The Invariant Gardener

The first paragraph is a beautiful piece of propaganda for neuroscience :

Recent advances in the neuroscience of emotions are high­lighting connections between cognitive and emotional func­tions that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of learning in the context of schools. (p.3)

Nothing explains such a statement, so this paragraph boils down to a mere annoucement of what is intended :

highlighting new connections between emotional, cognitive, and social func­tioning (p.3)

We may infer that a revolution is awaiting for these « new connections » between psychological dimensions. I’m absolutely thrilled at this idea of learning what these new connections are indeed. Aren’t you ?

But we will have to wait a little

The second paragraph start with an beautiful piece of self-conceit:

Modern biology reveals humans to be fundamentally emo­tional and social creatures. (p.3)

The interesting word here is « reveals ». As if the veil of ignorance was still concealing that truth. Obviously, the authors have a rough and self-centered conception of the history of ideas. Let us remind that in 1756 Hume already stated that  : « Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. »

I would suggest that almost all what is at stake in this article is probably solved by this simple assertion. We will come back to that later.

Concerning the fact that humans are social creatures, of course no revelation occured because of modern biology — unless Aristotle is considered as one of its representative.

But never mind with this illegitimate proudness.

Let’s come to the key argument of this paragraph :

Any com­petent teacher recognizes that emotions and feelings affect stu­dents ’ performance and learning, as does the state of the body, such as how well students have slept and eaten or whether they are feeling sick or well. We contend, however, that the relationship between learning, emotion and body state runs much deeper than many educators realize and is interwoven with the notion of learning itself. (p.3)

Are you exited when reading this ? Lucky you. It appears to me as one more contention without any substance. We’ll still have to wait.

So what about the next big statement ? :

It is not that emotions rule our cognition, nor that rational thought does not exist. It is, rather, that the original purpose for which our brains evolved was to manage our physiology, to optimize our survival, and to allow us to flourish. (p.3)

Not only the authors casually oppose Hume’s statement, they dogmaticly assert trivial statements concerning brain’s functions that give us no light on what is at stake.

So, we are still waiting for the first sound argumentation. I hope that you are not too disappointed.

It appears that propaganda is not the privilege of economics or politics. It is obviously an important tool in the factory of science.

Let’s come to deal with the first article’s abstract . It’s a gold mine with nice sprinkles. Immordino-Yang & Damasio make here two strong assertions. This is the first:

“the neurobiological evidence suggests that the aspects of
cognition that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely
learning, attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning,
are both profoundly affected by and subsumed within
the processes of emotion; we call these aspects emotional thought”.

Does this new concept of “emotional thought” has any value ? Do we need that ? Has a thought devoid of any affect whatsoever been isolated in some laboratory recently ? Have we any proof or, at least, any clue that such an emotionless thought could exist in some situation ? The answer is: no, no, no and no

There’s no need for the concept of “emotional thought”. All thoughts are emotional like all mammals have blood in their veins. The concept of “bloody mammals” won’t help.

The second assertion is the following :

“emotion-related processes are required for
skills and knowledge to be transferred from the structured
school environment to real-world decision making because
they provide an emotional rudder to guide judgment and action.”

This statement originates in Damasio’s beautiful book “Descartes’ error” where he explains at length that people who have lost their emotional capacity are no longer able to make judgments or decisions. Their intellectual capacity, even if apparently intact, is of no help when a choice has to be made.

This is an interesting result, sure enough, but what is its meaning from a psychological viewpoint.

Let’s use a metaphore. Do you remember these tournaments between knights that where used as judgments of God in Middle-Age? What would happen if no knights were willing to fight, each for one opposite version of a the “reality” waiting for the judgment of God? Well, no such judgment would ever occur. Indecision would remain, of course.

When there’s no energy invested in the process, no decision can be made. It’s obvious, almost trivial. It’s a logical consequence of the energetic conception of emotions which is now older than a century and which has been defended by many great authors of the XIXth and XXth centuries.

Nothing (really) new under the sun. That’ll be my provisional conclusion for tonight

A colleague of mine recently handed me two articles dealing with neurosciences and education. After their takeover bid attempt of psychology, neurosciences are coveting education as a possible conquest for their empire.

Sadly enough, less and less people seems able to judge this discourse for what it is: a pure rhetoric with no serious argument

In an attempt to help teachers, educators and any person interested by the field of education staying away of what appears to me as useless conceptions, in what follows I will indulge in the activity which always gives me tremendous satisfactions : criticism.

In a serie of posts, I intend to read very closely these two recent articles :

1) “We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education” by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio.
2) How Educational Theories Can Use Neuroscientific Data by Daniel T. Willingham and John W. Lloyd  

I don’t have read them yet. So it is supposed to be a kind of challenge. My only conviction is that, anyhow, I will learn something even if I still don’t know what.

My starting point is the fact that in my theory and pratice of psychology I have simply no use of neuroscience. Psychology is an autonomous science. I wouldn’t say so of education science but I am adamant that neurosciences won’t help in the least because my mind of school psychologist is complety devoid of neuroscientific concepts which would be of practical value when operating in the psychological realm.

Of course, this journey inside of the neuroscientific rhetoric will be an excellent opportunity to draw a global perspective of my synthetic conception of psychology

I hope you will have fun as much as I surely will.

In 1963, Magoroh Maruyama issued in the American Scientist a beautiful article devoted to positive feedback processes. It was entitled “The Second Cybernetics: Deviation-Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes » and had been refused 10 times before acceptance (see Per Nyfelt). Maruyama’s idea was that « since its inception, cybernetics was more or less identified as a science of self-regulating and equilibrating systems…[and has] paid less attention to the systems in which the mutual causal effects are deviation-amplifying…[which] are ubiquitous.”

