PROCESS DUALISM:

Cybernetics and the Mind/Body Problem

by Robert Johannson

July, 1993

robert_johannson@yahoo.ca

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROCESS DUALISM:

Cybernetics and the Mind/Body Problem

by Robert Johannson

This paper proposes a resolution to the mind/body problem by presenting a coherent interactionist account of the relationship.

We can define body as the process of matter/energy. Energy is force through space. An energy transform is the process that changes energy in one form into energy in another form. The quantity of energy remains constant.

We can define mind as the process of communication. Communication can be seen as a series of information transforms. Information can be defined as choices within a set. An information transform (or transmitter) is the process that changes choices in one set into choices in another set, thus creating the correlation we call "meaning."

The interaction of mind and body is the same as the interaction of the two aspects of a gestalt. They share common characteristics that are definitive for each other. Thus transmitters are definitive for a communication system, but transmitters are also energy transforms. Similarly the form of the energy transform is definitive for its operation, but a change in that form is a function of the transmission of form i.e. information.

PROCESS DUALISM:

Cybernetics and the Mind/Body Problem

In an April 21, 1966 lecture, that was later printed in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson (1972) commented,

Tthe term "cybernetics" was coined by the mathematician Norbert Wiener (1948).

What the term "cybernetics" promises is a general theory of control.

The scientists that participated in the Josiah Macy, Jr. Conference on Cybernetics in 1948 knew that they were on to something big, and they knew why it was big. Cybernetics was vitally important because it solved the mind/body problem. Thus the title of Warren McCulloch's (1965) book was Embodiments of Mind, and the title of Bateson's (1979) major work was Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity.

The excitement was intense. There was no doubt that here was a field that would shatter scientific orthodoxy and develop a completely new view of the world.

And yet, fifty-five years later, with the exception of the field of electrical engineering where automation continues to transform the world, the idea of "cybernetics" has been marginalized, trivialized and ignored. How could a field that promised so much be so quickly marginalized?

It was not simply a misunderstanding due to an inability to grasp a new paradigm. There are real flaws in the way that cybernetics has been formulated. The basic problem in creating an interactionist view of the mind/body problem is to do it in such a way that it does not end up reducing mental events to physical events or physical events to mental events. An interactionist approach must respect the integrity of both mind and body. The cyberneticists were never able to make clear how it was that they did that.

This paper attempts to do that.

The mind/body problem is the great divide in Western thought. In Western thought there are two different metaphysical paradigms. On the one side are the scientific materialists. They believe that only material things are real, and that everything else can be explained in terms of matter without any recourse to the categories of mind. Any one who believes otherwise is a soft-headed metaphysician, or even worse a superstitious animist.

Thus we have Arthur Samuel (1960) of IBM who gives the classic materialist rebuttal of cybernetics.

This is, of course, not a rebuttal, but merely a restatement of the basic materialist assumptions.

On the other hand you have the phenomenologists who believe that there may be a material world, but we can never know it. All we can know is our ideas about the world. Matter is just one category of ideas about the world. Anyone who believes otherwise is epistemologically naive or worse a "reductionist."

Thus Michael Polanyi (1975) who is noted for his efforts to bridge the gap between science and the humanities in his book Meaning dismisses cybernetics in the following way,

Thus the humanists saw cybernetics as just another form of reductionism, reducing mind to matter, to a machine.

For both humanists and scientists the idea of an interactionist theory of mind and body was literally "unthinkable."

The assumption, common to both Samuel and Polanyi, is that a materialist analysis is sufficient to explain a machine. But if the cyberneticists are right, then this assumption is false. If a cybernetic system does combine both mind and body then a materialist analysis of a cybernetic system would be reductionistic.

Traditional materialist metaphysics has argued that reality can be defined as matter in the dimensions of space/time. All other aspects of reality can be reduced to these as axioms.

One of the accusations that is brought against materialism is that it is reductionist. It is necessary to be clear about what this means.

