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Done and dusted
The research master is completed. Done. And dusted. But my, what a lot of dust!
Before I embark on that “dust”, let me express my profound gratitude to the universe, teachers, friend and colleagues and above all, Husband, for guiding, supporting and generally putting up with me during the years. Can’t have been easy ❤️ It also really took it out of me: this was a full-time 2-year degree which I did whilst being employed full-time, and in less than ideal personal and work circumstances. Which I only managed coz I absolutely loved every minute of it, even the first 6 months when I was scared stiff my brains were no longer up for this kind of battering. Or that the real (young) students would laugh at the old bat 🙂
Now why do I lay this on so thickly? Coz I don’t need to convince you, most of you know this. Well, it is the “dust”. Let me explain. My supervisor had expected the rounding up of my thesis to go smoothly, and hence, so had I. But something entirely different happened. During my thesis “defense” I ran into a breed of academic that I had not encountered before. A well-respected researcher specialising in at least half of the stuff my thesis was about. Seriously, I read quite a few of his papers, and he is good. He was brought in as my second examiner. During the 50 odd minutes I had to defend my thesis, this second examinar held the floor for well over half an hour, attacking me on points of form and method. He seemed to think a particular method – a mechanism – I employed merely as a source of inspiration to construct a research paradigm, should have been used, to “prove” a specific phenomenon. A parallel with the outside world: that is like the difference between devising a business strategy versus writing out the technical specifications of an IT system: totally different things. He must have understood some of that because he branded me a “generalist”, and himself a “specialist”. As if one excludes the other. Now I think about it, it did feel a bit like the day job: explaining security policy to an infrastructure whizzkid, just as, I suppose, it was once explained to me. Anyway, this guy did not ask me one genuine question. Not one. Instead he seemed to be arguing a point, saying things like “just as I thought” “what do you actually think philosophy is” and “just to prove my point”. I was flabbergasted. Was this an examination? I pointed out that I had adopted a problem-solving approach to a difficult issue and that it yielded results. According to him, the reason the problem had not been addressed was that it could not be solved, otherwise it would have been solved – by someone else, was the implication. Wow. A street fighter.
It took me a while, at least 15 minutes, to understand what was happening, and even then I could not believe it. I have been an examiner myself at some points in my life. To my mind, what this guy did was unprofessional, nothing to to with a neutral assessment of someone’s knowledge and work. But I was too much taken aback to say so. Thankfully my supervisor interrupted a couple of times with questions of his own, allowing me some time to regroup. He also made remarks about a third examiner, and how my end grade would be a weighted average, and that he himself had hoped for a different outcome, even that my work had giving him some new insights. It took me until the next day to deduce that there must have been a disagreement between examiners, which is by procedure is the only reason the third examiner is ever called upon.
So how did this end? Well, the damage is not too bad. My final score drops by .25 point to an 8.2 coz my thesis got a 7.5. So no big deal. I still get cum laude, say my diploma supplement. But I am annoyed. No, not annoyed, upset. Sad. It is not about the grade – if I had even been asked why I had used that particular approach in my thesis and they not agreed with the answer, that would have been fine. But this is not what happend. This little man I do not even know, single-handedly spoiled the very last event of my research master by embarking on some kind of personal war, without clear reason, without regard, completely out of the blue. What on earth could have made him so angry? It cannot have been the idea of a mechanism for enactive cognition, coz I wrote once a paper on that which was marked by his co-researcher and got a high grade. I suppose I did argue that, in philosophy of language, a broader view should be taken than is generally taken by individual, specialist researchers. I did propose, from my model, new issues to research, or to research differently. But that is not something to get angry about, is it? But I suppose the real reason has to remain a mystery. I have decided that I will not lodge a complaint because I can see that university procedure was followed meticulously. I will also not bother my supervisor with this, because I can tell he already did what he could. But I will, in my student-evaluation, suggest that the university amend the Research Master thesis defense-procedure to allow for situations like this – to give the student a chance to be informed of the objections of a second examiner in time to defend or amend. Might not do any good, coz this may be a rare case, but at least I will have voiced the issue.
