A World-Is-Random Model to Explain How Disorder and Chaos Skews Cognitve Scripts

From Frontiers in Psychology: Personality and Social Psychology, this is an interesting cognitive model for understanding how perceived chaos and disorder can create a world-is-chaotic mindset that shapes expectations and one's sense of self-efficacy and personal agency.

Full Citation: 
Kotabe, HP. (2014, Jun 13). The world is random: A cognitive perspective on perceived disorder. Frontiers in Psychology: Personality and Social Psychology; 5:606. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00606

The world is random: a cognitive perspective on perceived disorder

Hiroki P. Kotabe

• Center for Decision Research and Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Abstract

Research on the consequences of perceiving disorder is largely sociological and concerns broken windows theory, which states that signs of social disorder cause further social disorder. The predominant psychological explanations for this phenomenon are primarily social. In contrast, I propose a parsimonious cognitive model (“world-is-random” model; WIR) that may partly account for these effects. Basically, WIR proposes that perceiving disorder primes randomness-related concepts, which results in a reduction to one’s sense of personal control, which has diverse affective, judgmental, and behavioral consequences. I review recent developments on the psychological consequences of perceiving disorder and argue that WIR can explain all of these findings. I also cover select correlational findings from the sociological literature and explain how WIR can at least partly explain them. In a general discussion, I consider possible alternative psychological models and argue that they do not adequately explain the most recent psychological research on disorder. I then propose future directions which include determining whether perceiving disorder causes a “unique psychology” and delimiting boundary conditions.

Most of the research on the possible effects of perceived disorder on humans is sociological and concerns broken windows theory (BWT). BWT basically states that signs of social disorder (e.g., broken windows) cause further social disorder (e.g., more vandalism, theft; Wilson and Kelling, 1982; see also Keizer et al., 2008). Explanations for broken windows effects (BWE) are generally social. They focus on social norms, social signaling, and lack of social monitoring. In contrast, in this article, I propose a cognitive, “inside-one-head” model of the psychological consequences of perceiving disorder. After proceeding with the cognitive analysis, I turn back to the important naturally occurring social phenomena that I believe are partly explained by this cognitive model.

Before reviewing some recent developments relevant to this model, I should operationalize what I mean by “perceived disorder” (and “perceived order”): Perceived disorder is an interpreted state of the world in which things are in non-patterned and non-coherent positions. Oppositely, perceived order is an interpreted state of the world in which things are in patterned and coherent positions. Note that these broad definitions include all animate or inanimate things (i.e., all things that can be represented in mental “chunks”), and thus may apply both to purely physical disorder (e.g., objects randomly scattered about on a computer screen) and social disorder (e.g., littering, crime). The key requirement is that the stimuli are processed as non-patterned and non-coherent chunks.

There seems to be a developing interest among psychologists in the consequences of perceived disorder on human psychology (not necessarily in the context of BWT, however). Recently, some consequences of perceived disorder pertinent to the proposed model were documented by – in chronological order – Heintzelman et al. (2013), Vohs et al. (2013), and Chae and Zhu (2014): Heintzelman et al. (2013) documented a psychological state consequence of disorder. Across four studies, they manipulated perceived disorder either by (a) presenting people with pictures of seasons in temporal sequence (e.g., autumn, winter, spring, summer) or random sequence (e.g., winter, autumn, summer, spring; Experiments 1 and 2) or, in a more stripped-down presentation, (b) presenting people with semantic triads (i.e., Remote Associates Test items; Mednick, 1962) that were either coherent (e.g., “falling, actor, dust”; common associate: star) or incoherent (e.g., “belt, deal, nose”; Experiments 3 and 4). Subsequently, people across all four experiments reported less meaning in life in the disorderly condition than in the orderly condition (ds ranging from 0.37 to 0.54). Vohs et al. (2013) documented some judgment and behavioral consequences of perceived disorder. Across three experiments, they manipulated the immediate lab environment to be either orderly or disorderly. People in disorderly environments donated less (d = 0.73) and chose fewer healthier snacks (φ = 0.37; Experiment 1); they were rated as more creative in coming up with alternative uses for an ordinary object (d = 0.61; Experiment 2); and they showed stronger preference for an unconventional product whereas those in the orderly environment showed stronger preference for a conventional product (interaction, φ = 0.20; Experiment 3). Most recently, Chae and Zhu (2014) documented some other judgment, behavioral, and state consequences of perceived disorder. Across four experiments, they manipulated perceived disorder à la Vohs et al. (2013) – by having people do tasks in either a disorderly or orderly lab environment. Compared with people in the orderly environment, people in disorderly environments reported being willing to pay more for tempting but unnecessary products (d = 0.43; Experiment 1); they reacted slower in a Stroop task (d = 0.46) and reported feeling more depleted (d = 0.69; Experiment 2); and they did not persist as long on an unsolvable puzzle (d = 0.42, Experiment 3; d = 0.73, Experiment 4). Further, and most germane to the proposed model, they found in Experiment 4 that a threat to feeling in control mediated the effects of perceived disorder on persistence.

Perceived disorder apparently has a variety of psychological consequences for affect (broadly defined, see Gross and Thompson, 2007), judgment, and behavior. Is there a common process underlying these effects? Next, I will elaborate on a model that could account for the foregoing experimental findings as well as correlational findings in the sociological literature. In a general discussion, I will discuss three possible alternative psychological models that may explain some but not all of these findings, as well as future directions.

The World is Random

To follow along, see Figure 1 for a diagram of the proposed world-is-random model (WIR): Neglecting randomness, chance, and luck leads us to an illusion of control. WIR proposes that perceiving disorder primes concepts related with randomness/chance/luck (thus creating a “world-is-random” mindset). It may thus lead us to (accurately) believe we have less control over outcomes in low-control/high-chance situations because we weight available representations related to randomness/chance/luck more (Tversky and Kahneman, 1973). Through the same mechanism, it may even lead us to (erroneously) believe we have less control over ourselves when strongly tempted (i.e., when in a state of low-control/high-chance). This sense of losing personal control may have a variety of affective, judgmental, and behavioral consequences.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 1. The world-is-random (WIR) model.

WIR can account for the experimental findings discussed earlier. Regarding the investigation on perceived disorder and meaning in life by Heintzelman et al. (2013), WIR explains these results as a negative consequence of losing a sense of personal control. Feeling in control is a fundamental human need (White, 1959; Bandura, 1977; Deci and Ryan, 1985; Higgins, 2011). If not met, humans suffer. One plausible manifestation, according to self-determination theory, is a feeling that life is meaningless because one cannot control outcomes (unfulfilled competence need) or choose their own way (unfulfilled autonomy need).

The sense of losing control resulting from perceiving disorder can also explain the results from the experiments by Vohs et al. (2013). In Experiment 1, people in a disorderly environment (a) donated less and (b) chose fewer healthy snacks. Having personal control means being able to agentically influence outcomes (White, 1959; Deci and Ryan, 1985). Thus, people whose sense of personal control is reduced, by definition, see their actions (e.g., donating) as having less consequence. Similarly, people whose sense of personal control is reduced are likely to see their efforts to control oneself as more in vain, thus it follows that they would exert less self-control. In Experiment 2, people in a disorderly environment were rated as more creative. Research has shown that people are more creative when they enter a state of “flow,” which necessitates, among other operating conditions, a reduction in executive control (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). WIR proposes that, through priming and increasing the judgment weight of randomness-related concepts, perceived disorder decreases our sense of control over oneself. Such changes to our beliefs may reduce the motivation to exert executive control (Job et al., 2010; Kotabe and Hofmann, submitted), facilitating advancement into a flow state of unshackled creativity. Regarding Experiment 3, people in a disorderly environment more strongly preferred an unconventional product whereas people in an orderly environment more strongly preferred a conventional product. WIR explains these results similar to how it explains the results from Experiment 2. By reducing our sense of personal control and use of control resources, perceived disorder may facilitate a state of flow in which conventional boundaries “disappear.”