The axiomatic method argues that most complex things can be derived from a small set of relatively simple assumptions or axioms. This method was first proposed by Plato and first implemented by Euclid. It is at the core of Occam's Razor. It is the pride of many scientists, such as Einstein, that science has been able to take complex natural phenomena and reduce them to a few simple formulae. The axiomatic method is a powerful and effective method.

The charge of "reductionism," has to prove that the attempt to reduce things to a few axioms does so at the expense of leaving out important dimensions. Thus Euclid's geometry was reductionistic. It was a plane geometry that operated in two dimensions. It did not take adequate account of the third dimension. It has been supplemented by non-Euclidean geometries that operate in a multi-dimensional space.

Just as our understanding of geometry has progressed, so the understanding of materialism has developed from an idea of "matter" to an idea of "matter/energy."

When Descartes formulated the problem he saw it as a problem of things that had "extension," (things that you could measure with a ruler), and things that did not have "extension," (things that you couldn't measure with a ruler). In the one category you have lumps of wax, and in the other category you have ideas.

What has become clear is that the important things in both categories are not "things," but "processes." This changes our basic definition of the mind/body problem from the relationship of mind to body, to the relationship of material processes to mental processes.

Materialist analysis culminated in the concept of "energy" or "matter/energy." A modern materialist analysis would describe the processes of a cybernetic system in terms of energy transforms. (The development of this idea is dealt with more extensively in Appendix A.)

Let us then diagram a simple cybernetic device as a series of energy transforms. For example the flush toilet.

  As a series of energy transforms:

Each individual transform can be explained by a materialist description. In fact this description is necessary to understand the movements of a cybernetic system. But there is a missing dimension.

When we put them together the process looks like this:

When we try to do it as a series of energy transforms the series breaks down at the points where we try to pass from the energy in the water to the energy in the float, and from the energy in the lever to the water pressure in the valve. The energy used in raising the float is only a percentage of the energy used in raising the water. The ft/lbs transmitted through the lever are totally unrelated to the water pressure in the water pipe. The process cannot be described as a sequential flow of energy. Something else is happening that the energy transforms do not describe. There is a change in the system at a formal level. The changing opening in the valve can be described in materialistic terms, but the process cannot be. It is precisely the governor or cybernetic quality of the system that is not explained. It explains the movements of the system, but not the meaning of the system. In other words a purely materialist description of a cybernetic system is reductionistic.

The cyberneticists always said that a cybernetic system must be understood as a process of communication. Cybernetics does not reduce information to energy transforms, in fact it insists that information is a dimension of its own. Wiener (1948) declares "Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day." p.155.

A communications analysis of a cybernetic system sees the cybernetic system as a process of communication in which information is transmitted and is meaningful.

Let us now take this method of analyzing a cybernetic system and use it to analyze the flush toilet as a process of information transforms:

When we put these together it is a consistent, sequential process.

This analysis is not peculiar to the particular example. It could be used of any other cybernetic system such as a thermostat or a fuse.

The thermostat example is good for indicating the binary quality of the switch, which relates it back to information theory.

Each transform takes the result of the previous transform and changes it in a new way.

It is this consistent, sequential quality that allows it to be programmed in a computer simulation. A computer simulation is by definition a series of information transforms.

Materialists have never denied the importance of formal qualities. They have merely argued that all formal qualities can be expressed as quantities of space/time. Materialism denies the reality of any other kind of set. It is the process of communication that baffles the materialist. Each of the elements can be described materially, but the process cannot.

Seen as part of a communications system, the float acts as a sensor that conveys information about the water level in the tank to the valve. The water level is information. The float level is information. The valve opening is information. The float level has meaning and that meaning is the water level.

In a comparison of the two ways of describing the system, four important dimensions are missing from an energy transform analysis. 1. The information take-off involves a sample like procedure where one part of the surface of the water represents the whole surface (inductive logic). This process is essential to the information aspect of the system. If the full energy of the system were used as feedback then this informational quality would be lost. 2. The information controls the form of the transformation of a collateral energy supply. In other words the change of one formal variable operates to create a change in the system at a formal or holistic level. 3. The system has a circular quality which entails an element of self-reference and thus self- control. Each of these three differences is an aspect of part-whole relationships. 4. There is also a different relationship to time. The cybernetic system moves one way in time. It is not reversible in the way the energy transforms are.

