"Hell is other people" Sartre

"Hell is oneself" Eliot

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" Stephen in Ulysses

Posted by Norm at 12:11 AM | Permalink

The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story
in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the
strength to go on." Beckett

Posted by Norm at 7:19 PM | Permalink

"The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a
self propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game
of creation a sacred "Yes" is need: the spirit now wills his own will,
and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world" Nietzsche

Posted by Norm at 12:02 AM | Permalink

From today's Salt Lake Tribune

[The Republican state convention delegate was discussing with a prominent Utah GOP elected officeholder the issue of immigration when the delegate whined that a fence should be constructed to span the entire USA-Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants.
"What happens when they climb the fence?" asked the politician.
"You electrify it," said the delegate. "Then they won't touch it."
"But what if they touch it? You would let them die?"
"It would be their choice," said the delegate.
"What about a mother with a baby strapped to her back? You would let the mother and the baby die?"
"It would be the mother's choice to kill that baby," said the delegate.
"Then you're in favor of abortion?" asked the officeholder.
Dead silence. ]

The right wing see things as black or white except when they don't.

Posted by Norm at 5:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung
at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language,
religion. I shall try to fly by those nets" Joyce

Posted by Norm at 11:19 AM | Permalink

While chatting with Aaron, a chess playing friend on ICC. I asked him if he had any favorite quotations. This is one of them.

"When one first plays chess, he is like a man who has already caught a dose of microbes. Such a man walks along the street, and he does not yet know that he is ill. He is healthy, he feels fine, but the virus is doing its work." - Mikhail Tal

Posted by Norm at 12:06 AM | Permalink

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.... the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace....They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches."
--Eugene V. Debs

Posted by Norm at 4:58 PM | Permalink

What is the difference between crime fiction and a mystery. I suppose crime fiction doesn't necessarily have a mystery to solve but just getting the bad guys. I read both. I recently read my first novel by George P. Pelecanos. His novels are described as crime fiction, but there is just enough mystery about whodunit that for me it straddles the line. I can tell you that if you haven't read any Pelecanos you're missing out on some good stuff. Right as Rain one of this more recent offering's tells the story of Derek Strange private investigator working his magic in our nations capital D.C. The essential components are here drugs, love, and loyalty. Pelecanos develops very real characters along with a compelling story line. I love the way he describes his characters through some nifty dialogue. Here is some dialogue between Quinn, a former cop, and a used car salesman. It is clever, it is real, all without being too cliched.

Quinn looked Tony Tibbs over: pathetic and heroic, both at the same time.

I haven't enjoyed a crime novel this much since I read Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels a decade ago.

Pelecanos seems to have it all: Good plot, interesting characters and great writing.

Posted by Norm at 1:28 AM | Permalink

1. Introduction

You might think the world is at stake. At least that is the impression given by cognitive scientists engaged in the innateness versus acquired debate. Is this all sound and fury signifying nothing or is there a substantive debate? Is there any sense we can give to the concept ‘innate’ that makes a useful explanatory distinction? For example, there was a concept “superlunary space” that was used by early astronomers. Although this term picks out a real place in the universe, it does not make a particularly useful distinction for modern astronomers. It should not be assumed from the beginning that innateness is a natural kind. The problem for cognitive scientists is that it is not clear what account of innateness various people have in mind when they make innateness claims. There have been many. Noam Chomsky has famously claimed that we have innate knowledge of the universal grammar.

A basic tenet of evolutionary psychology is that “cognition is sub served by a number of innately channeled, domain-specific systems…” (Carruthers & Chamberlain 2000, p. 1) One example is an innate cheater detection module (Cosmides 1989). One reason ‘innateness’ has been so unclear is the multi-disciplinary nature of cognitive science. Behavioral geneticists, developmental psychologists, and philosophers each bring there own understanding of what innateness is to the debate. This results in a lot of confusions and cross-talk result. The concept is important because the experiments performed, the information deemed relevant from observation, and the way results are interpreted all depend in part on what notion of innateness is being employed. The purpose of this paper is to get clear about what is required for a good account of innateness.
I will begin by making some distinctions. First, I will discuss what it is that cognitive scientists are trying to explain by invoking innateness and what a good explanation would look like. I will do this by making use of two stories in Fiona Cowie’s (Cowie 1999) excellent book, “What’s Within: Nativism Reconsidered.” Cowie’s stories will help me make a cautionary distinction between what’s innate and what innateness is. They will also point the way to a distinction between adaptive evolutionary explanation and developmental explanation. Next, given this distinction, I will argue that most innateness claims are developmental claims and should be given developmental explanations. I will show that three current accounts of innateness blur this distinction in a way that is damaging to research in cognitive science. I will also point out some other shortcomings of these accounts. Finally, I will suggest what is needed for a useful and clear developmental account of innateness.

2. What’s Innate and What Innateness Is

What question is innateness invoked to answer? Fiona Cowie suggests it might be trying to answer the genetic question also known as Plato’s problem. Where does what is in our minds come from? Cowie gives us good reason to reject the other traditional use of innateness, namely as a foundation for a rationalist epistemology. I will not go into epistemology here and take it that she is correct about this. We have good reason to think that the innateness controversy is about the genetic question. Noam Chomsky, perhaps the most important example of a nativist, sees innateness as an answer to this question. “For many years, I have been intrigued by two problems concerning human knowledge. The first is the problem of explaining how we can know so much given that we have such limited evidence. The second is the problem of explaining how we can know so little, given that we have so much evidence. The first problem we might call ‘Plato’s problem,’ the second, ‘Orwell’s problem’ …” (Chomsky, 1986 p. xxv) However, Cowie argues that there is no substantive debate between nativists and empiricists on the genetic question. She argues that the substantive debate lies elsewhere. Cowie’s discussion illuminates some important distinctions about innateness explanations and shows us the kind of explanation we want. However, Cowie is incorrect in part about where the substantive debate might lie.
Cowie begins with Peter Godfrey-Smith’s distinction between internalist and externalist explanations. An internalist explanation for Godfrey-Smith explains “one set of organic properties in terms of other internal or intrinsic properties of the organic system.” (Godfrey-Smith 1996, p. 30) Externalist explanations explain “properties of organic systems in terms of properties of their environments.” (Godfrey-Smith, 1996, p. 30) So, under this schema empiricists are externalists and nativists are internalists. As Cowie points out, it is clearly the case that this won’t do. Nativists and empiricists allow for some explanations of both sorts. Ned Block point out that, “No organism can learn without a mechanism that accomplishes this learning. Hence at least one learning mechanism must be innate (if only a mechanism for acquiring other learning mechanisms).” (Block 1981, p. 279) Godfrey-Smith is aware of this and softens his distinction. He argues that internalists place greater weight on internalist explanations and externalists place greater weight on externalists explanations. Thus we have more of a continuum of explanations rather than a hard and fast distinction. Nativists and empiricists disagree about which factors, internal or external, play a greater role in the genesis of what is in our mind/brain.
Cowie argues that given this distinction, it can often be the case that the innateness debate is insubstantial. Cowie does this by an ingenious little story. She asks us to consider two possible explanations of how normal facial features develop in a human fetus. Gus the geneticist says genetic factors are most important in determining whether, say, our eyes are in the front of our head. Harry the epidemiologist says environmental factors are more important. For example, alcohol in the maternal blood stream can cause eyes to be elongated toward the side of the baby’s face. The problem is that Gus and Harry are giving explanations for slightly different questions. “The ‘internalist’ Gus, is explaining why a fetus normally comes to have eyes on the front (rather than the sides or top or back, say) of its head. The ‘externalist,’ Harry, is explaining how a fetus comes to have normal-sized eyes close to the center of its face rather than the larger, elongated eyes toward the side of its face that are characteristic of fetal alcohol syndrome.”(Cowie 1999, p. 22) Each explanation has a different contrast. Both are good explanations, but they reflect different explanatory interests. They simply aren’t in conflict.
Cowie argues that you can have a substantive debate if the explanatory contrast is the same for both sides. Chloe the molecular biologist and Minnie the epidemiologist are both interested in “why the facial features characteristic of fetal alcohol syndrome (rather than normal features) develop in a certain class of cases.” (Cowie 1999, p.23) Chloe says the defective FAS1 gene provides the most important explanation while Minnie attributes it to alcohol consumption during pregnancy. While it may be obvious that both these causes are relevant, it is not obvious which might be the major contributor and thus the most causally relevant. Cowie’s diagnosis of why Chloe and Minnie have a substantive debate and why Gus and Harry don’t is very enlightening. Chloe and Minnie are asking the same question whereas Gus and Harry are not. Chloe and Minnie’s question makes the same contrast. Second, Chloe and Minnie are not talking about fetal development in general, rather they have something very specific they are investigating. This is the lesson to be learned from Cowie’s two stories. “These contrasts suggest that disputes between internalist and externalists are substantive when they concern the particular ways that particular causal elements contribute to particular causal processes.” (Cowie 1999, p. 24)
Cowie argues that nativists and empiricists don’t seem to be arguing about particular contrasts and that this is a good reason to reject the internalist/externalist picture of innateness. She expects this picture will result in the Gus and Harry story where scientists are just talking past one another. The problem seems to be that although it may be possible to have substantive debates at the level of particular problems as in the Chloe and Minnie case, there does not seem to be a common contrast that nativists and empiricists make in general.
For example, an argument made in favor of nativism that is at a more general level is the poverty of stimulus argument. Cowie points out that the poverty of stimulus arguments is a negative a argument. We can see this in Chomsky's discussion of the matter, “The Language each person acquires is a rich and complex construction hopelessly underdetermined by the fragmentary evidence available. Nevertheless individuals in a speech community have developed essentially the same language. This fact can be explained only on the assumption that these individuals employ highly restrictive principles that guide the construction of grammar.” (Pinker 1994, p.23)# Poverty of stimulus arguments are arguments that try to show that empiricism cannot be correct. One cannot the positive thesis that a trait such as language is innate. On the internalist/externalist picture arguing not empiricism doesn’t provide a specific contrast like the contrast in the Chloe and Minnie story.
What is Cowie’s alternative? She argues that the substantive debate between nativists and empiricists is the following. “Whereas empiricists stress the generality of our innate learning mechanisms, nativists use arguments from the poverty of stimulus to defend their view that since certain learning tasks require special kinds of skill, the mind must contain special purpose, or task-specific learning mechanisms in addition to those that empiricists allow.” (Cowie 1999, p.30) Cowie is trying to show us what is at issue between nativists and empiricists without ever telling us what innateness is. What she has done here is dodge the question. She simply does not give a new account of innateness. Whether a trait is domain-specific is orthogonal to an account of innateness. It may well be that one could have domain specific capacities that are learned. It is possible that we have one innate learning mechanism that allows us to acquire other domain-specific learning mechanisms. The nativist invokes the poverty of stimulus argument to show that there is a domain-specific learning mechanism that is also innate. Cowie seems to think that innateness is just being inborn! “Nativism, seen from this perspective is the view that our inborn intellectual skills are domain-specific.” (Cowie 1999, p. 30). It is important to distinguish between what is innate and how it is innate, on the one hand, and what innateness is on the other. We cannot be clear on what the issue between nativists and empiricists is without having a better conception of innateness than “inborn.”

