Human Symbolic Learning

Discussion

"if applied evolutionary science is possible, it means that evolution itself can indeed be deliberate, intentional, purposeful, calculated, planned, and volitional."

Steven C. Hayes:

* Human Symbolic Learning

By 12-16 months, a normally developing human infant who has learned that an object (say, a rubber duck) has a name ("duckie") will orient toward the object when hearing the name, without specific training to do so. Furthermore, if the rubber duck squeaks, the infant will know that "squeak" is the sound "duckie" makes and vice versa even if the name and the sound have never been heard together.

Said in another way, an instance of one-way contingency learning (object → name) leads to a robustly two-way street of symbolic meaning that is then recombinable into symbolic networks (object ↔ name).

Deriving a network of the kind I have just described is called "stimulus equivalence" and although it is readily shown in human infants, after decades of trying, it has not been reliably produced in non-humans.6 Furthermore, we have known for more than 30 years that children who do not show stimulus equivalence do not develop normal human language.

Stimulus equivalence marks a transition in the evolution of consciousness because it is the first example of a learning process that is relational, not associative.

Learned associations and direct acting contingencies are not robustly reversible or combinatorial. For example, in classical conditioning, providing food after a bell will lead to salivation to the bell, but not to a robust raising of ears when food is later presented. Backward conditioning is very weak and does not enter into long backward sequences when chains of events are provided (e.g., later presenting a foul odor before the bell may eventually lead to salivation at the odor, but not food avoidance based on backward associations with the odor). The reason backward conditioning is weak is that environmental regularities are not normally robustly reversible or combinatorial, and thus there is limited selection pressure to develop that open learning process. If an animal avoids predation by running to a thicket when it sees a lion, it does not mean it will avoid predation by running to a lion when it sees a thicket.

That lack of reversibility and combinatorial capacity is not true of relations. If I am certainly bigger than you, you are certainly smaller than me. The derived relation is just as robust as the known relation. The evolution of human language and cognition is based on this relational property.

From the beginning of the act of naming itself, some forms of relational learning are not limited to formal relations. In the context of a cooperative social group with some level of social referencing, joint attention, and perspective taking, regularities in naming can be made reliably reversible by paralinguistic or other cues. If this object is a "duckie" from the point of view of a speaker, then it can be entirely safe to assume within a given troop or band that a "duckie" is this object from the point of view of a listener. Relational terms like "is" demarcate this particular kind of cooperative regularity within a specific group.

The human infant and toddler quickly learn to apply other reversible relations, increasingly controlled by arbitrary contextual cues. If a human infant hears an unfamiliar name it will search for an unfamiliar object in its environment and, if one is found, it will derive a two-way symbolic relation between the two.9 In other words, two relations of "different than" (the name is different than other names; the object is different than other objects) leads to a two-way "same as" relation (unfamiliar name ↔ unfamiliar object). As additional relations are added (comparisons, such as more / less; opposition, such as hot/cold; contingency, such as if → then; person, such as I/you; etc.), vast cognitive networks can emerge from very limited environmental inputs.

There is expansive experimental literature on this topic under the rubric of Relational Frame Theory that shows the ontogenetic histories needed to reveal these evolutionarily prepared responses.10 The claim I am making is that relational learning is the central core of human language and cognition, and evolved as an extension of cooperation.

Evolutionists have noted that humans are particularly adept in relational learning tasks.12 In non-arbitrary contexts, these are defined by the relata themselves (e.g., a nickel is larger than a dime). What happens in symbolic behavior is that particular relational responses (e.g., “larger than”) are abstracted and then brought under the control of social cues, not just the related events (such as being told that a nickel “is smaller than” a dime). That “relational frame” allows any event to be related in any way to any other event by social attribution, and then to enter into larger and larger derived symbolic networks. For example, a first grader can be told that a penny is smaller than a nickel and that a nickel is smaller than a dime, and derive that a dime is larger than a penny. A three-year-old could not. Relational framing is evolutionarily prepared but also learned.