We have defined body as matter/energy. Energy is force through space. An energy transform changes energy in one form into energy in another form. The quantity of energy remains constant.

We have defined mind as the process of communication. Communication can be seen as a series of information transforms where information can be defined as choices within a set, and an information transform changes choices in one set into choices in another set.

When we look at a cybernetic system we can ask if it is a process of energy transformation or a process of information transmission? Is one more "true," or more "real" than the other? It is similar to looking at the classic gestalt picture and saying, "Is it a vase or two faces?"

It is both, but if you focus on one then you will not see the other. The skill in designing a cybernetic system has always been the ability to see it as a process of information transmission and then draw it as a process of energy transformation. Electrical engineers have always been able to see the current in the line as both signal and energy. This is the essence of the vacuum tube or transistor.

The interaction of mind and body is the same as the interaction of the two aspects of a gestalt. They share common characteristics that are definitive for each system. Thus the transmitters are definitive for a communication system, but transmitters are also energy transformers. Similarly the form of the energy transformer is definitive for its operation, but a change in that form is a function of the transmission of forms, i.e. information.

Communication uses energy. Whether it is a sound wave, a radio wave, a printed book, a pencil and paper, a video screen, a stone carving or a synapse, messages are always transmitted by a process, and the process always uses energy.

These energy transforms are always collateral, because an energy transform, per se, cannot be an information transform. An information transform always entails a change of set. Choices within one set are correlated with choices within a second set. But an energy transform does not involve two different sets. In an energy transform a element within the set of energy quantities is equal to a corresponding set of energy quantities. This is accounts for the gestalt quality, the two different ways of looking at transforms.

Although the mechanism of an information transform will always be some kind of energy transform, the information process cannot be reduced to, derived from, or predicted by the energy transform.

For a message in Morse code, whether the message is sent using ten watts or thirty watts is irrelevant to the message.

Traditional physics deals with issues of power, but the new information sciences deal with issues of control. Power defines movement. Information defines form, and the form controls the movement.

The nature of an energy transform is controlled by its form. Thus the operation of a lever is controlled by the position of the fulcrum. Communication theory shows us how form is transmitted so that formal choices in one set can be translated into formal choices in another set.

The "cybernete" moves the tiller. The movement of the tiller sends a message to the rudder. The movement of the rudder changes the form of the ship thus changing its motion.

The purpose of this presentation of a cybernetic system was to show that a materialist (matter/energy) analysis of a cybernetic system is reductionistic. When a matter/energy analysis is compared and contrasted with a communications analysis then the system is more fully understood and the interaction between the energy and information aspects reveals the interaction of mind and body.

In describing a cybernetic system, I set out to describe it in terms that are generally used to describe the functions of mind. I replaced the terms "receptor, effector, take-off, rate, state, input, output," with the terms "sensing, evaluating, choosing, acting, models, values, resources, and situation." I did this in order to stress the idea that the functions of a cybernetic system are in fact the functions traditionally attributed to mind.

There still remains, however, the accusation that taking the terms usually used in reference to mind and applying them to machines is inappropriate, misleading, and "anthropomorphizing." Is the communications analysis simply a more sophisticated materialism? Are the aspects of a cybernetic system really aspects of mind, or is there some sleight of hand going on?

Let us look at these aspects of a system one by one and see what resemblance they bear to the conventional understanding of mind.

The only way to show that what we mean by "communication" is what has been traditionally meant by "mind" is to look at the characteristics traditionally attributed to mind and see if they match our definitions of communication.

Mind and body are generally seen as having the following distinguishing characteristics.

Sensing implies information, ideas, the immaterial, and deductive logic. Communications theory makes a distinction between "information," and "meaning." In Appendix C the definition of information as "choice within a set" is examined and shown to be equivalent to the treatment of ideas in deductive logic. It is also demonstrated that this definition implies that information is immaterial.

