NETFUTURE

                    Technology and Human Responsibility

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Issue #89      A Publication of The Nature Institute           May 4, 1999
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            Editor:  Stephen L. Talbott (stevet@netfuture.org)

                     On the Web: http://netfuture.org
     You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes.

NETFUTURE is a reader-supported publication.


CONTENTS
---------

Quotes and Provocations
   Globalism Means Living with Your Neighbor
   Tales from the Computerized Classroom

Failure to Connect: Jane Healy on Classroom Computers (Stephen L. Talbott)
   Finding a rationale for the computer isn't easy

I Wonder What My Brain is Thinking? (Stephen L. Talbott)
   `Brain' language and the disappearance of the self

About this newsletter


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                         QUOTES AND PROVOCATIONS


Globalism Means Living with Your Neighbor
-----------------------------------------

One of the damaging notions that seems to have gained in currency along
with the Net is that we can construct the most powerful educational
experiences from what is foreign and distant.  This thought seems to lie
behind the drive toward "multicultural education" via the Net, and also
behind the love affair with rain forests and online expeditions to
Antarctica.

I have nothing against the foreign and the distant as such, but the
sentiment here strikes me as dead wrong.  The truth is that the most
powerful educational experiences come from what is nearest to us.  The use
of the Net in pursuit of the opposite conviction often exemplifies the
well-known contradiction:  "I love mankind; it's just people I can't
stand."  The same contradiction could be put in environmental terms:  "I
love nature; it's just the bits of it around my home I find rather dull."

As I've pointed out before, if you really want to make Johnny a good
global citizen, there's no need to check his folder of email from remote
places.  Just observe which kids he doesn't get along with on the
playground.  There's where your real educational opportunities are.

We don't need to look further than the current tragedies unfolding in
Kosovo to be reminded that there is only one challenge in the whole world
regarding global citizenship:  it's the challenge of living with our
neighbors.  To the extent we allow our digital networks to distract us
from this challenge, we undermine the global spirit.


Tales from the Computerized Classroom
-------------------------------------

Some interesting facts and quotations drawn from Jane Healy's Failure to
Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds -- for Better and Worse.
Healy's book is reviewed in the feature articles of this issue.  (Page
numbers are indicated in parentheses.)

** Four of the ten best-selling children's CD-ROM titles in 1996 were
marketed for children beginning at age three.  (20)

** A father:  "We bought our three-year-old this great computer, but all
he wanted to play with was the box it came in."  (203)

** Lillian Katz:  "Children do not have to be amused, cajoled, or tricked
into learning.  This is only an American problem and it's disrespectful of
children."  (241)

** A survey of parents, teachers, "leaders" in various fields, and the
general public showed "computer skills and media technology" ranking third
in a list of sixteen possibilities -- considerably higher than "good
citizenship" and "curiosity and love of learning".  Every group but the
leaders rated computer skills more important than "values" (for example,
honesty and tolerance).  (20)

** Eight-year-old:  "Yes computers can think.  Because they pick up tons
of information.  I would think a computer is smarter [than a human].
Because it tells always the right answers."  (127)

** According to an online children's survey, children who were asked which
they trusted more, their parents or their computers, mostly voted for
their computers.  (82)

** "In survey after survey, to most parents' astonishment, when children
are given choices of activities, time spent with parents always
heads the list."  (75)

** A father and scientist:  "Any parent who thinks the computer can
substitute for a parent is just stupid."  (166)

** David Denby in The New Yorker:  "When Max is at home on a Saturday or
on vacation, he may hit the computer as soon as he gets up, ignoring
repeated entreaties to eat breakfast, and finally ignoring bowls of cereal
placed under his nose as he plays one of the war-strategy games he
currently loves .... What's lost is the old dream that parents and teachers
will nurture the organic development of the child's own interests, the
child's own nature.  In this country, people possessed solely by the
desire to sell have become far more powerful than parents tortuously
working out the contradictions of authority, freedom, education, and
soul-making."  (191)

** "I am discouraged by my estimate of what [students using computers] are
learning, namely:  Don't stop to think, don't work the problem through,
don't read the few text screens (even if they could), just jump in and try
something -- if it doesn't work you can blow it up, start again, or switch
programs."  (46)

