A Digression on the History of Some Philosophical Ideas about Cognition and Evolution

Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins has drawn attention to a new article about Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838-1916) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Mach was an important figure for the philosophical theory of positivism, philosophy of science in general, gestalt theory, and even influenced Skinner’s behaviorism. Mach was also very interested in psychology, and focused on the question how sense data and sensory elements, constitute our perception, and especially our conscious experience and sense of selfhood, given that the starting point for our conscious experience and reasoning is actually made of elements like this :

source:
wikiepdia commons

According to Mach, we then shorten, bundle and anchor these “elements” into a unified body-image self concept. There is thus only a

“complex of memories, moods, and feelings, joined to a particular body (the human body), which is denominated the "I" or "Ego" (Mach, 1897. p. 3, cited in Pleh 1999) But: "The primary fact is not the I, the Ego, but the elements (sensations). The elements constitute the I. ... when I die... only an ideal mental-economical unity, not a real unity, has ceased to exist (Mach, 1897, p. 19-20, cited in Pléh 1999)"

To explain how these sensations are bundled and form concepts he draws on Darwin’s theory of evolution, which, as Wilkins notes, makes him one on of the first evolutionary epistemologists:

Here’s what Paul Rojman writes in his article:

"Mach is part of the empiricist tradition, but he also believed in an a priori. But it is a biologized a priori: what is a priori to an individual organism was a posteriori to its ancestors; not only does the a priori pre-form experience, but the a priori is itself formed from experience. It was simultaneously the contradiction and confirmation of Kantian epistemology. In as much as Kant used the a priori to explain how knowledge is possible, Mach uses the knowledge of the new sciences to explain how an a priori is possible. One more patch of philosophy, it was thought, yielded to science.”

Interestingly, Mach even made some interesting comment on what today we would call Theory of Mind Research:

"We predict in thought the acts and behavior of men by assuming sensations, feelings, and wills similar to our own connected with their bodies" (Mach, 1910, p. 207, cited in Pleh 1999). He even speculates on how early and in what way these capacities emerge: "every child unconsciously accomplished it" (Mach, 1910: 208, cited in Pleh 1999).

This would thus make Mach a Simulationist in the current debate.

In his Article “Ernst Mach and Daniel Dennett: Two Evolutionary Models of Cognition” Csaba Pléh shows that there is are interesting historical developments that “create a continuity from Mach to Dennett“ starting from Ernst Mach and other Viennese Scholars. Pléh argues that Mach influenced psychologist Karl Bühler, taught and influenced both philosopher Karl Popper, who focused on the logical aspect of evolutionary transmission and ethologist Konrad Lorenz, who focused on evolutionary explanations for biological traits. Both then influenced the work of Dan Dennett either directly or indirectly.

Thus, the two philosophical traditions which had their origin in Vienna, Logical Positivism and evolutionary-minded behaviorally studies/evolutionary epistemology, finally unite in modern cognitive science-oriented philosophy:

“What we have today in the work of Dennett and others is a meeting of the Frege-Russell-Vienna traditions with the Darwinian traditions so clearly exposed by Mach.” (Pléh 1999)

Interestingly, speaking of historical forebears of modern ideas about cognition, I looked at the wikipedia articles on gestalt theorists, in the German wikipedia entry for famous gestalt theorist Wolfgang Köhler I found a reference to a paper in the journal Gestalt Theory, in which Morris Eagle and Jerome Wakefield claim that Köhler anticipated the discovery and function of mirror neurons with his theory of psychophysical isomorphism. Here are the abstracts:

"Recent work in cognitive neuroscience reveals that, when one observes another person performing some action, neurons fire in one’s own motor cortex that are the very same neurons that would fire if one were also performing the observed action; these have been dubbed “mirror neurons”. The principle of external or interpersonal isomorphism, formulated by the Gestalt psychologists, Köhler and Koffka, during the 1920’s through to the 1940’s, anticipated important aspects of the mirror neuron discovery. Moreover, both the Gestaltists’ theory, based on the principle of interpersonal isomorphism, and Gallese’s (2003) contemporary theory of “embodied simulation”, inspired by the mirror neuron discovery, converge on the central claim that our general ability to understand another’s actions, emotions, and intentions, is implicit, automatic, and non-inferential. (Eagle and Morris 2007)"

"This paper aims to give a constructive contribution to Eagle & Wakefield’s contention (in their article in Gestalt Theory 29, 59-64) that the Gestaltists’ hypotheses regarding isomorphism and phenomenological direct access to other’s mind anticipate recent accounts of mind-reading ability. I attempt to specify the extent to which Gestalt psychology might be seen to be consistent under certain respects with mirror neurons system theory and embodied simulation theory, claimed to be founding the aforementioned ability. Therefore, empirical and theoretical issues such as the neurobiological features of the mirror neuron system, the psychological explanation of its functions, and the features of the embodied simulation theory are briefly addressed. Further, some points about the consistence of this explanatory view with some key Gestaltist notions are made. It is argued that talk of off-line action planning as internal pretending states might not be consonant with Koffka’s attempt to explaining other’s mental states as a special class of phenomenal qualities." (Cali 2007)

"Recent work in cognitive neuroscience reveals that, when one observes another person performing some action, neurons fire in one’s own motor cortex that are the very same neurons that would fire if one were also performing the observed action; these have been dubbed “mirror neurons”. The principle of external or interpersonal isomorphism, formulated by the Gestalt psychologists, Köhler and Koffka, during the 1920’s through to the 1940’s, anticipated important aspects of the mirror neuron discovery. Moreover, both the Gestaltists’ theory, based on the principle of interpersonal isomorphism, and Gallese’s (2003) contemporary theory of “embodied simulation”, inspired by the mirror neuron discovery, converge on the central claim that our general ability to understand another’s actions, emotions, and intentions, is implicit, automatic, and non-inferential." (Morris and Wakefield 2007)