Sensing also implies meaning, awareness, consciousness, feeling, modelling, inductive logic, and the subjective. In Appendix D the definition of meaning as "referring to or being correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities," is shown to be equivalent to an information transform.

The idea of a sensor as an information transform means that the meaning of a perception is the object that is perceived. What is perceived is the form or information in the object. That information is transformed and thus correlated with a set of internal forms or informational sets.

This presents an epistemology that is a form of subjective realism. The perception of the world is a perception of reality, of real information. Thus there is awareness, consciousness or feeling. At the same time since this information is transformed and correlated with a set of internal categories this awareness is subjective. The transform process implies a process of modelling or inductive logic.

Sensing also implies the holistic, and the meta-level. The information transform allows for a process of naming, of holistic reference, and therefore the establishment of meta-levels.

Appendix D closes by showing that the difference between human "understanding," and cybernetic understanding is a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind.

Evaluating implies values, goals, purpose, teleology, programming. The best defense of the application of these terms to cybernetic systems is still that offered in the original paper by Arthuro Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow, "Behaviour, Purpose and Teleology," Philosophy of Science, 1943,X. 18-24.

Their argument, in short, is that if we define teleological as "purpose controlled by feedback," then we can avoid the difficulties posed by "final causes," achieve a greater precision of usage, and preserve the concept of purposeful behaviour.

Choosing implies choice and will. And raises the issues of free will, and action, and the inner dialogue. If information is defined as choice then the problem is resolved. An information system will involve choices. The universal human experience is the experience of choice and decision making. There is nothing magical about the will. There is a vast science devoted to the theory of decision making. At the same time the Existentialists have never tired of pointing out that the idea of absolute choice will always lead to the absurd. But this assumes a phenomenological metaphysics. If, as is proposed above, we adopted a subjective realism for our epistemology, then our reality is not totally arbitrary, but is in large part given. There then exists not only freedom and choice, but also error.

The cybernetic analysis puts choice and will in context. Choice has meaning in terms of the information that is received, the values that are being maintained, and of the options available. Choices are real, but they are not arbitrary or absurd. They have a context and a meaning.

Acting implies controlling, achieving specific changes. This aspect of a cybernetic system requires the least explanation since it is the most like the conventional materialist analysis. What is new is the idea that action has meaning, that it has a purpose, that it is designed to make a difference, to achieve significant changes.

The amazing quality of cybernetic systems is that they are self-regulating. They change their behaviour in response to changes in the environment that they have created. They are aware of the effect of their own behaviour and thus in an elementary sense self-conscious. Feedback implies self-consciousness. This analysis is dependent on seeing the cybernetic process as a series of information transforms, so that the meaning of an action is the result that it achieves.

By looking at each aspect of the system we have presented a case that the application of the terms for mind to the processes of communication is not simply a metaphor but a more accurate and precise description.

We have developed a metaphysics that says that reality is a constant process of transformation where energy changes forms and forms control energy. Is this a happy solution? Does it shed light on the placebo effect, the problem of individual and social responsibility, the relationship of the kidney to the body and the individual to society, the paradoxical responses of self-regulating systems, the phenomenon of families, defense departments, industrial pollution and other social events taking on a mind of their own?

As this point, however, we have begun to move away from the subject of the mind/body problem and have begun to enter the realm of social and economic analysis.

In 1948 when Norbert Wiener was writing his book Cybernetics, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead encouraged him to devote his energies to discussing the applications of cybernetic theory to social and economic problems. He demurred, on the grounds that the statistical runs were excessively short. The problem was later taken up by Jay Forrester and the Systems Dynamics Group. In this paper I have attempted to move cybernetic analysis one step closer to the social sciences. It is abundantly clear that it is in the field of communication and control that we must concentrate our efforts if we are to have any hope for significant breakthroughs in coping with the complex social and ecological problems that beset us.

Go to Appendices