3. Explanatory Strategies

Suppose I am telling somebody about language. This person, I will call him Ivan, says, “Oh, you are studying language acquisition, how do children learn language so quickly and easily?” I answer him by saying “It’s human nature to learn language quickly and easily.” How would we expect him to respond? He might say, “don’t patronize me, this much is obvious, I wanted to know how they do it, tell me the steps they take along the way to learning the language.” It’s not that what I said was false that was the problem for Ivan. The problem was that I was not answering the question Ivan was asking. How can we make the distinction between Ivan’s question and the question I answered. I suggest in the same way Cowie made a distinction between Gus and Harry on the one hand, and Chloe and Minnie on the other hand. We ask what contrast each is making. I wish to distinguish, as Ariew does (Ariew 1999), between two explanatory strategies. They are adaptive evolutionary explanation and developmental explanation. At first blush, the answer I gave to Ivan is an adaptive evolutionary explanation while the question he was asking was a developmental question. Below I will compare and contrast these two types of explanation and follow by illustrating how these strategies relate to innateness by way of an example.
I start with adaptive evolutionary explanation. An adaptation is a trait that was selected for because it contributes to the survivability of a species in a given habitat. For example, a Giraffe’s long neck allows it to get at a food source high up on a tree. The Giraffe’s neck contributes to its survivability in a habitat with tall trees. This trait is considered adaptive by way of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Adaptive explanation works at the level of population. It explains the relationship between a trait and the habitat it is adapted too. This relationship can be captured statistically by using the behavioral geneticist notion of heritability. Heritability in a population is described in the following way. “The distribution of the trait in an offspring population is predictable from the distribution of the trait in the parent population and the mating pattern of that population.” (Horvath 2000). Thus heritability can be characterized by the following contrast. The variation between individuals within a population arises from differences in the genome rather than differences in the environment those individuals inhabit.
Developmental explanations work at the level of a the individual. A developmental explanation gives us a causal history from the genotype to the phenotype. Alternatively, developmental explanation gives us a causal history from an initial state of not having some trait, knowledge, or capacity to having it. In other words developmental explanations give us the mechanism in an individual that produces a particular outcome.
Adaptive evolutionary explanation black boxes these mechanisms. The reason for this is that natural selection does not care, as it were, how you get to an adaptive outcome just so long as you get the right outcome. Developmental explanations are not concerned with population level variation of outcomes. Another difference is that adaptive evolutionary explanations count what constitutes an ‘environment’ differently than do developmental explanations. Whereas the chemical environment that DNA finds itself in is sometimes treated as the environment in developmental explanations, adaptive evolutionary explanations hold this type of ‘environment’ constant. The following example will make these distinctions clearer.
Andy Clark uses this example for very similar purposes. (Clark 1998) Phenylketonuria, known as PKU disease, is a horrible disease that causes mental retardation, shortness of stature and lack of pigment. The normal gene at the PKU locus produces a liver enzyme that allows us to metabolize phenylalanine, an amino acid that is common in lots of foods we commonly eat. People with PKU disease cannot produce this important enzyme, phenylalanine hydroxylase. The phenylalanine concentration in the blood gets too high and this interferes with the production of myelin, which serves as a protective sheaf around our nerve cells. Without this sheaf, the deleterious effects mentioned above occur. Fortunately, these effects are easily avoided. A person with this disease simply has to avoid phenylalanine in their diet. If we give an adaptive evolutionary explanation of this disease it will be considered heritable. The contrast question that an evolutionist might use is why did Mary have the deleterious effects rather than other people from her town. Since everybody in her town eats roughly the same things, this is not the difference that makes a difference in Mary’s having the deleterious effects of PKU. What is different about Mary is that she is homozygous at the PKU locus. For this reason, adaptive explanation attributes the cause of her disease to the PKU gene.
What would a developmental explanation for this disease look like? The developmentalist is not making a population level contrast. She is asking something like, why and how do these deleterious effects occur in Mary rather than Mary living a healthy normal life. Whereas the an adaptive explanation can take the chemical environment of the gene and the chemicals such as phenylalanine coming in from outside the organism as a backdrop, these things are all causally relevant to the developmentalist. While it may be obvious that both the gene and phenylalanine are causally relevant, it is not obvious which might be the major contributor and thus the most causally relevant. Suppose we ask how the PKU gene produces PKU symptoms. We see that adaptive evolutionary explanation works at a population level while developmental explanation is at the level of the individual. Given the contrasts that come out of explanations at these two levels, the evolutionist can take much of the environment as back drop, thus what counts as environment is much narrower. The developmentalist must have a broader conception of environment. Finally, adaptive evolutionary explanation is interested in outcomes and developmental explanation is interested in the mechanisms that produce those outcomes.
Cowie’s suggestion that innateness is a concept used in answering the genetic question or the ontogeny of our cognitive structures is correct. Here I take a very brief look at a famous innateness claim in the literature and show how it is a developmental claim. Noam Chomsky claims that our knowledge of universal grammar is innate. Chomsky argues that a number of observations lead us to this conclusion. We are capable of producing an infinite variety of sentences, but our lifetime is comparably quite short. The information we get while learning language is very limited. Differences in intelligence don’t seem to effect language acquisition one way or the other. “Such observations lead one from the start, that we are dealing with a species-specific capacity with a largely innate component.” (Chomsky 1975, p.123) Chomsky speaks of a species-specific capacity. This is an observation at the level of population and certainly not at the level of the individual. This seems very much like an evolutionary explanation and indeed Chomsky makes evolutionary claims about language as well as developmental ones. Chomsky may be making these observations as a defensible guide to a developmental conception of innateness. It is important; however, to keep the distinction between explanatory strategies in mind when these observations are made. Here we see Chomsky making a developmental claim. “The competence of an adult, or even a young child is such that we must attribute to him a knowledge of language that extends far beyond anything he has learned.” (Chomsky 1975, p. 123) Chomsky is saying something about how people come by or acquire their linguistic competence. Linguistic competence is the outcome of a developmental process and Chomsky claims that this outcome requires more knowledge than we could learn in the normal course of development. “The central problem in designing a language acquisition device is to show how such a system of rules can emerge given the data to which the child is exposed.” (Chomsky 1975, p. 124) Again we see Chomsky making claims about how an outcome “emerges.” What seems confusing in Chomsky’s work and that of others in cognitive science is they do not make it clear whether their arguments that invoke talk about the distribution of outcomes are also arguments about the development of those outcomes. What we want is a characterization of innateness that places constraints on developmental explanations of trait acquisition.

