Elsewhere Gallistel attributes this to the Hesslow laboratory at the University of Lund, which has a ResearchGate page at https://www.researchgate.net/lab/Germund-Hesslow-Lab. There are links there to what looks like this research.
> This is hard for neuroscientists to digest because they’re committed to the Aristotelean idea that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses.
How is the problem with this not obvious? Animals have all sorts of instinctive behaviors which incorporate knowledge. Many if not most are not attributable to training.
- How does a hungry animal know that it must eat to live? How does it know to eat the correct food instead of dirt? If they had to accumulate this knowledge through their senses they'd just die. Nothing could live.
- How does a spider which has never woven a web "know" that the behavior will lead to catching insects?
- Animals migrate to places where they've never been.
Those examples go on forever. The simplest animal brains are full of knowledge they never individually acquire.
Is that related to how human brains store knowledge? I don't know but I wouldn't rule it out.
BTW I read this article from a link. I have no idea if this site is political in nature. Something about "activism?" I don't endorse anything. I just enjoyed the article.
That isn't knowledge. Animal behavior doesn't require knowledge. The senses move them to do things in certain ways for constitutional reasons. Your claims are like saying that trees have to know how to grow leaves. Trees don't know anything! They just grow leaves because they are functionally ordered to grow leaves under certain conditions that cause the activation of these functions. Knowledge requires aboutness and you don't need aboutness necessarily to behave.
Careful you don't confuse metaphor for what is literal. You can say, figuratively, that trees "know" how to grow leaves, or that robots "know" how to move boxes around a warehouse, but they don't actually. (And in the case of robots, they are just machines that have been arranged in a sophisticated manner that simulates behavior that for human beings would entail some kind of knowledge.)
I'm curious how you distinguish "literal" knowing from "metaphorical" knowing. what is incorrect about saying that "trees (or the DNA of trees) contain the knowledge for how to grow leaves"?
you might be implying that knowledge can only exist if there's some conscious agent that has this knowledge, or only if the conscious agent *knows* that they have this knowledge. while this is the more traditional view of knowledge in epistemology ("justified true belief") it seems unnecessarily constrained.
there's definitely a distinction between the kind of knowledge contained in DNA (of how to eat, how to survive, how to reproduce) and the more explanatory knowledge humans create (theories in physics, chemistry, biology). explanatory knowledge is more powerful and universal. but why declare that the former is not knowledge altogether?
and finally, curious about your claim that robots are "just machines that have been arranged in a sophisticated manner that simulates behavior that [...] would entail some kind of knowledge." can we not say the exact same thing about humans?
I don't understand why the reference is to "numbers" rather than "data". Surely there's no evidence that the data stored in neurons is truly used as numbers. We can interpret any data as a number, of course, but the brain is unlikely to treat this data as numbers.
It may be in the form where it can be used to assess relative magnitude and not actually need arithmetic. I just read an article that refers to a paper on this topic.
I will try and track it down as it is only in my memory, but it addressed the existence of species capable of recognizing magnitudes and suggested that this might be a precursor to numerosity in humans.
This resembles what was proposed by Francis Otto Schmitt in 1962 in his edited volume “Macromolecular Specificity and Biological Memory.” Amazing to see this resurface.
This was a truly fascinating read. My professor fiercely believed that the brain processes numbers, that too what he called trans-ordinal numbers - numbers that are bigger than ordinals (1, 2, to billions, trillions, and more) but not as big as trans-finites (aleph, omega). And in that important way our brain-computer differs from a digital-computer, we operate on a different type of numbers.
Thank for this interview :)
Maybe you should talk to number theorists instead of molecular biologists or neuro scientists!
"they’re committed to the Aristotelean idea that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses. [...] The problem is that there are no sensory receptors for times of day and for interval-durations. A duration doesn’t feel like anything—it’s ineffable."
Where does Aristotle actually say that time is known as an object of the senses? I assure you he never says this. For Aristotle, time is the measure of change with respect to succession. Time is not a "thing"!
Tabula rasa doesn't mean that mental faculties don't exist. That's not what it means for something not to be in the mind that was not in the senses.
Really interesting article and questions - feel a bit hazy on a lot of the elements - one question that is important to me is - how does this help us learn/teach better? I am working on adult education - specifically on leadership that includes values and well being - and am curious what I might experiment with with learners - sort of the other end of Araidne's thread - coming back to the king's throne room
Andrew, check this out [in the context of this post]
https://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-secret-language-of-cells-new-cell-computations-u/
Thanks so much! This is really fascinating and I will definitely pursue this! :)
I have an interview coming up with someone who works on intracellular stuff so I will be sure to broad this in that upcoming interview! :)
Cell Biology: I'm interested in new stuff with regard to condensates & signalling
https://twitter.com/CrocodileChuck/status/1556980480893157376
If true, this is big
Like, Thomas Kuhn, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' big.
I have always remembered this post, and when I read the more recent article a light bulb clicked 'on'
An amazing feeling!
