The Things We Do: Using the Lessons of Bernard and Darwin to Understand the What, How, and Why of Our Behavior

by Gary Cziko

Cziko shows how the lessons of Bernard and Darwin, updated with the best of current scientific knowledge, can provide solutions to certain long-standing theoretical and practical problems in behavioral science and enable us to develop new methods and topics for research. The remarkable achievements that modern science has made in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, and engineering contrast sharply with our limited knowledge of the human mind and behavior. A major reason for this slow progress, claims Gary Cziko, is that with few exceptions, behavioral and cognitive scientists continue to apply a Newtonian-inspired view of animate behavior as an organism's output determined by environmental input. This one-way cause-effect approach ignores the important findings of two major nineteenth-century biologists, French physiologist Claude Bernard and English naturalist Charles Darwin. Approaching living organisms as purposeful systems that behave in order to control their perceptions of the external environment provides a new perspective for understanding what, why, and how living things, including humans, do what they do. Cziko examines in particular perceptual control theory, which has its roots in Bernard's work on the self-regulating nature of living organisms and in the work of engineers who developed the field of cybernetics during and after World War II. He also shows how our evolutionary past together with Darwinian processes currently occurring within our bodies, such as the evolution of new brain connections, provide insights into the immediate and ultimate causes of behavior. Writing in an accessible style, Cziko shows how the lessons of Bernard and Darwin, updated with the best of current scientific knowledge, can provide solutions to certain long-standing theoretical and practical problems in behavioral science and enable us to develop new methods and topics for research.

302 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2000

About the author

Gary A. Cziko is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

His two books published by MIT Press in 1995 and 2000 show how the process of language acquisition is itself (alongside other adapted complexity - whether single-celled organisms or scientific theories) a form of universal evolutionary process involving cumulative blind variation and selective retention.

He is the founder and major contributor to the ATALL Wikibook (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ATALL) including chapter on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Autonomo...

Reviews

[Geof Rayner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent fun book which I am enjoying (but haven't yet finished). Well written and thoughtful. Ignore the silly comments the arrogant teenager who thinks she is clever because she reads the dust cover of Proust.

[Braxton Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fact that the human mind is affected by studying itself, as pointed out by eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, provides an additional difficulty that does not arise when we study physical phenomena or other species.

circular causality in which causes are also effects and effects are also causes.

As we observe the world around us, our attention is drawn to things that move and change.

what could be studied objectively were overt behaviors of organisms and environmental factors that caused them. (Gardner, 1987 pp11-12)

distinction between what he called molar and molecular descriptions of animate behavior. A molar description referred to the consequences of the behavior, and the molecular description referred to the specific muscular and limb movements performed by the organism.

If "behavior may vary from trial to trial and yet the total 'performance' remains the same, " how is it that the organism is able to continually adjust its behavior to arrive at a desired goal?
sensory feedback was important; that is, the rat's behavior changed the stimuli it perceived and this feedback was essential in guiding the organism toward its final goal.

Blood sugar is just one of the many aspects of our internal environment that must be closely controlled for the normal functioning of our cells. Other essential variables are body temperature, water and salt concentrations, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, and acid-base balance. It is probably no coincidence that their control provides us with an internal liquid environment that in many respects is similar to the warm sea in which our first single-celled ancestors evolved.

The stability of the milieu interieur is the primary condition for freedom and independence of existence.

By "freedom an independence of existence," Bernard was not referring to metaphysical freedom of will. Rather he was describing the physical autonomy that allows organisms such as humans to survive in many different and often quite harsh environments despite the chemical and physical fragility of cells that make up our bodies. He saw this control of the inner environment as the primary distinguishing feature of life

many mammalian physiological systems are not strictly homeostatic but rather are capable of achieving and maintaining themselves at different states according to changing needs. (rheostasis)
negative and positive feedback systems

Paper Reference: Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology, 1943

application of control theory to the behavior of living organisms is called perceptual control theory

"Feedback Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems in Biology and the Social Sciences Meeting"
Article Reference: A General Feedback Theory of Human Behavior
Book Reference: Behavior: The Control of Perception

Thus goals can be related to each other within the same hierarchy as lower-level and higher-level, but can also be situated in different hierarchies, creating the possibility of some one being "of two minds" with accompanying stress and conflict.

method for distinguishing between the intended (purposeful) and unintended (accidental) consequences of behavior

answers to why questions of behavior can be answered only by moving up the hierarchy, whereas answers to how questions can be addressed only by moving down.

what he did also influenced what he saw (he was, after all, using his behavior to control his perception of the cursor), the lack of relationship makes more sense. The lesson being, once again, that the circular causality characteristic of perceptual control does not work according to rules of one-way cause-effect phenomena characteristic of the behavior of nonliving objects.
Instead of quickly bringing her arm down to her side as soon as you push down on it, she will at first resist your push for a fraction of a second.

