I noticed this. There are so many conceptual issues in that article.

For a start, the brain cells did not "learn to play pong", they just avoided "a chaotic stream of white noise". It was the experimenters who turned this into a game. That is, the dishbrain had no intent to play pong.

And is it a sign of my age, that I laughed at the need to explain to the reader how to play pong?

For a start, the brain cells did not "learn to play pong", they just avoided "a chaotic stream of white noise". — Banno

Same thing. (insert appropriate smiley)

Still, not bad for @apokrisis, @Isaac, and anyone else in the free energy camp.

Same thing. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed. Wait and see...

I did have a little wow! moment when I heard about this. 'A mini brain,' yep, things continue to get more and more interesting in science. If a mini brain can make decisions enough to be able to position the line (bat) to deflect the white dot on the screen, then surely a mini brain would be a good candidate to win as the republican party nominee for the next president of the United States, as a valid alternative to the micro brain currently called DJ Trump.

Still, not bad for apokrisis, @Isaac, and anyone else in the free energy camp. — Srap Tasmaner

I missed this yesterday.

Yes, I saw this in preprint some months ago (last year even, I think). I forgot all about it and here it is in full published majesty. It's a good piece of work.

Much misinterpreted already, and it's only been published for a few days, but, that's neuroscience...

How intelligent are we again? :snicker:

For a start, the brain cells did not "learn to play pong", they just avoided "a chaotic stream of white noise". That is, the dishbrain had no intent to play pong. — Banno

The dishbrain was not a simulation (or even an approximation) of what the actual brain does when you learn to play pong, although the article might suggest that. Is this your objection?

Dishbrain. That should be a good insult - it's all the better for its obscurity.

It is a point of interest how much you can do with a preference for order and predictability — any order, however arbitrary.

Sellars has that just-so story in "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" in which he derives the idea of natural law from the observation that some of the persons in nature (old man river, old man mountain, that sort of thing) are set in their ways, the way people get, and thus predictable, the way some people are. (Big Lake is freezing over again, like he always does this time of year.) He suggests we recognized the efficacy of habit first and derived the idea of mechanical determination from that. (A sort of corollary to the 'theory' that we derive the idea of force from our own efficacious action.)

DishBrain is able to identify habits or tendencies in the "ball" and to develop matching habits or tendencies or propensities. For what purpose? In an earlier age, we might have heard this described as a manifestation of the death drive, the will to become mechanical, but maybe Freud was on the right track in seeing life as paradoxically trying always to reduce irritation and excitation, or to predict it well enough that it ceases to be experienced as surprise. (See, @Isaac, I do listen. Did you know you're a closet Freudian?)

Did you know you're a closet Freudian? — Srap Tasmaner

I didn't. I shall seek a cure immediately.

Who you calling dishbrain, you dishbrain?

No, I was thinking more of the Chinese Room and extended cognition. In order to play pong the dishbrain had to be wired up to a screen that did a fair amount of interpretation for the neural signals to play pong.

Trump as the political incarnation of free energy.

Sellars has that just-so story in "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" in which he derives the idea of natural law from the observation that some of the persons in nature (old man river, old man mountain, that sort of thing) are set in their ways, the way people get, and thus predictable, the way some people are. (Big Lake is freezing over again, like he always does this time of year.) He suggests we recognized the efficacy of habit first and derived the idea of mechanical determination from that. (A sort of corollary to the 'theory' that we derive the idea of force from our own efficacious action.) — Srap Tasmaner

For us, children of the scientific revolution, such anthropomorphic inversion would seem odd: we expect simple natural systems to exhibit simpler and more consistent regularities than human minds. And yet, this just-so-story has a ring of... plausibility to it.

Trump as the political incarnation of free energy. — Banno

Trump would baulk at all definitions or concepts of the word 'free.'
Trump as a smaller brain than a mini brain, satisfies me more, than your comparison with what random energy may manifest into, if given enough time and interactions with the nuances of current USA politics.

the brain cells did not "learn to play pong", they just avoided "a chaotic stream of white noise". It was the experimenters who turned this into a game. That is, the dishbrain had no intent to play pong. — Banno

The question is whether it might be possible to say that the brain cells were forming intentions of any sort.
The brain cells ‘avoiding a stream of white noise’ is reminiscent of the description of Skinner’s
rats as avoiding aversive stimulation. While
one can employ a reductive s-r level of explanation in the the case of Skinner’s animals, it is now assumed that much more is going on in between stimulus and response in animal reinforcement. The same may be the case with the dishbrain.

No, I was thinking more of the Chinese Room and extended cognition. In order to play pong the dishbrain had to be wired up to a screen that did a fair amount of interpretation for the neural signals to play pong. — Banno

Well, the real brain is also "wired up" to the screen - just not in the same manner. But that doesn't even begin to describe the differences between the two cases.