World-is-random explains the results from the experiments by Chae and Zhu (2014) in a slightly different way. It assumes that the sense of losing control is threatening, and that this threat, in turn, is depleting to cognitive resources (Glass et al., 1969; Baumeister et al., 2007; Inzlicht and Kang, 2010), thus resulting in more impulsive behaviors across various domains. Accordingly, in Experiment 1, people in a disorderly environment were willing to pay more for tempting products and, in Experiment 2, people in a disorderly environment were slower to react in a Stroop task and reported feeling more depleted. In Experiments 3 and 4, people in a disorderly environment persisted less on an unsolvable puzzle. Moreover, the authors showed that a reduction in and threat to one’s sense of personal control mediated the effect of perceived disorder on persistence in Experiment 4, consistent with the mechanisms I propose.

WIR can also (partly) explain a variety of correlational findings in the sociological literature. For brevity, and because this paper does not focus on the sociological consequences of perceived disorder, I will only review select research intended to demonstrate the breadth of findings WIR may at least partly account for (for a summary, see Table 1)1. First, take a cross-sectional study by Geis and Ross (1998). Analyzing data of a representative sample of 2,482 adults, aged 18–92 years, in Illinois (from the 1995 survey of Community Crime and Health), they found that neighborhood-level disorder was associated with perceived powerlessness. WIR can explain this similarly to how it explains the “meaning in life” findings by Heintzelman et al. (2013). That is, by making the world feel random, people start to lose a sense of control which manifests itself in negative outlooks on life such as feeling powerless and meaningless. Another likely manifestation is distress; Cutrona et al. (2000) found that neighborhood-level disorder was associated with distress, and this was moderated by life outlook, temperament, and quality of relationships. Specifically, disorder was associated with higher distress among people with a more negative life outlook, more negative temperament, and low-quality relationships. Importantly, this study suggests that although perceiving disorder may result in negative affect via a reduction in a sense of personal control, it is not inevitable. This is consistent with recent psychological research showing that people sometimes buffer against the threat of losing control through compensatory control mechanisms (Whitson and Galinsky, 2008; Kay et al., 2010). It seems to be currently assumed that people generally possess and use this ability, but future research may find that there are individual differences. This would clearly have implications for the proposed model, and may necessitate including moderators. Ross (2000) analyzed other data from the 1995 survey of Community Crime and Health and found that neighborhood disorder was associated with self-reported depression. Again, these results are consistent with the idea that perceived disorder results in a sense of losing control, which has insidious psychological consequences. Lastly, Perkins and Taylor (1996) surveyed 412 people across 50 neighborhoods in Baltimore to evaluate the relationship between neighborhood disorder and fear of crime. Three methods were used to measure both physical and social dimensions of neighborhood disorder: self-reported resident perceptions, on-site observations by trained raters, and newspaper content analysis. All three measures of neighborhood disorder predicted fear of crime, corroborating the general definition of perceived disorder assumed in WIR. As fear is an affective response to threat (Watson, 2000), these findings can be explained by the sense of threat resulting from losing a sense of control: When we are threatened, we generate a primitive fight-or-flight response in which we pay particular attention to sources of threat in our environment (so we can avoid them or prepare for them), such as lurking criminals. It follows that people would start to lose a sense of security and safety, as documented in this study.

TABLE 1


TABLE 1. Select experimental and correlational findings on the psychological consequences of disorder.

General Discussion

In the following discussion, I consider possible alternatives to WIR and explain why they may be inadequate. I then discuss some future directions for psychological research on perceived disorder.

Alternative Explanations

Cognitive Disfluency Explanation

Perceived disorder might be cognitively processed more disfluently than perceived order. Disfluency is thought to make people think more deeply and abstractly (Alter, 2013). Therefore, perceived disorder might have effects on judgment and behavior through disfluency, though it is unlikely that disfluency would have as severely negative affective consequences as the sense of losing control proposed by WIR. That said, both accounts could explain how perceived disorder may result in more accurate judgments in low-control/high-chance situations – the difference being the mechanism through which this happens. WIR would make this prediction by stating that disorder in the environment results in priming concepts related to randomness/chance/luck, and thus, through the availability heuristic, these concepts are appropriately weighted more in judgment. The cognitive fluency explanation would make this prediction by stating that people make more accurate judgments in a disorderly environment because they think harder (utilizing more effortful “system 2” processing, Kahneman, 2011). Both mechanisms could jointly work together, however, the recent experimental research reviewed in this article is more consistent with the conditioning/priming account of WIR than a disfluency account, since it seems unlikely that cognitive disfluency would result in the sense of losing control. If anything, it would result in the opposite.

Social/Rational Agent Explanation

This general and prevalent view concerns how perceived disorder may signal information about social norms and social monitoring. It suggests that people’s judgments and behaviors in disorderly environments can be understood as rationally aimed at minimizing expected costs and maximizing expected benefits, given the available social information. Regarding social norms and signaling, environmental disorder (e.g., litter) defines the descriptive norm (“littering is okay here”) which inhibits the effectiveness of the injunctive norm (e.g., no littering policy), thus the perceived costs of littering are lowered and people litter (Cialdini et al., 1990; Cialdini, 2007). Regarding social monitoring, perceived disorder may reduce the perceived costs of crime (e.g., littering) by signaling that monitoring/policing is low and thus punishment is unlikely, thus reducing expected costs of committing crimes. While these explanations can account widely for BWE (thus their popularity), they do not provide a clear account for the recent advances in psychological research on perceived disorder, which has documented that perceived disorder results in threats to and reductions of the sense of control. That being said, I do not doubt that perceived disorder can have such social effects, which is partly why I think that there may be a “unique psychology” (i.e., a distinct constellation of psychological phenomena) caused by perceiving disorder―more on that later.

Goal-Based Explanation

This explanation makes similar predictions to the social/rational agent explanation. Basically, a reduction in the expected costs of a crime (e.g., littering) due to perceived disorder of that form in the environment results in a weakened ‘act-appropriately’ goal and consequently increases the strength of “hedonic” (e.g., littering) and “gain” (e.g., stealing) goals (see Lindenberg and Steg, 2007; Keizer et al., 2008). Thus, people who see litter in the environment also commit other crimes such as illegally using graffiti and stealing. Again, while this can explain BWE and the “spreading of disorder” (see Keizer et al., 2008), it does not seem to relate with the documented reduction in a sense of personal control.

Future Directions

A Unique Psychology?

As mentioned above, one direction for future research is to determine whether there is a distinct cluster of psychological consequences caused by perceiving disorder. Is there more to it than just priming randomness-related concepts and the associated consequences proposed by WIR? To my knowledge, there is no experimental evidence yet to confirm this. Although Keizer et al. (2008) proposed that goals are activated and deactivated in response to perceiving disorder, they did not measure this, and rather it is implied from the behavioral evidence which may be completely accounted for by reduced self-control. However, given the related research on social norms and signaling, I do not doubt that there is indeed more to the story. Further research can determine this conclusively.

Individual Differences?

Cutrona et al. (2000) provides correlational evidence that effects of perceiving disorder may be moderated by individual differences such as negativity and poor relationships. Moving forward, we should experimentally test whether personality measures of negative temperament (e.g., adult temperament questionnaire, Rothbart et al., 2000) and relationship quality (e.g., the positive relations with others scale, Ryff, 1989) have moderating effects and why. One possibility is that some people may not use compensatory control mechanisms (effectively). Further, Vohs et al. (2013) assumes that individual differences in reactions to perceiving disorder may translate into reactions to situational-level disorder. In light of this proposition, it may make sense to test whether there are interactions between classic personality measures regarding reactions to perceived disorder – such as preference for consistency (Cialdini et al., 1995), need for structure (Neuberg and Newsom, 1993), need for closure (Webster and Kruglanski, 1994), and ambiguity tolerance (Norton, 1975) – and perceiving disorder in one’s surroundings.

