Friday 8 January 2016
The watchtower Society's commentary on self-control.
SELF-CONTROL:
Keeping in check, restraining, or controlling one’s person, actions, speech, or thoughts. (Ge 43:31; Es 5:10; Ps 119:101; Pr 10:19; Jer 14:10; Ac 24:25) The Hebrew and Greek terms involving self-control literally denote having power or control over oneself. Self-control is a ‘fruit of God’s spirit’ (Ga 5:22, 23); and Jehovah, though possessing unlimited powers, has exercised it at all times. Instead of taking immediate action against wrongdoers, he has allowed time to pass so that they might have the opportunity to turn from their bad ways and thereby gain his favor.—Jer 18:7-10; 2Pe 3:9.
However, once it was firmly established that those to whom time for repentance had been extended would not avail themselves of his mercy, Jehovah rightly ceased to refrain from executing his judgment. A case in point involves the desolaters of Jerusalem. Failing to recognize that Jehovah allowed them to gain control of Israel to discipline the Israelites for unfaithfulness, these desolaters treated them without mercy and carried the discipline farther than God’s judgment had required. (Compare Isa 47:6, 7; Zec 1:15.) Jehovah had foreknown this and, through the prophet Isaiah, indicated that the time would come when he would no longer hold back from punishing the desolaters: “I have kept quiet for a long time. I continued silent. I kept exercising self-control. Like a woman giving birth I am going to groan, pant, and gasp at the same time. I shall devastate mountains and hills, and all their vegetation I shall dry up.”—Isa 42:14, 15.
Christ Jesus also exercised self-control. The apostle Peter, when calling to the attention of house servants the need to be in subjection to their owners, wrote: “In fact, to this course you were called, because even Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely. . . . When he was being reviled, he did not go reviling in return. When he was suffering, he did not go threatening, but kept on committing himself to the one who judges righteously.”—1Pe 2:21-23.
In “the last days” lack of self-control was to be one of the characteristics marking those who would not be practicing true Christianity. (2Ti 3:1-7) However, since Christians are to be imitators of God and of his Son (1Co 11:1; Eph 5:1), they should strive to cultivate self-control in all things. (1Co 9:25) The apostle Peter stated: “Supply to your faith virtue, to your virtue knowledge, to your knowledge self-control, to your self-control endurance, to your endurance godly devotion, to your godly devotion brotherly affection, to your brotherly affection love. For if these things exist in you and overflow, they will prevent you from being either inactive or unfruitful regarding the accurate knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”—2Pe 1:5-8.
The quality of self-control should especially be in evidence among those serving as overseers in Christian congregations. (Tit 1:8) If overseers are to deal effectively with problems inside the congregation, they must maintain self-control in word and deed. The apostle Paul counseled Timothy: “Further, turn down foolish and ignorant questionings, knowing they produce fights. But a slave of the Lord does not need to fight, but needs to be gentle toward all, qualified to teach, keeping himself restrained under evil, instructing with mildness those not favorably disposed.”—2Ti 2:23-25.
Failure to exercise self-control in a given situation can tarnish a long record of faithful service and plunge one into all kinds of difficulties. An illustration of this is what happened to King David. Though loyal to true worship and having love for the righteous principles of God’s law (compare Ps 101), David committed adultery with Bath-sheba, and this led to his having her husband Uriah placed in a battle position where death was a near certainty. As a consequence, for years afterward, David was plagued with severe difficulties within his family. (2Sa 12:8-12) His case also demonstrates the wisdom of avoiding situations that can lead to a loss of self-control. Whereas he could have left the rooftop of his palace, David evidently kept on looking at Bath-sheba as she bathed herself and so came to have a passion for her.—2Sa 11:2-4.
Similarly, it would not be good for a person lacking self-control to remain single when he could enter into an honorable marriage and thereby protect himself against committing fornication. In this regard, the apostle Paul wrote: “If they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to be inflamed with passion.”—1Co 7:9, 32-38.
Keeping in check, restraining, or controlling one’s person, actions, speech, or thoughts. (Ge 43:31; Es 5:10; Ps 119:101; Pr 10:19; Jer 14:10; Ac 24:25) The Hebrew and Greek terms involving self-control literally denote having power or control over oneself. Self-control is a ‘fruit of God’s spirit’ (Ga 5:22, 23); and Jehovah, though possessing unlimited powers, has exercised it at all times. Instead of taking immediate action against wrongdoers, he has allowed time to pass so that they might have the opportunity to turn from their bad ways and thereby gain his favor.—Jer 18:7-10; 2Pe 3:9.
