In Search of a Mechanism from the

Brain to the Mind A Conversation with

Chris Frith 1st Edition Howard Burton
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/in-search-of-a-mechanism-from-the-brain-to-the-mind-
a-conversation-with-chris-frith-1st-edition-howard-burton/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Pushing the Boundaries A Conversation with Freeman

Dyson 1st Edition Howard Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/pushing-the-boundaries-a-
conversation-with-freeman-dyson-1st-edition-howard-burton/

A Matter of Energy Biology from First Principles A

Conversation with Nick Lane 1st Edition Howard Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-matter-of-energy-biology-from-
first-principles-a-conversation-with-nick-lane-1st-edition-
howard-burton/

Ocean Enlightenment A Conversation with Edie Widder 1st

Edition Howard Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/ocean-enlightenment-a-conversation-
with-edie-widder-1st-edition-howard-burton/

Astrophysical Wonders A Conversation with Scott

Tremaine 1st Edition Howard Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/astrophysical-wonders-a-
conversation-with-scott-tremaine-1st-edition-howard-burton/
Our Human Variability A Conversation with Stephen
Scherer 1st Edition Howard Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/our-human-variability-a-
conversation-with-stephen-scherer-1st-edition-howard-burton/

Beyond Mirror Neurons A Conversation with Greg Hickok

1st Edition Howard Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/beyond-mirror-neurons-a-
conversation-with-greg-hickok-1st-edition-howard-burton/

Inflated Expectations a Cosmological Tale A

Conversation with Paul Steinhardt 1st Edition Howard
Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/inflated-expectations-a-
cosmological-tale-a-conversation-with-paul-steinhardt-1st-
edition-howard-burton/

Indiana Steinhardt and the Quest for Quasicrystals A

Conversation with Paul Steinhardt 1st Edition Howard
Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/indiana-steinhardt-and-the-quest-
for-quasicrystals-a-conversation-with-paul-steinhardt-1st-
edition-howard-burton/

Understanding ADHD A Conversation with Stephen Hinshaw

Ideas Roadshow Conversations 1st Edition Howard Burton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/understanding-adhd-a-conversation-
with-stephen-hinshaw-ideas-roadshow-conversations-1st-edition-
howard-burton/
Ideas Roadshow conversations present a wealth of candid insights from some of the
world’s leading experts, generated through a focused yet informal setting. They are
explicitly designed to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into
frontline research and scholarship that wouldn’t otherwise be encountered through
standard lectures and textbooks.

Over 100 Ideas Roadshow conversations have been held since our debut in 2012,
covering a wide array of topics across the arts and sciences.

See www.ideas-on-film.com/ideasroadshow for a full listing.

Copyright ©2020 Open Agenda Publishing. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-77170-121-1
Edited with an introduction by Howard Burton.
All Ideas Roadshow Conversations use Canadian spelling.
 Contents
A Note on the Text

Introduction

The Conversation
I. Becoming a Psychologist
II. Probing Agency
III. The Active Brain
IV. Ideal Bayesian Operators
V. In Search of a Mechanism
VI. Humanistic Hubris
VII. Free Will
VIII. The Very Big Picture
IX. Final Thoughts

Continuing the Conversation

 A Note on the Text
The contents of this book are based upon a filmed conversation
between Howard Burton and Chris Frith in London, England, on
November 14, 2016.
Chris Frith is Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at UCL and
Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, School of
Advanced Study, University of London.
Howard Burton is the creator and host of Ideas Roadshow and was
Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical
Physics.
 Introduction
Eyes on the Prize