Is there a link or a citation for this ferret article? I don't see any anywhere.
there's also this 2014 article by Johansson. but yea, curious to get the actual link from Dr. Gallistel / interviewer :) https://www.pnas.org/content/111/41/14930
Elsewhere Gallistel attributes this to the Hesslow laboratory at the University of Lund, which has a ResearchGate page at https://www.researchgate.net/lab/Germund-Hesslow-Lab. There are links there to what looks like this research.
Tyler Cowen retweeted link from Sara Constatin. Mind blown, tanks btw
It was on the top page of Hacker News, which means A LOT of people came to read it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26838016
Thank you for writing the article, an excellent read!
> This is hard for neuroscientists to digest because they’re committed to the Aristotelean idea that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses.
How is the problem with this not obvious? Animals have all sorts of instinctive behaviors which incorporate knowledge. Many if not most are not attributable to training.
- How does a hungry animal know that it must eat to live? How does it know to eat the correct food instead of dirt? If they had to accumulate this knowledge through their senses they'd just die. Nothing could live.
- How does a spider which has never woven a web "know" that the behavior will lead to catching insects?
- Animals migrate to places where they've never been.
Those examples go on forever. The simplest animal brains are full of knowledge they never individually acquire.
Is that related to how human brains store knowledge? I don't know but I wouldn't rule it out.
BTW I read this article from a link. I have no idea if this site is political in nature. Something about "activism?" I don't endorse anything. I just enjoyed the article.
That isn't knowledge. Animal behavior doesn't require knowledge. The senses move them to do things in certain ways for constitutional reasons. Your claims are like saying that trees have to know how to grow leaves. Trees don't know anything! They just grow leaves because they are functionally ordered to grow leaves under certain conditions that cause the activation of these functions. Knowledge requires aboutness and you don't need aboutness necessarily to behave.
Careful you don't confuse metaphor for what is literal. You can say, figuratively, that trees "know" how to grow leaves, or that robots "know" how to move boxes around a warehouse, but they don't actually. (And in the case of robots, they are just machines that have been arranged in a sophisticated manner that simulates behavior that for human beings would entail some kind of knowledge.)
I'm curious how you distinguish "literal" knowing from "metaphorical" knowing. what is incorrect about saying that "trees (or the DNA of trees) contain the knowledge for how to grow leaves"?
you might be implying that knowledge can only exist if there's some conscious agent that has this knowledge, or only if the conscious agent *knows* that they have this knowledge. while this is the more traditional view of knowledge in epistemology ("justified true belief") it seems unnecessarily constrained.
there's definitely a distinction between the kind of knowledge contained in DNA (of how to eat, how to survive, how to reproduce) and the more explanatory knowledge humans create (theories in physics, chemistry, biology). explanatory knowledge is more powerful and universal. but why declare that the former is not knowledge altogether?
and finally, curious about your claim that robots are "just machines that have been arranged in a sophisticated manner that simulates behavior that [...] would entail some kind of knowledge." can we not say the exact same thing about humans?
I don't understand why the reference is to "numbers" rather than "data". Surely there's no evidence that the data stored in neurons is truly used as numbers. We can interpret any data as a number, of course, but the brain is unlikely to treat this data as numbers.
It may be in the form where it can be used to assess relative magnitude and not actually need arithmetic. I just read an article that refers to a paper on this topic.
I will try and track it down as it is only in my memory, but it addressed the existence of species capable of recognizing magnitudes and suggested that this might be a precursor to numerosity in humans.
The idea is discussed to some degree on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sense_in_animals
Is there a link or citation to this ferret article? I don't see any anywhere.
How is this different/related to Eric Kandel's research on memory
This resembles what was proposed by Francis Otto Schmitt in 1962 in his edited volume “Macromolecular Specificity and Biological Memory.” Amazing to see this resurface.
This post at The Faculty of Language contains links to a Johansson article from 2017: http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-gallistel-king-conjecture-update.html#comment-form
This was a truly fascinating read. My professor fiercely believed that the brain processes numbers, that too what he called trans-ordinal numbers - numbers that are bigger than ordinals (1, 2, to billions, trillions, and more) but not as big as trans-finites (aleph, omega). And in that important way our brain-computer differs from a digital-computer, we operate on a different type of numbers.
Thank for this interview :)
Maybe you should talk to number theorists instead of molecular biologists or neuro scientists!
*you = Dr Gallistel
"they’re committed to the Aristotelean idea that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses. [...] The problem is that there are no sensory receptors for times of day and for interval-durations. A duration doesn’t feel like anything—it’s ineffable."
Where does Aristotle actually say that time is known as an object of the senses? I assure you he never says this. For Aristotle, time is the measure of change with respect to succession. Time is not a "thing"!
Tabula rasa doesn't mean that mental faculties don't exist. That's not what it means for something not to be in the mind that was not in the senses.
Ooops, Sorry:
https://twitter.com/CrocodileChuck/status/1556982485044834306
Really interesting article and questions - feel a bit hazy on a lot of the elements - one question that is important to me is - how does this help us learn/teach better? I am working on adult education - specifically on leadership that includes values and well being - and am curious what I might experiment with with learners - sort of the other end of Araidne's thread - coming back to the king's throne room