However, once it was firmly established that those to whom time for repentance had been extended would not avail themselves of his mercy, Jehovah rightly ceased to refrain from executing his judgment. A case in point involves the desolaters of Jerusalem. Failing to recognize that Jehovah allowed them to gain control of Israel to discipline the Israelites for unfaithfulness, these desolaters treated them without mercy and carried the discipline farther than God’s judgment had required. (Compare Isa 47:6, 7; Zec 1:15.) Jehovah had foreknown this and, through the prophet Isaiah, indicated that the time would come when he would no longer hold back from punishing the desolaters: “I have kept quiet for a long time. I continued silent. I kept exercising self-control. Like a woman giving birth I am going to groan, pant, and gasp at the same time. I shall devastate mountains and hills, and all their vegetation I shall dry up.”—Isa 42:14, 15.
Christ Jesus also exercised self-control. The apostle Peter, when calling to the attention of house servants the need to be in subjection to their owners, wrote: “In fact, to this course you were called, because even Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely. . . . When he was being reviled, he did not go reviling in return. When he was suffering, he did not go threatening, but kept on committing himself to the one who judges righteously.”—1Pe 2:21-23.
In “the last days” lack of self-control was to be one of the characteristics marking those who would not be practicing true Christianity. (2Ti 3:1-7) However, since Christians are to be imitators of God and of his Son (1Co 11:1; Eph 5:1), they should strive to cultivate self-control in all things. (1Co 9:25) The apostle Peter stated: “Supply to your faith virtue, to your virtue knowledge, to your knowledge self-control, to your self-control endurance, to your endurance godly devotion, to your godly devotion brotherly affection, to your brotherly affection love. For if these things exist in you and overflow, they will prevent you from being either inactive or unfruitful regarding the accurate knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”—2Pe 1:5-8.
The quality of self-control should especially be in evidence among those serving as overseers in Christian congregations. (Tit 1:8) If overseers are to deal effectively with problems inside the congregation, they must maintain self-control in word and deed. The apostle Paul counseled Timothy: “Further, turn down foolish and ignorant questionings, knowing they produce fights. But a slave of the Lord does not need to fight, but needs to be gentle toward all, qualified to teach, keeping himself restrained under evil, instructing with mildness those not favorably disposed.”—2Ti 2:23-25.
Failure to exercise self-control in a given situation can tarnish a long record of faithful service and plunge one into all kinds of difficulties. An illustration of this is what happened to King David. Though loyal to true worship and having love for the righteous principles of God’s law (compare Ps 101), David committed adultery with Bath-sheba, and this led to his having her husband Uriah placed in a battle position where death was a near certainty. As a consequence, for years afterward, David was plagued with severe difficulties within his family. (2Sa 12:8-12) His case also demonstrates the wisdom of avoiding situations that can lead to a loss of self-control. Whereas he could have left the rooftop of his palace, David evidently kept on looking at Bath-sheba as she bathed herself and so came to have a passion for her.—2Sa 11:2-4.
Similarly, it would not be good for a person lacking self-control to remain single when he could enter into an honorable marriage and thereby protect himself against committing fornication. In this regard, the apostle Paul wrote: “If they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to be inflamed with passion.”—1Co 7:9, 32-38.
On our neighbours' minds II
Does Intelligence Depend on a Specific Type of Brain?
Denyse O'Leary January 7, 2016 1:03 PM
All life forms participate in some kind of intelligence and intentionality, in the sense that for billions of years they have sought to live and have adapted for that purpose. Nonetheless, animals that also demonstrate individual intelligence are orders of magnitude less intelligent than humans -- whether they are closely related to us physically (apes) or not (bird species).
We know their intelligence by its effects, in the same way we know gravity by its effects -- without being quite sure what it is. But we have some signposts.
Anatomy Probably Matters, But It Is Not Clear How
Even though shellfish, like octopuses, strive to stay alive, they could not open a jar to do so. Anatomy prevents it. Appendages may reward attempts at reasoning by expanding the search space for solutions. But they do not directly cause that search, any more than hands "caused" the Lascaux cave paintings. If they did, chimps would be painting caves too.
Painting? Domesticated elephants can be taught to "paint" identifiable figures with their trunks. But they are following a series of motions guided and rewarded by by their trainers. They don't know that they are painting, or how it looks to humans.
Chimpanzees have been taught to "paint" as well, but their problem is the opposite: They work readily with the materials, of their own volition, but don't attempt to represent anything, probably because their brains do not work that way.
Anatomy, it seems, can only expand search space for a purpose already envisioned by the mind. It does not expand the mind, so far as we can tell.
Tool Use May Be a Product of Definition
Use of tools is often used as a measure of intelligence, but the examples we have raises questions about what qualifies as tool use, and what it means. This becomes especially tricky when dealing with tool-use by invertebrates, or other creatures vastly different from humans in their complexity and anatomy.