Chris Frith has long been fascinated by schizophrenia. As a young

graduate student working with Hans Eysenck, he recalls how his
interest was piqued even further by a serendipitous assignment as part
of Eysenck’s internal review process for his second edition of his
handbook of abnormal psychology.
“Students were handed out different chapters and I got the one on
perception, which was mostly about schizophrenia. What particularly
fascinated me then, and still does, is the problem of hallucinations and
delusions.
“It’s easy enough to understand in principle if you’ve got affected regions
of your brain why you become blind or deaf or can’t understand a
concept or something, but it’s very difficult to understand why you start
seeing things that aren’t there or believing things that are obviously not
true.
“So, I was always interested in questions like, Can we think about a
mechanism? and, How do we relate this to normal functioning? What is it
that could go wrong in normal functioning that can make you start seeing
things that aren’t there or hearing people talking about you, when they’re
not?”
A key theme driving Chris’ entire research career is readily apparent
from these early inquiries: using specific aspects of abnormal
psychology—“what goes wrong”, if you will—as a natural window to
help shed light on how, exactly, underlying “low-level” biological
mechanisms are converted to “higher level” subjective experiences.
Meanwhile, a more detailed consideration of the mechanics of
hallucinations initially drove him back in time, to the 19th century and
his “big hero” Hermann von Helmholtz, who developed a deep insight
on how we might objectively distinguish between external happenings
in the world and internal happenings in our brains.
 “Helmholtz pointed this out in relation to eye movements. When I move
my eyes, obviously things jump about on my retina so there’s movement
on the retina, but it’s due to me. And I have to be able to distinguish
between movement on the retina due to me and movement on the retina
due to something actually moving in the world.
“And he basically said that because there’s a message involved—you’re
sending a message to your eye muscles to move the eye—you can use that
signal as a way of determining what the corresponding movement is due
to, whether it’s you or the world.
“So I took that up and thought, Maybe what goes wrong in schizophrenia
is that this signal—this normal signal that tells you that it’s your
movement or your action—doesn’t arrive for some reason.”
Well, what kind of a signal might that be? Combining his own
experiments and analysis with a wealth of results from the broader
cognitive science community, such as Wolfram Schultz’s pioneering
work with monkeys, he eventually came to believe that the key signal in
question was that of a prediction and reinforcement mechanism
involving dopamine.
The brain, it turns out, is hardly the passive recorder of external
happenings that scientists once believed, but is instead, vitally, a highly
active participant, constantly predicting what will happen and regularly
comparing its predictions with the incoming sensory input. Chris,
together with colleagues such as Daniel Wolpert, began to focus
intently on the importance of human agency, forthrightly calling
himself “a motor chauvinist”.
“There used to be this view that everything was perception. They would
draw a picture of the brain, and most of it would be the visual system. But
we would say in contrast, ‘No, action is what the brain is all about. If you
don’t have action, you’re going to die.”
Nowadays, most neuroscientists are not only convinced that this active
prediction mechanism is an essential characteristic of the brain—quite
possibly the essential characteristic—but after years of careful study,
they have come to appreciate how it successfully harnesses all the
nuances of advanced probability theory in order to predict and learn
appropriately. The brain, goes the common description, is an “ideal
Bayesian operator”, meaning that it is constantly invoking a deep
understanding of Bayesian statistics as it engages the world around us.
Well, that’s hardly surprising. Since Bayesian statistics actually work,
calling the brain an “ideal Bayesian operator” is really another way of
saying that it uses statistics appropriately in its constant prediction-
mechanism, which any evolutionary theorist would have very much
expected in the first place. After all, it’s hard to see how a constantly
predicting life form would last very long if the way it was going about
making its predictions was all wrong.
But what’s deeply curious about this picture is that, while our brains
are busily going about acting like ideal Bayesian operators, if you were
to ask people to perform a basic statistical calculation, more often than
not they would get it wrong. So somehow, there’s a big difference
between what our brains are doing and what we, consciously, do.
And suddenly, we’re right back to Chris’ initial conundrum: how, exactly,
are “lower-level” biological phenomena—such as those involved in our
ideal Bayesian brains—related to “higher-level” subjective phenomena
—such as becoming convinced that we should really buy that lottery
ticket because “somebody has to win”?
“I think this is the key point. I’m not based in a philosophy department,
you see, so I have had to learn some terms; and the terms I have learned
now for this dualistic aspect is “the personal” and “the subpersonal”,
where “the subpersonal” is related to doing what the brain does as an
ideal Bayesian operator and “the personal” is what I do, as it were.”
Well, adopting a new vocabulary is often pleasant, but the question
remains how is the subpersonal related to the personal? What’s the
mechanism for that?
While it’s safe to say that nobody knows for certain, Chris is
increasingly convinced that the answer to that involves a proper
appreciation of “culture” and its impact on the brain through
neuroplasticity.
“I’ve become more and more interested in culture. In some ways, the
brain is not enough on its own—it’s almost like a tool.
“And one thing I think about is that, genetically speaking, our brains at
birth are no different from the brains of people from something like
200,000 years ago, when people were making these crude stone tools and
so on. But adult brains today I would suspect, are very different from the
brains of people 200,000 years ago, because the brain is very plastic and
culture affects the brain.
“A lot of what we mean by “culture” is at the personal level: it depends
on communication, the interactions between people, which create
traditions and so on, that are then fed back into the system.”
A very thought-provoking idea. But how, exactly, might it be
implemented? To what extent is it possible, even in principle, to
develop a concrete framework that tells us something rather more
detailed and structured than simply saying something like, “Large-scale
cultural traditions shape our brains”?
Chris doesn’t pretend to know the answer to that, of course, but ever
the rigorous scientist, he is quite keen to point out some contemporary
experiments that might be signposts to a deeper understanding, such
as new interpretations of so-called “ego-depletion” and “common
goods games” that might be highlighting instances of how our
subjective “high-level” convictions influence our “low-level” brain
processes.
“I think these are hints of the kinds of mechanisms that are involved, and
my current research project is precisely about that: trying to discover
something about these mechanisms.”
Chris Frith has had a highly impactful academic career in one of the
most dynamic scientific fields imaginable, a discipline which has been
transformed almost beyond recognition from what it was a mere fifty
years ago. But through it all, his fundamental approach to addressing
the key questions hasn’t changed one jot.
And why should it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Our ideal Bayesian brain would happily tell us as much, if we were only
to ask it.
The Conversation
 I. Becoming a Psychologist
From “min and crys” to schizophrenia