** "If we develop children who are empty of all but what is beamed into
them from outside, we will have begotten nothing but the sad shells of our
own ambitions."  (175)

** "In most studies, hypertext has come in as a poor second to traditional
text.  Reading from a screen is slower, more fatiguing, less accurate, and
more subject to information overload than standard reading.  In several
studies, students tested for comprehension after reading from a screen
demonstrated less understanding and poorer memory than those getting the
same information from a book.  They tended to get lost or flip too quickly
through the screens without reading .... Adding digitized pictures, sound,
and animation to learning has not yet proven any more effective than
studying illustrated books."  (152)

** "Reading consists much more of a person's `habits of mind' -- e.g.,
sustained concentration, language, imagery, questioning strategies -- than
it does of reciting words or alphabet sounds.  Computers ... tend to raise
older children's scores if the tests focus more on mechanics of reading
than on deeper comprehension skills .... In one study children using very
popular reading software drill-and-practice (disguised as games with
reward screens) demonstrated a 50 percent drop in their creativity
scores."  (234)

** Dr. John Jacobi, optometrist:  "Thanks to computers, my business is
booming, I'm sorry to say.  We're seeing humongous increases in the need
for both vision therapy and occupational therapy because two-dimensional
visual experience without related motor experience doesn't set the
necessary base.  Kids come in with `the look' -- I can tell right away."
(112)

** UCLA researchers polled 350,000 U.S. college freshmen, who chose as
their highest goal, "being very well off financially".  In previous
decades, aspirations such as "developing a meaningful philosophy of life"
received top ranking.  (90)

**  "Cause and effect -- as well as self-control -- are easy to learn when
you're trying to hammer a nail into a board (if I miss, then I might hurt
my finger), but hard to learn when a system crashes for no apparent reason
or things jump around the screen without a visible source of propulsion."
(209)

** "Much of the software your children are playing with was developed by a
company founded by two brothers who, as children, created their own secret
world in an alcove under the stairs based on their reading of the Hardy
Boys adventure series.  Although their software is among the `better'
products, I am quite sure its manufactured delights don't hold a candle to
that wonderful secret kingdom that occupied so many of their hours -- and
later enabled them to make a fortune from parents who feared their own
children might have too much unscheduled time."  (228)

** "At Vancouver's DigiPen (short for digital pencil) college, students
spend four years -- often after four years at another university --
learning to create video games.  Applications for admission at last count
were running at 12,000 for 77 places."  (158)

** A Forbes magazine editor:  "In the end it is the poor who will
be chained to the computer; the rich will get teachers."  (47)

SLT

Goto table of contents


==========================================================================

          FAILURE TO CONNECT: JANE HEALY ON CLASSROOM COMPUTERS

                            Stephen L. Talbott
                          (stevet@netfuture.org)

Notes concerning Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our
Children's Minds -- for Better and Worse, by Jane Healy (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1998).

Jane Healy walks into the school's computer room, where she sees a huge
banner proclaiming, "COMPUTERS ARE OUR FUTURE!!!"  Thirty-two nine- and
ten-year-olds sit at the computers, pursuing their solitary math and
reading tasks while a teacher and an aide lend what support they can.

Taking up a position behind Raoul, Healy watches as he effortlessly solves
a few simple addition problems and then gleefully accepts his reward:  a
series of smash-and-blast games.  When the games end, Raoul is confronted
with more math problems.  "Groaning slightly, he quickly solves the
problems and segues expertly into the next space battle."

   By the time I move on, Raoul has spent many more minutes zapping aliens
   than he has doing math .... [I] wonder if what we are really teaching
   Raoul is that he should choose easy problems so he can play longer, or
   that the only reason to use his brain even slightly is to be granted --
   by an automaton over which he has no personal control -- some mindless
   fun as a reward.  (p. 43)

Then Healy observes Dareesha, who is practicing reading skills.