4. Current Accounts of Innateness

4.1 Andre Ariew’s Canalization Account

Andre Ariew gives potentially the best account of innateness. Ariew recognizes the different explanatory projects above and it is largely his work on this that has inspired my point of view. Despite recognizing these two explanatory strategies, Ariew believes he can somehow heroically save an account of innateness that works in either explanatory strategy. There are three related problems with Ariew’s canalization account of innateness. After summarizing his account I will show how each of these problems comes out of this distinction between explanatory strategies.
Ariew revisits the early debates over innateness between Konrad Lorenz and Lehrman. Lorenz characterized the issue as a dichotomy between traits that are genetically determined and those that are acquired or learned. Lehrman (1953) argued that no trait could develop on the basis of genes alone. Every trait requires some interaction between genes and environmental factors. Ariew diagnoses their disagreement as being caused by their different explanatory goals. Lorenz has adaptive explanation in mind and Lehrman has developmental explanation in mind. Ariew believes that Lehrman has made rather damning criticisms of Lorenz’s innateness conception but believes that there are some innocent features of it that are desirable. Ariew in effect is trying to create a middle ground view between the radical view which rejects the distinction between innate and acquired altogether and Lorenz's view that innate traits are genetically determined traits. Ariew derives three desiderata from his review of this debate.

1. “An account of innateness should make it a feature of development.” (Ariew 1999, p.14)
Ariew clearly wants his account to be relevant to a developmental explanation. So far so good, as we saw above, cognitive scientists seem to be making developmental innateness claims. .

2. “Innateness should denote an environmentally stable trait.” (Ariew 1999, p.15)
This also seems quite reasonable. As Ariew points out there are a number of deprivation experiments in ethology in which various species seem to develop traits in impoverished learning environments. Lorenz and others believe these experiments can provide evidence for innateness.

3. “An account of innateness should make clear how natural selection can effect prevalence of some adaptive traits.” (Ariew 1999, p. 15)
It is very unclear why this should be a desideratum given that innateness is supposed to be a developmental concept.

Based on these desiderata, Ariew argues that C. H. Waddington’s concept of canalization is innateness. “Canalization denotes a process whereby the endstate (the product of development) is manifested despite environmental perturbations.” (Ariew 1999, p.16) Development is considered an “epigenetic landscape” in which various developmental pathways branch off. Each of these pathways leads to a particular end state. Certain environmental features can induce an organism to follow one of these pathways. Each of these pathways can be more or less canalized. So Ariew equates innateness with canalization. “The degree to which a biological trait is innate for individuals possessing an instance of a genotype (or set of genotypes) is the degree to which the developmental pathway for individuals possessing an instance of that genotype (or set of genotypes) is environmentally canalized. The degree to which a developmental pathway is canalized is he degree to which development of a particular endstate (phenotype) is insensitive to a range of environmental conditions under which the endstate emerges.” (Ariew 1999, pp. 17-18)
It is surprising that Ariew makes the distinction between developmental explanation and adaptive evolutionary explanation and still maintains his third desideratum. Why not leave evolutionary explanation to heritability. It is only when heritability is used as an equivalent of innateness for development that it runs into explanatory problems. It need not be the case that heritability and development are unrelated. Innate traits may well be widespread in a species and their innateness would explain why this is so. However, the inverse situation is would not be the case. That is the fact that a trait is wide spread tells us nothing about the development of the trait. Developmental biologists and psychologists can give a story about a trait without the use of this notion. Meanwhile, behavioral geneticists can provide us with interesting information on the level of population. Trying to combine the two sorts of explanation leads to problems. First, Ariew ends up talking about end states or outcomes again. This is the province of evolutionary explanation. Innateness defined in terms of the outcome, again makes no useful contrast between the environmental and internal factors that combine to make something canalized. Again the developmentalist is not interested in the fact that a trait is canalized, she is interested in the precise mechanism of that canalization. It appears that though canalization pretends to be about development that it is not. Ariew thus sacrifices his first desiderata for his third.
How does canalization describe our PKU case. It seems under one construal, PKU isn’t canalized much at all. It is totally contingent upon whether the person includes phenylalanine in their diet. Thus, PKU is highly sensitive to the environment and is not highly canalized. However, PKU is very heritable. It is strange that a trait that is highly heritable is not innate. On another construal, PKU might be thought of as moderately canalized. Given the way I have characterized the disease, the genes and the environment both play relevant causal roles. Nowhere in this characterization do we get anything like my explanatory gloss of the mechanism of PKU. Canalization seems to be just another way to characterize an end state. As a resource in adaptive evolutionary explanation it may even be more useful than heritability. As Ariew points out you can tell a story about how a particular path of development may be selected for and thus parts of it may be translated into genetic instruction. As a developmental concept, canalization won’t do the job.
Another problem with canalization is that it over-generalizes. Richard Samuels makes this point in his forthcoming article. It seems that water appears in every environment that a human could be in. The concept water is acquired over a massive range of environments and thus is insensitive to a wide range of environments. Under this view, acquisition of the concept of water is highly canalized and therefore we would have to say that the concept of water is an innate concept. But clearly this is a concept we learn from experience. A concept that is learned is surely not one we want to call innate. Canalization seems fine for adaptive evolutionary explanation, but doesn’t do so well for developmental explanation.

4.2 Elliot Sober’s Invariance Account

Elliot Sober offers an account of innateness that captures some of the benefits of Ariew’s canalization account. However, it also suffers from similar failings. Ultimately Sober’s account fails because it offers nothing by way of developmental explanation.
Sober like Ariew lists a set of desiderata for innateness. They are as follows.

1. Innateness should be thought of as a continuum concept rather than a dichotomy. This is motivated by his bird song example. There are some birds that acquire their song just by listening to any bird song whatsoever. They don’t need to hear the song they end up singing. Thus the song is not acquired independently of its environment, but by some sort of interaction. It is also clear that they don’t learn the song in any traditional sense of learning. Note this case is similar in structure to the PKU case given above.

2. Innateness should not mean the trait is unmodifiable later in life. Sober points out that Egyptian Vultures initially break ostrich eggs and this trait emerges quite reliably. However, They stop this behavior if they discover that the eggs are often empty.

3. Innateness must account for the possibility of arriving at the same phenotype via an innate mechanism or via an environmental mechanism. Sober notes that in some fruit flies the number of bristles they develop is contingent upon diet, while in others diet has no effect one way or the other.
Based on these considerations Sober concludes innateness must be defined as follows. “A phenotypic trait is innate for a given genotype if and only if that phenotype will emerge in all of a range of developmental environments.” (Sober 1999)
Sober’s account is again about an outcome and not a mechanism. Knowing that trait emerges in a range of environment tells us nothing of the mechanism by which the trait emerges. Richard Samuels puts it nicely. “The fundamental flaw to which invariance accounts are subject is that they attempt to explain the central features of innateness solely in terms of a mapping relation between genotypic and phenotypic traits, without imposing any substantive constraints on the mechanisms or processes in virtue of which such mapping relations obtain.” (Samuels forthcoming, p. 12) Sober’s account doesn’t serve any useful purpose in a developmental explanation.
The key to Sober’s account seems to be how you determine the relevant “range of environments.” As Sober admits this may have to be pragmatically characterized, but then it seems that these pragmatic characterizations are doing all the explanatory work. Samuels and Ariew point out that the range of environments would have to be exceeding large indeed. Ariew writes that on the Sober account traits emerge “By means of a development mental sensitivity only to environmental factors that are themselves invariant within the organism’s developmental environment.” (Ariew 1999, p. 26) Samuels points out that such a factor is the presence of water. Are we to believe that since everybody acquires the concept water in a wide range of environments that this concept is innate? This seems highly counter-intuitive. Here we have again an account of innateness with an overgeneralization problem. Sober and Ariew have recognized that old accounts of innateness, such as that of Konrad Lorenz were too rigid. They could not account for cases such as PKU disease or Sober’s birdsong example. However, it appears that their accounts are too liberal.

4.3 Richard Samuels’ Primitivism

In his forthcoming article Richard Samuels rightly notes that canalization and Sober’s invariance account try to capture a mapping from genotype to phenotype, but fail to put any constraints on the mechanisms that account for that mapping. The most simplistic mapping of genotype to phenotype occurs in Konrad Lorenz’s innateness account. For Lorenz (1953) , an innate trait is one that is genetically transmitted as opposed to acquired through learning. This is the account that everyone has been reacting against since. Griffiths & Gray (1994) subject this account of traits being genetically programmed to a devastating critique. Further, there are all kinds of problem cases for his account such as PKU and Sober’s birdsong example. These are problematic for Lorenz because a good account of the development of the birdsong and the appearance of the deleterious effects of PKU requires reference to environmental factors as well as genes. Ariew and Sober try to solve this problem by treating innateness as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. However, these accounts still map genotype to phenotype and are subject to the problems mentioned above because of this. Samuels’ solution is to cut Lorenz’s innateness in half. Since it is the genes that are the problem, reasons Samuels, I will cut out the genetic transmission part. What we are left with is that a cognitive trait is innate just in case it is not learned. This is roughly what Samuels proposes. As will shortly become apparent this puts innateness purely in the realm of psychology and removes it from all other fields of inquiry. This, I will show, is still too liberal for our explanatory needs in one sense and in another sense far too restrictive. What results is a concept that still exemplifies problems similar to those discussed above.

4.3.1 Desiderata and Primitivism

Before considering these problems I will briefly review Samuels’ desiderata for innateness and the resulting account. The desiderata are as follows.