What have I learned? Well, as my friend Teja has told me a thousand times, a university is not always a safe place. And as Husband often reminds me, I tend to be too trusting. Right. Wake up time, and let’s be grateful I learn it now and not years hence. This kind of situation certainly is not a risk I will run for my PhD. I will find some other medium to express interesting stuff, and stick to the well worn approach for university work. I will also make sure that I connect with every professor judging my Phd research well in time until I am sure that I have explained myself sufficiently and ironed out any creases. Which also means that I have to find another way and environment to express my more daring thoughts and interesting notions. Not at work, though, coz that runs into the same but different problems 🙂 I will think on this, maybe do a series of short papers or publish informally on some blog or medium or other. Do drop me a line if you have ideas. I do want to voice my newly found insights on the crossroads between language, security and IT – there are so many old, even obsolete, philosophical theories still believed in by the general educated public, that I itch to dispel some of them, and replace by something more productive. Such as the idea that using language is no more than stringing along words derive their meaning from referring to an entity in the world. That is an old idea, introduced by Frege, but even he give up it up towards the end, as I found to my surprise in my little Frege adventure. Yet everyone in IT seems to cling on to this idea as if it were a religion. The reverse is also true: Ashby, a psychiatrist who in the previous century pioneered in cybernetics and invented the “homestat”, and with that, the idea of a double feedback loop in status tracking, the basis of every now existing quality control and assurance program. There must be millions. In philosophy, this concept is not discussed often or not in connection with language, which I think is a pity. But my research will change that, I hope ;-), or at least throw a crumb in that direction.
So what is next? Well, I here post links to my thesis and to my research proposal. I am proud of both. There are summaries to both of them, so please don’t feel obliged to read them (I will never question you about them, honestly). But some of you seem to want to read these, so needs must.
If things go as planned, I will start my research in september. It should take 4 years full time, but who cares if it takes 7. I want to finish it before I get pensioned off though. Through the day job, I have managed to secure positions both on the board of the international committee creating norms on information security and on the national governmental board of professionals directing compliance with said norms, so I am exactly where I want to be to run the research I want on both “sides” of the normative coin. Also, coz I am nearly 60 now, I now get a day off every monday. Great employer, eh? The universe smiles, I suppose. Let’s go for it. The old bat is up for it 🙂
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On becoming human
I have shamelessly stolen the title of this post from Tomasello’s new book: on becoming human. You will have gathered from the picture at the top that this is about the evolution of humans. Us. Or, as my professor puts it, “how chimp-style communication developed into human discourse”. Why? Well, it is all in the family:
I told you about my adventures with my research groups in an earlier post. Now I want to tell you what I am learning. I will resist the temptation to tell you how much there is to read or how I felt obliged to to draw up a project charter as a structuring aid (if you do decide to visit the links, do click open all the boxes). So with that out of the way 🙂 let go for some new, well, new to me, ideas.
Because I tend to think outside-in when I am trying to make sense of something, I needed to immerse myself in the current literature about human evolution. No way I have time to read all those big books, so I have I been listening to them. Audiobooks are wonderful. I listen to them as I walk to the office, when cooking, when not being able to sleep, when waiting for the lift, when walking from one end of the office to the other (10 minutes), well, you get the idea.
These books were great. You must read them too. Seriously. Here is the list:
- Jared Diamond – the Third Chimpanzee
- Yuval Noah Harari – Homo Sapiens
- Yuval Noah Harari – Homo Deus
- Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse – The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science Is Rewriting Their Story
- Silvana Condemi and Francois Savatier – A Pocket History of Human Evolution: How We Became Sapiens
- Cecilia Heyes – Cognitive gadgets
- Michael Tomasello – Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny
Well, perhaps not all. But do not miss out on the first three. Husband is smiling at this, I am sure. Because the first three books he received from me as a present, years ago. At his request, I might add. I never even looked at them. Until I devoured them last month.