   Dareesha watches as a page with a few lines of storybook text appears,
   embellished by a colorful illustration.  She examines the pictures as
   the cursor highlights and a voice reads each phrase of the text.  This
   takes approximately twenty seconds; now Dareesha's face breaks into a
   broad grin as she seizes the mouse and for several enchanted minutes
   clicks skillfully on the objects in the illustration.  In response,
   each picture animates and performs a clever act:  a mailbox opens and
   waves its flag, flowers bend in a rhythmic dance, vegetables turn jet-
   propelled and zoom across the screen.  Dareesha, mesmerized, laughs
   aloud, unfortunately attracting the attention of the aide who
   materializes over her shoulder.  "Read me that story!" she demands.
   Dareesha wilts and begins futilely to attempt sounding out the words on
   the screen.

   You'd better try harder or you'll never pass this grade", comments the
   aide, moving on.  Dareesha sighs, looks over her shoulder, makes a few
   limp passes at the words, which are clearly too difficult for her, and
   begins once again clicking on the pictures.  (pp. 43-44)

Later, Healy chats with Dareesha's teacher:

   "No, I don't have nearly enough time to give attention to each kid",
   she sighs.  "Actually, I'm not really a trained teacher.  They drafted
   me because I was pretty good with these machines.  So I get the kids
   started on the programs, then I can go about my business -- a lot of
   paperwork and there are always a few of these darn things that need
   fixing."  (p. 44)



Looking for the Benefits
------------------------

In her new book, Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our
Children's Minds -- for Better and Worse, Healy offers numerous such
stories based on her remarkably extensive observation of computer-based
education around the country.  The stories range from good to bad to ugly
-- with the great majority being decidedly ugly.  It's enough to make any
sober-minded reader despair of the American educational system.

Healy herself struggles mightily to see benefits, real or potential, in
the classroom use of computers.  Currently, however, her typical positive
scenario runs something like this:  Here's an example of a reasonably
healthy exploitation of the computer in a richly textured classroom
setting; but, of course, given the healthy setting, much the same thing
could easily be achieved without the massive expenditures on high-tech
equipment and support.

"There's no question that one's initial reaction to much children's
software is bedazzlement", she says.  It may take awhile to realize that
"the remarkable tricks are mostly being played by the computer, not by the
child" (p. 48).  It's a measure of our extremity today that Healy is
driven to spend a good deal of time repeating such obvious truths.  For
example:

   "The mere presence of computers guarantees nothing about their
   educational value".

   "Just because children like something does not mean it is either good
   for them or educational".

   "Using a computer will not automatically make your child smarter".

   "Facility with a computer signifies nothing special about a child's
   intelligence".

   "`Information' is not the be-all, end-all of learning".

But Healy's advice is by no means all so elementary.  She is a
psychologist and educator of some thirty-five years' standing, who
previously wrote Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think -- and What
We Can Do About It.  Her new book, grounded wonderfully in wise
observation of actual classroom work, is a vital resource for educators.
By way of the endnotes, it provides excellent access to the current
research literature.  And throughout the book there are valuable
checklists for parents and educators:  for example, how to

*  evaluate software for different age groups
*  encourage girls to use computers
*  boost motivation with computers
*  avoid "online addiction"
*  improve attention
*  control video-game use
*  protect against health hazards
*  plan for the introduction of computers in a school

and much more.

I found some of this advice about how to make the best use of computers
slightly disconcerting -- especially when it immediately followed a series
of horrific pictures illustrating our society's systematic inability to
engage the computer sanely.  This was particularly true in the discussion
of pre-schoolers and children in the lower grades, for whose use of the
computer Healy could find few redeeming benefits to offset the many
disastrous consequences.  Given her awareness of our society's "irrational
obsession with high-tech solutions" (p. 81), and given the computer's
near-perfection of our prevailing imbalances, I half expected her to say
(as I myself am always tempted to say) "Ban the cursed machines from the
classroom; in today's social context they are almost certain to work
destructively".

But instead (for which we must thank her) she offers her eminently
sensible advice about how to get the most from the machine.  As a
practical, feet-on-the-ground guidebook for parents and educators, and as
an admirably comprehensive introduction to the massive literature bearing
on computers in education, Failure to Connect is perhaps the most
valuable book we now have.


