BOOK REVIEW.

Mind in Everyday Life and Cognitive Science. Sunny Y. Auyang, The MIT Press, 2000,
529 pages



Introduction

Sunny Y. Auyang's "Mind in Everyday Life and Cognitive Science" is a scientific book, but it is written in an easily understandable fashion. Auyang's background is in physics. She has written books on the philosophical significance of quantum field theory (Auyang 1995) and on complex-system theories (Auyang 1998). In this book, which might seem like something of a departure, Auyang attempts the construction of a comprehensive overview of current theories of mind. The central thesis is that "the mind is an emergent property of complex physical entities its infrastructures". When arguing for this thesis, she also presents her solution to the so-called 'binding problem'. One version of this problem is: "how do numerous unconscious processes merge into one consciousness." Auyang approaches the problem from the other end -- starting from everyday experiences rather than mental infrastructures. In doing so, she shows how the analyses of experiences may help in advancing cognitive science and how cognitive science can help us in understanding ourselves as autonomous subjects.

Auyang tackles what she calls "the large pictures of the human mind," exploring the relevance of cognitive science findings to everyday mental life. She proposes a model of an "open mind emerging from the self-organization of infrastructures," which she contrasts with prevalent models that treat mind as a disembodied brain or computer, subject to the control of external agents such as neuroscientists and programmers. Her model consists of three parts: (1) the open mind of our conscious life; (2) the mind's infrastructure, i. e., the unconscious processes studied by cognitive science; and (3) emergence, i. e., the relation between the open mind and its infrastructure. At the heart of Auyang's model is the mind that opens onto the world and makes it intelligible.

Closed vs. open mind

Auyang notes that cognitive scientists have produced remarkable results with neural models, in brain functioning, and in computer and robot designs. But she also asks important questions that don't get asked very often: What is the relevance of these results to our everyday experiences? Can they tell us who we are, how we understand and feel, why we care for others, what are the meanings of life? How many of cognitive science's claims on knowledge about mind have a scientific basis, how many are wishful thinking or hype? In a book detailing the advances in vision research, Francis Crick (1994:24) wrote: "We do not yet know, even in outline, how our brains produce the vivid visual awareness that we take so much for granted. We can glimpse fragments of the processes involved, but we lack both the detailed information and the ideas to answer the most simple questions: How do I see color? What is happening when I recall the image of a familiar face?" Auyang asks further questions: "What goes on in vision, in which I am simultaneously conscious of my own experiences and making sense of events in the world? How do I recall the past and anticipate the future, one of which is no more and the other not yet? Who am I, what is my sense of self? What are the meanings of my existence, autonomy, and freedom of action? How is it possible that a chunk of physical matter like me raises such questions at all? Why is it that among all matter in the universe, only a few chunks are capable of experiencing, thinking, feeling, sympathizing, knowing, doubting, hoping, choosing, speaking, and understanding each other? What are the peculiar characteristics of these capacities?" These are big questions. Ayang believes that science will eventually give some answers, but it will take a long time.

Ayang's book is concerned with the big pictures of mind, and their relationship to the results of cognitive science. She asks some more questions like: "What are the arching structures of human experiences and understanding? How are they illuminated by scientific findings? How does our intuition about them help scientific research?" In order to answer these questions, Auyang proposes a model the core of which is the open mind emerging from intricate infrastructures. She believes that it accounts for both scientific results and our everyday experiences better than the model that dominates current interpretations of cognitive science, which she calls the closed mind controlled by mind designers.

The book undertakes a comprehensive review of current theories of mind and explains how most theories fall under the robric of the closed mind controlled by the mind designers (the cognitive scientists). These models sharply distinguish an inner realm for the closed mind and an outer realm accessible only to mind designers. Most theories emphasize one or the other, sometimes to the extent of rejecting one side. Computationalism and connectionism are examples of inside theories; behaviorism and dynamicalism outside theories. In discussing them, Auyang introduces and explains many traditional and technical concepts, the adopting of which is useful for everyone interested in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Auyang also presents several theories that abolish inner-outer dichotomy. Chief among them is existential phenomenology, from which Auyang borrows major ideas but, fortunately, not their terminologies.

Auyang's model consists of two theses. First, the locus of cognitive science is not mind but mind's infrastructures or mechanisms underlying mental phenomena. Properly interpreted, results on infrastructural processes enhance our understanding of mind. Mistaking infrastructural processes for mental phenomena, however, leads to confusion and obscurity. Second, we cannot hope to explain how mind emerges via self-organization of infrastructural processes without clarifying what it is that emerges.

By "mental phenomena", Auyang means the activities described by common-sense mental and psychological terms such as experience, feel, care, concern, recognize, err, believe, desire, think, know, doubt, choose, remember, anticipate, hope, fear, speak, listen, understand, and intend. The closed mind sees only mental representations and has no way of knowing that they represent in the world. Mind designers match the representations to things in the world, thereby assigning meanings that are known only to themselves and not to the closed mind.

Open mind and its emergence from its infrastructures

Maybe the most interesting, and the most difficult chapter, scientifically at least, is the one dealing with the question concerning the emergence of the open mind from its infrastructures. Auyang introduces a self-consistency criterion for the theories of mind and explains why it is violated by closed-mind models. Then she introduces her model of the open mind emerging from infrastructures and its underlying hypothesis: mind is an emergent property of certain complex physical entities.