HB: I’d like to talk a little bit about your intellectual origins. And I’d like
to ask you specifically about your influences in psychology—I know
that you’ve written a little bit about that—but I want to go further back
than that and begin with your interest in science writ large. My
understanding is that you began reading natural sciences at
Cambridge, and I was curious to know if science was an all-consuming
passion of yours from an early age.
CF: Well, certainly from an early age, I was very interested in nature and
doing birdwatching, but also going up into the attic and mixing things
together and seeing what happened. And I’m told that at the age of 12
when asked what I wanted to be I said, “A research scientist”.
HB: Really? From the age of 12?
CF: But I don’t think I knew what that meant, because certainly no one
in my family was like that. My father was a classicist, so I did lessons in
Greek. And in fact I was the last generation who, in order to read
science at Cambridge, had to do a Latin exam—going back to the good
old days when everything was in Latin. At school, I basically did maths
and physics, which I was good at. But in my gap year, I learned about
this mysterious subject called cybernetics, particularly as applied to
people—which is sort of control theory.
So I arrived at university, and of course at Cambridge all you can do is
natural sciences—there was no such thing as cybernetics, the nearest
thing was psychology. But you couldn’t do psychology in your first year.
So my background is in applied maths, physics and what we used to call
then “min and crys”, which is mineralogy and crystallography. Then I
did psychology as what they call a “half-subject” in the second year, and
then I specialized in it in the third. But that means that my
undergraduate-level psychology is based on one and a third years of
work. And in fact, the “min and crys” turned out to be very useful
because you had to learn about three-dimensional maps and things like
that, which suddenly became relevant 20 years later with brain
imaging.
My plan at the end was to go on and do work with someone called
Donald MacKay, who was one of the very early people doing
information theory as applied to the brain—what we’d now call
“computational neuroscience”—and in fact I had spoken to him and he
had taken me on to do a PhD, but luckily I failed to get a good enough
degree, which is a constant storyline for me.
So I went and did clinical psychology as a way back into doing
research—which is also fascinating because today you would do
research as a way into clinical psychology, but then it was the other way
around. There was only one course at the time, which was in the
Maudsley Hospital in South London, a 13-month course in abnormal
psychology. So I’m now technically an abnormal psychologist. And they
rapidly said, “Yes, yes, very good. We think you should not see patients.
Why don’t you do a PhD?”
And I agreed with that because in order to see patients you have to
believe that you can really help them, and I wasn’t sure that I could. In a
way there’s a conflict between doing research—where you have to
doubt everything—and being a clinician where you have to be
confident. There’s always that conflict I think.
So I did my PhD with Hans Eysenck, which was quite interesting, and
it sort of set off from there.
And one of the very lucky things at that time for me was that—as I
claim—we had the very first computer in a psychology department in
the country, which was in 1965. So I learned to program in machine
code as part of my PhD.
HB: I imagine that, aside from whatever you learned in particular at the
time, doing that played a more general role in exposing you to
computationally-oriented thinking and made you more receptive than
others, perhaps, to the idea of moving even further in that direction
later on.
CF: Yes.
HB: Getting back to what you were saying before, what was your father
the classicist’s reaction to your announcement at the age of 12 that you
were going to be a research scientist? Was he pleased? Bemused?
Intrigued?
CF: Oh, I think he was pleased. And in fact, the chap who told me about
cybernetics was a friend of my father who was another teacher—he
was in biology or something, I believe—and we used to see him quite a
lot. He was a very entertaining chap who would regularly tell us all
about the current developments in science.
My parents were very open-minded because while I said that I
wanted to be a research scientist, my younger brother—now known as
Fred—announced that he was going to be a rock guitarist.
HB: That was okay too?
CF: That was okay too—and he still is.
HB: And when you were at school and interested in the natural sciences
and mathematics before you went off to Cambridge, did you have any
particularly influential teachers who stimulated you?
CF: Well, I guess the most influential was the sixth form maths teacher. I
just loved the idea that you could solve things with these equations.
And you knew for certain when you had done it correctly, as opposed to
writing an English literature essay, say, where different people naturally
had different views and opinions on things. In fact, as it happens the
English teacher and I seemed to disagree on all possible topics, so that,
in a sense, switched me over.
HB: Was he a model of the English professor in Making Up the Mind:
How the Brain Creates Our Mental World?
CF: Quite possibly.
It’s interesting because at university I did particularly well in “min
and crys”, because the lecturers there were really strict and told you
what to do and made sure you did it. But the psychology was
marvellous fun: I was particularly lucky because I had the very good
fortune to be lectured by Richard Gregory and Donald Broadbent—who
were the main people who started off cognitive psychology—Larry
Weiskrantz—who was very big in monkey physiology—and my direct
tutor was someone called John Steiner, who at that time was, well, I
guess what you call a “born-again Skinnerian”, so he was completely
behaviourist. So I got this extraordinary mixture of behaviourism plus
the new thing: cognitive psychology.
HB: I imagine that there were many behaviourists at the time.
CF: Well, in Cambridge, it never really caught on to quite the same
extent as in the States, for example.
And interestingly John Steiner subsequently became a psychoanalyst,
which always fascinates me because I think there’s an interesting
relationship between behaviourism and psychoanalysis, because both
are about how everything is determined by your early experiences in
some sense.
