“What if your brain were completely separated from your senses?” I ask. "Or, what if your brain had never been connected to sense organs?"
“It would be catastrophic personally,” you say. “Those senses are the brain’s windows. In fact, they’re more than windows. They’re tentacles, also. I don’t have all the analogies for what else those senses are, but I know the senses are important. I can’t imagine a brain disconnected from them.”
“Until now,” I return.
“Meaning?” you query.
“Some scientists are growing brains in petri dishes. I’m not kidding. Neda Vishlaghi, a research assistant at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, has grown some brain-like tissue from stem cells. And it must not be too hard to do because Bennett Novitch, a developmental biologist and neuroscientist at UCLA, says, ‘It’s like making a cake….’”*
“Whoa! Growing brains in petri dishes? I hadn’t heard. And as easy as cake?” you say, startled like some chicken fleeing the shadow of a hawk.
“Yes, she used human pluripotent stem cells to grow clusters of rosette-shaped neural tissue. Now I’m wondering what that little blob of neural tissue is thinking.”
“Surely, you don’t think it has thoughts? From what you are telling me, she just grew a few cells in a petri dish.”
“But what if it does have thoughts?” I ask. “Is it possible to have thoughts without senses? Just had a thought. There was an original Star Trek episode in which bodiless brains of superior abilities run a planet and control other beings. I assume that those brains once had sense organs to connect them to the outside world and that on the basis of experience, the brains know about the physical environment. So, in a science fiction TV show, brains without bodies can have thoughts, but those thoughts apparently had a history of some sensory input, and in the plot of the show, those brains also seem to be aware of their world because they bet on the outcome of contests.”**
You note, “Right, but the ‘brains’ grown from stem cells at UCLA don’t have a previous set of experiences that depended upon senses and sensory experiences. So, for the ‘brains,’ the petri dishes are the entire world. But we still can’t say that the brains know that world because Vishlaghi and Novitch haven’t provided them with sense organs.”
A thought arises in my feeble brain, “Kind of makes an argument against a priori knowledge, doesn’t it? Remember your philosophy class? In the 14thcentury Albert of Saxony suggested a difference existed between knowing the ‘cause’ of something before knowing its ‘effect.’ Immanuel Kant took the idea further and said that space, time, and cause were the stuff that mind imposed on experience. And remember the ‘I-think-therefore-I-am’ guy Rene Descartes? He thought ideas were already present or innate in the mind.”
Now you say, “No, it doesn’t convince me that we know before we learn unless someone can prove without a doubt that the little petri brains think. I don’t doubt that we have brains that are prewired to adapt to the environment, but we don’t know an environment that we can’t experience through our senses. There can’t be any thought without senses.”
Having been thrown into a state of doubt, I stumble, “There’s something to think about. So, someone in a coma or someone who has been completely paralyzed, continues ‘to think.’ But with regard to neurons that have never been connected to sense organs, I now have difficulty believing those cells are either aware of the world or are connected the way an ordinary brain’s neurons are connected. Haven’t the neuroscientists demonstrated that as we learn more, we make new connections in our brains and that we can, regardless of the old saying, really teach an old dog new tricks?”
“So,” you question me, “if we can’t accept a priori knowledge and thinking in brains that aren’t attached to sense organ, can we accept the idea of instinct? Haven’t we been told that animals act on instinct, like being a baby chicken or goose and being afraid of a hawk’s shadow the very first time the bird sees one?”
“I think that’s a myth.”
“What? No. No. There were experiments in 1937 by Lorenz and by Tinbergen in the late 1930s and early 1940s and 1950s to demonstrate that geese were prewired to fear hawks. That’s why I put a plastic owl next to my big windows. I wanted to stop birds either from attacking the image they saw reflected in the glass or from crashing to their deaths against the windows. You know someone calculated that about a billion birds die in such crashes every year.”***
I say, “Waste of effort. Wolfgang Schleidt, Michael D. Shalter, and Humberto Moura-Neto reported in 2011 that those experiments were flawed or incomplete and that the mere silhouette of a bird isn’t a deterrent to bird-window crashes.**** Birds still don’t perceive of a window as a solid substance with immovable silhouettes or raptor figures. However, nets work if the strings in the nets are thick enough. Bottom line: The sensory experiences of birds play a role in their behaviors. I don’t think a petri dish goose or chicken birdbrain would be afraid of a hawk. I don’t think anyone can discount some learning as the basis for thoughts.”
You conclude, “Well, the two of us sound a bit confused, and we both have brains connected to sense organs. So, what good is all this learning when we can’t even resolve whether or not those little brain blobs grown in a petri dish in a UCLA lab can think?”
*Chan, Ingfei. “How to build a human brain.” Science News. Vol. 193, No. 4, March 3, 2018, p. 22. Online at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-build-human-brain?mode=topic&context=69
** “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” a second season episode of the original Star Trek series, January 5, 1968.
*** Klem, D., Jr. (2006). “Glass: A deadly conservation issue for birds.” Bird Observer , Vol. 34, 73-81. And (1990) “Collisions between birds and windows: Mortality and prevention.” Journal of Field Ornithology, 61, 120-128.
**** Schleidt, et al. “The Hawk/Goose Story: The Classical Ethological Experiments of Lorenz and Tinbergenm, Revisited.” Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2011, Vol. 125, No. 2, 121-133, Online at http://www.academia.edu/3068540/The_hawk_goose_story_The_classical_ethological_experiments_of_Lorenz_and_Tinbergen_revisited
“It would be catastrophic personally,” you say. “Those senses are the brain’s windows. In fact, they’re more than windows. They’re tentacles, also. I don’t have all the analogies for what else those senses are, but I know the senses are important. I can’t imagine a brain disconnected from them.”