Dependent Variables

To advance an interdisciplinary connection between the psychology of perceived disorder and the sociology of BWT, it will be important to develop laboratory measures analogous to those interpreted in the sociology of BWT. What would a laboratory analog be for “throwing a rock through the window of an abandoned building?” One may look to the aggression literature for inspiration. For example, research in this domain has employed creative behavioral measures such as serving hot sauce to a confederate (Bushman et al., 2005), blasting a confederate with aversive noise (Bushman et al., 2005), and delivering ostensibly painful shocks (Zillmann, 1971) to assess aggressive tendencies, which may have some parallels with criminal behaviors such as vandalism and theft.

Concluding Remarks

Research on the psychology of perceived disorder is a new and exciting development. In this article, I propose a parsimonious cognitive model possibly explaining a variety of effects and relationships concerning perceived disorder documented across the psychological and sociological literatures. To recap, WIR proposes that perceiving disorder results in a threatening sense of losing personal control (via priming randomness-related concepts), which can account for a variety of affective, judgmental, and behavioral findings in the literatures. Going forward, it is important to further corroborate each link in this model and delineate boundary conditions. It is also important to determine what aspects of this model have to do with BWT and what aspects do not. A broader and more challenging future direction is determining whether there are parallel psychological processes triggered by perceived disorder that collectively define a unique constellation of psychological phenomena.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers, Reid Hastie, Ayelet Fishbach, and Spike W. S. Lee for their useful feedback.

Footnotes

1. ^Across the selected studies, they control for various community- and individual-level variables such as urban area, neighborhood disadvantage, race, education, and income that may correlate with the dependent variables, yet perceived disorder remained a significant covariate.

References available at the Frontiers site.

B. Alan Wallace - Settling The Mind In Its Natural State Series : All 8 Parts

 

From Upaya Zen Center, this is an 8-part series of podcasts featuring B Alan Wallace, one of the foremost scholars of Tibetan Buddhism. The series of talks is focused on the meditative practice of “settling the mind in its natural state,” which is foundational for both the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. These practices are centrally focused on realizing the nature of consciousness, occupying a middle space between shamatha (the cultivation of highly focused attention) and vipashyana (the cultivation of contemplative insight). "Settling the mind" consists essentially in focusing single-pointedly on the space of the mind and on whatever thoughts, images, and other mental events arise within that field of experience.

Enjoy!

Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 1)

By Dharma Podcasts on May 29, 2014

Speaker: B. Alan Wallace
Recorded: Friday May 2, 2014

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Series Description: The meditative practice of “settling the mind in its natural state” is foundational for both the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, which are centrally focused on realizing the nature of consciousness. This practice lies right at the cusp between shamatha (the cultivation of highly focused attention) and vipashyana (the cultivation of contemplative insight). It consists essentially of focusing single-pointedly on the space of the mind and on whatever thoughts, images, and other mental events arise within that field of experience. The quality of mindfulness cultivated in this practice is focused, spacious, discerning, and non-reactive. Through such practice, the activities of the mind gradually subside so that the mind comes to settle in its “natural state,” which manifests three core qualities: bliss, luminosity, and nonconceptuality. We explore this practice with teachings and commentary from B. Alan Wallace, as well as experientially through guided meditations and daily group practice.

Episode Description: In this first session of the program, Alan introduces participants to the practice of “settling the body, speech, and mind in their natural states” through a guided meditation. He then discusses his views of what “practicing Dharma” and being “on a path” to liberation mean in terms of a long-term spiritual aspiration. He also touches briefly upon the idea of continuity of consciousness. Finally, Alan introduces and delves into the root text from which he will teach during the program: Taking Aspects of the Mind as the Path, from the Sharp Vajra of Conscious Awareness Tantra, by Dzogchen master Dudjom Lingpa (19th C).

B. Alan Wallace began his studies of Tibetan Buddhism, language, and culture in 1970 at the University of Göttingen in Germany and then continued his studies over the next fourteen years in India, Switzerland, and the United States. Ordained as a Buddhist monk by H. H. the Dalai Lama in 1975, he has taught Buddhist meditation and philosophy worldwide since 1976 and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars and contemplatives, including the Dalai Lama. After graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied physics and the philosophy of science, he returned his monastic vows and went on to earn his Ph.D. in religious studies at Stanford University. He then taught for four years in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and is now the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. He has edited, translated, authored, and contributed to more than thirty books on Tibetan Buddhism, medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion.”

Here are the rest of the episodes in this series.

• Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 2a)
• Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 2b)
• Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 3a)
• Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 3b)
• Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 4)
• Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 5a)
• Settling the Mind in its Natural State (Part 5b, last part)

How Trauma Affects The Brain Of A Learner (NPR)

From NPR and KPCC Public Radio in Southern California, this is an excellent set of articles on how to change the way we teach children such that we acknowledge the impact trauma has on learning.

It's great to see that happening - it needs to be something that happens everywhere there is poverty and violence - it's the children in those communities who suffer most.

How Trauma Affects The Brain Of A Learner

by Anya Kamenetz

June 15, 2014 

 

Chronic stress can cause deficiencies in the pre-frontal cortex, which is essential for learning.

  
Our public media colleagues over at KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, have a fascinating  two-part report on the efforts of schools in the Los Angeles area to address the effects of "toxic stress" on student learning.

"As researchers work to solve one of the most persistent problems in public education – why kids in poor neighborhoods fail so much more often than their upper-income peers – more and more they're pointing the finger at what happens outside the classroom.

Shootings. Food insecurity. Sirens and fights in the night. Experts are finding that those stressors build up, creating emotional problems and changes in the brain that can undermine even the clearest lessons."

Eighty percent of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are in poverty. Scientists are zeroing in on how it can affect their developing brains.

"Studies show chronic stress can change the chemical and physical structures of the brain.

'You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,'said Dr. Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University.

Dendrites, which look like microscopic fingers, stretch off each brain cell to catch information. Wellman's studies in mice show that chronic stress causes these fingers to shrink, changing the way the brain works. She found deficiencies in the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain needed to solve problems, which is crucial to learning.

Other researchers link chronic stress to a host of cognitive effects, including trouble with attention, concentration, memory and creativity."

Responding in part to this research, Camino Nuevo, a network of eight charter schools, dedicates resources to creating what it calls a "continuum of integrated support" for students. One fourth of students at the schools see counselors to help them build social and emotional skills. The schools hold group sessions for parents to help them deal with stress in their lives too, and employ full-time parent liasions to help families access health care, mental health, housing, legal, or immigration services. To pay for all this, the schools privately raise about $1.6 million in outside funds. They also tap into MediCal and work with private providers to integrate services right within the school.

Blanca Ruiz is a Mexican immigrant and single mother with a child, Luis, at a Camino Nuevo middle school.

"Since she started counseling at the school, Ruiz lost fifty pounds and saved money to buy a reliable car.

Last year, Ruiz moved her kids 15 miles east to a house in El Monte with a tiny porch and big lemon tree. But there was no way she was changing schools.

She still drives Luis to Camino Nuevo in MacArthur Park every day on her way to work. Sometimes she'll bring him a special treat of KFC for lunch...

Luis's sixth grade teacher, Sarah Wechsler, keeps a close eye on him. She tracks even the smallest details, like how often she encourages him. She wants to make sure positive reinforcements far outpace stern talk.

Wechsler said in the last year, she's seen Luis completely turn around and take ownership of his schoolwork."

At LAUSD public schools, it's a different story. Resource constraints mean just one percent of the school population can access mental health services. Read the rest of the series here.