Octopuses, which have very different brains from vertebrates, have been filmed carrying away halved coconut shells to use as shelters. Recently, crows were also filmed (via hidden close-up cameras) twisting sticks to make hooks to root insects out of tree bark:
Humans have previously seen the crows making the tools in artificial situations, in which scientists baited feeding sites and provided the raw tools; but researchers say the New Caledonian crows have never been filmed doing this in a completely natural setting
Also:
"Crows really hate losing their tools, and will use all sorts of tricks to keep them safe," Rutz said in a statement. "We even observed them storing tools temporarily in tree holes, the same way a human would put a treasured pen into a pen holder."
These findings are fascinating, but they also highlight the limits of assessing intelligence through tool use. First, confirming the crows' natural behavior is important, but it should not come as a surprise. Had the crows never behaved this way in nature and never been coached by humans either, it would be remarkable indeed if they tumbled to it all by themselves in captivity. Life forms of widely varying (apparent) intelligence store and hide things for later use, so that is not hard evidence of remarkable intelligence.
Brain imaging tests show that animals "treat sticks, hooks, and other tools as extensions of their bodies." If so, they probably do not abstract the concept of "tool" (that is, not-self), which limits their ability to envision other possible uses for a tool.
In any event, how we define tool use is complex, and somewhat muddled. As noted earlier, apes using stones are claimed to be entering the Stone Age. But no similar claim is made for great antshrikes, who apparently only recently started smashing snail shells using stones (the snails were a new arrival in their habitat).
Then what about birds that drop shellfish onto stones from the air, to break them? Does it make a difference if the presence or absence of suitable natural media influences choices of method?
Greater vasa parrots of Madagascar use pebbles for grinding minerals from seashells, though it is worth noting that many birds, including wild parrots, may eat little bits of insoluble minerals anyway, to aid in digestion. If the pebbles are tools, is the grit a tool? Are false teeth a tool? At any rate, the bird may not see any difference, and is probably not heading in any direction in particular in the use of tools.
The ability to modify tools -- often cited as evidence of additional intelligence -- prompts the same question: Does modifying a tool -- regarded as an extension of the appendage -- involve more intellectual effort than finding and marking a suitable scratching tree, as a sort of stationary comb? As you can see, even the seemingly simple task of identifying tool-use is difficult. We need much more observation of life forms in their natural habitats in order to spot larger patterns in (one hopes) a growing body of data on animal intelligence.
Sometimes, interpreting tool-use through the lens of naturalism leads to lapses in common sense. Take, for example, this section from an otherwise informative article by Annalee Newitz at I09, "The Mysterious Tool-Making Culture Shared by Crows and Humans" We are advised, "The fact that humans use tools doesn't make us unique among animals."
True, but we then hear:
Riskier environments seem to spur tool use, perhaps because food sources are more difficult to come by. And in addition, animals with large toolkits -- like humans -- seem to invent more tools as their populations grow. This could help explain why humanity's population explosion over the past century has been accompanied by an explosion in tool diversity, including radical new technologies.
Animals with large toolkits -- like humans?
If Newitz thought anything remotely similar had happened among non-human life forms, she did not mention it.
No matter how it is spun, the difference between the bent stick and the New Horizons satellite mapping Pluto is not merely one of degree. The crow is interested in rooting for grubs, and even if it develops other uses for the stick, it will never be interested in mapping Pluto. That isn't a "shared culture" at all, and we are back with the same conundrum of animal vs. human minds.
Are There Patterns in Invertebrate Brains and Intelligence?
Reptiles and fish sometimes show signs of intelligence despite having quite different brains from mammals. But, being exothermic, they don't do much of anything very often. For example, turtles may rescue each other, but can also spend months in a state of icy torpor with little adverse effect. At one time, it was assumed that the intelligence to rescue would not co-exist with lengthy inertia (the reptilian or triune brain hypothesis). Actually, the two qualities can co-exist, though they wouldn't be simultaneous.
Invertebrate just means "not a vertebrate," so there is no single type of invertebrate brain:
Invertebrates have immensely diverse nervous structures and body plans, revealing the variety of solutions evolved by animals living successfully in all kinds of niches.
And that is where things get a bit complicated. Starfish, essentially, do not have a brain or even ganglia, just a nerve ring. Their behavior has accordingly been attributed to "self-organized behavioral patterns" not strictly determined by external stimuli. It would be good to unpack what that implies.
Crayfish seem somewhere in the middle, that is, smarter than we used to think, even though the crustacean brain (a "microbrain" of three fused ganglia) is often studied on account of its comparative simplicity.
We keep learning new complexities of other invertebrate behavior too. For example, mantis shrimp use a polarizing light display to warn their fellows that a hiding place from predators is already taken.
Commentator Eric Metaxas recently drew public attention to the "genius" invertebrate, the octopus. Octopuses, we are told, are practically aliens. But how unusual are they and why?
U.S. researcher Dr. Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago, said: "The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities."
