshine by growing its branches and leaves towards the sky. Find water and
minerals by roots growing down into the soil.
§
Automatic
ú
No “thinking”
o
Plants developed more complex behavior
§
Emergence of “communication systems” based on
chemical signals
§
Insect damage leads to the slow transmittal of a
chemical through the vascular system to its other parts. In turn, this triggers
a defense mechanism which in many plants is the creation of a toxin to kill or
detract the insect.
·
Consciousness
o
Mind-Body
Problem
§
“Philosophical problem of how the mind is
related to the body, and of what properties, functions, and occurrences, should
be regarded as, respectively mental or physical” (Philosophy Terminology)
§
Ask how mental phenomena can be affected by and
can affect the physical collection of cells and molecules that make up the
brain [ME]
§
Body/Brain/Mind Connection
o
Philosophy of Mind
§
Complete branch of philosophy that explore these
issues such as the mind-body problem.
§
Philosophical questions, metaphors
o
Perception
o
Senses
o
Mindfulness
o
Awareness
o
Belief
formation?
o
Sense of
self?
·
Brain/Mind
o
What is the system?
o
How does it work?
o
Hardware/Software?
o
Evaluate theory of brain as a computer
§
Weaknesses, inefficiencies of theory
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Different processing
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Brain as a machine/computer
o
Turing
§
Turing test intelligence based on end result
ú
Imitation game
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If machine was indistinguishable from a human
being solely on the basis of written interactions
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[ME] Clearly this is not sufficient. The end
result is only one part of intelligence, the test does not address process or architecture.
o
Computational theory of mind
§
“Discrete-state device” that stores “symbolic
representations, manipulated by “syntactic rules.”
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“Thought is mental representation,”
“representationalism”
§
link semantics to syntax, link syntax to
causation?
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Mental models and syntactic rules
o
Connectionists
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Learning information as connections between
neurons
o
Comparison to machine sheds light to the unique
qualities of the brain
o
Attempts at designing machine intelligence have
led to a greater understanding of how the brain functions.
o
Gives an idea of what intelligence is and isn’t.
·
Architecture/Development of Brain
o
Reptilian Brain/Instinctive Mind
o
Limbic Brain/ Emotional Mind
o
Neocortex
Brain/ Analytical Mind
§
Most developed in humans
§
Pattern Recognition
§
Allman illustrates the development of the brain
by comparing it to an old power plant. He explains that “because the plant was
needed for continuous power output, it could not be shut down and retrofitted
with each new technology.” Therefore, old “control systems” stayed in
place while new ones were integrated
into the existing system. Nature “cannot afford” to throw out an old brain
system (Allman 1984).
o
Ornstein views the brain as “ramshackle house.” The
Amazing Brain
§
Evolution “remodeling old rooms to serve new functions.”
·
Jerison
o
Brain being the seed of intelligence,
evolutionary thinkers associated the size of the brain with level of
intelligence.
o
Increase in encephalization. Tripled in the last
3 Million Years.
o
(History of reptiles/mammals)
o
“The evolution of hearing and smell to
supplement vision as a distance sense is sufficient reason for the evolution of
an enlarged brain in the earliest mammals (Jerison 1976).” Only an enlarged
brain would allow a reptilian brain to analyze non-visual information. New neural
networks would have to evolve in order to process these new senses. Jerison explains that “the first expansion of
the vertebrate brain may have been primarily a packaging problem and that it
may only incidentally have resulted in the evolution of intelligence (1976).”
·
Minsky’s Society of Mind
o
Machine-intelligence approach
o
“Envision a mind (or brain) composed of many
partially autonomous ‘agents’ – a ‘Society’ of smaller minds- then we can
interpret ‘mental state’ and ‘partial mental state’ in terms of subsets of the
states of the parts of the mind”
Working Thesis
Development of well synthesized thesis
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Examine, evaluate and adopt a framework for
modeling human behavior and the evolution of intelligence
·
What are the existing frameworks?
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Comparison of current theories and their
associated algorithms
o
Systems models, programs, etc
·
Development of a (computational?) framework for
human behavior, specifically theory of the brain
o
Multi-disciplinary
Investigate how information is
represented, transmitted and transformed by humans (by the brain)?
·
Cross
association of the senses?
Brain can be viewed as a complex,
dynamic, adaptive system made up of multiple interconnected elements that have
the capacity to change and learn from experience.
·
Complex system
o
Takes in information and systematically creates
an output using feedback, sensors, etc.
·
Dynamic?
o
New neural networks and connections are formed
through time
·
Large Neocortexes give humans an innate ability
to recognize patterns (Hawkins 2004).
·
Adaptive/Adaptation
o
Results from the relations of environment and
genes.
o
“Genes load the gun, and environment pulls the
trigger.”
o
When genes or environment change the phenotype
changes.
o
Environment to develop in
o
Dimorphism
o
As time moves on the "product"
develops.
o
No End Goal to evolution
o
Nature/Nurture
o
Environmental vs. Genetic, interaction
§
Epigenetic influences
§
Environmental influences can modify gene
expression without changing the underlying DNA
§
Nutrition, activity level, health
o
Logical (Rational) vs. Emotional
o
Philosophy