“Until now,” I return.
“Meaning?” you query.
“Some scientists are growing brains in petri dishes. I’m not kidding. Neda Vishlaghi, a research assistant at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, has grown some brain-like tissue from stem cells. And it must not be too hard to do because Bennett Novitch, a developmental biologist and neuroscientist at UCLA, says, ‘It’s like making a cake….’”*
“Whoa! Growing brains in petri dishes? I hadn’t heard. And as easy as cake?” you say, startled like some chicken fleeing the shadow of a hawk.
“Yes, she used human pluripotent stem cells to grow clusters of rosette-shaped neural tissue. Now I’m wondering what that little blob of neural tissue is thinking.”
“Surely, you don’t think it has thoughts? From what you are telling me, she just grew a few cells in a petri dish.”
“But what if it does have thoughts?” I ask. “Is it possible to have thoughts without senses? Just had a thought. There was an original Star Trek episode in which bodiless brains of superior abilities run a planet and control other beings. I assume that those brains once had sense organs to connect them to the outside world and that on the basis of experience, the brains know about the physical environment. So, in a science fiction TV show, brains without bodies can have thoughts, but those thoughts apparently had a history of some sensory input, and in the plot of the show, those brains also seem to be aware of their world because they bet on the outcome of contests.”**
You note, “Right, but the ‘brains’ grown from stem cells at UCLA don’t have a previous set of experiences that depended upon senses and sensory experiences. So, for the ‘brains,’ the petri dishes are the entire world. But we still can’t say that the brains know that world because Vishlaghi and Novitch haven’t provided them with sense organs.”
A thought arises in my feeble brain, “Kind of makes an argument against a priori knowledge, doesn’t it? Remember your philosophy class? In the 14thcentury Albert of Saxony suggested a difference existed between knowing the ‘cause’ of something before knowing its ‘effect.’ Immanuel Kant took the idea further and said that space, time, and cause were the stuff that mind imposed on experience. And remember the ‘I-think-therefore-I-am’ guy Rene Descartes? He thought ideas were already present or innate in the mind.”
Now you say, “No, it doesn’t convince me that we know before we learn unless someone can prove without a doubt that the little petri brains think. I don’t doubt that we have brains that are prewired to adapt to the environment, but we don’t know an environment that we can’t experience through our senses. There can’t be any thought without senses.”
Having been thrown into a state of doubt, I stumble, “There’s something to think about. So, someone in a coma or someone who has been completely paralyzed, continues ‘to think.’ But with regard to neurons that have never been connected to sense organs, I now have difficulty believing those cells are either aware of the world or are connected the way an ordinary brain’s neurons are connected. Haven’t the neuroscientists demonstrated that as we learn more, we make new connections in our brains and that we can, regardless of the old saying, really teach an old dog new tricks?”
“So,” you question me, “if we can’t accept a priori knowledge and thinking in brains that aren’t attached to sense organ, can we accept the idea of instinct? Haven’t we been told that animals act on instinct, like being a baby chicken or goose and being afraid of a hawk’s shadow the very first time the bird sees one?”
“I think that’s a myth.”
“What? No. No. There were experiments in 1937 by Lorenz and by Tinbergen in the late 1930s and early 1940s and 1950s to demonstrate that geese were prewired to fear hawks. That’s why I put a plastic owl next to my big windows. I wanted to stop birds either from attacking the image they saw reflected in the glass or from crashing to their deaths against the windows. You know someone calculated that about a billion birds die in such crashes every year.”***
I say, “Waste of effort. Wolfgang Schleidt, Michael D. Shalter, and Humberto Moura-Neto reported in 2011 that those experiments were flawed or incomplete and that the mere silhouette of a bird isn’t a deterrent to bird-window crashes.**** Birds still don’t perceive of a window as a solid substance with immovable silhouettes or raptor figures. However, nets work if the strings in the nets are thick enough. Bottom line: The sensory experiences of birds play a role in their behaviors. I don’t think a petri dish goose or chicken birdbrain would be afraid of a hawk. I don’t think anyone can discount some learning as the basis for thoughts.”
You conclude, “Well, the two of us sound a bit confused, and we both have brains connected to sense organs. So, what good is all this learning when we can’t even resolve whether or not those little brain blobs grown in a petri dish in a UCLA lab can think?”
*Chan, Ingfei. “How to build a human brain.” Science News. Vol. 193, No. 4, March 3, 2018, p. 22. Online at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-build-human-brain?mode=topic&context=69
** “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” a second season episode of the original Star Trek series, January 5, 1968.
*** Klem, D., Jr. (2006). “Glass: A deadly conservation issue for birds.” Bird Observer , Vol. 34, 73-81. And (1990) “Collisions between birds and windows: Mortality and prevention.” Journal of Field Ornithology, 61, 120-128.
**** Schleidt, et al. “The Hawk/Goose Story: The Classical Ethological Experiments of Lorenz and Tinbergenm, Revisited.” Journal of Comparative Psychology, 2011, Vol. 125, No. 2, 121-133, Online at http://www.academia.edu/3068540/The_hawk_goose_story_The_classical_ethological_experiments_of_Lorenz_and_Tinbergen_revisited
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