It also has an unusually large genome, with more protein-coding genes than humans have (33,000 vs., 25, 000):
This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families, Ragsdale says. One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes -- more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature's unusually large brain and the organ's even-stranger anatomy. Of the octopus's half a billion neurons -- six times the number in a mouse -- two-thirds spill out from its head through its arms, without the involvement of long-range fibres such as those in vertebrate spinal cords. The independent computing power of the arms, which can execute cognitive tasks even when dismembered, have made octopuses an object of study for neurobiologists such as Hochner and for roboticists who are collaborating on the development of soft, flexible robots.
It seems that a relatively big brain benefits even an invertebrate -- but we are now left to wonder how the octopus acquired one. Researchers consider it a striking example of convergent evolution -- with vertebrates.
What Do We Know About Insect Intelligence?
We don't know very much about insect intelligence. The envisioned long, slow continuum of intelligence from mite to man has meant that many explicitly non-human types of intelligence have been written off or explained away. Brain researcher Antoine Wystrach helps us understand how ants perceive the world:
Counter-intuitively, years of bottom-up research has revealed that ants do not integrate all this information into a unified representation of the world, a so-called cognitive map. Instead they possess different and distinct modules dedicated to different navigational tasks. ... These results demonstrate that the navigational intelligence of ants is not in an ability to build a unified representation of the world, but in the way different strategies cleverly interact to produce robust navigation.
He adds, "We need to keep in mind that this is only our current level of understanding. Even insect brains are far too complex to be fully understood in the near future. "
If the current description proves accurate, the ant may show considerable intelligence, but not have a unified sense of self, in the same way that a dog or raven probably does (all these sensations are happening to me). Other researchers are less cautious, claiming that insects may have consciousness and "could even be able to count."
But consciousness is the central conundrum in philosophy even for humans. And, as Clever Hans and similar co-operative animals have shown, the ability to count, like tool use, is not necessarily reliable evidence of intelligence. The count may be driven by metabolism, prompting, or simply the fact that a given number of efforts succeeds (without the number being abstracted in any way).
The way insect intelligence develops may be different as well. Bees, like many insects, exhibit "an incredibly wide variety of intelligent behaviors." But, according to some researchers, insect intelligence tends to increase when individuality is suppressed (the hive mind):
Compared to social species, they found solitary species had significantly larger brain parts known as the mushroom bodies, which are used for multisensory integration, associative learning and spatial memory -- the best available measure of complex cognition in these insects. The finding supports the idea that, as insect social behavior evolved, the need for such complex cognition in individuals actually decreased.
Some have described this "hive" model of intelligence as a "superorganism":
We will see that the 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of bees in a honeybee swarm, just like the 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of neurons in a human brain, achieve their collective wisdom by organizing themselves in such a way that even though each individual has limited information and limited intelligence, the group as a whole makes a first-rate collective.
If so, animal intelligences can be highly developed and yet quite different from each other. No specific type of brain is required and humans remain outliers.
But intelligence is not all we wonder about. There is also the question of subjectivity -- a sense of self. If jellyfish were conscious of their apparent intention to catch fish, would they have a mind without a brain? When starved amoebas form a slime mold, and act temporarily as a colony, do they have a hive mind, which simply dissipates when they find food and break up? Intelligence is today's unknown country. But some animal intelligences do encourage a sense of self, as anyone who has lived with a group of domestic animals will attest. Can there be a sort of minimal self?
Denyse O'Leary January 7, 2016 1:03 PM
All life forms participate in some kind of intelligence and intentionality, in the sense that for billions of years they have sought to live and have adapted for that purpose. Nonetheless, animals that also demonstrate individual intelligence are orders of magnitude less intelligent than humans -- whether they are closely related to us physically (apes) or not (bird species).
We know their intelligence by its effects, in the same way we know gravity by its effects -- without being quite sure what it is. But we have some signposts.
Anatomy Probably Matters, But It Is Not Clear How
Even though shellfish, like octopuses, strive to stay alive, they could not open a jar to do so. Anatomy prevents it. Appendages may reward attempts at reasoning by expanding the search space for solutions. But they do not directly cause that search, any more than hands "caused" the Lascaux cave paintings. If they did, chimps would be painting caves too.
Painting? Domesticated elephants can be taught to "paint" identifiable figures with their trunks. But they are following a series of motions guided and rewarded by by their trainers. They don't know that they are painting, or how it looks to humans.
Chimpanzees have been taught to "paint" as well, but their problem is the opposite: They work readily with the materials, of their own volition, but don't attempt to represent anything, probably because their brains do not work that way.
Anatomy, it seems, can only expand search space for a purpose already envisioned by the mind. It does not expand the mind, so far as we can tell.
Tool Use May Be a Product of Definition
Use of tools is often used as a measure of intelligence, but the examples we have raises questions about what qualifies as tool use, and what it means. This becomes especially tricky when dealing with tool-use by invertebrates, or other creatures vastly different from humans in their complexity and anatomy.