When cognitive scientists talk about computation or the computational mind, they usually refer to causal processes in the mental infrastructure. As Auyang notes, computer modeling is a powerful tool in cognitive science, but it belongs to the scientists, not to the processes that they study.

Infrastructures presuppose what they support; they are integral parts of a larger system where they play certain roles. Thus the mental infrastructure presupposes the mental level. Cognitive scientists delineate infrastructural processes according to their functions in mental life, such as their contributions to vision, memory, or speech comprehension.

Although knowledge about the mental infrastructure illuminates the structure of mind, its light is indirect. Infrastructural processes lack understanding and feeling. Therefore they are qualitively different from mental processes. To explain mind directly, we have to show how the two kinds of process are causally connected, how a process on the mental level emerges from the self-organization of many processes on the infra structural level. Cognitive scientists call this the binding problem; it demands an account of how myriad unconscious processes combine into the unity of consciousness. Auyang says that many "regard its solution as the Holy Grail, as it will answer the question of how our mental and physiological properties are related. Unfortunately, the knights are still out and it is unlikely that hey will return soon with the Grail."

In a previous study (Auyang 1998), Auyang found examples from various sciences showing that emergent properties are never easy to explain, and the connection between levels is a bridge that requires firm anchors on both levels. Auyang offers a familiar example. Fluids are made up of particles. A fluid's flow and turbulent motions are emergent properties that cannot be understood by summing particle motions, for they pertain to the large-scale structures that span the whole fluid. Physicists had long known the laws governing particle motions; however, they did not directly deduce fluid motions from the particle laws. They could not; such brute force deduction would go nowhere. They first developed fluid dynamics that clearly describe macroscopic flow characteristics. Only then did they develop statistical mechanics to connect fluid dynamics to particle motions. Why did they need fluid dynamics first? Auyang gives the following answer. From time immemorial people have poured water, fought floods, irrigated crops, and negotiated currents. Even as we deal with river rapids and pounding waves, we cannot describe fluid motions clearly. Thus we cannot say exactly what fluid properties we want explained in terms of particle motions. To characterize fluidity systematically requires a theory of its own. Fluid dynamics enables physicists to delineate macroscopic properties clearly and to pinpoint the characteristics most favorable for building the bridge to particle motions. This example shows that the bridge between two organizational levels must be anchored at both ends.

Likewise in tackling the binding problem: we have to first consider the problem of spelling out the basic peculiarities of the mental level. What are the phenomena that we expect the science of mind to explain? To answer these questions, according to Auyang, we must turn to our everyday experiences.

Scientists and folk in the street think about different things, but they think in the same ways, and their thinking shares the characteristics and structures of the human mind. These characteristics, Auyang summarily calls mind's openness to the world. Seeing, believing, hoping, and deciding are some of the most common mental activities that everyone engages in every day. They are equally fundamental to empirical scientific research, where they are generally called observing, hypothesizing, and predicting. All cases share the common characteristics that our observations and beliefs are mostly about events and states of affairs in the world that is physically outside us. It is common sense that reality goes in its own way independent of our thinking, so that hopes can shatter and predictions fail. We are aware of our own fallibility, so that we often doubt our eyes and judge our beliefs false. Scientists, too, as Auyang correctly notes, make falsifiability an essential criterion of their hypotheses and theories.

Auyang advocates commonsense psychology. People see; cameras do not see but merely register light. "See", "believe", "doubt", "hope", and "act" are parts of the mental vocabulary that express what most people mean by mind. Commonsense psychology is indispensable to understanding of ourselves and each other; everyone knows and uses it intuitively. It is ordinary and not glamorous.

When presenting the philosophical background of her model of the mind-open-to-the-world, Auyang begins with a story about Heraclitus. Once some visitors found Heraclitus warming himself at the hearth. They turned back scornfully, because they deemed the activity too ordinary for a great thinker, who should be doing extraordinary things such as contemplating the heavens. But Heraclitus said, "Come in, there are gods here, too." Telling the story in Parts of Animal (654), Aristotle exhorted his students to overcome the "childish aversion" to the humble and ordinary. Aristotle poured great effort in examining everyday thinking and practice, and he was far from alone. Immanuel Kant labored to analyze the general structures of ordinary objective experience, value judgment, and aesthetic appreciation. Martin Heidegger went further in putting everyday life in the center stage, and argued that human existence is essentially being-in-the-world. Auyang follows their paths. In soing so she bucks the fashion in current philosophy of mind and interpretations of cognitive science. Auyang maintains that the open mind belongs not to the brain, not even to a person in isolation, but to a person engaged in the natural and social world. The mental level where the mental phenomena occur is the engaged-personal level.

Conclusion

As Auyang notes, each mental faculty is a complex. Therefore she does not attempt to provide a comprehensive picture. Instead, she tries to focus on one important conceptual issue: the modularity of mind in the context of language; the concept of objects in perception; causality in memory; reason in emotion. After reading the book, one will certainly find she succeeds well.

References

Aristotle (1984). The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Auyang, S. Y. (1995). How Is Quantum Field Theory Possible? New York: Oxford University Press.

Auyang, S. Y. (1998). Foundations of Complex-System Theories in Economics, Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Physics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Crick, F. (1994). The Astonishing Hypotheses. New York: Charles Schribner's Sons.