So, armed with all this background I dived into the project. For the first couple of weeks I kept trying to find the beginning of an answer to the project’s question (chimp-style communication -> human conversation), but after a while it became clear that the professor wanted us to look at real data. Lots of data. We looked at over a hundred examples of “normative” animal behaviour. “Normative” is when the animal(s) in question appear to have strong expectations of what other animals should do or not do. Not just chimpanzees, but also bonobo’s, whales, dolphins, and orcas. As an example, look at this one by Frans de Waal. It is about how one monkey reacts to a piece of cucumber whereas the other one gets a grape (monkeys love sweet fruit).
Convinced the monkey is angry about being treated unfairly? Frans de Waal is. I was too, at first. But on reflection, it is not so clear what we see here. It may well be a simple case of the monkey seeing there are grapes to be had and wanting them; then expressing its frustration at not getting any. I forget who said it, but the researchers in this field are either Believers (animals are like humans) or Party Poopers (don’t believe anything until you have to). Frans de Waal is a Believer. Being a philosopher (well, a budding one), I am supposed to by a Party Pooper. Tomasello (see the beginning of this post) is a Party Pooper. According to him, chimps are wonderful animals who only think of themselves. Me, myself and I. They regard other chimps as social tools. There is no sense of “we”.
Actually, my research group found other evidence that supports this view. Empathy is correlated with low social status in chimps, but with high social status in bonobos. Interestingly, chimps have a patriarchal social structure, whereas bonobos have a matriarchy. Do we see any parallels with our own world? I would say that we humans are very chimp-like in this respect!
Tomasello is also a psychologist. Which, according to my professor, is a problem, because Tomasello keeps reading intentions into behaviour (human or animal) that are just not there. He may well be right. As I remember from my earlier studies, psychologists always attribute more importance to differences between individuals than, say, sociologists. And you find what you are looking for (expectancy bias). Still, Tomasello found that chimps cannot “share attention”. They can both look at the same thing, but they cannot look at it together.
My research group has come to a similar conclusion. Chimps are clever and social creatures. Did you know? They live long (50 years), in large groups (up to 70 animals) with a strong social hierarchy. They solve puzzles and do some forward planning. They use meaningful gestures, some of which other great apes also use. You can look these gestures up in the Great Ape Dictionary. Chimps even go hunting together. But their behaviour appears largely one-directional, from “me” to the world. They either use imperatives (groom me, play with me, have sex with me), or they broadcast (I am here). There does not appear to be any sense of “we”.
I am fascinated by this sense of “we” that according to Tomasello is an essential building block for cognition. If you do not “share” a world with someone, you will never understand the difference between subjective-objective views. Or that one word of gesture may have different meanings for different people or in different circumstances. You will also not expect the other to share your world. So you will never build a view, an idea, a project or a story together. Tomasello convincingly shows how human babies learn these things within the first year of their life, whereas the chimp never gets beyond simple gaze-following (to look where another is looking), and even that takes several years.
Assuming my professor is right, this “we” is not: shared intentions, beliefs etc. But surely it can be something hard-wired, i.e. neurological? Or social? He says, social. Maybe it is a matter of chimps not being interested in others. In which case the bonobos, who are much friendlier, should do much better. I will look for research on this. Anyway, all this to give you an impression of what I have been doing in this project. If you like, you can have a look at our work in progress. It is all here, until the end of the year at least.
Having seen how very important this “we” appears to be to human cognition (and from there, to everything human), I got thinking. How is it ever going to work with humans in the new digital world? Aren’t we turning back to the chimp world, by speaking our imperatives or broadcasts into digispace? It does not seem an improvement at all.
There were other things to learn. For instance, how difficult it is to determine whether any behaviour is “intentional”. You get a feeling that is it deliberate, but after that it may be instinctive, emotional, intentional, conditioned – we learned to give up on assigning motives. Probably just as well, because we would always be in danger of assigning human-like behaviour to animals.
