Review

A long time ago I got “The Society of Mind” at a Half-Price Books because I needed a coffee table book and the picture on the front looked dope. That was years ago, and it has sat in the pocket underneath my living room table ever since UNTIL I saw it a month ago hiding between some dust bunnies that were overstaying their welcome in my home. Between my increasing interest in the human mind and my failure to produce satisfying answers, now was the time to give this book a shot.

So, where do I begin? It’s hard to say because the book acts as an atlas for basically everything in the cognitive sciences, which gives me a plethora of information to talk about. That’s great, I’ll likely reference this work a lot despite having my disagreements with it. Something I enjoyed was how the organization of information is given, where there are several systems in place for understanding specific functions of the mind: agents and agencies, levels and level-bands, a-brains and b-brains, intricately connected societies at every point in mind-space. This helped me realize the crux of most analysis of the mind relies on what layer the principles of the mind are being applied and interpreted. How many parts go into a whole, what is the whole relative to other wholes, is an operant a whole of behavior or a part of a behavior, is everything just a trick of language? I’ve had too much on my mind lately and it’s flooding my head in the most annoying way. Where was I? I don’t remember, I must have failed to develop the correct k-lines necessary for my “TYPING” agent to memorize the state I was in a couple of minutes ago. My friend’s grandfather had dementia, that guy couldn’t form k-lines to save his fucking life.

The first chapter sets up the core tenets of Minsky’s theory: The mind is built from “particles” called “agents,” which function like small machines; These agents complete simple tasks and can be combined as an “agency” to complete more complex tasks; All processes in the mind can be understand as a whole defined by its parts; An organization of these parts can be defined as a “society.” From this, all cognitive systems and most issues within the realm of psychology can be explained: Memories are formed by agents called “k-lines” which save-state other agents in a given moment of time to be restored in the future, emotions are agencies which act as checks for other agents to prioritize specific goals, language is translated by frames which are built out of agents called “pronemes,” etc.

Ideally, we would have full access to the body with a complete understanding of the brain’s anatomy and the various functions certain cognitive systems possess. With the rate things are going, I am hopeful that this will be available within my lifetime. Assuming I live a full 80 years, if I die tomorrow then probably not. Unfortunately, we do not have access to such knowledge and thus we must theorize conceptual frameworks for how the mind likely functions. My background is in behaviorism, which has been unsuccessful as a framework that fully encompasses and explains the psychological phenomenon occurring within our bodies. I was hoping the society of mind would fill in the gaps or even replace my understanding of human psychology, but what I’ve instead recognized is this: the question of how the mind works, until the tools are available to document physical phenomena in acute detail, is answered by linguistics.

As a behaviorist, something which is harped on and on is to avoid “mentalism” at all costs. “Mentalism” is an argument that adjacent to the body their exists a mind as a meta-physical construct and, in the case of behaviorism, this mind is used as an explanatory fiction for behaviors. In contrast to this, behaviorists should explain behavior based on environmental factors and organize potential factors in a linear fashion: Antecedent --> Behavior --> Consequence. I am conditioned to avoid any terminology which utilizes mentalism as a crutch for explanation, meaning there is no “self” or “consciousness” or “emotions” unless an operational definition exists which is conceptually systematic with behaviorist rhetoric. Does that mean there is no such thing as “consciousness?” If you asked Skinner, the answer would be yes!

Why bring all that up in the last paragraph? “The Society of Mind” frequently makes use of mentalistic terminology and gives them credence as if they exist as concepts within the body which are just waiting to be discovered. An early example of this is the chapter about “common sense,” where Minsky describes the experience as being universal and built from a process of learning whereby over time the learner forgets the earliest moments of learning and begins to behave automatically - with “common sense.” But how can you be sure what is called “common sense” exclusively falls under this umbrella and doesn’t also include behaviors which are genetically inherent from birth for most members of a species, with the term being learned as socially-mediated rule-governed behavior? Probably because rule-governed behavior is a simplification of verbal behavior to match a predefined framework and has less of a basis in material reality than in a theoretical one, but that’s exactly my point. What Minsky has created is an interpretation of psychological phenomena primarily through experimentation with robots and introspection. Posited is a theoretical way the mind works without any basis to the claims. Really its just a series of spitballs shot at the wall to see which one’s stick.

I plan to write more about this work in a future article which will go into greater detail about his theory. I’ll leave off here for now by saying if you are interested in the field of cognitive science or computer science then give the book a read, otherwise it’s probably not for you.