Octopuses, which have very different brains from vertebrates, have been filmed carrying away halved coconut shells to use as shelters. Recently, crows were also filmed (via hidden close-up cameras) twisting sticks to make hooks to root insects out of tree bark:
Humans have previously seen the crows making the tools in artificial situations, in which scientists baited feeding sites and provided the raw tools; but researchers say the New Caledonian crows have never been filmed doing this in a completely natural setting
Also:
"Crows really hate losing their tools, and will use all sorts of tricks to keep them safe," Rutz said in a statement. "We even observed them storing tools temporarily in tree holes, the same way a human would put a treasured pen into a pen holder."
These findings are fascinating, but they also highlight the limits of assessing intelligence through tool use. First, confirming the crows' natural behavior is important, but it should not come as a surprise. Had the crows never behaved this way in nature and never been coached by humans either, it would be remarkable indeed if they tumbled to it all by themselves in captivity. Life forms of widely varying (apparent) intelligence store and hide things for later use, so that is not hard evidence of remarkable intelligence.
Brain imaging tests show that animals "treat sticks, hooks, and other tools as extensions of their bodies." If so, they probably do not abstract the concept of "tool" (that is, not-self), which limits their ability to envision other possible uses for a tool.
In any event, how we define tool use is complex, and somewhat muddled. As noted earlier, apes using stones are claimed to be entering the Stone Age. But no similar claim is made for great antshrikes, who apparently only recently started smashing snail shells using stones (the snails were a new arrival in their habitat).
Then what about birds that drop shellfish onto stones from the air, to break them? Does it make a difference if the presence or absence of suitable natural media influences choices of method?
Greater vasa parrots of Madagascar use pebbles for grinding minerals from seashells, though it is worth noting that many birds, including wild parrots, may eat little bits of insoluble minerals anyway, to aid in digestion. If the pebbles are tools, is the grit a tool? Are false teeth a tool? At any rate, the bird may not see any difference, and is probably not heading in any direction in particular in the use of tools.
The ability to modify tools -- often cited as evidence of additional intelligence -- prompts the same question: Does modifying a tool -- regarded as an extension of the appendage -- involve more intellectual effort than finding and marking a suitable scratching tree, as a sort of stationary comb? As you can see, even the seemingly simple task of identifying tool-use is difficult. We need much more observation of life forms in their natural habitats in order to spot larger patterns in (one hopes) a growing body of data on animal intelligence.
Sometimes, interpreting tool-use through the lens of naturalism leads to lapses in common sense. Take, for example, this section from an otherwise informative article by Annalee Newitz at I09, "The Mysterious Tool-Making Culture Shared by Crows and Humans" We are advised, "The fact that humans use tools doesn't make us unique among animals."
True, but we then hear:
Riskier environments seem to spur tool use, perhaps because food sources are more difficult to come by. And in addition, animals with large toolkits -- like humans -- seem to invent more tools as their populations grow. This could help explain why humanity's population explosion over the past century has been accompanied by an explosion in tool diversity, including radical new technologies.
Animals with large toolkits -- like humans?
If Newitz thought anything remotely similar had happened among non-human life forms, she did not mention it.
No matter how it is spun, the difference between the bent stick and the New Horizons satellite mapping Pluto is not merely one of degree. The crow is interested in rooting for grubs, and even if it develops other uses for the stick, it will never be interested in mapping Pluto. That isn't a "shared culture" at all, and we are back with the same conundrum of animal vs. human minds.
Are There Patterns in Invertebrate Brains and Intelligence?
Reptiles and fish sometimes show signs of intelligence despite having quite different brains from mammals. But, being exothermic, they don't do much of anything very often. For example, turtles may rescue each other, but can also spend months in a state of icy torpor with little adverse effect. At one time, it was assumed that the intelligence to rescue would not co-exist with lengthy inertia (the reptilian or triune brain hypothesis). Actually, the two qualities can co-exist, though they wouldn't be simultaneous.
Invertebrate just means "not a vertebrate," so there is no single type of invertebrate brain:
Invertebrates have immensely diverse nervous structures and body plans, revealing the variety of solutions evolved by animals living successfully in all kinds of niches.
And that is where things get a bit complicated. Starfish, essentially, do not have a brain or even ganglia, just a nerve ring. Their behavior has accordingly been attributed to "self-organized behavioral patterns" not strictly determined by external stimuli. It would be good to unpack what that implies.
Crayfish seem somewhere in the middle, that is, smarter than we used to think, even though the crustacean brain (a "microbrain" of three fused ganglia) is often studied on account of its comparative simplicity.
We keep learning new complexities of other invertebrate behavior too. For example, mantis shrimp use a polarizing light display to warn their fellows that a hiding place from predators is already taken.