Here is the remainder of the story linked to at the end of the NPR piece.

Teaching Through Trauma: How poverty affects kids' brains

Annie Gilbertson | June 2nd, 2014

Maya Sugarman/KPCC

Training in self control starts early at Camino Nuevo. Karina Rodriguez leads preschoolers through a motor skills exercise, asking them to start and stop based on musical cues. Students will be exposed to 14 years of curriculum designed to address academic and soft skills.

Teaching Through Trauma: the first in a series of stories on poverty in Los Angeles schools. Read Part Two here.

New research shows the mere fact of being poor can affect kids' brains, making it difficult for them to succeed in school.

Los Angeles public schools — where more than 80 percent of students live in poverty — illustrate the challenges for these students. Less than half of third graders in L.A. Unified read at grade level and 20 percent of students will have dropped out by senior year.

But researchers also offer hope. They said the right interventions can make a difference. And one school in MacArthur Park is battling biology by helping children with life as well as school — to growing success.

Children living in poor neighborhoods are more likely to suffer traumatic incidents, like witnessing or being the victims of shootings, parental neglect or abuse. They also struggle with pernicious daily stressors, including food or housing insecurity, overcrowding and overworked or underemployed, stressed-out parents.

Untreated, researchers have found these events compound, affecting many parts of the body. Studies show chronic stress can change the chemical and physical structures of the brain.

“You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,” said Dr. Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University.

Dendrites, which look like microscopic fingers, stretch off each brain cell to catch information. Wellman’s studies in mice show that chronic stress causes these fingers to shrink, changing the way the brain works. She found deficiencies in the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain needed to solve problems, which is crucial to learning.

Other researchers link chronic stress to a host of cognitive effects, including trouble with attention, concentration, memory and creativity.

For students in many Los Angeles public schools, those chronic stressors are everywhere.

Growing up hearing gunshots

Take MacArthur Park, where Census surveys show the child poverty rate is double the California average. The neighborhood’s namesake grassy square is so crime-ridden that many parents refuse to let their children play outside.

The Los Angeles Police Department arrested 3,000 juveniles in the neighborhood in 2011 alone, the most recent data available. Most were for theft — but 14 were taken in on suspicion of homicide.

Kids here deal with parents being deported, siblings being locked up or social workers being called in to take kids away from neglectful or abusive parents. They often live in cramped, crowded apartments with two or more families.

Ana Ponce herself grew up an immigrant in MacArthur Park and thought: it’s time to change how a school tries to reach students.

“We had this understanding that we can not teach kids that are not ready to learn because they were preoccupied with all of the barriers they encountered on their way to school - or all of their fears they had leaving school,” she said.

In the early 2000s, Ponce joined the leadership of a small charter school called Camino Nuevo in her neighborhood. It has since grown to a network of eight schools.

A different approach

At a recent 7 a.m. meeting, Camino Nuevo elementary and middle school teachers clustered into groups, sounding a lot like social workers. Their task: to figure out how to “use positivity and relationships to reverse some of the negative effects of poverty.”

Sarah Wechsler reported a dramatic improvement in one of her students, whose mother was recently deported.

“We’ve loved him, and we’ve replaced his mom the best we can,” she said. “And he’s done all his work this week.”

Ponce said she sees the school’s job as improving the lives of students’ entire families.

Staff helps parents enroll younger siblings in preschool and hooks parents up with healthcare providers. School sites have a full-time parent liaison to provide referrals for those struggling with housing, employment or legal problems.

In group sessions, parents are taught how to participate in their children’s education and relate better to them.

 

Tracking wellbeing

Camino Nuevo’s teachers are trained to track not just academic progress but also overall wellbeing.

If academics slip, they offer reading or math tutoring. In the same way, when emotional or behavior issues bubble-up, a student is referred to a counselor to develop those equally vital emotional skills.

Most schools in L.A. Unified only provide counseling for the most serious mental disorders, targeting resources to the less than 1 percent of the student population – those diagnosed with a serious emotional disturbance. (Read more on this in the second part of our series.)

At Camino Nuevo, about one in four students receives one-on-one counseling or group interventions. They don’t just talk about their problems at home, but also learn how to process emotions and make better decisions.

“They need the place to - you know – detox, so to speak. To let go. To get all this out, and to learn about themselves,” said Gloria Delacruz-Quiroz, head of mental health at Camino Nuevo.

Research shows that not all children who experience trauma will struggle emotionally. Those who feel they have support from an adult seem to do better.

Ninety-seven percent of students at Camino graduate high school, compared to 68 percent district-wide, where the rate slips even further for Latino and low-income students.

To pay for it, the school taps MediCal, California’s version of Medicaid.

The charter school created a system where its own staff works alongside private counseling service providers - including the Los Angeles Childhood Development Center and Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services – right at the schools.

The services aren’t free. Camino Nuevo scrapes together $1.6 million to cover what the providers cannot, plus a smattering of other services school leaders term their "continuum of care," which include not just counseling but things like after school programs and field trips.

A single mother

Camino Nuevo’s Burlington middle school campus is around the corner from where Blanca Ruiz works long hours at a nail salon.

Since she came here from Mexico years ago, she often felt she was barely keeping it together. She was sharing an apartment with her two kids and several roommates. Sometimes the stress would overwhelm her kids.

“I’m a single mother who came here with very low self-esteem, very unfocused, and with severe economic problems,” she said in Spanish. “If I was insecure, my kids would feel the same way.”

Her son Luis acted out. He got bad grades. He refused to do what his mom said and that enraged her.

“She screams because I don’t want to listen to her,” he said.

In class, sometimes Luis would stare off at his desk, checked out; other times he’d become disruptive, start talking, get up and walk around. He expressed no interest in learning and made it difficult for other students in class to stay on task.

“Sometimes I forgot, or sometimes I would decide not to do my work,” he said flatly.

In fifth grade, he was sent to the principal’s office for ignoring his teacher’s instructions. The principal suspended him from school.

Written off?

Rather than write him off, the staff at Camino Nuevo got him to meet with a mental health counselor at the school. He also received tutoring everyday to catch up in math.

His mom went to the school’s group sessions for parents.

“I think it helped me because if you want to help your kid, you have to be emotionally stable, a clear mind and more positive,” she said.

Since she started counseling at the school, Ruiz lost fifty pounds and saved money to buy a reliable car.

Last year, Ruiz moved her kids 15 miles east to a house in El Monte with a tiny porch and big lemon tree. But there was no way she was changing schools.

She still drives Luis to Camino Nuevo in MacArthur Park every day on her way to work. Sometimes she’ll bring him a special treat of KFC for lunch.

A turnaround

Luis’s sixth grade teacher, Sarah Wechsler, keeps a close eye on him. She tracks even the smallest details, like how often she encourages him. She wants to make sure positive reinforcements far outpace stern talk.

Wechsler said in the last year, she’s seen Luis completely turn around and take ownership of his schoolwork.

“You want to be your own man, don’t you?” she said, smiling at Luis with encouragement.

Luis still has days where he feels unfocused, and Wechsler allows him to take breaks or move to another desk. On a recent school day, Luis chose the table facing a wall. Without distraction, he hunkered down to divide fractions.

As the school year was drawing to a close, evidence of Camino Nuevo’s work – and Luis’s - became evident in one unmistakable way: He finally reached grade level in math.

How does that make him feel?
“Proud,” he said.

Annie Gilbertson, Education Reporter
Follow @AnnieGilbertson on Twitter
More from Annie Gilbertson

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified Ana Ponce as a founder of Camino Nuevo and misstated its current number of campuses. KPCC regrets the errors.
 

The Woman Who Forgot the Names of Animals (And four other neuroscience patients who changed how we think about the brain, and ourselves)

This is a cool piece from Mother Jones, even if it is essentially a promotion for Sam Keen's new book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery. It does look like an interesting book.