Relational learning of this kind is the smoking gun – the sine qua non of human language and cognition. We know that in part because children who do not show this kind of learning show only limited verbal and intellectual abilities, and whereas if they develop this kind of learning, they begin to advance more rapidly. This suggests that the unit of symbolic learning is relational, not associative.

* Impact of Human Consciousness on Evolution

Symbolic learning is another step forward in the evolution of consciousness because with this repertoire of relational responding we can respond to the past as the symbolically constructed future in the present. Only a rather small set of cognitive relations are needed to solve problems through symbolic reasoning: names of events and their features, if → then relations, and comparisons. Stated more simply, human verbal problem solving involves an "if/then/better" relational network that alters present action so as to coordinate with the verbally constructed future. Responding of this kind is not only conscious, it allows symbolically intentional behavior.

The two-way street of human cognition transforms the present based on cognitive networks about the future. The evolving future that is presented symbolically in present moments via human language can alter the impact of the environment. Nelson Mandela can treat a prison guard kindly, for example, because that action brings a just world a little bit closer, even if the guard is a source of deprivation.

Said in another way, human cognition can change the "selection criteria" for human behavioral and cultural evolution. Genetic evolution depends on life and death. Human behavioral evolution does not remove that truth but supplements it with cognitively available meaning and purpose.

When people consider their future and apply evolutionary scientific concepts to actions and policy choices to alter that future, the world is consciously evolving. I believe that is a factual statement, but it is also pragmatically and politically useful to say that evolution can be conscious in that way because it provides a use for evolutionary science that will alter the receptivity of the public to this entire area of science.

Only a minority of the US population believes that human beings are as they are due to natural processes of evolution. I can’t help but think that is in part because evolution has not yet been shown to matter to the average Joanne or Joe. For that to change, evolutionists themselves need to show that they can solve problems of human concern. But for applied evolutionary science to emerge as a field, it is necessary to step up to the idea that evolution can be conscious, and then to spend much more time on the role of human behavior in evolving the future. The culture at large will not attend to evolution in a major way, in my opinion, until it is clear that humanity has the capacity to evolve on purpose, culturally and within a lifetime.

Evolution begins with processes of blind variation and selective retention, but it does not stay there for the simple reason that evolvability itself evolves.14 The phrase "survival of the most evolvable" is far truer to the whole of evolutionary data than the hoary phrase "survival of the fittest." Symbolic learning is key to human consciousness, but human consciousness can comprehend and consciously apply multi-level and multi-dimensional evolutionary models to the accomplishment of human purposes.

Behavioral variation and selection within the lifetime of individuals is not merely an expression of genes and cultural practices. Learning is a legitimate evolutionary dimension that impacts on other evolutionary dimensions at other levels and time frames. Symbolic processes led to the principles of evolutionary science itself—variations within the relational networks of particular people were expressed and selected by accomplishment of their scientific purposes individually and culturally. If these principles then lead human beings to change their behavior in order to achieve better outcomes, and if the success of these actions maintain them—as would be the case with any successful application of evolutionary science that was sustained because of its utility —it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that evolution can be conscious.

Applied evolutionary science is not just the passive beneficiary of scientific understanding—it is the very field in which an extended evolutionary synthesis will be fostered. We can think of applied evolutionary science as a type of fieldwork in the evolution of human behavior. No amount of laboratory knowledge is enough to be certain that the action of an organism is understood—but if this knowledge is applied in the actual environment in which the behavior occurs and predictable changes occur, the validity and utility of evolutionary science expands.

When we have created a robust field of applied evolutionary science, evolutionary science will be relevant to the world in a way that it is not now. And if applied evolutionary science is possible, it means that evolution itself can indeed be deliberate, intentional, purposeful, calculated, planned, and volitional. These are all merely terms for actions that are regulated by the "if / then / better" symbolic formations of human beings. Evolutionary principles can be applied to and contained by these formulations themselves.

We have evolutionary accounts of consciousness—now we need evolutionists to apply those accounts to their own assumptions, theories, and purposes. Understanding the evolution of consciousness provides the scaffolding for evolutionary science itself to consciously evolve, and to help human individuals and groups do so as well."

(https://www.prosocial.world/posts/the-evolution-of-consciousness-enables-conscious-evolution)