The dish brain experiment was meant to isolate one basic mechanism of brain function - it wasn't meant to simulate the entire complexity of the brain, nor even that minuscule part of it that would be called upon to play Pong.

DishBrain is able to identify habits or tendencies in the "ball" and to develop matching habits or tendencies or propensities. For what purpose? In an earlier age, we might have heard this described as a manifestation of the death drive, the will to become mechanical, but maybe Freud was on the right track in seeing life as paradoxically trying always to reduce irritation and excitation, or to predict it well enough that it ceases to be experienced as surprise. (See, Isaac, I do listen. Did you know you're a closet Freudian?) — Srap Tasmaner

Freud’s understanding of life drew inspiration in part from physical models ( hydraulics, etc) in which equilibrium is static , and change within a psychic system requires an extraneous source of motivation in the form of the push or pull of instinctive drive.
In contrast, contemporary dynamical systems and autopoietic approaches assume that equilibration is not driven toward static balance but a dynamical tension characterized by incessant activity and change. That is, equilibration tends in the direction of an increasingly active, increasingly organized organism, rather than a drive toward mechanical equilibrium ( the death drive).

Skinner’s
rats as avoiding aversive stimulation. — Joshs

Part of the logical difficulty with Skinner's approach was that what was considered an averse stimulation was no more than that which the organism avoided. The explanation of Dishbrain's behaviour in terms of free energy doesn't suffer a similar circularity. Dishbrain just grows in the laziest way possible.

My point is that explanations in terms of intent do not apply to dishbrain. Talk of intent is part of a different language game.

(There are often odd carriage returns in your posts; just mentioning it in case you were not aware. Presumably your device or browser?)

Yep, I agree. My complaint was more to do with the pop inferences in the article than with the experiment.

My point is that explanations in terms of intent do not apply to dishbrain. Talk of intent is part of a different language game. — Banno

I don’t understand the function of ‘intent’ in living systems the way that eliminativists like Dennett do. In their language game intent is reduced to a glorified form of s-r, the combined behavior of numerous dumb bits. Placing living neurons in a dish is a whole new ball game in comparison with silicon chips. We can try to force what is taking place in the dishbrain into the strictures of computational patterns of 0’s and 1’s or some such thing, but I think this misses much of what is most interesting about self-organization in even the simplest living systems.

(There are often odd carriage returns in your posts; just mentioning it in case you were not aware. Presumably your device or browser?) — Banno

Nope, a combination of fat fingers on an iphone touch keyboard and the fact that I compose most of my comments while hiking in the woods.

The temptation to reduce intent to mere reaction is always there in those with a reductionist bent. So is it legitimate to describe dishbrain as having intended to move the paddle to deflect the ball? That's the implication of "Dishbrain learned to play pong".

Keep hiking. We can put up with the odd returns.

So is it legitimate to describe dishbrain as having intended to move the paddle to deflect the ball? — Banno

What's missing is the intent to make some actual change in the world.

A biosemiotic view of Dishbrain, and predictive coding in general, is that it is meaningless unless it is driving some pragamatically useful result for the organism.

The wee beastie has to be rewarded by being fed and sustained, not simply by being assaulted by "a nicely organized" burst of electrical activity, rather than "a chaotic stream of white noise", if it "got it right".

So biological realism would involve the 800k cell Hebbian network being in control of its environment in some self-sustaining and homeostatically-bounded fashion.

It's intent would be to live. It would be modelling the world for a reason.

In contrast, contemporary dynamical systems and autopoietic approaches assume that equilibration is not driven toward static balance but a dynamical tension characterized by incessant activity and change. That is, equilibration tends in the direction of an increasingly active, increasingly organized organism, rather than a drive toward mechanical equilibrium ( the death drive). — Joshs

:up:

I see. Static bad; dynamic good.

Serves me right for needlessly poking Isaac.

What's missing is the intent to make some actual change in the world. — apokrisis

I'm not convinced that a thermostat intends to keep the temperature stable. Nor that a virus intends to reproduce. My suspicion is that for some act to count as intentional, the organism might in some sense have done otherwise.

Consider Anscombe's two lists, both of the very same items, but one a receipt printed by the register after your purchases, the other the list you brought with you to remind yourself of what you wanted to purchase. Which is intentional? The shopping list clearly satisfies the intent to make some change in the world, but in addition there are ways it might have been otherwise that do not apply to the receipt.

I'm not convinced that a thermostat intends to keep the temperature stable. Nor that a virus intends to reproduce. — Banno

You sound a little vague and uncertain about borderline cases. And the fact that you can't simply deny intent is support for my position.

My suspicion is that for some act to count as intentional, the organism might in some sense have done otherwise. — Banno

Yep. It's all about the growth of reasonableness. Intent is the development of counterfactuality.