The Woman Who Forgot the Names of Animals

And four other neuroscience patients who changed how we think about the brain, and ourselves.

By Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney | Fri Jun. 13, 2014 

 

Angela Waye/Shutterstock

We've all been mesmerized by them—those beautiful brain scan images that make us feel like we're on the cutting edge of scientifically decoding how we think. But as soon as one neuroscience study purports to show which brain region lights up when we are enjoying Coca-Cola, or looking at cute puppies, or thinking we have souls, some other expert claims that "it's just a correlation," and you wonder whether researchers will ever get it right.

Sam Kean 

But there's another approach to understanding how our minds work. In his new book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean tells the story of a handful of patients whose unique brains—rendered that way by surgical procedures, rare diseases, and unfortunate, freak accidents—taught us much more than any set of colorful scans. Kean recounts some of their unforgettable stories on the latest episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast.

"As I was reading these [case studies] I said, 'That's baloney! There's no way that can possibly be true,'" Kean remembers, referring to one particularly surprising case in which a woman's brain injury left her unable to recognize and distinguish between different kinds of animals. "But then I looked into it, and I realized that, not only is it true, it actually reveals some important things about how the brain works."



Here are five patients, from Kean's book, whose stories transformed neuroscience:

1. The man who could not imagine the future: Kent Cochrane (KC), pictured below, was a '70s wild child, playing in a rock band, getting into bar fights, and zooming around Toronto on his motorcycle. But in 1981, a motorcycle accident left him without two critical brain structures. Both of his hippocampi, the parts of the brain that allow us to form new long-term memories for facts and events in our lives, were lost. That's quite different from other amnesiacs, whose damage is either restricted to only one brain hemisphere, or includes large portions of regions outside of the hippocampus.

KC's case was similar to that of Henry Molaison, another famous amnesiac known as HM. HM taught us that conscious memories of things like which street you grew up on (personal semantic information or facts about yourself) and what happened on your prom night (episodic memories for events in your past) are stored independently from other types of nonconscious memories, of things like how to ride a bike or play the guitar. You can lose one type of memory without losing the other. But KC taught us still more: That our ability to imagine the future is tied to our ability to use our memories to reexperience the past.

KC ("Kent Cochrane"), right, with his family. After losing his long-term memory, KC became one of the most famous patients in neuroscience. Cochrane family

"When he lost his past self," says Kean of KC, "he lost all sense of what he was going to do over the next hour, or over the next day, or over the next year. He couldn't project himself forward at all, and kind of realize that he would want to be doing something in a month or a year. He was kind of eternally trapped in the present tense."

Although it might sound obvious now, before KC came along, neuroscientists hadn't realized how closely tied, on a cognitive level, our future is to our past. "But if you think about it, it does make sense," explains Kean, "because the ultimate biological purpose of having a memory isn't just…to make you happy or something like that. The point of a memory is so that you can kind of keep track of what happened in your past, and then apply that to the future."

2. The man whose vocabulary was reduced to one word: In the late 18th century, the idea that different functions of the mind might be tied to specific parts of the brain first gained a foothold. Phrenology, as it came to be called, was based on the notion that bumps in the skull were markers of larger bits of brain, and that these bumps were clues as to what mental talents, or lack thereof, a person might possess. By the 1840s, however, many scientists dismissed phrenology (and rightly so) as rank pseudoscience.

Paul Broca Wikimedia Commons.

So when Paul Broca, a French neuroanatomist, first proposed that there was a specific "language area" in the brain—and did so based on evidence from the brain of a patient nicknamed "Tan"—he was laughed out of a scientific meeting.

Tan—whose story is related in Kean's new book—suffered from epilepsy throughout his childhood. By age 31, he could only respond to questions by repeating the word "tan." Unless, that is, he was enraged. Then, he'd let out a cry of "Sacre nom de Dieu!" a French insult. Yet Tan still seemed to be able to understand spoken language, even if he could not to speak himself. Because his vocabulary was so impoverished, he became an expert at gesturing, expressing himself through mime.

So how was it possible that a man lost his ability to speak words, but not to understand them?

In 1861, gangrene took Tan's life—and Broca got his brain, which he proceeded to study. Broca found a lesion on the left side of the brain, near the front. This turned out to be the "language production" node; it is now known as Broca's area. From Tan and patients like him, neuroscientists thus learned that the speech production and speech comprehension regions of the brain are quite separable—and we need both, functioning properly, to communicate using language.

3. The man whose brain was split in two: In the 1940s, neurosurgeons developed a new procedure to treat patients with severe epilepsy. As a last resort when other less invasive treatments were ineffective, they would sever the major fiber tract, known as the corpus callosum, that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. That way, when the sparks of overexcited neurons started in one part of the brain, the seizure was at least confined to that hemisphere, limiting the damage of the electrical storm.

The corpus callosum (in red) Anatomography/Life Science Databases/Wikimedia Commons

But as it happened, the patients involved didn't just have their epilepsy reduced: They also became marvels of science. Because these "split-brain" patients cannot send information from one hemisphere to the other, neuroscientists can learn from them which functions are limited to one side of the brain or the other.

One such patient, with the initials PS, was studied by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. In experiments on PS and other split-brain patients, Gazzaniga devised a clever way of talking to each hemisphere independently. He would flash pictures on different sides of a screen, knowing that the visual system divides the world into two halves, and each hemisphere only sees one of them.

Thus in one experiment, Gazzaniga flashed an image of a snowy scene so that only PS's right hemisphere would perceive it, and an image of a chicken claw so that only his left hemisphere would pick it up. Then, Gazzaniga asked PS to choose, from an array of objects, those relevant to what he had seen. PS's left hand (governed by the right hemisphere) picked up a snow shovel, and his right hand (governed by the left hemisphere) chose a rubber chicken. So far, so good: That makes sense.

But when Gazzaniga asked him why he chose those objects, PS responded, "The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed," reports Kean. But of course, the shovel actually went with the snow scene. What was happening was that when it came to language, the left hemisphere is dominant. The right hemisphere, by contrast, has a barely functioning language capacity, but can express itself in other ways—by pointing with the left hand, for example, or by drawing or choosing objects with it.

You can watch a video featuring Gazzaniga's work with another split-brain patient here.

Split-brain patients like PS thus unlocked another mystery of the mind; or rather, the two minds. They showed that the two hemispheres store and process different types of information, and that when the connections between the two hemispheres are broken, each one can act independently of the other. For those of us with an intact corpus callosum, however, the hemispheres share information to such a large extent that calling someone "left-brained" or "right-brained" just doesn't make sense. "The idea that the left-brain is logical and controls all language, and the right brain is completely arty and just wants to do those kind of creative things—that's way, way overblown," says Kean.

4. The woman whose brain forgot animals: This is the story that, when Kean first read about it, he "did not believe it at first."

"It was a case of someone who had an injury to the part of their temporal lobe," remembers Kean, "so, on the side of the brain…the temples. And this person lost the ability to recognize all animals." And yet, stunningly, pretty much everything else was fine.

How could that happen? In his book, Kean explains that the woman in question suffered from complications of a herpes virus infection, which in rare cases can spread to the brain's temporal lobes, where we store general information about the world, like our knowledge of the capitals of states and countries. When herpes invades the brain, it can induce a coma and even death. But patients who do recover are sometimes left with very bizarre problems: They can lose the ability to recognize a particular category of things.

That's what happened with the woman who couldn't recognize animals: She could not tell them apart either by sight or sound, even though she could name and recognize other things just fine—the sound of a doorbell versus that of a phone, for instance. "She knew tomatoes are bigger than peas," Kean writes, "but couldn't remember whether goats are taller than raccoons. Along those lines, when scientists sketched out objects that looked like patent-office rejects (e.g., water pitchers with frying-pan handles), she spotted them as fakes. But when they drew polar bears with horse heads and other chimeras, she had no idea whether such things existed."

