Strange Loops

What if language hinders the understanding of cognition

How is it possible that a human brain—a three pound lump of soft, wet, and warm matter—creates Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Einstein's Theory of Relativity? This may be the most enigmatic and persistent question of all time.

We are proud of our language and reasoning skills. No other animal has a language with a lexicon and a grammar as complex as ours. But what if language is the barrier that prevents us from understanding cognition?

In Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter describes self-referential loops. Stick with me here. Astronomers use telescopes to study the stars. Physicists use particle accelerators (aka atom smashers) to study subatomic particles. Philosophers—and to a lesser degree, scientists—use language and reasoning to gain new knowledge. Telescopes and atom smashers are not the same as the objects they study. But we can use language and reasoning as tools for discovery that generate new concepts. Since concepts are represented externally by words and manipulated by reasoning, the tool, the object of study, and the result (new concepts) all become inextricably linked. Telescopes and atom smashers are not changed by the data they collect. But gaining knowledge about language and reasoning alters reasoning permanently. Like a snake swallowing its tail, studying language through language forms an ungrounded paradoxical loop. The point is this: You cannot use language to step outside of language.

Language, reasoning, consciousness, revelation, and innovation are all cut from the same cloth. To understand them, we need to step outside of our language entirely. This is possible by constructing models that are physically homologous with brains and behaviors. To be explanatory, these models cannot be simply statistical or metaphorical—they must be founded on physical laws. Examples of physical models include architectural models, wind tunnel tests, analog computers, and model organisms.

You might protest that—in writing a book or blog full of logically organized words—I am being hypocritical in my critique of language. That is not the case. I am critical of language and reasoning as tools for the study of language and reasoning—not to communicate evidence and hypotheses. My lack of faith lies with philosophy, not science. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, I intend to show and not tell. I will show multiple physical models of natural intelligence that are diverse yet complementary to each other. The posts that follow are not philosophical essays, but rather a straightforward approach that takes you from interdisciplinary evidence to grasping the workings of natural intelligence.