Commentator Eric Metaxas recently drew public attention to the "genius" invertebrate, the octopus. Octopuses, we are told, are practically aliens. But how unusual are they and why?
U.S. researcher Dr. Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago, said: "The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities."
It also has an unusually large genome, with more protein-coding genes than humans have (33,000 vs., 25, 000):
This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families, Ragsdale says. One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes -- more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature's unusually large brain and the organ's even-stranger anatomy. Of the octopus's half a billion neurons -- six times the number in a mouse -- two-thirds spill out from its head through its arms, without the involvement of long-range fibres such as those in vertebrate spinal cords. The independent computing power of the arms, which can execute cognitive tasks even when dismembered, have made octopuses an object of study for neurobiologists such as Hochner and for roboticists who are collaborating on the development of soft, flexible robots.
It seems that a relatively big brain benefits even an invertebrate -- but we are now left to wonder how the octopus acquired one. Researchers consider it a striking example of convergent evolution -- with vertebrates.
What Do We Know About Insect Intelligence?
We don't know very much about insect intelligence. The envisioned long, slow continuum of intelligence from mite to man has meant that many explicitly non-human types of intelligence have been written off or explained away. Brain researcher Antoine Wystrach helps us understand how ants perceive the world:
Counter-intuitively, years of bottom-up research has revealed that ants do not integrate all this information into a unified representation of the world, a so-called cognitive map. Instead they possess different and distinct modules dedicated to different navigational tasks. ... These results demonstrate that the navigational intelligence of ants is not in an ability to build a unified representation of the world, but in the way different strategies cleverly interact to produce robust navigation.
He adds, "We need to keep in mind that this is only our current level of understanding. Even insect brains are far too complex to be fully understood in the near future. "
If the current description proves accurate, the ant may show considerable intelligence, but not have a unified sense of self, in the same way that a dog or raven probably does (all these sensations are happening to me). Other researchers are less cautious, claiming that insects may have consciousness and "could even be able to count."
But consciousness is the central conundrum in philosophy even for humans. And, as Clever Hans and similar co-operative animals have shown, the ability to count, like tool use, is not necessarily reliable evidence of intelligence. The count may be driven by metabolism, prompting, or simply the fact that a given number of efforts succeeds (without the number being abstracted in any way).
The way insect intelligence develops may be different as well. Bees, like many insects, exhibit "an incredibly wide variety of intelligent behaviors." But, according to some researchers, insect intelligence tends to increase when individuality is suppressed (the hive mind):
Compared to social species, they found solitary species had significantly larger brain parts known as the mushroom bodies, which are used for multisensory integration, associative learning and spatial memory -- the best available measure of complex cognition in these insects. The finding supports the idea that, as insect social behavior evolved, the need for such complex cognition in individuals actually decreased.
Some have described this "hive" model of intelligence as a "superorganism":
We will see that the 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of bees in a honeybee swarm, just like the 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of neurons in a human brain, achieve their collective wisdom by organizing themselves in such a way that even though each individual has limited information and limited intelligence, the group as a whole makes a first-rate collective.
If so, animal intelligences can be highly developed and yet quite different from each other. No specific type of brain is required and humans remain outliers.
But intelligence is not all we wonder about. There is also the question of subjectivity -- a sense of self. If jellyfish were conscious of their apparent intention to catch fish, would they have a mind without a brain? When starved amoebas form a slime mold, and act temporarily as a colony, do they have a hive mind, which simply dissipates when they find food and break up? Intelligence is today's unknown country. But some animal intelligences do encourage a sense of self, as anyone who has lived with a group of domestic animals will attest. Can there be a sort of minimal self?
In search of high quality ignorance II
In Science Education, "Confusion" Can Be a Synonym for Stimulation
Sarah Chaffee January 7, 2016 2:25 PM
Writing at NPR's Cosmos and Culture blog, psychology professor Tania Lombrozo highlights the role that confusion can play in learning -- especially in science ("Sometimes Confusion Is a Good Thing"). This may seem paradoxical. Isn't dispelling confusion an aim of education?
In fact, Lombrozo argues, it may be helpful in some contexts. She refers to a study by Sidney D'Mello, Blair Lehman, Reinhard Pekrun, and Art Graesser in the journal Learning and Instruction. The researchers induced confusion by exposing learners to contradictory opinions and then asking them to decide which opinion had the most scientific merit. Student confusion was correlated with enhanced learning. Although correct answers were later provided to the students in the study, this may not be possible in areas of ongoing scientific debate.
The authors note:
The most obvious implication of this research is that there might be some practical benefits for designing educational interventions that intentionally perplex learners. Learners complacently experience a state of low arousal when they are in comfortable learning environments involving passive reading and accumulating shallow facts without challenges...