Remembering the Alternatives
----------------------------

If I had to lodge one complaint, it would be that Healy does not follow up
on her repeated observation that most successful projects would prove just
as successful without the computer.  That is, she does not spend much time
helping us to imagine the alternatives.  This exercise is important,
however, because it almost invariably shows how the alternatives can
readily provide what children are most lacking in our society, whereas the
computer itself tends to exacerbate the lack.  Surely this has a bearing
on educational policy.

To take one example:  Healy visited a fourth-grade class where the
children were studying water resources.  They collected data on local
water quality, in cooperation with twelve to fifteen other schools around
the world.

   But hands-on learning comes first, as they visit a well to investigate
   local water sources and research water rights which date from the 1850
   gold rush.  Then they conduct science experiments to test water for
   chemical elements and send the results to a central "server", which
   collates them with data from children as far away as Russia.  Finally,
   an adult scientist receives their data, analyzes it, and sends back a
   summary of her findings.

Much about this context is indeed healthy, and the notion of collecting
and sharing "data" about environmental problems around the world is highly
regarded in most educational circles.  And yet, the features most directly
facilitated by the computer -- namely, the electronically mediated data-
sharing and the scientist's analysis and report -- point to what is most
questionable in the project.

To see why this is so, listen to a story told by David Sobel in his
exhilarating little booklet, Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in
Nature Education.  He is discussing how the water cycle is usually
taught:

   Starting in first grade, children do little experiments in jars and
   soon thereafter draw diagrams of clouds, condensation, rivers flowing
   to the ocean and evaporating back to the clouds.  Too often the
   denatured words have little connection to the real world.  Rarely do
   children step outside, investigate puddles, collect rainwater, make
   miniature landscapes, or follow streams.  (p. 22)

Once, when Sobel was working with fourth, fifth, and sixth graders who
could all "recite the water cycle forwards and backwards", he decided to
test their understanding.  He asked, "When it rains over the ocean, does
it rain fresh water or salt water?"

   Almost all of them were adamant that it rained salt water.  If we were
   teaching the water cycle in an experiential fashion, these children
   would know the answer to this question.  But the problem is that we're
   not really teaching science or environmental education, we are teaching
   a veneer of words, recitation without reality.  (p. 22)

The challenge for children today is to find a direct, meaningful
connection with nature.  The scientist's chemical analysis of the
children's data gains meaning only within a vast body of high abstraction
that these kids must eventually find some approach to.  But that approach
must be grounded in their own experience.  Far better at their age to test
the water by observing its effects upon seed germination or other life
processes the children themselves can observe than to have scientists or
"black boxes" report back the presence of so many parts per million of
such-and-such a molecule.

We adults too easily forget that these remote facts make no sense -- not
even to us -- except insofar as they are correlated with sensible effects.
("How does this chemical affect health?")  The child whose direct
experience of nature has been shortchanged -- the child who thinks it
rains salt water -- is not going to gain in scientific stature by
obtaining abstract chemical analyses of unpronounceable trace elements.

Sobel's book, incidentally, contains several examples of water-related
instruction.  Students can undertake to clean and groom a section of a
local stream -- an exercise that, by itself, could supply many years of
curriculum in physics, biology, ecology, geography, map-making, and any
number of other subjects.  Class trips can be taken to explore along the
length of a stream.  (Sobel describes one fifth-grade class that went
exploring to find out about the stream that flowed through a culvert under
the playground.  It became an exciting adventure for the students, and fit
well with a neighborhood contour-mapping project.)

And, again, a third-grade class, after reading Paddle-to-the-Sea,
constructed their own little boats and then, after a brief ceremony,
launched them in a local stream.  When, a few weeks later, a canoeing
stream-lover found one of the boats with its message and wrote back to the
owner, the class excitedly traced the boat's position on the map and
debated its further progress.  They also knew that they had been in touch
with someone else out there who deeply shared their concern for the life
of the stream.

Upon reading this, I couldn't help thinking, "Now there's `distance
education' that really works!"  As children grow, their horizons need to
expand -- but by manageable increments, so that the threads connecting
them to the surrounding world are continually lengthened and strengthened,
not summarily snapped.