1. The Fundamental Conceptual Constraint- “If a cognitive structure is innate, then it is not learned.” (Samuels forthcoming, p. 3) This constraint ends up being nearly identical with innateness on Samuels’ account. Samuels argues that it is failure to meet this constraint that explains the failings of Sober and Ariew’s innateness accounts.

2. The Negative Conceptual Constraint- “The claim that a cognitive structure is innate does not imply that no environmental factors contribute to the acquisition of the structure.” (Samuels forthcoming, p. 4) The problem is to make explicit what constraints if any apply to the environment’s causal contributions to development. Samuels leaves his innateness account neutral on this issue. He provides no constraints one way or the other. Sober uses a “a range of environments” clause in his account in order to place a constraint on environmental contribution and is lead to an overgeneralization problem. Similarly Ariew characterizes canalization in part as “insensitivity to a range of environments” with the same result.
3. The Argument constraint. The idea here is that the account of innateness ought to allow arguments for innateness prima facie plausibility.

4. The Logical Geography Constraint- An innateness account should categorize prototypical nativists such as Chomsky and Fodor as nativists and it should categorize prototypical empiricists such as Skinner and Piaget as empiricists. No argument here.

5. The Significance Constraint- An innateness account should make it apparent ceteris paribus why nativism matters to cognitive scientists. I will argue below that cognitive scientists interested in developmental explanations of traits should probably not think that nativism matters. Further, the notion may well be destructive.

Given this set of desiderata Samuels concludes that “a psychological structure is innate just in case it is a psychological primitive.” (Samuels forthcoming, p. 14) Samuels leaves “psychological structure” undefined, but he does provide us with the following examples: concept, belief, learning mechanism or module. A psychological structure is a psychological primitive just in case:

“1. S is a structure posited by some correct scientific psychological theory.
2. There is no correct scientific psychological theory that explains the acquisition of S (in the baseline sense of “acquisition”).” (Samuels forthcoming, p. 13)

Samuels gives us a cluster of inductive learning theories of concept acquisition as an example of what would count as a correct scientific psychological account of a psychological structure’s acquisition. In other words, any trait that is learned cannot be innate and conversely any trait that is innate is not learned. “So, I am happy to view primitivism (at least for the moment) as an articulation of the appropriate sense in which innate cognitive structures are not learned.” (Samuels forthcoming, p. 17). This comes with the caveat that learning should be broadly construed and that a normalcy clause, which I will discuss later, will have to be added. It seems very unsatisfactory that innateness turns out to be just a negative characterization. After all there are many ways ‘not’ to be something. The account doesn’t seem to tell us much. However, if innateness is characterized merely as not learned then we need to know what Samuels has in mind for learning.

4.3.2 Primitivism is too Liberal

In order for innateness as Samuels’ construes to have any explanatory contrast we need to know what counts as learning. Once we know what learning is then we can identify traits as innate and perhaps learn something about their ontogeny or development. Below we will see that Samuels’ notion of learning leads to an overgeneralization problem. Also, we will also see an overgeneralization problem akin to those suffered by Sober and Ariew’s accounts.
Samuels wants to avoid accounts of learning that would be too restrictive on his account. Here notes two notions of learning that are too restrictive. “1. It is not uncommon to preclude various perceptual processes such as visual processing from counting as forms of learning, even though they are psychological processes of acquisition. 2. Similarly, it is common for cognitive scientists to characterize learning as on inferential process whereby stimuli are used as evidence in the formation of concepts or knowledge structures.” (Samuels forthcoming, p. 17) Given that Samuels doesn’t want to preclude “visual processing” from learning and the fact that Samuels will accept connectionist theories as scientific psychology gives us an interesting case of over-generalization.
Ralph Linsker (Linsker 1988) created a connectionist network that models the way someone might development basic features of vision such as edge detection. The idea in visual science is the visual system is organized into a set of layers that process successively more complex features of the visual world. The first layer consists of two types of cell organization on the retina. These cells groups have excitatory regions and inhibitory regions that are sensitive to light. Some cell groups are sensitive in the center and inhibitory in the surround while others are sensitive in the surround while inhibitory in the center. (see fig. 1 below).

?

In the next layer cell groups of the same type can be lined up, as it were, in order to detect light edges or dark edges as needed. At this layer the cells may be more sensitive to horizontal bars or vertical bars. Linsker was able to create a feed-forward network that self-organized so as to realize these edge detectors. The only input that was needed was some random light noise. The self organization into these edge detectors occurred by virtue of the interaction of the network architecture and this random noise from the environment.
The point is, if it is the case that our actual visual system develops in the same way, then under Samuels account we will have to say that the development of our visual capacity to detect edges is learned and thus not innate. Hebbian learning and back propagation would count as learning under Samuels view because he does not want to place the limitation quoted above on what counts as learning. This is a highly counter-intuitive result. The development of something as basic and fundamental to vision as edge detection should surely be regarded as innate. One might argue that this model can be seen as a model of some brute causal process whereby random light entering the visual system causes neural reorganization. However, Samuels has not precluded this from counting as learning in cases where this neural reorganization is construed as Hebbian learning mediated by back propagation. It simply isn’t clear on Samuels account where to draw the line between a psychological processes and a neurological processes.

There is another sense in which Samuels’ account is too liberal. This time it is the innateness rather than learning that is given too broad a scope. Samuels is aware of the following over-generalization problem and offers some possible solutions which will be discussed later. Samuels mentions the possibility of there being something like a Latin pill. A Latin pill would be one that a person could just swallow and subsequently changes in their neurochemistry would occur such that they now have the ability to speak Latin fluently. Swallowing a pill is certainly not a psychological process and would be a psychological primitive; therefore, the knowledge of Latin would have to counted as innate in this case. This version of overgeneralization is not too worrying, because it is highly unlikely if not impossible that this situation will ever occur. Since it is unlikely there will be such a thing as a Latin Pill, this problem is not too much of a worry for Samuels account. His account is not meant to be a conceptual analysis of the term innate and it is to be understood as a defensible account. A more problematic version of overgeneralization occurs when pathologies cause one to acquire new cognitive traits. Samuels mentions a disease in Australia called Ross River fever, that causes its victims to hallucinate that buildings are crashing down. This disease is spread by mosquitoes. Thus we have a new cognitive trait that is not acquired via a psychological process and must be counted as innate. Samuels also mentions the possibility of lesions inflicted on somebody’s brain by some horrific accident. It might be that someone acquires some strange new cognitive trait as seeing a red patch in their visual field all the time.
Since primitivism places no constraints on environmental contributions, it suffers from this overgeneralization problem. We get on one extreme Lorenz’s the view that nothing from the environment can be involved in the development of an innate trait. On the other end of the spectrum we get an account that says nothing about the way environmental factors effect the development of a trait. Samuels account puts no constraint on environmental contribution at all. Samuels notes that all of the counter-examples to his case seem to be pathological in nature and this leads him to adopt a problematic normalcy clause.

4.3.3 Primitivism is too Restrictive

In his discussion of what should count as a scientific psychology, Samuels rightly recognizes innateness ought to be a term that helps to explain the ontogeny or development of these cognitive traits. He also recognizes that the other type of explanation common to these debates is evolutionary explanation and he gives a very good reason to reject this sort of explanation with regard to innateness. “What primitivism maintains is that if a cognitive structure S is innate, then scientific psychology can specify no mechanism or process in virtue of which S is possessed by an individual organism O at a given time t, even though there is no time prior to t at which P possesses S. But evolutionary theories -whether adaptationist or not- simply do not address this question.” (Samuels forthcoming p. 18) He points out the developmental theories do address this issue.
The complaint I have been making against all of these accounts is that they don’t provide any constraints on the mechanisms of development. These accounts only say something about the outcomes and not how that outcome comes about. Samuels account doesn’t tell us anything positive about the developmental mechanism that produces these cognitive traits. He has given us a hint at what developmental mechanism is not involved, namely learning. This doesn’t tell us much because there is a severe lack of learning theories out there and it is not clear precisely what would count as learning. As I said above if innate traits are not learned traits then we need to know what learning is.
Eliminating discussion of innateness from all fields except psychology is all well and good for the psychologist, but what help is it for the neurobiologist. This artificial division away from biology contributes to the overgeneralization problem discussed above. If innateness precludes psychological explanation then it should give us a constraint on the biological end of development. However the only constraint Samuels does place on the biology of development is his normalcy clause. Simply that everything happening in development ought to go normally. “Normalcy Condition. A (token) cognitive structure S possessed by an organism O is innate only if O would acquire S (in the baseline sense) in the normal course of events.”(Samuels forthcoming p. 25) Samuels invokes this normalcy clause in order to account for the pathological counter-examples to his account discussed above. This “normal course of events” is precisely what a developmental account of acquisition is supposed to explain. When we give an account of development we give a history of the causal factors or mechanisms that produces the trait in question. The normal course of events is precisely this set of causal factors. Adopting this normalcy clause combined with limiting innateness to psychological explanation is downright destructive to the scientific enterprise. What kind of evidence could we have that something is not learned? The standard practice in ethology is to perform deprivation experiments. Limit features of an animal’s environment and note whether that animal still acquires the trait in question. This of course would not be the normal course of events. For Samuels this test would not count as evidence of innateness, rather it would just be as case of pathology akin to Ross River fever or a nasty knock on the head. Just as the pathological cases could be deemed not normal, so would any experimental manipulation that a scientist might perform on the developmental environment. Samuels actually criticizes evidence sited by Elman et al (1996) in their plasticity argument on this very point. The nature of evidence was invasive experimental manipulation on the brains of animals. Perhaps Samuels would not count ethology as scientific psychology since its subject is animals rather than humans. To suggest that a concept that is supposed to play some explanatory role in development should only belong to the discipline of psychology is counter-productive. A great source of experimental evidence about development comes from comparing human development with that of our close evolutionary cousins. Nevertheless suppose that it is the case that Samuels really intends there to be such a restriction. Then we could not count pathological conditions that arrive in humans by some horrible accident as evidence one way or another for innateness, because these would not count as normal conditions. If we are to adopt such a normalcy clause for innateness then we rob ourselves of a very important source of evidence and a very important scientific methodology. Samuels’ account is so restrictive in this sense, that it inhibiting and destructive to the scientific enterprise of trying to understand the development of cognitive traits.