HB: You gave this self-effacing anecdote about how you hadn’t been
successful enough at Cambridge to enable you to move directly into
what later became computational biology—and I’m not sure I’m going
to take that a hundred percent on your word—but I’m guessing that
before you began that clinical program in abnormal psychology at
Maudsley Hospital, you were quite interested in abnormal psychology
or aspects of different psychological conditions?
CF: I don’t quite remember how it started, but I was particularly
interested in schizophrenia and I read lots of books about it. Later,
when Hans Eysenck was producing the second edition of his enormous
handbook of abnormal psychology his students were handed out
different chapters and I got the one on perception, which was mostly
about schizophrenia. What particularly fascinated me then, and still
does, is the problem of hallucinations and delusions.
It’s easy enough to understand in principle if you’ve got affected
regions of your brain why you become blind or deaf or can’t understand
a concept or something, but it’s very difficult to understand why you
start seeing things that aren’t there or believing things that are
obviously not true—although scientists are quite good at that too, as it
happens, but that’s another matter.
And so, I was always interested in questions like, Can we think about
a mechanism? and, How do we relate this to normal functioning? What is
it that could go wrong in normal functioning that can make you start
seeing things that are not there or hearing people talking about you,
when they’re not?
HB: And was this perspective—focusing on brain functioning and
specific mechanisms in the brain—was this something that was
somewhat iconoclastic at the time?
CF: Well, thinking about the brain, for me, came somewhat later. But
certainly the early cognitive stuff was very much about thinking about
the mechanisms or cognitive processes or information processing that
underlies all our different abilities.
So that was iconoclastic in relation to behaviourism, because you’ve
started thinking about what’s inside “the black box”, but at that stage
we were just talking about cognitive processes. And of course the
neuropsychologists, whom I came into contact with a bit later—people
like Elizabeth Warrington and Tim Shallice and John Morton—were
interested in asking, If somebody has a lesion in the brain, what does that
tell us about cognitive processes? They weren’t really interested in what
it tells you about the brain, at that stage.
HB: So tell me how your work on schizophrenia evolved and what the
prevailing views on it were at the time.
CF: Well, after my PhD I did several years as a postdoc—which was
marvellous because I more or less did whatever I liked: in those days
money was not a problem somehow, which I never quite understood,
but that’s the way it was. But then I joined this Medical Research
Council unit run by Tim Crow, where specifically the main question we
had to answer was, What’s the biological basis of schizophrenia?
And this was somewhat iconoclastic because there was this
extraordinary distinction between “functional psychosis” and “organic
psychosis” in old-fashioned psychiatry. According to this view, an
“organic psychosis” is where there was clearly something wrong with
the brain, while a “functional psychosis”—which was how
schizophrenia was regarded—either meant, There must be something
wrong with the brain but we don’t know what it is, or, There’s nothing
wrong with the brain.
So it was almost as if this was not a brain disorder—and you had
people like Ronnie Laing, who was saying that it was caused by society
or something like that—it was a response to an abnormal society—or
you had other people saying it’s caused by peculiar interactions in the
family. And both of these ideas, in a sense, faded away because there
wasn’t much empirical evidence to support them. And one of the first
things we did in this unit with Eve Johnstone was one of the first ever
structural brain imaging of schizophrenic patients using modern
technology, which in those days was what they called CAT-scans.
HB: When was this exactly?
CF: It was published in 1976. And these scans showed that chronic
patients with schizophrenia had enlarged ventricles, which was not due
to any treatment or things like that. And that, I think, had a big impact
on switching the belief towards the view that, This is really a brain
disorder which we need to explore.
But just to give you an idea of the problems, there’s this famous DSM
statistical manual (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) for deciding how
you diagnose people. And in DSM-3, which is what we had at that time,
you have counter-indications. It said, To get a diagnosis of schizophrenia
you have to have these hallucinations and delusions and various other
things, but there must be no known brain disorder. So as soon as you find
any brain disorder it ceases to be regarded as schizophrenia. This has
changed.
HB: Quite the question-begging that.
CF: Yes. This has changed.
And the other thing we did—which I’m still very proud of—involved
research on anti-psychotic medication.
 They first discovered the anti-psychotic medication in ‘55, I think, by
accident. They all turned out to be dopamine-blocking drugs. So we did
an experiment with one of the standard treatments that was something
called flupenthixol. Flupenthixol is interesting because it has two
isomeric forms: one of these forms blocks dopamine, while the other
one—which has lots of other effects—doesn’t; so you could do a very
tight comparison. And it turned out that indeed, yes: the one that
blocked the dopamine receptors reduced severity of symptoms over
the course of four weeks, whereas the other one was no different from
placebo.
So there are various interesting things in that result. First of all, it
seems to be very specific to this dopamine blocking—which again,
relates it to the brain. And that still seems to be true: I don’t think
they’ve progressed that much on that score.
Secondly, there were positive results for everyone, including the ones
on placebo.
And thirdly, that this effect was specifically on hallucinations and
delusions and not on the so-called negative symptoms: the retardation
and poverty in speech and things like that. So in a sense, you were
finding an effect, of dopamine blocking, which is clearly a very low-level
brain type intervention with an extremely high level of subjective
experience. So the key question then became, How do we bridge the
gap?
 Questions for Discussion:

1. To what extent do you think Chris’ training in mathematics

and computer science gave him a different perspective than
some of his other colleagues?

2. Why do you think it took scientists so long to appreciate the

importance of looking at biological mechanisms to explain
psychological conditions? What does this tell us about the
sociology of science? Are there current dogmas that we will
look at 50 years from now as disapproving as we currently
regard behaviourism?
 II. Probing Agency
Predictions, tickling and dopamine

HB: That brings up the important idea of how to bridge low-level and
high-level gaps in all sorts of ways, including, but not limited to
schizophrenia. But I’d like to stay with schizophrenia for a little while
and continue to examine the evolution of our understanding of that
condition.
But first, I’d like to go back and talk about the societal understanding
and appreciation of this disease, because my sense is that has also
changed enormously since the time when you first started doing your
research. Not to imply that everybody’s got a full understanding of the
situation today, but my sense is that in the popular consciousness the
word means something quite different today than it did then. Is that a
fair statement, you think?
CF: Well, I don’t really know what that word meant to people in the 50s
and 60s, if they knew the word at all. I mean, they knew that there were
“mad people” who lived in these big asylums, and you occasionally saw
them on the street talking to themselves and they probably thought
they were a bit dangerous. And I’m not sure that, on the whole, that’s
changed all that much.
I mean, I’m not quite sure how true it is nowadays, but certainly in
the recent past if you say were to say the word “schizophrenia”, people
would think, Split-mind and multiple personality—which of course is
completely wrong.
It’s a rather funny term, because the word “schizophrenia” does
actually mean “split-mind”, but it meant that there was a split between
your different faculties, like emotion and reason and motor and
perception. A classic example would be what was sometimes called “a
peculiar effect”: for example, you’d say to the patient, “Your mother is
very ill”, and he’d laugh. It would be that sort of splitting, not the
multiple personality that people believe about.
 And then, of course what happened was that the big asylums were
closed down so that these people were no longer “over there”
somewhere—they were in hostels or on the streets or whatever. The
other thing that has happened in my lifetime, of course, is that in the
olden days if you were to see someone walking on the street talking to
themselves, they were thought to be schizophrenic. Now they’re most
likely to be on the phone.
HB: And they may or may not be schizophrenic in addition.
CF: That’s right.
HB: Let’s get back to this question of our scientific understanding of
things. Perhaps you could just give me a sense of how our
understanding of schizophrenia has evolved in the past 30 or 40 years
and why?
CF: Certainly—but of course this will naturally be my perspective on
things.
As I said earlier, I was interested in this problem of hallucinations
and delusions, and there’s one particular delusion that I became very
interested in, which is the delusion of control, which occurs in about
16% of cases. This is where the patient says, “I’m not in control of my
actions. Some alien force is causing me to do things”. It could be even
simple things like lifting up the glass and drinking.
It’s very difficult to find examples, interestingly—you’d think people
would collect these symptoms, but they all come from more or less
three papers, one of which is mine.
So you have a patient saying something like, “The force is causing me
to move”—this is pre-Star Wars, incidentally—and there’s also
something called “thought insertions”, which is even more peculiar and
yet to be solved, where the patient says, “There are thoughts coming
into my mind, which are not mine”. It’s very odd, because how can a
thought be in your mind and not be yours? After all, is there a little label
that comes with each thought saying “mine”?
But when you think about action, that’s much easier, because, for
example, if I hear a voice, it could be me talking, or it could be you
talking to me, and in a sense we need a label so that I know what I’m
hearing is my voice and not yours.
And this takes us right back to my big hero, Hermann von Helmholtz,
who pointed this out in relation to eye movements. When I move my
eyes, obviously things jump about on my retina so there’s movement
on the retina, but it’s due to me. And I have to be able to distinguish
between movement on the retina due to me and movement on the
retina due to something actually moving in the world.
And he basically said—I can’t remember his exact terminology
—“Because there’s a message involved—you’re sending a message to
your eye muscles to move the eye—you can use that signal as a way of
determining what the corresponding movement is due to, whether it’s
you or the world”. And he has this simple experiment: if you poke your
eyeball with your finger, carefully, to make it move, the world appears to
jump about, but you can use that signal to your eye muscles to
determine that the phenomenon in question is internal to you and not
in the world.
So I took that up and thought, Maybe what goes wrong in
schizophrenia is that this signal—this normal signal that tells you that
it’s your movement or your action—doesn’t arrive for some reason.
And we did various experiments, but the one I particularly like was
done by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore when she was doing a PhD with me.
She recognized that this obviously relates to tickling, as you can
immediately see, because we know that you can’t tickle yourself—Larry
Weiskrantz published something about this in Nature in the early
1970s. The question is why, and the answer is gained using this
Helmholtzian argument that because you can predict exactly what
you’re going to feel when you tickle yourself, it’s suppressed.
So Sarah-Jayne and I took this into the scanner and we had various
clever bits of equipment so you could tickle yourself directly or
indirectly. And she showed that if you introduce a delay of a hundred
milliseconds or so—if you’re holding a rod and tickling yourself with it,
you can introduce a delay—then it feels more ticklish.
But the nice thing was that she then tried this out on people with
schizophrenia. And indeed for the ones with delusions of control, if you
ask them to rate how ticklish it feels, there was no difference between
them tickling themselves and Sarah-Jayne tickling them. And we did
more sophisticated things after that. So that seemed to fit: we were
beginning to come up with a more mechanistic story of what might be
going wrong.
HB: So as I understand it there’s a natural focus on this question of
agency. When you and I are lifting up glasses of water or deciding to
look out the window or whatever, we have no doubt whatsoever that
it’s we, broadly defined—and, hopefully we’ll get to what that means in
a moment—who are actually doing that, but that the idea is that people
at least with some particular form of schizophrenia have a difficult time
with this whole concept.
CF: Yes. And there have been similar studies demonstrating this. Judith
Ford did some very nice work on hallucinations where she showed that,
while we normally suppress the sound of our own voice—which you
can measure with EEG and so forth—this was not happening to the
same extent in people who are prone to delusion. So you’re getting a
similar story.
And the obvious question now is, So what about dopamine?
In parallel with this, there were very exciting developments in the
dopamine story—mostly, I think, due to Wolfram Schultz at Cambridge,
who is looking at monkeys. He showed that there are neurons in the
middle of the brain—in the ventral tegmental area—which release
dopamine. He was measuring activity in these neurons and he could
show that they were actually predicting reward. In other words, if the
monkey gets an unexpected reward, these neurons fire.
You can then do some conditioning, so that the monkey learns that a
certain signal—a light flash—tells it there’s a reward coming.
Now this light flash, of course, is a signal of unexpected reward, so
what happens is that the neurons would fire immediately after the
monkey sees the flash rather than receiving the reward itself, since the
reward is now entirely predicted. On the other hand if the reward
doesn’t come as expected, then the firing rate of those neurons actually
decreases.
 So you have a very nice mechanism here which is telling you whether
you’re being rewarded or not. This led to the development of early
forms of computational neuroscience, where you can have a very nice
story of how learning occurs on the base of whether your reward goes
up or down, and you can then learn to attach rewards to signals and so
on and so on.
It used to be viewed as simply a reward-mechanism—dopamine was
released when you were rewarded—but it’s now much more
sophisticated. It’s actually a signal of reward prediction error, as they
call it, which is used in learning.
And to this you add a so-called Bayesian perspective: you have prior
expectations and you have evidence, and then you update your model
of the world on the base of it.
HB: I’d like to get into those Bayesian aspects you were just mentioning
in more detail shortly, but first I’m going to back up and ask a few more
general sorts of questions.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my sense is that through your work in
schizophrenia—or at least your work in schizophrenia combined with
other work—you’ve been led to appreciate the important way that the
brain acts and conditions information in such a way that we can learn
from it, namely this idea of prediction and reinforcement.
So at some level, it seems to me that you have used schizophrenia as
a window to better understand what’s occurring more generally, insofar
as you’re saying, “Oh, in these circumstances it doesn’t seem to be
working quite as well as it should. Let’s try to understand what’s
happening there.” Is that a fair way of looking at it?
CF: Yes. I think certainly one of my basic beliefs would be that we
should study the abnormal systems in order to learn about how it
works in the normal case. In a sense the abnormal system is somewhat
of a “simplification”, and I’ve been very influenced by
neuropsychologists studying patients with known lesions.
For example, alongside what I’ve just been talking about was the
discovery of things like “blindsight” and the famous patient, DF, that
David Milner and Melvyn Goodale studied. This is a patient who, due to
carbon-monoxide poisoning, has damaged her temporal lobe. She is
technically assessed, I believe, as effectively blind: she can see, but she
can’t recognize objects on the basis of their shape.
The fascinating thing that Milner and Goodale recognized is that she
wouldn’t be able to tell you that this thing in front of me is a mug, and
she wouldn’t be able to tell you where the handle is, but she can reach it
correctly. That gives you the idea that there are these two roughly
independent streams, one of which is for recognizing what the things
are and one of which is for reaching and grasping; and in the normal
case they’re all tied up together and it’s very difficult to separate them
out, but in the abnormal case, you can start to see these fractionations.
 Questions for Discussion:

1. What are some of the key assumptions behind the idea that a
close examination of abnormal cases can shed light on generic
brain processing mechanisms?

2. To what extent does Chris’ invocation of Hermann von

Helmholtz argue for the importance of scientists being aware
of the history of science? Readers may be interested to learn
that Helmholtz is not just a “big hero” of Chris Frith’s—his
name spontaneously arises as a reference point in Chapter 4 of
The Physics of Banjos with Caltech Physics Nobel Laureate
David Politzer (who also calls Helmholtz “one of my heroes”) as
well as in Chapter 2 of Knowing One’s Place: Space and
the Brain with Duke University neuroscientist Jennifer Groh.
 III. The Active Brain
The principal actor in the theatre of experience

HB: I’d like to talk more now about our general picture of how the brain
is operating.
Let me start off with what I’ll call the naive view—which we
understand now is not the best picture of what’s going on—but for the
longest time, I think, people did look at things this way. And the naive
view seems to be we have these receptors that correspond to our
senses and sense data impinges itself upon us through these various
receptors, which is how we get information about the world around us.
There’s this rather awkward little step which is elided in all of that,
which is how this is actually processed in our mind’s eye, but if we just
forget about that for a moment, the idea is that we’re going around the
world with our eyes open, say, and so photons hit our retina and there
is corresponding electrical stimulation and so forth in our brain. In
other words the brain is somehow this big receiver of information.
CF: Yes.
HB: And my sense is that things are considerably more complicated
than that.
CF: That’s right.
HB: Hence my calling it “the naive view”. So perhaps I could get you to
just give us a clear sense of what we now believe and why, very much in
keeping with what you were just discussing.
CF: Yes. So I would characterize the earlier version as a “feed-forward”
version. The evidence comes from the senses. Then it goes to a higher
level area that determines the shape, that goes to a higher level area
that sorts out what object in particular it is, and so on.
Take reading. You can say that there are marks on the page, which can
then be interpreted as letters, then converted to words, then
recognized as sentences; and then in the old-fashioned diagram box
there are diagrams that denote “the place that sentences go when
they’re understood”.
Again, Helmholtz, I think, was the first to see that this is clearly
wrong.
It’s partly because he realized that it’s simply too long, in
physiological terms: even though nerve conduction is rather slow, the
time it takes to recognize what an object is, is ten times slower. And
realized that there was something he called “unconscious inferences”
that were going on—we get this experience that this is the object, but
we’re not aware of how much work the brain has done to arrive at this
point. So the interesting question is, What is this work, exactly?
And this is where the idea of “predictive coding” or “the Bayesian
approach” comes in. And there are two aspects to this.
The first is that you have to have a prior expectation.
From my past experience, for example, I have a very good idea of
what’s likely to be on this table beside me. And what I use the evidence
from my senses to do is to evaluate to what extent that prior
expectation was right or not. If it’s right, that’s fine. If it’s wrong, I have
to slightly change what I think is out there—which leads to the idea
that most of the time, since our prior expectations are right, we’re not
actually taking any account of what’s out there. I think I say somewhere
in my book, Making Up The Mind—which I probably stole from
somewhere else—that basically our perception is “a hallucination
mildly constrained by reality”.
A nice example of this, if you’ll allow me to jump about a bit, is the
phantom limb. How on earth can someone have a phantom limb when
there’s no limb actually there? You can say, “Well, what motor control
theory tells us is that when I perform an action, I have a prediction of
where my limb is going to be and what it’s going to feel like”. Most of the
time, my experience of the world is not what my limb is, it’s my
prediction about where it will be and what it will feel like. So the person
with the phantom limb still has all these predictions and things intact,
and that’s what I think results in the phantom limb phenomenon.
But the second point is that not only do we have expectations prior
to the evidence from the senses, but we spend a lot of time doing things
to the world. And this is where I’m very much influenced by my friend,
Daniel Wolpert, who proudly says when he goes to meetings, “I am an
engineer”—he’s now in the engineering department in Cambridge.
And he’s also, as I am, a motor chauvinist because prior to us, there
was a sense that everything was perception. If we go back to Hubel and
Wiesel, they would say, “We know a great deal about visual perception”;
and if one of them would draw a picture of the brain, most of it would
be the visual system.
But we would say in contrast, “No, action is what the brain is all
about. If you don’t have action, you’re going to die.”
Daniel has this nice anecdote he likes to tell—I’m not sure if it’s
actually entirely true, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s illustrative.
There’s some sort of creature like a sea squirt that, in its larval form,
swims about and finds food, but when it matures into an adult, it
immediately attaches itself to a rock and never moves again. And the
first thing it does is it dissolves its brain, because it doesn’t need it
anymore—just like someone who’s being given tenure, incidentally.
It’s worth mentioning that Helmholtz also pointed this out when he
described how we perceive how far away things are. Well, you can use
something called parallax, which is basically to move from side to side,
and you find that things further away move less than the nearer things.
So you’re using your action, you’re making predictions about what will
happen when you act, to find out more about the world.
HB: Yes. And getting back to this overall approach that I was
mentioning earlier of using abnormal circumstances or systems as a
window into normal brain function, in Making Up The Mind you
specifically highlight the role that visual illusions can play in helping us
get a deeper understanding of how our normal act of perception works
by examining precisely how it is somehow being interfered with
through these illusions.
CF: Yes, that’s right. As we were saying in this new formulation
everything depends on prior expectations; and there are, of course,
circumstances where your prior expectations are completely wrong,
and I think that most illusions are indicating where this point is. So
many of them depend on seeing something as being 3D when it’s really
2D, but a particularly nice one is something called the “Hollow-Mask
illusion” that Richard Gregory used to great effect.
This is where you have a hollow mask, but if you look at it from
behind when the nose is actually pointing away from you, you cannot
help but see it sticking out towards you. And if you mount it on a rod
and rotate it, you see that when it’s facing you it rotates normally, but
when it’s facing away from you and you’re looking at it from behind it
seems to start rotating in the other direction once the illusion kicks it
because you’re now misperceiving the nose as sticking out.
And I would say that this is due to have an incredibly strong prior
expectation that faces stick out which completely overrides the
evidence we are being presented with to our senses. Now what is quite
interesting is that in schizophrenia, this illusion is much less strong. So
it seems that there’s something peculiar about the way they integrate
their prior expectations in their evidence.
 Questions for Discussion:

1. Why do you think that many of those who still cling to what
Howard calls the “naive view” of the brain work on the
neuroscience of vision? How might the field of vision be
regarded as “a victim of its own success”? Readers interested in
this issue might want to compare Chapter 7 of Minds and
Machines with Duke neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis with
Chapter 3 of Vision and Perception with Stanford
university vision scientist Kalanit Grill-Spector.

2. In what ways might the particularly strong impact of the

Hollow-Mask illusion be linked to the evolutionary importance
of facial recognition? If so, how might we deliberately create
other sensory illusions that are equally impactful?

3. To what extent does Chris’ use of the word “override” imply a

sense of “competition” between our prior expectations and the
information we are receiving from our senses?

4. Why do you think that the phenomenon of “phantom limb

pain” has not been more often highlighted by neuroscientists
and psychologists as a key example of how the brain acts?
Readers interested in more discussions of phantom limb pain
are referred to Chapter 9 of Knowing One’s Place: Space
and the Brain with Jennifer Groh and Chapter 6 of Minds
and Machines with Miguel Nicolelis.
 IV. Ideal Bayesian Operators
How our brains trump our minds