It is precisely these connecting threads that our children most
desperately lack in a society where they find themselves isolated from
both nature and the world of adult work.  In this context, the computer --
a veritable engine of abstraction -- a black box that inserts
incomprehensible layers of mediation between the child and whatever it is
he experiences -- is something the educator must always work against.

Given the endless opportunities of the sort David Sobel describes, why do
we work so hard to make the task more difficult?  Do you realize what we
could do in the way of nature education if we diverted even a modest
portion of current computer expenditures toward real-world engagement?

I say all this because Healy's exemplary fourth-grade class project does
indeed represent one of the better educational undertakings in conjunction
with the computer.  But it is important to see how the computer's role in
this project is peripheral to the most urgent benefits of the project, and
is actually a strong invitation to sacrifice some of the benefits by
pulling the students away from a science rooted in their own experience
and understanding.

It's also worth noting that the communication function served by the
computer in this project could readily be exercised by old-fashioned mail.
I'm not aware of any educational loss that would result from the several
days' lag time -- and there might possibly be a gain in the students'
anticipation and in their more sustained focus.  If, as so many people
think, the computer's role in such projects is educationally remarkable,
one wonders why so few educators previously saw -- or now see -- the same
remarkable opportunities being offered by the vastly cheaper postal
service.  Apparently the computer exudes a glamor that simply pre-empts
all "common" educational answers -- and thereby also pre-empts common
sense.

Goto table of contents


==========================================================================

                   I WONDER WHAT MY BRAIN IS THINKING?

                            Stephen L. Talbott
                          (stevet@netfuture.org)

One of the many virtues of Jane Healy's Failure to Connect (see
previous article) is its emphasis upon the stages of child development.
Healy carefully details the needs manifest during each period of growth.
She then shows how the computer can distort the growth or (at least
potentially, and after the first school years) complement it.  She is
often compelled to point out that the consequences of particular computer
uses for good or ill are currently unknown; we are conducting a huge
experiment, with our children the guinea pigs.

I will not try to summarize Healy's wide-ranging commentary -- an
impossible task.  Instead, I wish to look at how she speaks about the
brain -- a way of speaking that has profound consequences for our
understanding of both man and machine.  I believe her many references to
the brain are largely irrelevant to her case.  Or, putting it the other
way around:  the immense amount of clear-headed advice in the book gains
little from the misleading references to the brain.  Nevertheless, these
references pose huge problems of their own.

Here are some examples of her usage:

*  "The need for relatedness is so ingrained in the human brain that even
   adults treat computers a lot like human beings" (p. 192).

*  "Musical intuition and the sense of musical form are ... grounded in
   the brain's experience of the body during development" (p. 122).

*  The problem with many prestructured computer programs is that
   "attention is guided by noise, motion, and color, not by the child's
   brain" (p. 178).

*  "Contrary to popular belief, says Robert Sylwester from the University
   of Oregon, `adolescence occurs mainly within our brain'" (p. 178).

*  "No one is sure how `creativity' arises in the brain..." (p. 163).

*  "Since there are a limited number of [brain] circuits, it is hard to
   pay attention to both pictures and language at the same time" (p. 231).

*  Section heading:  "Brain-Appropriate Technology for Elementary-Aged
   Children" (p. 263).

*  "The intellectual job of the middle-school brain is to start divorcing
   itself from the total dependence on concrete experience..." (p. 273).

*  Another section heading:  "New (and Some Old) Responsibilities for the
   Human Brain" (p. 299).

It's not hard to understand why Healy might want to resort to this usage.
As I heard Professor Bettye Caldwell, a child development specialist,
remark at a recent conference, psychologists have been pointing out the
harmful effects of various electronic media upon child development for
decades, yet the larger public has yawned.  But when, today, researchers
begin to talk about effects upon the brain, suddenly everyone jerks awake.
Apparently the brain has become more fundamental and precious in our
thinking than ... our thinking.