Maruyama lamented that “in contrast to the progress in the study of equilibrating systems, the deviation-amplifying systems have not been given as much investment of time and energy”.

45 years later, nothing has changed. The situation remains desperately biased in favor of negative feedback processes which are all over the place thanks to the many contributors to control theory.

Maruyama’s work is much cited and acknowledged as an important landmark in the history of cybernetics but it had no sequel. Too bad.

Why is it so? Why, if ubiquitous, positive feedback systems are still in the margin of scientific focus? Isn’t the life itself a deviation-amplifying system?

What comes to my mind at this point, is the possibility that Maruyama didn’t go far enough in challenging the empire of negative feedback. He conceived of the second cybernetics as the study of “the deviation-amplifying mutual causal relationships” as opposed to those of “the deviation-counteracting type”.

In spite of its obvious meaningfulness, this opposition is misleading because it is simply not sufficient. The second cybernetics should have defined as the study of positive feedback loops as opposed to negative feedback mechanims.

Where lies the difference? It is quite simple : positive feedback loops are not only deviation amplifying, they are first and foremost reproduction oriented. Deviation-amplifying is a mere side-effect of reproduction. Anything which is a living organization is, in essence, a positive feedback. The more bacteria, dogs, cats or humans you have, the more you will get in a close future. C’est la vie ! The sad thing with the deviation amplifying conception is that it has been an open avenue for anyone willing to reinstate the ultimate power of limiting factors, hence, the necessity of deviation-counteracting regulations.

As expressed by François (1999) “a limitless positive feedback, supposing a considerable — but limited — source to feed on, would indeed quickly turn absolutely destructive. So, it is important to study limits to such a growth.”

That’s precisely what has been done. Positive feedback has just been studied as a possibly disruptive mechanism and the fact that it is the bread and butter of the whole process of life has been disregarded. Most scholars and educated laymen know what an autopoeitic structure is. But how many are aware of the fact that any self-reproducing organization is a positive feedback loop per se? Only a very few of them.

In his PhD thesis in robotics, Thomas Labella definition of positive feedback is just one particular example of a widely disseminated and/or stereotyped misconception:

“Positive feedback: it occurs when small perturbations of the system change its dynamics in such a way as to increase the perturbations themselves. The feedback leads to a snowball amplification of the original perturbations. Perturbations can come from changes in the environment or by some random behaviour of the system.

Negative feedback: it is the opposite of the positive process feedback. Perturbations of the system changing its dynamic have the effect of reducing the causes of the perturbations. In self-organising systems, it usually starts having effects after positive feedback and has the purpose of keeping the system under control. Without negative feedback, a system can literally explode.”

Obviously, for the sake of security, resorting to the negative feedback comes like a reflex and unfortunately, the wording “deviation-amplifying systems” invites such a reaction.

But the problem that I want to stress here is definitely not a mere problem of wording. It is not the more serious problem of the insufficient attention paid to positive feedback processes in scientific investigations. It is much more than that. It is the fact that we have here a tremandous misconception which is left unoticed with the consequence that positive feedback is simply not acknowledge as the essence of reproduction, hence, the essence of any kind of organization. It’s an ontological problem. Positive feedback is simply not acknowledged for what it is : ubiquitous.

In order to get a better understanding of this huge mistake, just try to think of the most normative process in psychology, the most deviation-counteracting dynamics. What could it be if not habit? A habit is the most powerful obstacle to change. We have all noticed that in our everyday life.

But what is a habit if not, also, a positive feedback mechanism, since the more you repeat an act, the more you will repeat it in the future?

What does this contradiction means? It’s quite simple : what stands at the root of both deviation-counteracting and deviation-amplifying mechanisms is just one and the same process : reproduction. Reproduction is the essence of organization since no organization can maintain itself, hence, exist, if it is not capable of self-reproduction. Reproduction is the alpha and the omega of any kind of organization, whether biological, psychological or sociological. Positive feedback loops is all what it takes.

Therefore, let’s come to a foolish hypothesis : anything that exist is an organization, it has to reproduce, hence, it is a positive feedback loop, a circular process or anything that feeds on itself. Negative feedbacks don’t have such a structure.  They don’t feed on themselves. They are definitely not a self-reproducing organization. Quite the opposite. Therefore, from an ontological perspective, a foolish conclusion that seems nonetheless warranted is that they have no existence per se.

Of course, you have a problem with this very idea, don’t you? However, just try to think of the most normative process in biology, the most deviation-counteracting dynamics. What could it be if not natural selection? Well, as you certainly know, natural selection which is all over the place in scientific explanation of evolution, simply doesn’t exist in the ontological sense I am currently addressing. It doesn’t exist, indeed, since natural selection is … a metaphor which has been used by Darwin in order to express in the most obvious fashion that there is no selection agent ! 

Where does selection come from? Wanna bet? From reproduction, of course ; from the differential reproduction which takes place among the population of competing self-reproducing processes. No negative feedback has to be evoked here. All living forms are positive feedback dynamics contributing to a mutually co-selective process. Negative feedback mechanisms appear when attention is restricted to some local aspects of the circular causal chains involved. Negative feedback are mere perceptive bias.

The first cybernetics is about deviation-counteracting systems. The second cybernetics has been an attempt to draw more attention on deviation-amplifying systems. Imitating Maruyama gesture and, most probably, imitating his failure, I would suggest that it is time to confront the fact that, like natural selection, negative feedback don’t exist. It is time to study positive feedback loops as the only things that can emerge from chaos, hence the only things that exist. This study could conveniently be labelled “the third cybernetics”.