5. Conclusion

We have seen that there don’t seem to be any adequate developmental accounts of innateness on offer. Fiona Cowie fails to make the distinction between what’s innate and what innateness is. Sober, Ariew, and Samuels fail to sufficiently recognize the distinction between explanatory projects. Since many claims of innateness in cognitive science seem to be developmental claims we wanted an account of innateness that was a developmental account. A developmental account would put constraints on the mechanism in an individual that produces a particular outcome rather than on the about the distribution of that outcome. It is interesting to note that the accounts I reviewed above all had problems with overgeneralization. This can be diagnosed as a failure to find good constraints on the environmental contribution to innateness. Sober and Ariew try to constrain environmental contribution by making reference to a range of environmental conditions without giving us any principled way to identify the relevant range of environments. Samuels places no constraint whatsoever on the environmental contribution to development. If a satisfactory constraint cannot be found, innateness as a developmental concept will join superlunary space in the rubbish bin of useless concepts. We have seen that the behavioral geneticists notion of heritability serves nicely in evolutionary explanation. It may well be that heritability is the only useful notion of innateness available, but it should be kept clear that this notion will only function for adaptive evolutionary explanation and is not a useful concept for developmental explanation.

Word Count: 7619

Bibliography

Ariew, A. (1999). “ Innateness is Canalization: A Defense of a Developmental Account of Innateness.” In Valerie Hardcastle (ed.) Biology Meets Psychology: Conjectures, Connections, Constraints. MIT Press.

Block, Ned (ed.) (1981) Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology. Volume 2. London: Methuen.

Carruthers, P. & Chamberlain, A. (eds.) (2000) Evolution and the Human Mind:
Modularity, Language, and Meta-Cognition Cambridge Press.

Chomsky, Noam. (1975) “Recent Contributions to the Theory of Innate Ideas.” In Innate Ideas Stich (ed.) 1975 University of California Press.

Chomsky, Noam. (1986) Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. Praeger Publishers.

Clark, A. (1998) “ Twisted Tales: Causal Complexity and Cognitive Science Explanation.” Minds and Machines, 8, 79-99.

Cosmides, Leda. (1989) “The Logic of Social Exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task.” Cognition 31 pp. 187-276

Cowie, Fiona. (1999) What’s Within: Nativism Reconsidered.
Oxford University Press.

Elman, Jeffery et al (1996) Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Devlopment. MIT Press.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter. (1996) Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature
Cambridge University Press.

Griffiths, P. & Gray, R. (1994) “ Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation.” Journal of Philosophy, 91.6, 277-304

Horvath, Christopher D. (2000) “Interactionism and Innateness in the Evolutionary Study of Human Nature.” Biology and Philosophy 15: 321-337.

Linsker, Ralph. “Self-Organization in a Perceptual Network.”
Computer Magazine 21:105-117.

Lorenz, Conrad (1953) “The Nature of Instincts.” In C. H. Schiller (Ed.) , Instinctive Behavior. New York: International University Press, 129-175.

Pinker, Steven (1994) The Language Instinct. Penguin Books.

Samuels, R. (forthcoming.) “Nativism and Cognitive Science.”

Sober, E. (1999) “Innate Knowledge.” The Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. Routledge.

Copyright © 2002 Christopher Jenson. All rights reserved

Posted by Norm at 8:12 PM | Permalink

Chris took a week off from his studies at Sheffield to vacation in Rome. Upon his return he was looking at Ovid's Metamorphoses because lots of the art work in Rome was based on stories from it. Here is the epigraph at the beginning of that book. I like it alot.

"The elation of comedy is saying hooray for life in its own terms, however incongruous and absurd."

Posted by Norm at 7:55 PM | Permalink

<rant>
I think the political right wing is colorblind. All they can see is black and white.
They're so far gone they can't even see shades of gray. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is a good example. Those dumb Asses see no difference between The Palestinian's and the Al Qaeda. Take the fact that Israel is occupying Palestinian territory to mention just one. If you are not with us your against is their motto. When you're "right", well you’re "right". I wouldn't be surprised to hear them calling Randy Johnson un-American because he pitches from the left side, nor would I be surprised if Bush's education plan included instructions to teach all those little left handed kids to write with their right hand. At least then we could give them credit for being consistent. The right likes democracy in Israel, but doesn't find it so noble in Venezuela. Dubya rants on about terrorism, but doesn't seem bothered by the fact that his Dad pardoned Orlando Bosch, a known terrorist. This guy blew up a civilian Cuban airliner with 73 people on it. I can just imagine the scene Big Dubya and Little Dubya having lunch. Little Dubya says, “Hey Dad I just heard about the Orlando guy you pardoned. You know either you're with us or you’re against us”, and Big Dubya responding like Justice T. Buford in Smokey and the Bandits "Junior when I get home, the first thing I’m gonna do is punch yo mama in the mouth. There aint nooo way, no way, you could come from MY LOINS".</rant>

Posted by Norm at 8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We all have a right to free speech, and those that disagree have a right to ignore you or try and refute your claims. Hubert Humphrey once said, "The right to free speech does not imply the right to be taken seriously. That depends on what is said." Our constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to be free from criticisim.

Posted by Norm at 12:39 AM | Permalink

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."-Abraham Lincoln
<rant>
I too am concerned about my country, our democracy. Paradoxically it is “Free Speech” that concerns me. Now this is not the “Free Speech” I grew up learning about in school. The guy at the park or public square standing on the proverbial soap box telling the world why he's a Christian or why he's an Atheist or that he is just a dumb fuck with something he wants to say. And I'm not talking about the line of speakers at the commission meeting, or the local school board, expressing their opinions one by one each receiving a chance, one for, and one against. Nor am I talking about the “Free Speech” that lets me criticize my leaders without being called unpatriotic or a local business without losing my job. That is definitely not the “Free Speech” I'm talking about. The "Free Speech" I'm talking about is that of the bullies of the world beating the crap out of the rest of us not with words but with dollars. These are the assholes that buy all the radio and TV stations and then control the content. Just like the air we breathe the airways belong to the public, for the benefit of all of us. No individual in a democracy has a right to control that air or those airways. They are ours. Now I'm not saying that politicians shouldn't be able to use them to present their messages, and I’m not saying that a business shouldn’t be able to make a profit, but I am saying that there is something wrong when we only hear one voice, the voice with the money. If our democracy is to survive them someone has to tell these dick wads that free speech is definitely not monopolizing our airways. The country was founded on the principal of one-man one vote. What we have today is one dollar one vote and that my friends is tyranny not democracy. There is nothing free about that “Speech” it will cost us our way of life. </rant>

Posted by Norm at 1:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true."
(From "Introduction: On the Value of Scepticism", Sceptical Essays [London: Allen & Unwin, 1928])

and

"Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, `The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance.' You would say, `Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment'; and that is really what a scientific person would say about the universe."
(From Why I Am Not a Christian [London: Watts, 1927])

finally

"The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible...."