All of which suggests that our thinking has lost its anchor.  This is
unfortunately evident in Healy's usage, which is objectionable in the
first place because it grotesquely alters the normal meanings of words
without explanation -- and without making sense.  It's hard to know how
the usual meaning of "adolescence" might apply to a brain -- unless,
perhaps, adolescent brains produce their cortex in the shape of a baseball
hat turned backward.

Similarly, if you were in charge of a row of brains and one of them failed
to carry out its "responsibilities", how would you discipline it?  What is
a fit punishment for an organ?  The notions of responsibility and
punishment apply to whole selves -- selves with hands to reach into cookie
jars, privileges that can be revoked, selves with faces that blush with
guilt, chests that swell with pride, and limbs that grow unsteady with
fear.

And, again, what does it mean for a brain to have a question?  Are its
tissues "bothered" by something that doesn't quite make sense?  Do some of
those tissues "quiver" with excitement when on the verge of discovery?  Do
they experience a surge of pleasure upon suddenly "getting it"?  To
imagine such experiences as the possession of a particular organ in the
body or as somehow a consequence of the abstract logic networks we are so
fond of projecting upon the brain is to engage in speculation far wilder
and less justified than anything the medieval schoolmen have been accused
of.


The Brain as Violin
-------------------

In the second place, the shift in usage gives us a wholly illusory sense
that we are approaching a scientific, cause-and-effect understanding of
child development, whereas in fact the shift continually encourages us to
move away from real understanding.

How could we know that an activity is "brain-appropriate" in Healy's
sense?  Primarily by observing the consequences of the activity for
consciousness and behavior.  Even if we could trace in exquisite detail
how brain changes correlated with the particular activities of a
particular person, this correlation would forever remain inadequate as a
basis for reasoning from brain to behavior -- even for that same person at
a later time.

Let me elaborate briefly.  Healy writes,

   Since metacognition [that is, self-evaluation] appears to be controlled
   by the prefrontal cortex, it is not surprising to learn that highly
   gifted children seem to have enhanced prefrontal functioning, just as
   learning disabled children show less.  (p. 190).

There's no problem with the correlation, but one needs to remember that
the only way we could have distinguished an "enhanced" cortex from a
"degraded" one in the first place was by getting to know the owners of
these cortexes in thought and behavior.  Further, having once drawn our
correlation, we cannot absolutely rely on it in the future.  If there's
one thing we know about the human race -- which has produced a Mozart,
Gandhi, Picasso, Helen Keller, Einstein, Mao, Charles Manson, and Mother
Teresa -- it is that it embraces vast potentials of consciousness
impossible for any of us to imagine adequately.  And if there's one thing
we know about the brain, it's that it exhibits enormous plasticity; it is
like a highly expressive instrument in the hands of a consummate musician:
there is no end of different ways it can be played.  A functional
structure that correlates with one thing in one person may correlate with
something different in another person -- now or in the future.  We are
always driven back to conscious experience as the basis for assessing what
is going on.

So even if we started to see massive changes in certain brain structures
over the next decades -- changes that looked (based on past
correlations) as if they were pathological -- we would only know whether
this was indeed pathology or instead, say, a new form of genius, by making
judgments about consciousness and behavior, not by resting content with
judgments about physical organs.  We would have to observe persons, not
brains.  The human being -- as long as he remains fully human -- never
stops growing toward new, unprecedented achievements of consciousness.
These provide the standard for evaluating the brain, not the other way
around.


Who `Plays' the Brain?
----------------------

In the third place, what really drives this "brain talk" within society as
a whole is the untenable assumption that, "well, one way or another it
is the brain that produces consciousness.  After all, thinking is
something that goes on in our heads.  If we want to understand
consciousness, we've got to understand brains".

When an utterly groundless assumption such as this becomes deeply
entrenched and taboo-like, one can scarcely point the assumption out, let
alone provide reason for rejecting it, in a few paragraphs.  I will merely
offer a suggestion or two for those wishing to pursue the matter further:

** As Owen Barfield reminds us in Speaker's Meaning, until a few hundred
years ago the universal consensus would have been that thoughts do not
occur in our heads.  In fact, our ancestors would have found it as
impossible to conceive of the head "containing" thoughts as we find it to
imagine thoughts outside the head.