Other than using irresistible physical force, an individual can control another individual's behavior (or more accurately, the outcome of his behavior) only by causing disturbances to goals that will elicit the desired behavior, and only if the desired behavior does not disturb the goals of higher-level control systems.

This is another instance of consistent outcomes requiring variable means that William James described as the essence of purposeful behavior.

For evolution by natural selection to occur, three conditions must be met. First, there must be variation in the population of organisms making up a species. Second, this variation in behavior must have consequences for reproductive success. Finally, variation in behavior influencing reproductive success must be heritable

whereas individual genes and groups of genes have an important influence on behavior, they alone cannot determine behavior since all development and consequent behavior depend on the interaction of genes and environmental factors, the latter including physical factors such as nutrition and temperature as well as various sensory experiences.

it is the gender with the higher reproductive costs that is choosy in selecting a mater, whereas the gender with the lower costs is less discriminative and more competitive.

The spider is able to fit web to site not by engaging in a fixed patter of actions buy by varying its behavior for each stage of web building until certain goals are met before it proceeds to the next stage.

sensory feedback is essential

It is only by varying its behavior as required to achieve each subgoal that the spider is successful in recreating the same basic design that evolved over millions of years for its prey-catching ability.

"the environmental history is still in control" (Skinner 1974

Paper Reference: The Misbehavior of Organisms, 1961, Keller and Marian Breland

"instinctive drift" - an animals normal instinctive behavior is interfering with the new behavior the researching wanted it to learn

why is that pigeon pecking that key? Answer: Because it is hungry and has discovered that it can obtain food by doing so), learning alone cannot provide answers to ultimate why questions. Ultimate questions must consider the evolutionary origin of the animal's learning abilities.
humans are subject to sexual selection of males by females and of females by males
these scientists were aware that genes must interact with environmental factors for them to have any effect on the structure or behavior of an organism, human or otherwise.

children over the age of four living with a step-parent were forty times more likely to suffer some form of parental abuse than those living in families with both biological parents. (Daly & Wilson, 1985)

With respect to human language, all human societies have: Gossip. Lying. Verbal humor. Humorous insults. Poetic and rhetorical speech forms. Narrative and storytelling. Words for days, months, seasons, years, past, future, body parts, inner states (emotions, sensations, thoughts), behavior propensities, flora, fauna, weather, tools, space, motion, speed, location, spatial dimensions, physical properties, giving, lending, numbers (at the very least "one," "two," and "more than two"), proper names, possession. Kinship categories defined in terms of mother, father, son daughter, and age sequence. Binary distinctions, including male and female, black and white, natural and cultural, good and bad. Measures. Logical relations including "not," "and," "same," "equivalent," "opposite," general versus particular, part versus whole. Conjectural reasoning (inferring the presence of absent and invisible entities from their perceptible traces).

Concerning nonlinguistic vocal communication, all humans communities have: Cries and squalls. Interpretation of intention from behavior. Recognized facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and contempt. Use of smiles as a friendly greeting. Crying. Coy flirtation with the eyes. Masking, modifying, and mimicking facial expressions. Displays of affection.

With respect to emotions we find all human communities having:

Concerning activities, humans everywhere have:

Aspects of universal human technology include:

For Social conventions, we find in all human communities:

Concerning sex and age differences, found universally are:

Behavior is not randomly emitted; it is elicited by information which is gleaned from the organism's external environment, and, proprioceptively, from its internal states. Natural selection gave us information processing machinery to produce behavior, just as it gave us food processing machinery to produce digestion.... The evolutionary function of the human brain is the process information in ways that lead to adaptive behavior; the mind is a description of the operation of a brain that maps information input only behavioral output.... Behavioral output differs with informational input; the information processing machinery that maps informational input onto behavioral output is a psychological mechanism.

some observable aspect of the environment and a person's behavior makes it appear as if a stimulus is causing behavior when in fact behavior is being used to control a perception that may not be apparent to the researcher.

humans constantly adapt their behaviors and desires to new environmental challenges for which our evolutionary past could not have prepared us.

"uncertain futures problem", Psychologist Henry C. Plotkin

The ability to change one's behavior (and thoughts, in the case of humans) as a result of environmental experiences is generally referred to as learning by psychologists and animal scientists.