Posted by Norm at 7:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I started drinking coffee in 1962. I remember ordering some coffee at the local greasy spoon. It was the typical fare, weak, black coffee, to which I quickly added sugar and cream to make it palatable. If you grew up in Utah where drinking coffee was a sin. Postum a cereal beverage courtesy of Mr Charles William Post, was the substitute the Mormons used to remain pure. So in Utah drinking coffee was a coming of age activity. I eventually acquired a taste for the beverage and it wasn't long before I was drinking it regularly and black. I went along for years drinking the very best brew Folgers (good to the last drop) from the local grocery store, no Starbucks no Peet's, at least not in Utah. In fact the coffee bar phenomenon reached Utah about five years behind the rest of the country, but of course that's Utah. It must have been about 1986; I was traveling to Northern California, San Mateo to be exact to help my brother set up a computer system. We had just opened a branch office of the family collection agency, and of course computers were a great advantage in those days, not every small business had one. Our first computer was manufactured by Ohio Scientific and used the famous 6502 processor also used in the first Apple, and Commodore computers. Of course the Ohio Scientific was a Business Computer. It was about the only Micro to support multiple users. Not a networked setup, but four terminals, (I’m sorry for this interruption but I simply must. We used Soroc terminals. The story is that the guys that designed the Soroc terminal were having trouble coming up with a name. They were sitting around drinking Coors beer and there you have it Soroc an anagram for coors) and one lowly 6502, a giant 23 Megabyte Seagate Hard drive, even file and record locking were supported. It is amazing I think back how truly functional it was. Running a very fast BASIC, performance was perfectly acceptable. But I'm getting off track here this is about coffee. So I'm in San Mateo setting up this computer and training my brother on the software. Each morning on the way to office, he lived in Los Gatos at the time, we stopped at Peet’s Coffee on the way to work. The first day we stopped I got what must have been the house blend or coffee of the day whatever they called it then. We walked out the front door and I took my first sip of real coffee. Well, I don't recall now, but it either put hair on my chest or removed it. “Holy shit,” I said “This is strong. How can you drink coffee like this”. My brother gave me a look I didn't recognize at the time, but it wouldn't be long until I did. Back at the office I added a bit of cold water and was pleased. He smiled. The next day it was back to Peet’s I ordered a cup of the daily brew and then added, could you add a little water to that, you make really strong coffee. I can't describe the look on his face was he amused, pissed, I wasn't sure. His reaction however was quick and decisive. Loud enough for the entire clientele to hear he said "No”, and then to the customers, "Can you believe this bozo he wants me to add water to his coffee." The whole place erupted everything from polite giggles to loud guffaws. Damn was I embarrassed. I'm fortunate he didn't know I was from Utah he would certainly have said "You ought to be drinking Postum.” I couldn't get out of place fast enough, but by the end of week I was acquiring a taste for this new breed of coffee. When I returned home, I soon discovered where to buy real coffee, even in Utah. The Salt Lake Roasting Company, roasts some quality beans. The other night I somehow stumbled across Peet’s site on the Internet. I couldn't resist. I ordered a couple of pounds of my favorite "French Roast" . It arrived today, and tonight as I'm writing this I'm enjoying cup of Peet's finest.

Posted by Norm at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The point of Rodney Brooks new book Flesh and Machines - How Robots Will Change Us is that we are machines. That our bodies are a mass of biomolecules that act according to a set of specifiable rules. He believes that his spouse, his children are mere machines, but that is not how we treat them. The crux of the book is why that is so and what that means to a future world that will include more robots. He tells the history of robotics, from Shaky to Kismet with dozens of other interesting characters in between, and what is on the horizon. What is already here ranging from artificial hearing to the prospects for artificial vision, to robots that can make our lives easier and free our time for more rewarding pursuits. He discusses the what and how of artificial intelligence. There are currently two main approaches to artificial intelligence one is a top down representational view, the other is a bottom up more evolutionary view. One way to look at it would be to compare the spectrum of views with a robot, a distributed network, and a desktop pc. The robot would be no representations, the distributed network non-discrete distributed representations, and desktop computer discrete symbolic representations. Check out Steven Pinkers How the Mind Works and Andy Clarks Being There for additional insight into this aspect of the question. The notion that we are machines strikes at the core of our belief systems, and Rodney spends several chapters tracing that history. We are special, we are not special, we are them. What it is that we think makes us special and why we are so reluctant to part with beliefs that our rational mind find unsupportable but which support that idea. He takes us from Galileo to Darwin to the present, one belief at a time. This book will enlighten and challenge you. Whether you agree or not you'll understand the issues. In discussing his early attempts at building a robot Mr. Brooks says "I did manage to get my first robot, Norman, to the point where it could wander around the floor, respond to light, and bumble its way around obstacles." That is exactly how this Norman started out in this world simply change the it to he and Rodney could be talking about my beginnings. Is that the leap he is asking us to make? Are you ready? Highly Recommended. Here is an added bonus, a One Act Play by Terry Bisson entitled "They're Made Out Of Meat" published in 1991, which provides an amusing look at the question from the machines point of view.

Posted by Norm at 7:46 PM | Permalink

As in life the level of discourse on the internet ranges from excellent to really quite terrible. We are emotional animals and have to be careful not to let those emotions get in the way of clear thinking. Supporting our views with sound arguments, verifying information to the best of our ability and being willing to admit when we have erred. I have recently discovered two sites that are helpful in that regard. The first is Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies The other site I like is here and is part of the Nizkor Project. This site lists forty-two common fallacies including Ad Hominem, Straw Man, Begging the Question to mention a few.
Stephen's site is slightly different he lists categories of similar fallacies, covering basically the same ground as the Nizkor site. For instance he has a category called Fallacies of Distraction which includes the following:
1. False Dilemma:two choices are given when in fact there are three options
2. From Ignorance: because something is not known to be true, it is assumed to be false
3. Slippery Slope: a series of increasingly unacceptable consequences is drawn
4.Complex Question: two unrelated points are conjoined as a single proposition

I found his entry under False Dilemma particularly interesting. The first example of a false dilemma was "Either you're for me or against me" This had a familiar ring to it. Wasn't it President Bush that said that there was no room for neutrality in the war against terrorism "You're either with us or against us in the fight for terror." But as the president is discovering it is not quite that simple. It is not enough just to name the fallacy but that there is a method to prove it. In the case of a False Dilemma you would present the options given and show (with an example) that there is an additional option. So lets see a country could agree with us that the Al Qaeda are terrorists but not agree that the Iraqis are terrorists, in fact I believe many of them are making that point, and there you have an additional option they are neither totally with us or against. Proving the statement a false dilemma. This type of fallacy is very common and is often referred to as Black and White Thinking. As one of those left of left liberals I seldom have anything nice to say about our current president but I can certainly thank him for an excellent example of a logical fallacy.

Posted by Norm at 11:58 PM | Permalink

[For the sake of clarity I’ve placed all my comments in brackets.

Since 9-11 our country has been obsessed with Patriotism and Religion. Our President injects it at every opportunity. In a recent radio address he sermonized on how it was God’s will that we defeat terrorism, but he doesn’t even come close to his Attorney General who recently said, “Civilized individuals, Christians, Jews, Muslims, all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator” I suppose that means I’m just uncivilized and bereft of dignity.

The following two essays both express love for America, and opinions on religion and government but in very different ways. Take a few minutes to read them; your efforts will be rewarded.

I don’t know the source of this first essay, just that it was an email making the rounds, and as the last line states “if you agree, pass this onto other Americans; It is time to take a stand.”]

Broken Arrow, Oklahoma School officials remove “God Bless America” signs from schools in fear that someone might be offended. Channel 12 News in Long Island, New York, orders flags removed from the newsroom and red, white, and blue ribbons removed from the lapels of reporters. Why? Management did not want to appear biased and felt that our nations flag might give the appearance that “they lean one way or another.” Berkeley, California bans U. S. Flags from being displayed on city fire trucks because they didn’t want to offend anyone in the community.
In an “act of tolerance” the head of the public library at Florida Gulf Coast University ordered all “Proud to be an American” signs removed so as to not offend international students.
I, for one, am quite disturbed by these actions of so-called American citizens; and I am tired of this nation worrying about whether or not we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attracts on September 11, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Americans. However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled in New York and Washington D. C. when the “politically correct” crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others.
I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to America. In fact, our country’s population is almost entirely comprised of descendants of immigrants; however, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some Native Americans, need to understand.
Fist of all, it is not our responsibility to continually try not to offend you in any way. This idea of America being a multi-cultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Americans, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language, and our own lifestyle. This culture, called the “American Way” has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom, our forefathers fought, bled, and died at places such as Bunker Hill, Antietam, San Juan, Iwo Jim, Normandy, Korea,
Vietnam.
We speak English, not Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language!
“In God We Trust” is our national motto. This is not some off-the-wall, Christian Right Wing, political slogan; it is our national motto. It is engraved in stone in the House of Representatives at our Capitol and it is printed on our currency. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation; and this is clearly documented throughout our history. If it is appropriate for our motto to be inscribed in the halls of our highest level of Government, then it is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools.
God is in our pledge, our National Anthem, nearly every patriotic song, and in our founding documents. We honor His birth, death and resurrection as holidays, and we turn to Him in prayer in times of crisis.
If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture and we are proud to have Him.
We are proud of our heritage and those who have so honorably defended our freedoms. We celebrate Independence Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Flag Day. We have parades, picnics, and barbecues where we proudly wave our flag.
As an American, I have the right to wave my flag, sing my national anthem, quote my national motto, and cite my pledge whenever and wherever I choose.
If the Stars and Stripes offend you, or you don’t like Uncle Sam, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. The American culture is our way of life, our heritage, and we are proud of it. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don’t care how you did things where you came from, if it was so superior, go home.
We are Americans, like it or not, this is our country, our land, and our lifestyle.
Our First Amendment gives every citizen the right to express his opinion about our government, culture, or society, and we will allow you every opportunity to do so.
But once you are done complaining, whining and griping about our flag, our pledge, our national motto our way of life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great American freedom the right to leave.
If you agree, pass this onto other Americans; It is time to take a stand.
MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA
LAND THAT WE LOVE