Also, wonderful stories from the animals themselves. They all show amazing ritualistic behaviour around their dead, caring for them, defending them, even washing them. Dolphin mothers showing their babies how to hunt with bubbles. Whales singing to each other. Orcas rescuing a human. Chimps grooming and sharing food. And then me, searching for the origins of language. Somehow I think it might take a while 🙂
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Into the woods
In my last post I promised you the story of the philosophy of language research project. Well, as you can tell from the featured image on the blog, I am out there, in the woods. Intentionally speaking (this is a joke which I will explain some other time). Anyway, some serious research is really happening out there because the research project is about the evolution of language. In a nutshell, how did language happen to us, and not to, say chimpanzees. Given that chimps only differ from us in 1.2% of our genes, how come they don’t talk? Because they cannot? Because they have nothing much to talk about? Because all the important things can be expressed without language? Because … well, use your imagination. That is what we students have to do. Apart from reading stacks of research. And doing “some good old-fashioned thinking” (the professor’s famous last words).
It is a wonderful project that speaks to the imagination and can be explained to normal people. Like my 85 year old neighbour who is the queen of our little neighbourhood. As she put it: “how nice that you are doing something I can understand!”… note the unspoken “I did not have a clue what you were on about before”. Well, yes. It is a change. Normally philosophy of language would not a popular choice as a conversation piece at parties, as I explained in this earlier post. But evolution of language really is a lot of fun. Even Husband is engrossed in Frans de Waal and his chimps. Can you imagine us sitting talking late at night about how chimps may or may not show normative behaviour? We do! There is me marking the pages for the examples he has found. I want him to read much more, but he is holding back for some reason 🙂
You might think, how come she is suddenly interested in evolution? I will have you know that I have always been interested in biology. And evolution. I will quickly bandy some proofs around. I took Biology at A-level. From a Welsh teacher, who fancied himself speaking English. Imagine me fresh out of Holland, trying to understand him. A nightmare. I got a C for Biology, which was my lowest grade but also the highest grade in Biology that year, and he came up to me, saying: how on earth did you get that? Emphasising the “you”. Well, it was not for his help in having his assistants sharpening my dissection knives without my knowing about it. When, during the examination, I tested the blade on my hand I bled profusely all over my dogfish and then I still had to separate out all the nerves.
Also, I went on a Biology marine field course in Wales which must have been the best course I took in my entire life. I remember how it felt strange to be back in a world where all the lines were straight. Anyway, this was when I was eighteen. Since then, my biology-exploits have restricted themselves to participation in National Geographic gene project. I have about 4% of Neanderthal genes, and at the time they said that was a lot. Perhaps I should have my genes re-tested, because I think they know much more about Neanderthals now.
It is useful to know a bit about biology and genetics when you do a project like this. Mendel is all a-b-c to me, as are double-helix DNA structures and stuff. But there is also such a thing as “philosophy of biology” and particularly “philosophy of evolution”. Had to look into those, because I needed to clarify all concepts I came across. Took me about a week, but now I know that concepts like “species” and “fitness for survival” are not the clear concepts I took them for.
I was going to tell you about what happened in my research project. Remember, I had to ask my professor to help me sort out my group? Well, I will not bore you with all the things an elderly student may say about a younger generation. It all happened. It was not as bad and it was worse. But the curious ingredient into the mix was me.
Image. There is me who know how to run a project. I have been a project and program manager, spending millions of tax-payers’ money on projects which were not entirely unsuccessful. There is also me who is an architect. I know how to translate complex concepts into projects; manage interfaces, scope creep, stakeholders, requirements, scenarios, dependencies, the lot. Including all the tools of the trade. Then there is the student me who, unlike most of the other students in my seminar, already knows some of the important concepts because I happened to take a seminar with the professor last year.
So what do I do in my new research group? Do I take charge, outline the work, divide the labour and make the group produce results? Ah no, nothing of the sort. Of course I suggest things. I make things. I organise. I read. I explain. But when my group mates want to go off on their own track, or are plainly uninterested, I just let it go. Because I don’t want to push. After all, they are the student and I am ? Yes, there is a thinking error there.
In the end, and much too late, I showed my professor what was happening, or rather, what I could not make happen. There was a simple but sensible solution. Just go to another group. As it turns out, the other group really wanted me to join. So, there is me camping out in the woods. The chimps are out there and waiting.