As I have observed here before, allowing students to grapple with scientific questions engages them in the act of inquiry. Note that there is a difference between uncertainty that is irrelevant to the question at hand (due to a teacher's lack of clarity, for example, or the inability to find the right page in the textbook) and experiencing the dynamic tension between alternate viewpoints.
Lombrozo reflects:
One possibility is that confusion is not itself beneficial, but rather a marker that an important cognitive process has taken place: The learner has appreciated some inconsistency or deficit in her prior beliefs. But another possibility is that confusion is itself a step toward learning -- an experience that motivates the learner to reconcile an inconsistency or remedy some deficit. In this view, confusion isn't just a side effect of beneficial cognitive processes, but a beneficial process itself. Supporting this stronger view, there's evidence that experiencing difficulties in learning can sometimes be desirable, leading to deeper processing and better long-term memory.
In science, it is uncertainty, and the urge to explore the unknown, that leads to discovery. Research aims to extend the current body of knowledge, not merely to regurgitate what has already been found. In the Journal of Cell Science, Martin Schwartz writes about working on his PhD:
I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did.
That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.
Unanswered questions are central to ongoing scientific inquiry. They spur further investigation. Exposing students to the interplay between questions and answers prepares them to engage in research.
In the study of life's origins, for example, many fundamental questions are unresolved. Priestley Medalist George M. Whitesides wrote, "Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea." Similarly, leading molecular biologist Eugene Koonin noted:
Despite many interesting results to its credit, when judged by the straightforward criterion of reaching (or even approaching) the ultimate goal, the origin-of-life field is a failure -- we still do not have even a plausible coherent model, let alone a validated scenario, for the emergence of life on Earth.... A succession of exceedingly unlikely steps is essential for the origin of life, from the synthesis and accumulation of nucleotides to the origin of translation; through the multiplication of probabilities, these make the final outcome seem almost like a miracle.
Koonin acknowledges that some progress has been made, but falls back on the controversial multiverse theory to explain how life sprang into existence against all odds. The enigma of biological origins offers an ideal opportunity for students to learn about a field of persistent scientific uncertainty. Isn't this better than insisting that students accept evolution as "fact," then work backward to explain all that they see in that dogmatic light?
Another mystery is the Cambrian explosion. As many of our readers will know, nearly two-thirds of known animal body plans appeared in a roughly 5 to 10 million-year period -- a brief span in geological terms. Some scientists question the ability of natural selection and random mutation to produce so many diverse animals in such a short period. In their book The Cambrian Explosion, Douglas Erwin and James Valentine wrote:
One important concern has been whether the microevolutionary patterns commonly studied in modern organisms by evolutionary biologists are sufficient to understand and explain the events of the Cambrian or whether evolutionary theory needs to be expanded to include a more diverse set of macroevolutionary processes. We strongly hold to the latter position.
Similarly, in reviewing Erwin and Valentine's book, the journal Science noted:
The Ediacaran and Cambrian periods witnessed a phase of morphological innovation in animal evolution unrivaled in metazoan history, yet the proximate causes of this body plan revolution remain decidedly murky. The grand puzzle of the Cambrian explosion surely must rank as one of the most important outstanding mysteries in evolutionary biology.
Yet textbooks generally avoid acknowledging this mystery. In Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells writes:
Since booklets published by the National Academy of Sciences ignore the fossil and molecular evidence and call evolution a "fact," perhaps it is not surprising to find biology textbooks doing the same. "Descent with modification from common ancestors is a scientific fact, that is, a hypothesis so well supported by evidence that we take it to be true," according to Douglas Futuyma's 1998 college textbook Evolutionary Biology....Although Futuyma's book subsequently discusses the Cambrian explosion, its emphasis is on explaining it away rather than dealing candidly with its challenge to Darwinian theory.
It does not matter what you call it; uncertainty, grappling with puzzling questions, acknowledging areas of scientific ignorance -- it is pedagogically sound and a real and integral part of science. This is one reason that Discovery Institute recommends teaching both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory. Our science education policy states:
[Discovery Institute] believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned.
John Scopes himself put it well: "If you limit a teacher to only one side of anything, the whole country will eventually have only one thought... I believe in teaching every aspect of every problem or theory." Our position is simply that, in science education, admitting areas of honest uncertainty should extend to evolution as much as to any other subject. By withholding such stimulation, educators do students no favor.
Sarah Chaffee January 7, 2016 2:25 PM
Writing at NPR's Cosmos and Culture blog, psychology professor Tania Lombrozo highlights the role that confusion can play in learning -- especially in science ("Sometimes Confusion Is a Good Thing"). This may seem paradoxical. Isn't dispelling confusion an aim of education?
In fact, Lombrozo argues, it may be helpful in some contexts. She refers to a study by Sidney D'Mello, Blair Lehman, Reinhard Pekrun, and Art Graesser in the journal Learning and Instruction. The researchers induced confusion by exposing learners to contradictory opinions and then asking them to decide which opinion had the most scientific merit. Student confusion was correlated with enhanced learning. Although correct answers were later provided to the students in the study, this may not be possible in areas of ongoing scientific debate.