[This response is from a retired United States Marine major decorated for his service to our country in Viet Nam. I have lightly edited the contents removing a few names and places but I believe it is true to the original. He received a copy of the above in an email]

I don’t often get set off, but I was just in the mood that that one caught me. A very, very tiny little bit of self-righteousness goes a really long way with me.
On a personal note, my best friend was raised a Buddhist in Japan and brought to this country through his mother marrying into the military. He was still a registered alien when he was drafted (yes, non-citizens are subject to conscription – forced service – and dying for “not their country” – so sorry, you just happened to be here and we could use you.), came into the Marines with me, was hit in the thumb, eye, and other places by shrapnel from a grenade and mortar near Khe Sanh in Vietnam in April of 1967, medevacced out to the hospital ship, further evacced to the Naval Hospital for surgery to save his eye. During a leave from Viet Nam I visited him in San Francisco Bay where they held him for 6 months for recuperation. Once fit, he was an instructor at the infantry training school at Camp Pendleton until his discharge, whereupon he has earned a civil engineering degree and a law degree, also seeking and getting his citizenship along the way from that is willing to speed up the process for those who’ve risked their lives and shed their blood for the privilege, and I doubt there are any who realize intimately just what a privilege it is, than those who have earned it in this fashion – seen scrawled on lots of flak jackets in Viet Nam, “For those who fight for it, freedom has a flavor the protected never know.” Now I don’t feel like I do just because of my friend – I know there are other stories of other people to illustrate this same point, but I happen to know him best, which makes it personal.
So when I hear some self righteous clown claim that we have a Christian government to serve a citizenry made up of may faiths, the citizens of all other faiths must be required to use government money recognizing the Christian god, they must all pledge allegiance to a flag subordinate to the Christian god, listen to lectures in government schools paid for by all the citizenry which claim the “begats” in Christian literature prove the earth is only 5,000 years old, students of all faiths should stand and acknowledge Christian prayers blared out over public address systems in classrooms or at government school sporting events, lawyers and defendants of contrary religious faiths should face accusations and risk their lives, liberty and property facing judges in government courtrooms with Christian Commandments posted behind the bench, and hear that anyone who speaks of seeing any hypocrisy or conflict of interest in this mixing of government and religion, especially the Christian religion, should just get the hell out, I get just a little perturbed.
The part of the First Amendment that refers to “shall not prohibit the free exercise thereof” say each person of whatever faith, EVEN the Christians, can pray in schools – over their test, in the hallways, over their textbooks, out on the lawn, during assemblies – in any way at all the doesn’t interfere with the ability of their fellow students to get educated. They can pray while they spend money, when they’re in court, while they’re pledging their life and service to the continued existence of this form of government. While doing all those things – but not to the point of interfering with the efforts of their fellow citizens to pursue the same activities. I know of no members of any religious belief (except those killing, or exposing their children to death) whose personal choice of practices is interfered with.

In addition, the part that says, “shall recognize no establishment of religion” OUGHT to have prevented every single government agency from using its power to coerce, influence, legitimize, support, or defend any particular belief system. Throughout the history of our current form of government, I know of no effort by the Jews, Muslims, Bahaii, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucist, Animist, Wiccan, Satanic, Zoroastern, Heathen, Pagan or Idolaters to actively seek to have the government use its coercive power to cause the citizens of a differing belief to stand, stop or pledge in recognition of the rightness of that particular for of belief in a higher supernatural power – only the Christian have done this; repeatedly, relentlessly, obsessively. They can’t be satisfied with practicing their faith in our society in all the other avenues left open to them, save only the government, which our Founders had the wisdom to exempt. They are rabid about cloaking themselves in public, government approval and turning all the various government tentacles into the means of legitimacy and coercion for themselves.
Subscribing wholeheartedly as I do to the philosophy embodied in the two previous paragraphs, and having both traveled about much of the world and also continually observed the rest of it through media, I have no fear or anxiety with regard to any of the people who hold all the polyglot of beliefs I listed above, who have chose to surrender everything and risk greatly to live in this country and share in the liberty promised to those committing themselves to our form of government. I do, however, fear and dread the perpetual actions of the Christians to turn our government into a tool for their own use. So, in the ultimate bit of irony, and in the spirit of Catch-22, I can only sum all this up by praying myself: “God! Save us from the good, self-righteous Christians”

[The author of this reply makes a few additional points in the following:]

The author [referring to the original essay] states that, “In God We Trust” is our national motto. This is not some off-the wall, Christian Right Wing, political slogan; It is our national motto.”
Sorry, but despite the fervent wish of the Christian Right Win, our Nation Motto is “E Pluribus Unum”, not “In God We Trust” but like Bluto (John Belushi) in Animal House, I thought: “Don’t stop him, he’s on a roll!”
In God We Trust didn’t exist for the first 74 years of our country – only be added to our coinage by the Secretary of the Treasury with approval of then President Abraham Lincoln) at the urging of a lady citizen who had written to him in 1862 out of concern that the Civil War had gone so badly up until then, and the outcome was in such great doubt (a view widely held by many throughout the Union toward a conflict confidently expected to be settled with 90 days and now out of control for over a year, with no end in sight) because we were two Christian nations at war each certain as to the righteousness of their cause, and we (the Union) had to persuade God to get on our side. She proposed we do this by putting the phrase In God We Trust on our currency. Lincoln was desperate and figured it couldn’t hurt. [The phrase wasn’t added to our paper money until 1957]
It isn’t on our currency because the Founding Fathers did anything of the kind. They could have done something like this when we first formed, but you’ll notice they specifically chose not to. This was primarily because nearly every single colony had a different (and nearly always antagonistic) religious belief from all the others – and each had, to varying degrees, been motivated by the opportunity to escape systems of government which, for the entirety of human history, had used their authority to tax, conscript, regulate commerce, imprison and execute: all in support of the locally favored religious belief. Such a step as proclaiming our allegiance to a particular deity at our country’s founding was not possible because of the revulsion held toward the death and destruction experienced nearly nonstop across all of Europe for the preceding several hundred years. This conflagration was the direct result of competing “Christian” religious beliefs (righteous Catholics killing good Heugonauts slaughtering devout Lutherans attacking righteous Catholics on the Continent; with righteous Catholics in England and Ireland killing good Anglicans in England while those good Anglicans slaughtered the devout Presbyterians of Scotland who massacred the righteous Catholics who attacked from Wales and Ireland out on the British Isles, ad infinitum and every bit of it driven by Divine Right monarchs allied, and constantly changing alliances with, groups of people supporting competing and antagonistic Christian beliefs). Religiously, our colonies were nothing like warm, fuzzy friends; they unite ONLY against a common enemy.
This reality is continually and conveniently forgotten by writers of today, who bask in the passivity of modern religious competition – muzzled and virtually confined to the printed page, as opposed to the blood-filled gutters and severed-heads-on-spikes lined roads of days not long gone by throughout Christendom. Instead the step of using this phrase grew out of the desperation of the Civil War, and afterwards remained, because like most of the things given birth during that period, it stood as another symbol of the Victory of the North over the South – “We had the true Christian God on our side, Yawls Christian God was false.”
Today’s proponents (mostly Christians – since the phrase implies belief in only one god, and one god in particular: the Christian one) have conveniently revised history to give themselves a warm fuzzy, but use it mostly to smite those whose life experiences have convinced them of the truth of a different belief system – and, in my view: all toward creating the reassurance of an “us”, in the face of the dreaded “them”.

But hey, except for that little historical revision, which the mainstream media and our school system continue to allow to sprout like a week in the Garden of Knowledge, it was a real motivator.
The writer also says, “God is in our pledge”, and of course while it is it was only added to the original Pledge (which had already served our Nation well for decades) by the Christian Right Win at the height of the Red Scares in the Fifties. It was there so we could tell who were the traitors among us by watching our friends, relatives, and neighbors closely as they stood to give the Pledge, because the Godless Communists would give themselves away by not saying the words. After all, a similar means had worked really well for the good Christians in Salem and the good Christians in Spain, when they both had encountered a similar problem in sorting out the True Believers from the Great Pretenders just a couple of years before. After all, why have to come up with something new when you have a tried and true good Christian tradition to fall back on? But that’s’ another story.

[So to those flag wavers who are tired of my complaining my whining and griping about our way of life. I say take advantage of one other great American freedom; express your views at the polls. Embrace the diversity you have nothing to fear. Don’t leave America but help us make it a better more tolerant place where we can all realize our dreams.]

Posted by Norm at 1:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Shane was driving near Rocky Mountain State Park, a two lane road, keeping the speed at a constant 55 when he saw a flashing red light behind him. Oh shit, I can't afford a ticket he thought as he pulled to the side of the road. The officer pulled in behind him. Shane began rummaging through his glove box looking for his registration. He still hadn't found it when the officer arrived at his window. "You can quit rummaging. You were doing 55 the speed limit is 45, but the guy who just passed us is going even faster. Have a nice day" he said. The officer got back in his car and began his pursuit of the more serious speeder. Later in the evening Shane was telling his brother Ryan about his good fortune. His brother said had it been me, he would have handed me the ticket book, said you were doing 55 in a 45 fill it out, I'll be back in a few minutes.