HB: You mentioned the word “Bayesian” a couple of times already, so

I’d like to ask you to be a little bit more specific there, because as you
were speaking just now about how people with schizophrenia might be
integrating their experiences in different ways from others, it struck
me that they might be rephrased, at least in some hand-wavy way, as
saying that their Bayesian inferences are not quite what they should be.
CF: That’s exactly right, yes.
Thomas Bayes was a fascinating chap who lived in the 18th century.
He was a very good mathematician, although of course he wasn’t
allowed to go to university in England as he was a nonconformist
minister, so he had to go to Scotland. I’m fascinated by him because he
became a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a very difficult thing to
do, despite not having published anything of real note. The famous
paper on probability theory and statistics, which everybody now
quotes, was actually published after his death. So it’s quite interesting
to know how he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, but one
speculation is that at that time many of the people in the Royal Society
were actually aristocrats rather than scientists, and they were
particularly interested in gambling.
HB: So it was useful.
CF: Yes, that’s right.
But the way people tend to interpret his theorem these days is, How
much should you update your prior expectation, given this new evidence.
It’s a mathematical formula that tells you precisely how much you
should change it. And that’s the basis for all these ideas of predictive
coding and so on.
Then it becomes more complicated because you can say, “Well, in
certain environments maybe I should put more weight on the evidence
rather than on my prior expectations—or the other way around.” So it
becomes quite complicated, but it’s a very good framework for
explaining a lot about perception, about action, and about how the
brain works in general.
And while I do very little work on schizophrenia these days myself,
my understanding is that there is one strand of those who are working
on it who believe that a central factor is precisely this balance between
expectations and evidence, believing that dopamine plays a more or
less direct role in this.
HB: That’s interesting. I’m curious to know what the mechanism might
be for that. And I’m guessing you are too.
CF: Yes, so am I.
HB: One thing that I thought I would just interject: my sense of an
essential aspect of this Bayesian framework is that there’s a strong
correlation with how unusual or usual the thing is that you’re
predicting, or at least the characteristic that’s associated with the thing
that you’re going to be predicting.
CF: That’s right. There are some very interesting studies on people in
airports who are scanning for guns, where you can easily show that it is
so unlikely that a gun is going to be in the luggage, that they’re not
going to see it.
HB: Another area where you mentioned explicitly that Bayesian
understanding has had great impact is in the health sciences, and in
terms of evaluating risks. You give an example of mammography and
whether or not it’s worth our while to be doing a mammogram for the
entire population.
CF: Yes, this is partly to do with base rates, so that even if you have a
reasonably sensitive test, if the odds among the general population
having the condition are low to start with, then the test is going to
produce large numbers of false positives compared to detecting those
few who actually have the condition, and it may simply be
counterproductive.
HB: Right. An interesting aspect of this to me is that as you pointed out
—and as many others have also pointed out—humans are generally not
very good at calculating Bayesian probabilities. The mammogram
example is a good case in point. If people tell us that a test is 80%
effective at detecting something harmful and important with a
relatively low false-positive rate of, say, 10%, our intuitive reaction is,
“Clearly everybody should have this done.”
And then you do the calculation and find out that, no, the number of
false positives is so large that it’s actually disadvantageous to do this—
incorporating the results of this new test at face makes you think that a
far greater proportion of the population actually has this condition
than you first—and quite rightly—thought.
But here’s the point I’m trying to make. Somewhere in your book,
Making Up The Mind, you describe how our brain is this so-called “ideal
Bayesian operator”.
CF: Yes, that’s right.
HB: And it seems the argument for why our brain is this “ideal Bayesian
operator” is because in order to learn effectively and quickly, it needs to
have this feedback loop done in the appropriate way—in other words, if
its sense of calculating probabilities was disastrous, we wouldn’t be
able to learn as efficiently as we do. So there’s a clear evolutionary
argument for why our brains should be wonderful at performing
Bayesian statistics about basically everything, all the time.
But at the same time, if you ask me a question that involves basic
Bayesian statistics, like the one about the mammogram we just spoke
about, I’ll likely get it wrong: I’m lousy at it. This seems to be pointing to
some sense of a weird dualism between what “I” think I understand
about the world and what my brain actually does.
CF: Yes, that’s absolutely right. I’m now based in a philosophy
department, you see, so I have had to learn some terms; and the terms I
have learned now for this dualistic aspect is “the personal” and “the
subpersonal”—“the subpersonal” meaning doing what the brain does,
and “the personal” is what I do, as it were.
 And I think this is the key point. The brain is an ideal Bayesian
operator at the subpersonal level—and there are some beautiful
experiments, which I will probably insist on describing now—
demonstrating that.
HB: Go right ahead. I insist as well.
CF: Well, one experiment is about combining the senses. I should say
before I continue that another mistake people used to make is making a
big deal about distinguishing between all these different senses, but as
far as the brain is concerned it doesn’t care about any of that: it just
wants to know what’s out there and use all the information possible it
can get its hands on, as it were.
At any rate, in this experiment you see a bar, and you can also feel it;
and you have to evaluate its width.
And then of course, because there’s all this fancy equipment, you can
make it feel different than what it looks.
So you can measure how good you are at telling how wide it is from
vision and how good you are from touch, and then you can have them
competing. In the usual situation, vision wins and touch is ignored,
because vision is a much more precise sense.
But you can make the vision less precise by adding noise; and what
you then see—which is what the Bayesian operator predicts—is that
you weight the two senses on the basis of the precision of the two
signals. So if the vision is very bad, then you’re now entirely dependent
on touch and vice-versa. And there’s a sweet spot in the middle where
they’re both equally informative; and then you do better if you have
touch and vision then you do with either one on their own.
So that demonstrates the exquisite Bayesian approach that the brain
has at the subpersonal level.
But you’re absolutely right. At the personal level, when we’re asked to
justify things or to do probabilities, we can often get it wrong. But this
is partly because of the way the problems are presented. I think it’s
precisely analogous to visual illusions: you’re presenting problems in
such a way that they don’t fit the way we’ve learned to expect things.
 There are various people now who say, “Actually, we’re completely
rational. It’s just that we have different prior expectations than the
problems are set up to explore”.
The only example I can think of at the moment is the frame effect,
which is where, if you start with 1,000 people and you say, “If we
introduce this new treatment, it will save 400 lives”, you will likely get a
different response than if you say, “If we introduce this new treatment,
there will still be 600 people who will die.”
So the probabilities are identical, but people’s decisions are modified
by this frame; and you could say, “That’s not rational, is it?”
But I would say that what we’ve brought up to do is to recognize that
when people present a problem, the way they present it is very
important. This is what pragmatics is all about: it is the glass half full or
half empty. If you say, “My glass is half empty”, that means please give me
some more. If you say, “My glass is half full”, it probably means I’ve got
enough.
HB: So we have to look closer at the hermeneutics of these things.
CF: Exactly. In fact, I’ve written a paper with Karl Friston about
hermeneutics (“Active inference, communication and hermeneutics”).
HB: OK, but do you actually believe that? I mean you were very cagey
just now, saying something like, “Some people believe that it’s all a
question of how these things are being phrased”. Are you, personally of
that view as well?
CF: I’m inclined to agree with that. The trouble is that I don’t know
enough about it, but there’s this chap, Chris Summerfield in Oxford,
who’s got a Bayesian account of why these answers are not actually
irrational if you consider the problem from a wider perspective.
Certainly the base rate thing is a problem—we’re just not used to
thinking about base rates, it’s not something we know about.
I mean, it’s like, Why do people buy lottery tickets? It’s completely
irrational. Perhaps the way to resolve this is to ensure that every time
you see a person on television winning the lottery, you should also see
all the other people who didn’t win the lottery, and then you might get a
proper experience of the relevant statistics.
HB: OK, but it seems to me that we’re sliding towards questions like,
Why do people behave irrationally?
CF: Yes, sorry about that.
HB: Well, there’s no reason to apologize: after all that’s deeply
mysterious in its own right. And we could discuss all other questions
like, Why do people do what they do all day?, which I also don’t
understand as a general rule.
CF: Right.
 Questions for Discussion:

1. Do you agree that our apparent human weakness at

correctly evaluating probabilities mostly boils down to a
matter of how the question is phrased? What might be some
counterarguments to that view?