These patients have what are called category-specific agnosias, or losses of knowledge. And they have taught neuroscientists something critical concerning how we store information about the world: Namely, our brain divides objects into categories, and organizes those categories hierarchically. Thus, in the patient that Kean describes, the "animal" category had been knocked out, but nothing else had been.

That's just the beginning of what can happen to the brain, however. There are other patients who suffer from a disease called semantic dementia. First, they can't tell a robin from a sparrow. Then all birds seem the same. Then, as their brain damage progresses, they can't tell an animal from an inanimate object—until eventually, their speech contains no specific nouns.

5. The king who kept his skull but lost his mind: If you're still not convinced that blows to the head can devastate the brain—even if there are no symptoms of concussion, or exterior damage to the skull—this last case just might make you a serious NFL critic. In 1559, King Henry II of France lost a jousting match after taking a blow to the head. In doing so, he proved unequivocally that an intact skull does not mean that an intact brain resides inside it.

Henry II Wikimedia Commons.

At first, the doctors examining the king were not concerned. "They thought Henry was actually going to be just fine because when they looked at his skull, there was no…big crack on the outside; there wasn't a gory, obvious wound," says Kean. But it took the dueling neurosurgeons in the title of Kean's book to realize the extent of the damage to the king's brain.

"Twisting injuries, where you get hit on the side of your head, and your head kind of jerks one way," explains Kean, "those are especially bad because they end up tearing the seams between neurons—sometimes even tearing neurons themselves—open. And your brain—because of the flood of chemicals that come out of these torn neurons—your brain often has a big, electrical discharge at the same time."

"If the brain starts to swell or blood pools up inside the brain, it's very, very deadly. It will start to crush cells," Kean says. In such a case, a skull fracture might actually help matters by releasing some of the pressure and limiting the damage.

Henry II was not so lucky: The blow to his head caused his brain to swell and eventually hemorrhage, leading to his death—even though not a single shard of the jousting rod that hit him actually penetrated his brain. Henry's doctors could not save him, but future researchers learned from his case just how bad brain injuries can be.

Such, then, are some of the fascinating things we can learn from patients whose brains have been altered, or damaged, in unique ways. But as Kean relates, these patients don't just teach us by virtue of what they have lost. We also have much to learn from what they keep, from the brain functions that still work for them, even after all of their injuries.

Notably, they all seem to keep, at least in some form, their core identities.

"The more cases I looked [at], the more I saw evidence that you really do retain the sense of self," Kean says. "And in some ways…I thought that was kind of comforting, too, because when you're talking about these stories, you have to put yourself in the mind of these people, and think, you know, 'What would I be like if I lost this function of my brain, or, you know, if I turn into a pathological liar or I couldn't recognize my loved ones anymore?' But there are some things you do retain, that you won't lose about yourself."

To listen to the full interview with Sam Kean, you can stream below:

This episode of Inquiring Minds, a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and best-selling author Chris Mooney, also features an exclusive brief interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson about the meaning of the just-completed Cosmos series; a discussion of whether the famed and controversial hormone oxytocin might be capable of extending the span of human life; and a breakdown of the physics of how soccer balls travel through the air (just in time for the World Cup).

To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher and on Swell. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also recently singled out as one of the "Best of 2013" on iTunes—you can learn more here.

Indre Viskonta - Inquiring Minds co-host.
Indre Viskontas is a neuroscientist, opera singer, and co-host of the Inquiring Minds podcast. RSS | Twitter

Chris Mooney -Correspondent
Chris Mooney is a science and political journalist, podcaster, and the host of Climate Desk Live. He is the author of four books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science. RSS | Twitter

How to Read James Joyce's Ulysses on Bloomsday

Via Open Culture, here is a quick guide to everything you need to enjoy reading James Joyce's Ulysses on this, June 16 (1904), the day of the action in the book, otherwise known as Bloomsday. Interestingly, 1904 was the last year that Joyce was to see Dublin, the city of his youth. And June 16 was the day on which he and Nora, who would become his wife, first went out on a date.

The only novel in the history of literature more daunting to most readers than Ulysses is Joyce's last novel, Finnegan's' Wake, the companion to Ulysses. In Joyce's mind, Ulysses was the "daytime" book, but Finnegan's Wake is the nighttime book, a nearly impenetrable text, written over a period of 17 years (with the assistance of Samuel Beckett as typist) and written in an idiosyncratic language that is almost code more than language.

In comparison, Ulysses is a piece of cake.

If you were in Dublin today, you could take a tour of all of the place Leopold Bloom visited through the course of the novel. It's amazing the Joyce was able to remember Dublin so precisely despite not having lived there in the two decades prior to writing the book.

Everything You Need to Enjoy Reading James Joyce’s Ulysses on Bloomsday

June 16th, 2014

Since its publication in 1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses has enjoyed a status, in various places and in various ways, as The Book to Read. Alas, this Modernist novel of Dublin on June 16, 1904 has also attained a reputation as The Book You Probably Can’t Read — or at least not without a whole lot of work on the side. In truth, nobody needs to turn themselves into a Joyce scholar to appreciate it; the uninitiated reader may not enjoy it on every possible level, but they can still, without a doubt, get a charge from this piece of pure literature. Today, on this Bloomsday 2014, we offer you everything that may help you get that charge, starting with Ulysses as a free eBook (iPad/iPhone - Kindle + Other Formats - Read Online Now). Or perhaps you’d prefer to listen to the novel as a free audio book; you can even hear a passage read by Joyce himself.


The work may stand as a remarkably rich textual achievement, but it also has a visual history: we’ve previously featured, for instance, Henri Matisse’s illustrated 1935 edition of the book, Joyce’s own sketch of protagonist Leopold Bloom (below), and Ulysses “Seen,” a graphic novel adaptation-in-progress.

Even Vladimir Nabokov, obviously a formidable literary power himself, added to all this when he sketched out a map of the paths Bloom and Stephen Dedalus (previously seen in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) take through Dublin in the book.

Other high-profile Ulysses appreciators include Stephen Fry, who did a video expounding upon his love for it, and Frank Delaney, whose podcast Re: Joyce, as entertaining as the novel itself, will examine the entire text line-by-line over 22 years. Still, like any vital work of art, Ulysses has drawn detractors as well. Irving Babbitt, among the novel’s early reviewers, said it evidenced “an advanced stage of psychic disintegration”; Virginia Woolf, having quit at page 200, wrote that “never did any book so bore me.” But bored or thrilled, each reader has their own distinct experience with Ulysses, and on this Bloomsday we’d like to send you on your way to your own. (Or maybe you have a different way of celebrating, as the first Bloomsday revelers did in 1954.) Don’t let the towering novel’s long shadow darken it. Remember the whole thing comes down to an Irishman and his manuscripts — many of which you can read online.


Related Content:

• James Joyce’s Ulysses: Download the Free Audio Book
• James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Recordings (1924/1929)
• Henri Matisse Illustrates 1935 Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses
• Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Podcast
• The First Bloomsday: Watch Dublin’s Literati Celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses in Drunken Fashion, 1954
• James Joyce, With His Eyesight Failing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

The Philosopher's Zone - Mind the Brain

This is last week's episode of The Philosopher's Zone podcast, with guest Daivd Papineau, professor at King's College in London. Papineau has worked in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophies of science, mind, and mathematics. His overall stance is naturalist and realist. He is one of the originators of the teleosemantic theory of mental representation, a solution to the problem of intentionality which derives the intentional content of our beliefs from their biological purpose. He is also a defender of the a posteriori physicalist solution to the mind-body problem.