The authors note:
The most obvious implication of this research is that there might be some practical benefits for designing educational interventions that intentionally perplex learners. Learners complacently experience a state of low arousal when they are in comfortable learning environments involving passive reading and accumulating shallow facts without challenges...
As I have observed here before, allowing students to grapple with scientific questions engages them in the act of inquiry. Note that there is a difference between uncertainty that is irrelevant to the question at hand (due to a teacher's lack of clarity, for example, or the inability to find the right page in the textbook) and experiencing the dynamic tension between alternate viewpoints.
Lombrozo reflects:
One possibility is that confusion is not itself beneficial, but rather a marker that an important cognitive process has taken place: The learner has appreciated some inconsistency or deficit in her prior beliefs. But another possibility is that confusion is itself a step toward learning -- an experience that motivates the learner to reconcile an inconsistency or remedy some deficit. In this view, confusion isn't just a side effect of beneficial cognitive processes, but a beneficial process itself. Supporting this stronger view, there's evidence that experiencing difficulties in learning can sometimes be desirable, leading to deeper processing and better long-term memory.
In science, it is uncertainty, and the urge to explore the unknown, that leads to discovery. Research aims to extend the current body of knowledge, not merely to regurgitate what has already been found. In the Journal of Cell Science, Martin Schwartz writes about working on his PhD:
I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did.
That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.
Unanswered questions are central to ongoing scientific inquiry. They spur further investigation. Exposing students to the interplay between questions and answers prepares them to engage in research.
In the study of life's origins, for example, many fundamental questions are unresolved. Priestley Medalist George M. Whitesides wrote, "Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea." Similarly, leading molecular biologist Eugene Koonin noted:
Despite many interesting results to its credit, when judged by the straightforward criterion of reaching (or even approaching) the ultimate goal, the origin-of-life field is a failure -- we still do not have even a plausible coherent model, let alone a validated scenario, for the emergence of life on Earth.... A succession of exceedingly unlikely steps is essential for the origin of life, from the synthesis and accumulation of nucleotides to the origin of translation; through the multiplication of probabilities, these make the final outcome seem almost like a miracle.
Koonin acknowledges that some progress has been made, but falls back on the controversial multiverse theory to explain how life sprang into existence against all odds. The enigma of biological origins offers an ideal opportunity for students to learn about a field of persistent scientific uncertainty. Isn't this better than insisting that students accept evolution as "fact," then work backward to explain all that they see in that dogmatic light?
Another mystery is the Cambrian explosion. As many of our readers will know, nearly two-thirds of known animal body plans appeared in a roughly 5 to 10 million-year period -- a brief span in geological terms. Some scientists question the ability of natural selection and random mutation to produce so many diverse animals in such a short period. In their book The Cambrian Explosion, Douglas Erwin and James Valentine wrote:
One important concern has been whether the microevolutionary patterns commonly studied in modern organisms by evolutionary biologists are sufficient to understand and explain the events of the Cambrian or whether evolutionary theory needs to be expanded to include a more diverse set of macroevolutionary processes. We strongly hold to the latter position.
Similarly, in reviewing Erwin and Valentine's book, the journal Science noted:
The Ediacaran and Cambrian periods witnessed a phase of morphological innovation in animal evolution unrivaled in metazoan history, yet the proximate causes of this body plan revolution remain decidedly murky. The grand puzzle of the Cambrian explosion surely must rank as one of the most important outstanding mysteries in evolutionary biology.
Yet textbooks generally avoid acknowledging this mystery. In Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells writes:
Since booklets published by the National Academy of Sciences ignore the fossil and molecular evidence and call evolution a "fact," perhaps it is not surprising to find biology textbooks doing the same. "Descent with modification from common ancestors is a scientific fact, that is, a hypothesis so well supported by evidence that we take it to be true," according to Douglas Futuyma's 1998 college textbook Evolutionary Biology....Although Futuyma's book subsequently discusses the Cambrian explosion, its emphasis is on explaining it away rather than dealing candidly with its challenge to Darwinian theory.
It does not matter what you call it; uncertainty, grappling with puzzling questions, acknowledging areas of scientific ignorance -- it is pedagogically sound and a real and integral part of science. This is one reason that Discovery Institute recommends teaching both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory. Our science education policy states:
[Discovery Institute] believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned.
John Scopes himself put it well: "If you limit a teacher to only one side of anything, the whole country will eventually have only one thought... I believe in teaching every aspect of every problem or theory." Our position is simply that, in science education, admitting areas of honest uncertainty should extend to evolution as much as to any other subject. By withholding such stimulation, educators do students no favor.
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