The last time I saw the flashing reds I wasn't the driver. My son Tim was at the wheel. Oh shit, he said as he pulled over to the side of the road. The officer pulled in behind us, and appeared at the window. "I'll need to see your registration" he said. I started rummaging through the glove box. "Do you realize your car is not currently registered and I could have it impounded" he said. It was everything Tim could do to keep from laughing. The car belongs to him he said pointing at me. Five minutes later we were back on the road, a ticket in my hand and instructions to get the registration renewed were all he left. I know how Ryan feels.

Posted by Norm at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell

Posted by Norm at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Over 200 years ago Thomas Jefferson said, “ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…

Dennis Miller and James Carville, ordinarily considered to be strong civil libertarians, seem to be having second thoughts when it comes to the” terrorists". Following a recent rant on the subject Dennis Miller made it clear that he didn't believe “terrorists” had the same rights as others and frankly didn't give a fuck if their civil rights were violated or even that they had any rights. James Carville on a recent Crossfire was trying to find a level of torture he would be comfortable with. He was okay with sleep deprivation and other psychological torture and seemed ready to consider other measures when the program ended.
The question on my mind is simple. Why shouldn’t we grant the same legal rights to any person that we grant Americans. I've heard some answers:
They are terrorists, Duh!
They aren't citizens and therefore don't agree to follow the laws of our country and so they shouldn't be protected by those same laws.
We are at war. Everything has changed nothing is the same.
They may know something that could save American lives.

They are “terrorists”, but so was Timothy McVeigh, and most agreed that he should be afforded his rights.
They aren't citizens, and so haven't agreed to follow our laws. Of course no natural born citizen ever explicitly agrees to obey our laws. Should they have their rights taken away?
They may know something that could save American lives. I’m sure there are plenty extremists in this country plotting terrible deeds. Do we just haul them in ignore their rights and torture them.
Does anyone believe individual members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda being held in Cuba are any worse than a Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, or an extremist living in Northern Idaho plotting a “terrorist” act?

So what it all boils down to is that some would determine rights simply as an accident of the person’s birth, and for me that is just not good enough.
The foundation of our legal system is sound. We separate the functions of justice. The person who arrests or soldier who captures the accused doesn't pass judgment. A prosecutor makes the case against the accused, and the accused has a defense. The final determination is left for the courts. Some cases indeed seem obvious and it is tempting to forgo the judgment phase and move directly to the punishment. But therein lies the rub. What is obvious to one person is not at all obvious to another. That is why our sense of fair play requires that we follow the same procedure regardless of our initial perceptions.
In the eighteenth century we labeled women “witches” and in the fifties it was “communist”, labels used to dehumanize and make it easier to forgo the rule of law. Let us not allow the term “terrorist” to be used in a similar way. It’s time to treat all men equally.

Posted by Norm at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When the great Bobby Fischer was asked if women could play chess he said "I could give any woman in the world a piece and a move; to Gaprindashvili even, a knight" When Mikhail Tal heard about Fischer’s claim he is reported to have laughed and said "Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!"
During the 1930's few women played chess against the men. There was one notable exception, Vera Menchik. She was a very good chess player perhaps the first woman of Grandmaster strength. In fact she defeated so many strong players, world champions among them, that a club of sorts was formed, The Vera Menchik Club. It wasn't a good thing to be a member of the club since the only way you could get there was if you were male and lost a game to Vera. Among her victims were Max Euwe (twice), Sammy Reshevsky, Mir Sultan Khan, Sir George Thomas, C. H. O'D. Alexander, Edgar Colle, Frederick Yates, William Winter, Lajos Steiner, Frederich Saemisch, Milner-Barry, Harry Golombek, and Jacques Mieses (who lost to her four times in a match). After Vera's death there were few women who competed with the male chess players until the late eighties when the Polgar sisters burst upon the scene. Until then men were relatively safe from becoming members of any "woman's club." Well the times they are a changing. This past week the Female World Champion Zhu Chen defeated the Reigning Men's World Champion Ruslan Ponamariov playing at the F.I.D.E. Grand Prix tournament in Dubai. She drew the first game and defeated the men's champ in the second game eliminating him from contention. Chen's remarkable achievement makes her perhaps the only female world champion ever to defeat the male world champion in any sport. The men had to console themselves with the fact that former world champion Anatoly Karpov defeated her in the following round. So the debate goes on, although there are fewer now who don't believe women can compete on an equal basis with men in this mental game. For those of you who would like to see the games here are four games from the event Chen's win and draw against Ponamariov and the losses to Anatoly. Click here for additional information on the F.I.D.E. Grand Prix

Posted by Norm at 10:08 PM | Permalink

"Chess is a foolish expedient for making IDLE PEOPLE believe they are doing something clever when all they are doing is wasting their time" George Bernard Shaw

Is it possible that Mr. Shaw lost his last game?

Posted by Norm at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Igor Ivanov, if you were to ask, will tell you that he was born in Russia many years ago. In 1980 at the age of thirty-three he left Russia and moved to America. During the past 20 plus years Igor has lived in Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Salt Lake his favorite. He has travelled all over the world playing chess in Paris, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Sebastian and many other exotic locations, but as Igor will tell you nothing is forever. A few years ago he quit travelling and with his dear wife Elizabeth moved to a lovely small town, Central, 25 miles North of St. George in Utah. Igor loves to play the piano having done so all his life. He occasionally gives recitals at the Tabernacle in St. George. On a recent visit to his home I found him playing the Fantasie Impromptu by Frederick Chopin. One year before leaving Russia Igor played the then World Champion Anatoly Karpov in a tournament in Moskow. Anatoly was World Champion from 1975 to 1985. Karpov's style is best described as positional. His philosophy of chess is clear from his own words, "Let us say the game may be continued in two ways: one of them is a beautiful tactical blow that gives rise to variations that don't yield to precise calculation; the other is clear positional pressure that leads to an endgame with microscopic chances of victory. I would choose the latter without thinking twice. If the opponent offers keen play I don't object; but in such cases I get less satisfaction, even if I win, than from a game conducted according to all the rules of strategy with its ruthless logic." Anatoly has lost very few games in his career but one day in 1979 he lost to Igor. Here is the game for which Igor has provided the annotations.

Posted by Norm at 12:20 AM | Permalink

Every year I say we should fly to Arizona to visit my Father In Law and every year we drive 750 torturous miles from Salt Lake to Yuma Arizona. It is I suppose my wife's fear of flying that decides. She has come to tolerate a major airline but no way am I going to get her into a propeller driven plane that looks like a giant cigar. No major airlines land in Yuma so we would have to be fly to Phoenix and then catch the cigar to Yuma. I know we could simply fly into Phoenix then take a bus or van or some such to Yuma, but that would be 150 miles on the road and hell there is really not a lot of difference between 150 and 750 really. So off we go Thursday afternoon, headed for Mesquite Nevada, and my father's condo. I've learned that driving 750 miles straight through is even dumber than driving in the first place. So three hundred miles of uneventful low flying down Interstate 15 until we reach the Virgin River Gorge you remember a Million Dollars A Mile I couldn't resist another picture of the Gorge. A little dinner at the Casablanca not good. There was a time when I thought casino food was good and cheap, now its just cheap. A little culinary treat one would expect eating at the local choke and puke. Twenty, Forty, Sixty dollars into the tightest slots in Nevada and we've had our fun at that casino. Why the hell do we gamble anyway. The signs say guaranteed 96% return. I believe that means that if I invest my money there they guarantee to return less than I invest. So on to the Virgin River Casino another Twenty in the Slots. Perhaps the Blackjack table will be kind. I start with fifty dollars an hour later I have only ten. Time to quit, but you know how gambling is it kind of sucks you in. There is the Roulette Table. Five dollars on the nine five dollars on the eleven and holy shit I hit the nine One hundred seventy-five dollars back in my pocket, and I didn't let the terrorists win. On the way back to the condo we note the new casino in town, well not really new it just has a new name. Gail says do you want to spend a buck or two in there. No way I say, did you see what they named it. The Eureka, no way in hell I'm going to take my money into a building named after a vacuum cleaner. I fully expected to see a flashing sign saying come on in we'll clean you out in no time. The next day we complete the second half of the trip mostly two lane roads filled with FUV's (fucking utility vehicles). Between Las Vegas and Searchlight we are listening to Depche Mode on the stereo. My son Tim tells me the title of the song is Comatose it occurs to me that Morrisey is probably planning a lawsuit, what the fuck do they think they're doing don't they know that's my trademark. Well on to Needles, Parker, Quartzite. Quartzite is a favorite spot of the Snowbirds during the winter. They all park there RV's out in the desert and tell each other what a great time they're having. Their entertainmeant consists of playing cards and buying and selling their crafts. It's a little bit like a giant Ebay in the desert. But damn the desert is beautiful. I love the Joshua Trees, and the Saguaro
cactuses. We had a nice visit with Gail's dad Earl. He just celebrated his 83rd birthday, and about a week ago had the seventh hole in one of his long romance with the game of golf.

Posted by Norm at 5:08 PM | Permalink