Here is a lengthy explanation of teleosemantic theories in philosophy from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

What all teleological (or “teleosemantic”) theories of mental content have in common is the idea that psycho-semantic norms are ultimately derivable from functional norms. Beyond saying this, it is hard to give a neat definition of the group of theories that qualify.

Consider, for instance, some theories that are clearly intended as alternatives to teleosemantics, such as Fodor's (1990b) asymmetric dependency theory or theories that appeal to convergence under ideal epistemic conditions (see Rey 1997 for an outline). Elaboration of these theories is beyond the scope of this entry but we can note that they both seem to need a notion of normal or proper functioning. Fodor's theory adverts to the “intact” perceiver and thinker. Presumably this is someone whose perceptual and cognitive systems are functioning properly (this is covered under the ceterus paribus part of the laws to which Fodor's theory refers). The idea of convergence under ideal epistemic conditions also involves a notion of normal functioning, for epistemic conditions are not ideal if perceivers and thinkers are abnormal in certain respects, such as if they are blind or psychotic. If normal or proper functioning is analyzed in terms of an etiological theory, which says that a system functions normally or properly only if all of its parts possess the dispositions for which they were selected, then these theories would qualify as teleological theories of mental content under the characterization provided in the first paragraph of this section. Those who propose these theories might reject an etiological theory of functions, but they need some analysis of them. There could anyway be etiological or teleological versions of theories of this sort.

An appeal to teleological functions can also be combined with a variety of other ideas about how content is determined. For example, there can be both isomorphic and informational versions of teleosemantics. In the former case, the proposal might be that the relevant isomorphism is one that cognitive systems were adapted to exploit. An alternative idea is that the isomorphism does not need to be specified given that the targets of representations are determined by teleological functions. This appears to be the view of Cummins (1996, see esp. p.120) although Cummins is generally critical of teleological functions in biology. A teleological version of an informational theory is given when content is said to depend on information carrying, storing or processing functions of mechanisms. The relevant notion of information is variously defined but (roughly speaking) a type of state (event, etc.) is said to carry natural information about some other state (event, etc.) when it is caused by it or corresponds to it. 

It is sometimes said that the role of functions in a teleological theory of content is to explain how error is possible, rather than to explain how content is determined, but the two go hand in hand. To see this, it helps to start with the crude causal theory of content and to see how the problem of error arises for it. According to the crude causal theory, a mental representation represents whatever causes representations of the type; Rs represent Cs if and only if Cs cause Rs. One problem with this simple proposal is its failure to provide for the possibility of misrepresentation, as Fodor (1987, 101–104) points out. To see the problem, recall the occasion on which crumpled paper is seen as a cat. The crude causal theory does not permit this characterization of the event because, if crumpled paper caused a tokening of CAT then crumpled paper is in the extension of CAT, according to the crude causal theory. Since cats also sometimes cause CATs, cats are in the extension too. However, the problem is that crumpled paper is included in the extension as soon as it causes a CAT to be tokened and so, on this theory, there is no logical space for the possibility of error since candidate errors are transformed into non-errors by their very occurrence. Note that the problem is simultaneously one of ruling in the right causes without also ruling in the wrong ones. CAT cannot have the content cat unless non-cats (including crumpled paper) are excluded from its content. So explaining how content is determined and how the possibility of error are accommodated are not separate tasks.

The error problem is an aspect of what (after Fodor) is often called “the disjunction problem.” With respect to the crude causal theory, the name applies because the theory entails disjunctive contents when it should not. For example, it entails that CATs have the content cats or crumpled paper in the case just considered. The disjunction problem is larger than the problem of error, however, because it is not only in cases of error that mental representations are caused by things that are not in their extensions (Fodor, 1990c). Suppose, for example, that Mick's talking about his childhood pet dog reminds Scott of his childhood pet cat. In this case no misrepresentation is involved but the crude causal theory again entails inappropriate disjunctive contents. Now it entails that Scott's CATs has a content along the lines of cats or talk of pet dogs. This last aspect of the disjunction problem might be called the problem of representation in absentia: how do we explain our capacity to think about absent things? How do mental representations retain or obtain their contents outside of perceptual contexts? 

Asking how to alter the crude causal theory to allow for error is one place to begin looking for a more adequate proposal. One approach would be to try to describe certain situations in which only the right causes can produce the representation in question and to maintain that the content of the representation is whatever can cause the representation in such situations. This is sometimes referred to as a “type 1 theory.” A type 1 theory distinguishes between two types of situations, ones in which only the right causes can cause a representation and ones in which other things can too. A type-1 theory says that the first type of situation is content-determining. A type 1 teleological theory might state, for example, that the content of a perceptual representation is whatever can cause it when the perceptual system is performing its proper function, or when conditions are optimal for the proper performance of its function. The content of representations in abstract thought might then, it might be proposed, be derived from their role in perception. Not all teleological theories of content are type 1 theories, however. The theory described in the next section is arguably a variant of a type 1 theory but some of the theories described in later sections are not.

And here is a specific account of Papineau's teleosemantic model - this also comes from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

A further way in which teleological theories of content can differ is with respect to the contents that they aim to explain. David Papineau's theory, developed at the same time as Millikan's, will help illustrate this point. Papineau (1984, 1987, 1990 and 1993) develops a theory that is top-down, or non-combinatorial, insofar as the representational states to which his theory most directly applies are whole propositional attitudes (e.g., beliefs and desires). In early writings, Millikan sometimes seems to hold a similar view and some objections initially raised against her theory are based on this interpretation of her view (see, e.g., Fodor 1990b, 64–69, where he raises some of the following points).

In Papineau's theory, the contents of desires are primary and those of beliefs are secondary in terms of their derivation. According to Papineau, a desire's “real satisfaction condition” is “… that effect which it is the desire's biological purpose to produce” (1993, 58–59), by which he means that “[s]ome past selection mechanism has favored that desire — or, more precisely, the ability to form that type of desire — in virtue of that desire producing that effect” (1993, 59). So desires have the function of causing us, in collaboration with our beliefs, to bring about certain conditions, conditions that enhanced the fitness of people in the past who had these desires. Desires, in general, were selected for causing us to bring about conditions that contributed to our fitness, and particular desires were selected for causing us to bring about particular conditions. These conditions are referred to as their satisfaction conditions and they are the contents of desires.

The “real truth condition” of a belief, Papineau tells us, is the condition that must obtain if the desire with which it collaborates in producing an action is to be satisfied by the condition brought about by that action. A desire that has the function of bringing it about that we have food has the content that we have food, since it was selected for bringing it about that we have food, and if this desire collaborates with a belief to cause us to go to the fridge, the content of the belief is that there is food in the fridge if our desire for food would only be satisfied by our doing so if it is true that there is food in the fridge (Papineau's example).

This seems to reject the Language of Thought hypothesis, according to which thought employs a combinatorial semantics. Language is combinatorial to the extent that the meaning of a sentence is a function of the meanings of the words in the sentence and their syntactic relations. “Rover attacked Fluff” has a combinatorial meaning if its meaning is a function of the meaning of “Rover”, the meaning of “attacked” and the meaning of “Fluff”, along with their syntactic relations (so that “Rover attacked Fluff” differs in meaning from “Fluff attacked Rover”). According to some philosophers (see esp. Fodor 1975) the content of propositional attitudes is combinatorial in an analogous sense. That is, for instance, the content of a belief is a function of the contents of the component concepts employed in the proposition believed, along with their syntactic relations. A teleological theory of content can be combinatorial, for it can maintain that the content of a representation that expresses a proposition is determined by the separate histories of the representations for the conceptual constituents of the proposition (and, perhaps, by the selection history of the syntactic rules that apply to their syntactic relations). Papineau's theory is not combinatorial, at least for some propositional attitudes. Instead, the proposal is that the contents of concepts are a function of their role in the beliefs and desires in which they participate.