You may disagree with the older view, but you should at least acknowledge
that none of the current brain research bears on the issue.  That is, it
does not weigh against the notion that consciousness first fashions the
brain as an instrument for its own subsequent use -- that the thinking
self is the "violin player" who draws from the brain its expressive
potentials.

The reason current research is generally irrelevant to this question is
that our culture has grown incapable of even asking the question in any
coherent fashion.  This alone should be a red flag for us.  If we find it
impossible to work our way into the mindset of our predecessors from just
a few hundred years back -- if we can't experience the "sense" of their
view from the inside, so to speak -- then we have also lost any ability to
defend or even state our own perspective in relation to theirs.  We are
imprisoned within the parochial environs of our own culture.

** Moreover, for one who is willing to look, it is easy to see why
we are incapacitated in this way.  Starting with the Scientific Revolution
(say, around the year 1600) we made a decision to begin ignoring the
qualitative content of consciousness -- which is to say:  to ignore
consciousness as such.  We chose instead to focus our attention on certain
abstractions -- for example, mathematical abstractions -- that were easily
available as a kind of precipitate of thought.

It is hardly surprising that, given a history of such ignoring, what we
ignored should have progressively disappeared from sight, until finally we
convinced ourselves that it was really an illusory phantom all along, a
ghost in the machine.  Having lost all vivid experience of their own
thinking, many cognitive scientists now congratulate themselves for their
great intellectual prowess in exorcising the ghost and manipulating the
machine.  The question is whether it is insight or unconsciousness that
earned the congratulation.

This is not to derogate our extraordinary and vitally necessary victories
of abstraction.  But an abstraction is just that -- something "pulled out"
of a larger whole.  And to forget the whole is, eventually, to lose the
meaning even of the abstractions derived from it.

** Lastly, I find it interesting that some of Healy's "brain talk"
actually points in the direction I've been suggesting.  Referring to a
dysfunctional eleven-year-old, she says, "Boyd couldn't manage his own
brain" (p. 182).  That's rather silly, but at least it's a far sounder way
of speaking than the various usages cited above.

More substantively, Healy puts this question:

   What is the magic of language that helps the brain control itself,
   think more effectively, and deal with stresses of all types?  Language
   actually serves as "brain food" for the prefrontal cortex, enabling it
   to make effective connections and organize the confusing assault of
   information from sensory and emotional systems.  (p. 190)

Despite the misguided mention of the brain "thinking" and "controlling
itself", this reminds us of a profoundly important fact:  language --
one's own as well as that of others -- must shape the brain before the
brain can adequately mediate language.  Who knows whether the child's
first, playful babbling -- the melodic eruption of a yet-unfettered
imagination descending from forgotten realms -- is even mediated by
the brain in any full sense?  It seems more likely that, like powerful
sound waves evoking beautiful, delicate forms from a layer of dust, it is
still to some degree singing and shaping the instrument by which later it
will be sung.

Barfield, on the basis of his work as a semantic historian, has remarked
that it makes little sense to ask about the origin of language because
this is to ask about the origin of origin.  It is noteworthy that few can
see the sense of this remark -- not even those who make it a matter of
religious profession that "in the beginning was the Word".  Many meanings
that once confronted us right there in our language are simply no longer
accessible to us, whatever our verbal professions.

                 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Nothing I have said above subtracts from the importance of brain research.
If consciousness fashions this marvelously complex instrument for its own
expression, then messing around with the instrument is surely the height
of foolishness, and learning about the instrument is just as surely
relevant to the one who wields it.  My point has been only that, in the
end, all understanding of the brain is rooted in and made comprehensible
by our understanding of consciousness -- our self-understanding -- and not
the other way around.

If you doubt the importance of all this, just ask yourself about the
development of a sense of responsibility in the child.  Why should anyone
begin to feel responsibility for the actions of his brain?  We don't in
general feel that sort of relation to our internal organs.  Only
people bear responsibility, and I fear that Healy's usage will
contribute further to the underlying problems of dehumanization that she
herself so heroically combats.

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Steve Talbott :: NetFuture #89 :: May 4, 1999

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