"in all probability the errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one. Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at truth are among the first requisites of discovery; but the erroneous guesses must be many times as numerous as those which prove well founded" (1874, quoted in Campbell 1974, p. 428

divergent thinking, that is, the ability to generate many novel and diverse responses to a problem or question.

[Geniuses] are either discriminating or lucky in their choice of problems. (The unlucky ones, however talented, aren't remembered as geniuses). They work day and night and leave us with many works of subgenus. Their interludes away from a problem are helpful... because they are exhausted and need the rest (and possibly so they can forget blind alleys). The epiphany is not a masterstroke but a tweaking of an earlier attempt. They revise endlessly, gradually closing in on their ideal.

he can attempt to touch with his finger a small faintly glowing object in an otherwise completely darkened room (so that he cannot see his finger). He will then realize that without continuous visual feedback provided by seeing the target, his finger, and the space between them, the act of reaching for an object cannot be reliably perfumed.

Behavior is not randomly emitted; it is elicited by information which is gleaned from the organism's external environment, and proprioceptively, from its internal states.

Learning must be a matter of finding the right connection strengths so that the right patterns of activation will be produced under the right circumstances.

Marken's "Spreadsheet Model of a Hierarchy of Control Systems" (1990) www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/g-cziko/twd

This action of the would-be controlee against the would-be controller was recognized by Skinner who referred to it as "countercontrol,"

For example, a father may tell his teenage son that he must improve his high school grades to earn the right to use the family car. The teenager can then engage in countercontrol by making it known that if he can't use the care whenever he wants, he will simply not study at all.

If rewards and punishment fail to solve the problems caused by human behavior, why do those with political, military, and economic power persist in using them? One reason is that, as mentioned, the promise of reward and the threat of punishment can modify others' behavior, at least until ways are found to defeat the system (as in escaping from the situation or using violence to overcome the reinforcer-punisher). Another reason is the assumption of a one-way cause-effect view in which reinforcement causes desired behaviors and punishment eliminates undesirable ones.

the Bernardian lesson that humans beings act to control aspects of their environment.

students engaging in disruptive behavior are asked a series of questions by the teacher designed to have students reflect on their behavior and its consequences if continued. Students who need help learning how to behave responsibly (that is, in a way that does not disturb the learning activities of the classroom) go to a "responsible thinking classroom" where a full-time teacher-counselor helps them develop a plan for change to submit to the classroom teacher for approval.

www.respthink.com

Book Reference: Primates in the Classroom, 1988, Gary Bernhard

"biologically primary" and "biologically secondary" cognitive abilities. The former appear to have evolved largely by means of natural or sexual selection, whereas "biologically secondary cognitive abilities reflect the co-optation of primary abilities for purposes other than their original evolution-based function and appear to develop only in specific cultural contexts (Geary 1995, p24)

[Steven · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read about half of this to see if the author would ever make his point. He writes exactly like Hayek in Sensory Order, von Bertalanffy in General Systems Theory, and so many other PCT authors. He's perpetually stuck in the "fixing to get ready to" phase of laying out his case. The point never arrives, but the Jordan Peterson citation whirr never stops running, nor do his wholly unnecessary page count fluffing asides which set out to show us how special and smart of a boy he is. Surely, one day someone will be impressive by the vacuity of his thoughts. Despite his (presumed) lifelong track record of unimpressed audiences, he must keep conveying his ideas. His audience always "just so happens" to fail to be enthralled by his profound banality. Maybe one day this secret king will pull the sword from the stone, and we'll recognize our past inability to understand his greatness and throw ourselves at his pedantic feet - begging for mercy.

As a technical point for this author's benefit: when you write, regardless of the medium through which the writing will be presented, DO NOT lose sight of the point. When I taught public speaking to the children of wealthy people I always insisted upon this point. We're not playing to a rubric provided by our middle school history teachers where "knowing something" achieves something. We're playing to an audience, and that audience must voluntary engage with our work from beginning to end. Once your reader starts skimming or checking his phone while you speak, you've lost. Skimming begets skimming, and cell phones are full of engineered distractions. Them checking out renders you impotent as a communicator.

As a word count fluffing aside to my readers: if someone grimaces and says "you're so smart" after you give an impromptu lecture, you're annoying them. You're not conveying genuine ability. Please do not take those experiences and try to build a life as an academic out from them. Unless people engage with you as a smart person is engaged with: do not arrive at an inflated concept of yourself. If celebrities aren't texting you, and people aren't going out of their way to tell you about how you always have something valuable to add... you don't.

[Sarahfina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Feel like reading an undergrad's senior thesis? This would be the thesis of someone who is used to getting good grades and feels this means he is smart. He doesn't know that you can work your way to good grades, but you can't work your way smart.