Papineau's theory is a benefit-based theory, and some issues discussed in the previous sub-section are relevant to an assessment of it. For instance, it is unclear that what we desire is always what is beneficial to fitness. One might want sex, not babies or bonding, and yet it might be the babies and the bonding that are crucial for fitness. However, this section will not attempt an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of this theory but will focus on issues peculiar to non-combinatorial accounts.

Any non-combinatorial theory must face certain general objections to non-combinatorial theories, such as the objection that it cannot account for the productivity and systematicity of thought (Fodor 1981, 1987). This entry will not rehearse that argument (see the entry on the language of thought hypothesis) but special problems for a teleological version of a non-combinatorial theory need to be mentioned. Consider, for example, the desire to dance around a magnolia tree when the stars are bright, while wearing two carrots for horns and two half cabbages for breasts. Probably no-one has wanted to do this. But now suppose that someone does develop this desire (to prove Papineau wrong, say) so that it is desired for the first time. We cannot characterize the situation in this way, according to a non-combinatorial teleological theory. Since it has never been desired before, it has no history of selection and so no content on its first occurrence, on that style of theory. It is also a problem for this kind of theory that some desires do not or cannot contribute to their own satisfaction (e.g., the desire for rain tomorrow or the desire to be immortal) and that some desires that do contribute to their own satisfaction will not be selected for doing so (e.g., the desire to smoke or to kill one's children). In contrast, teleological theories that are combinatorial have no special problem with novel desires, desires that cannot contribute to bringing about their own satisfaction conditions or desires that have satisfaction conditions that do not enhance fitness, as long as their constitutive concepts have appropriate selection histories or are somehow built up from simpler concepts that have appropriate selection histories.

Papineau can respond by agreeing that some concessions to a combinatorial semantics have to be made. Once some desires and beliefs have content, the concepts involved acquire content from their role in these and they can be used to produce further novel, or self-destructive or causally impotent desires. However, it needs to be shown that such a concession is not ad hoc. The problem is to justify the claim that the desire to blow up a plane with a shoe explosive is combinatorial, whereas the belief that there is food in the fridge is not.

Here is a selection of his papers available online through his personal website.

Forthcoming

"Choking and the Yips" Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences forthcoming
"Sensory Experience and Representational Properties" Procedings of the Aristotelian Society forthcoming
"A Priori Philosophical Intuitions: Analytic or Synthetic?" in E Fischer and J Collins eds Philosophical Insights forthcoming
"Recanati On Mental Files" Disputatio forthcoming
"Can We Really See a Million Colours?" in P Coates (ed) Phenomenal Qualities forthcoming

2010-13

“What Is Wrong With Strong Necessities?” (with Philip Goff) Philosophical Studies 2013
"In The Zone" in A O'Hear (ed) Philosophy of Sport 2013
"The Poverty of Conceptual Analysis" in M Haug (ed) Philosophical Methodology 2013 (this is a revised version of "The Poverty of Analysis" 2009)
"Causation is Macroscopic but not Irreducible" in S Gibb and E Lowe (eds) The Ontology of Mental Causation 2013
"There Are No Norms of Belief" in T Chan (ed) The Aim of Belief 2013
"Phenomenal Concepts and the Private Language Argument" American Philosophical Quarterly 2011
"Realism, Ramsey Sentences and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction" Studies in History and Philosophy of Science  2011
"The Philosophical Insignificance of A Priori Knowledge" in M Shaffer and M Veber (eds) New Essays on the A Priori 2011
"What Exactly is the Explanatory Gap?" Philosophia 2010
"A Fair Deal for Everettians" in J Barrett, A Kent, S Saunders, and D Wallace (eds) Many Worlds? 2010
"Can any Sciences be Special?" in C Macdonald and G Macdonald (eds) Emergence in Mind 2010

Shorter Pieces Online

"Interview" in 3:AM Magazine 2013
"Can We be Harmed After We are Dead?" Journal of the Evaluation of Clinical Practice 2013
"What is X-Phi Good For?" The Philosophers' Magazine April 2010
“Five Philosophy of Science Answers” R. Rosenberger (ed) Philosophy of Science: Five Questions 2010
"Top Universities: Only the Rich Need Apply" The Times 13 August 2009
“The Causal Closure of the Physical and Naturalism” B. McLaughlin, A. Beckermann and S. Walter (eds) Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Mind 2009
“Reply to Lewis: Metaphysics versus Epistemology” (withVictor Durà-Vilà) Analysis 2009
"Explanatory Gaps and Dualist Intuitions" in L. Weiskrantz and M. Davies (eds) Frontiers of Consciousness 2008
 “Five Philosophy of Social Science Answers” in D. Rios and C. Schmidt-Petri (eds) Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Five Questions 2008
“A Thirder and an Everettian: Reply to Lewis’s ‘Quantum Sleeping Beauty" (with Victor Durà-Vilà) Analysis 2008
“Naturalism” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2007
“Three Scenes and a Moral: My Philosophical Development” The Philosopher’s Magazine 2007
"Review article of Gary Marcus's The Birth of the Mind" (with Matteo Mameli)  Biology and Philosophy 2006
“The Tyranny of Common Sense” The Philosopher’s Magazine 2006
“Naturalist Theories of Meaning” E. Lepore and B. Smith (eds) Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Language 2006
"Reply to Robert Kirk's and Andrew Melnyk's comments on my Thinking about Consciousness" SWIF Online Philosophy Forum 2003

Wow, that is a LOT of information.

Enjoy!

Mind the brain

Sunday 8 June 2014

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Consciousness in a material world: Putting the mind back into the brain (Don Farrall/Getty Images)
Neuroscience might have banished dualist notions of mind and body but it seems that M. Descartes’ 350 year-old hunch will not go away. What hasn’t helped is the log-jam of schemes trying to explain the dreaded ‘c’ word. The race is on to build a brain, but the deeper neuroscientists dig into the soggy grey matter the more elusive consciousness becomes. It needn’t be according to leading philosopher of mind David Papineau. If only we could accept some deceptively simple advice.

Guests 

Daivd Papineau - Professor of Philosophy of Science, King's College London

Zen teacher and integral darling Diane Hamilton has been vigorously promoting her new book, Everything Is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution (Shambhala, 2013). Here is the publisher's ad copy for the book:

Using mindfulness to work with and resolve the inevitable interpersonal conflicts that arise in all areas of life.
Conflict is going to be part of your life—as long as you have relationships, hold down a job, or have dry cleaning to be picked up. Bracing yourself against it won’t make it go away, but if you approach it consciously, you can navigate it in a way that not only honors everyone involved but makes it a source of deep insight as well. Seasoned mediator Diane Hamilton provides the skill set you need to engage conflict with wisdom and compassion, and even—sometimes—to be grateful for it. She teaches how to:

• Cultivate the mirror-like quality of attention as your base
• Identify the three personal conflict styles and determine which one you fall into
• Recognize the three fundamental perspectives in any conflict situation and learn to inhabit each of them
• Turn conflicts in families, at work, and in every kind of interpersonal relationship into win-win situations

In the video below, Hamilton stopped by Google to give a Google Talk.

Diane Hamilton - "Everything is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution"

Published on Jun 13, 2014


Learn how to deal with conflicts more skillfully from state supreme court mediator and Zen master Diane Hamilton. Ignoring conflicts usually won't make them go away, but if you approach them consciously, you can navigate conflicts in ways that not only honors everyone involved but also makes them a source of deep insight as well. Diane will show you how to engage conflict with wisdom and compassion by:

- Cultivating the mirror-like quality of attention as your base
- Identifying three personal conflict styles and determine which ones you fall into
- Recognizing the three fundamental perspectives in any conflict situation
- Turning conflicts in families, at work, and in every kind of interpersonal situation into win-win situations

Reduce stress in your life by learning these techniques and transform the way you handle conflicts in your life.