It can start off simple. A bacterium swims purposefully down a chemical gradient in pursuit of a food concentration by twirling its flagella in one direction so that they entangle and propel it in a straight line. But when they lose the scent, they instead flip the switch to spin them the other way. The flagella untangle and the bacterium tumbles randomly, until a new chemical gradient is discovered.

Consider Anscombe's two lists, both of the very same items, but one a receipt printed by the register after your purchases, the other the list you brought with you to remind yourself of what you wanted to purchase. Which is intentional? — Banno

Let's not waste time with irrelevancies if the subject is what "intent" means to the biologist or neurobiologist.

Biosemiosis recognises grades of intent such that we have teleomaty, or material tendencies; teleonomy, or biological functions; and teleology, or organismic purposes.

Again, what is key is that any notion of intent is clearly tied to its pragmatic utility. Choices get made that change the world to organismic advantage.

And the beauty of the free energy framing of the issues is that it places this counterfactuality in the context of homeostasis.

The fulfilled or unfilled intent is not the primary thing. The first task is to strike the dynamical balance where no specific intent is felt because all typical desires are being smoothly met. Sources of dissatisfaction can then be felt as problems with that smooth homeostatic flow.

So in leaping to Anscombe, you would be just importing a bunch of unexamined thought habits into this neurobiological discussion.

Although that might serve to restore your own sense of homeostatic rightness about the world.

So is it legitimate to describe dishbrain as having intended to move the paddle to deflect the ball?
— Banno

What's missing is the intent to make some actual change in the world.

A biosemiotic view of Dishbrain, and predictive coding in general, is that it is meaningless unless it is driving some pragamatically useful result for the organism. — apokrisis

I'm not convinced that a thermostat intends to keep the temperature stable. Nor that a virus intends to reproduce. My suspicion is that for some act to count as intentional, the organism might in some sense have done otherwise — Banno

I’m sympathetic to the idea that a brain in a dish is too close to the idea of a brain in a vat for it to qualify as having intentionality in the same sense as a natural organism. But can we rule out the idea there is in some sense a structural coupling taking place between the dish brain and the environmental stimuli that the experimenters have drummed up? More importantly, could these cells be creating a primitive form of normative pattern of functioning , a kind of anticipation,
via this coupling? If so, then the pragmatic usefulness of the dishbrain’s behaviors is driven by its ‘striving ‘ to maintain a patterned self-consistency.

If so, then the pragmatic usefulness of the dishbrain’s behaviors is driven by its ‘striving ‘ to maintain a patterned self-consistency. — Joshs

But what purpose does this coupling serve? Is it a striving to avoid the white noise as an aversive stimulus or negative reinforcer?

Where did such a preference come from? It can only be a relic from the genetic bauplan of what makes a neuron useful in an actual embodied relation with its world.

If we are to dissect “intent”, then we must remain sensitive to its proper semiotic definition.

So in leaping to Anscombe, you would be just importing a bunch of unexamined thought habits into this neurobiological discussion. — apokrisis

More starting from, than leaping too. If the biologist's use of "intent' does not match the philosophers, then perhaps they are talking about something quite different

The borderline cases are the interesting ones. It won't do to just assume a linear progression from dishbrains to shopping lists. There's too much that might be lost in the detail.

Again, it seems there is more to intent than just use. A thermostat uses a heat pump to maintain the temperature, but it doesn't intend to do so.

But can we rule out the idea there is in some sense a structural coupling taking place between the dish brain and the environmental stimuli that the experimenters have drummed up? — Joshs

This is not dissimilar to the whole system response to Searle's Chinese Room - it's the whole room, book and all, that understands Chinese, not just the fellow implementing the program; and so arguably it is the whole experiment that has the intent. But then again, perhaps the intent has its origin in the folk who designed the experiment.

But to my eye the question is, if we choose to say that the dishbrain intends to move the paddle to stop the ball, have we extended the use of "intend" too far? So far that we have lost some worthwhile distinctions. For instance, we commonly only attribute culpability in cases of acting intentional - is the dishbrain now culpable for any negative consequences of its intent?

Isn't the language around intent distinct to that around use, including, as Josh says, normative features?

If the biologist's use of "intent' does not match the philosophers, then perhaps they are talking about something quite different — Banno

Sure. You can go off and do your own thing. But why start from a neurobiological example that speaks to natural philosophy and its ontology of the organismic?

Especially if you eventually want to found your own “philosophical” useage in biological realism rather than … whatever. An ontology of the world as a set of atomic facts or medium sized dry goods. That kind of AP world made safe for predicate logic.

What you denigrate as

your own thing — apokrisis

is the bread and butter of intentionality.

A shame, since the conversation was almost interesting.

The takeaways from dish-brain are

1. It learned (to play Pong).

2. The brain seems reducible to electrochemistry (chemical-based electricity i.e. the brain is fundamentally electronic). Frankenstein's the wretch!