2. What does the claim that humans are poor at consciously

evaluating probabilities imply about the role of probabilistic
thinking in evolution?
 V. In Search of a Mechanism
How to connect the subpersonal with the personal

HB: For the moment, however, I’d like to concentrate on the apparent
distinction between our brains and the processing that they’re doing,
and our conscious minds—a distinction that strikes me as a major
theme throughout Making Up The Mind.
I’m certainly willing to accept the fact that there are irrational people
—after all, the evidence seems to be overwhelming. Whether or not
that means they have irrational brains, as well as irrational minds, I
don’t know, but the point is that this distinction certainly seems to
exist for even reasonably rational people.
So if we focus on that we can now forget about focusing on Bayesian
probability per se—that was an example of trying to look at the
distinction.
When we talk about whether or not we’re convinced of something—
our beliefs, our desires, all the rest of that—we’re talking about
“ourselves”. We all have a fairly clear understanding of what that means
—even if we can’t specify it logically or physiologically—and that’s very
different, of course, than looking at brain activity in an fMRI machine.
Now, what I detect from you is some ambiguity—I’m not accusing
you of anything other than what every reasonable human being has
grappled with throughout the dawn of history, so this is not particularly
directed at you—but there is this obvious ambiguity that we’re all
battling with, it seems to me.
If we are materialists, we are naturally inclined to say something like,
“We don’t believe in a soul or ‘soul-stuff’; we believe that at some level
there’s nothing other than physical stuff out there, and therefore the
brain must cause the mind—and we also have all sorts of other evidence
for those conclusions, ranging from lesions to the brains to how people
behave under narcotics and so forth.”
So there are all sorts of reasons to believe that the brain and the
mind are causally connected, but the question is, Well, how does it work
exactly? Or even approximately, for that matter.
 At one point in Making Up The Mind, you say admirably humble
words to the effect of, “This leads us to the question of consciousness, and
I’m not going to look so much at consciousness because that’s too
difficult. I’m going to look at what it’s for and go through an evolutionary
pathway and so on.”
But I want to put you back on the hook for a moment now and simply
ask you, “OK, look, we’ve got these two things: the brain and the mind.
How are they linked up?”
CF: Well, that’s what I’ve been thinking about, mostly, since writing that
book. And it’s very much to do with what I was saying before about the
personal and subpersonal and how they relate, but also I’ve become
more and more interested in culture. In some ways, the brain is not
enough on its own—it’s almost like a tool.
And one thing I think about is that, genetically speaking, our brains at
birth are no different from the brains of people from something like
200,000 years ago, when people were making these crude stone tools
and so on. But adult brains today I would suspect, are very different
from the brains of people 200,000 years ago, because the brain is very
plastic and culture affects the brain.
I was involved in the famous Taxi Drivers Study, showing that the
hippocampus, or portions of the hippocampus, of a London taxi driver
increases in volume as a result of learning The Knowledge—the
rigorous mental map of London that is required for all successful
drivers. I’ve been involved in a study which shows that Italian brains
are different from English brains because the spelling of Italian and
English is so different.
So there are innumerable things in modern culture that will make our
brains very different from what they were 200,000 years ago. A lot of
what we mean by “culture” is at the personal level: it depends on
communication, the interactions between people, which create
traditions and so on, that are then fed back into the system.
But to talk to people and describe our experiences and how the mind
works is quite difficult.
So this is becoming a bit speculative—there’s some nice work,
slightly controversial from Dijksterhuis and colleagues in the
Netherlands, where they show that making a complicated decision
which involves taking into account 12 different variables, you could do
it actually better if you didn’t think about it.
And there’s another study that says that if you have to recognize a
face and you’re asked to describe it, that actually makes you worse at
recognizing it. So the idea is that our subpersonal brain is extremely
good at handling a very complicated multi-dimensional structure, but
as soon as things get up to the personal level—which from my point of
view means we have to talk to other people about it—we have to
simplify it, we have to reduce the number of dimensions.
So we can do tricks, like making them richer. But in essence, we have
to reduce the number of dimensions. And if you choose the wrong
dimensions, you’re going to make the wrong decision. And I think that
might be the sort of thing that’s happening in these problem-solving
cases we spoke about earlier. But it’s this talking to each other—
including things like how the mind works—which creates culture and
feeds back into us.
HB: Let me just interject for a moment, because while I have no
problem whatsoever in being speculative, I don’t want to lose the
thread. So let me try to be a little bit more concrete.
I’m immersed in a culture. And as a result of this immersion, I need to
be communicating with you and others, and that communication
necessitates that I bounce ideas off you, predict how you might
respond and so forth, all of which requires me to use my wonderful,
ideal Bayesian operator brain.
CF: Yes.
HB: And by interacting with you and utilizing this prediction-
confirmation process—which presumably also includes some higher
level aspects of empathy and so forth—my brain is also evolving and
it’s changing its structure, resulting in things like, as you said earlier,
how Italians have a slightly different brain than anglophones, say.
So all of that, at least on a hand-wavy level, I’m okay with. But I don’t
know if that brings me any closer to this sense of how I’m linking my
“me”—my personal level—with “my brain”—the subpersonal level. Do
you see my problem?
CF: Yes, yes.
Well, the way I look at it is that there are signals coming up from the
subpersonal level, into the personal level, which we can actually talk to
people about. And likewise, when people tell us things that somehow
influence how the subpersonal level works.
So an example of a signal would be, I have a sense of effort: I feel how
hard I’m having to work to do a particular task. And in many tasks, the
longer I do it, the harder it seems to be. And I’m aware of this sense of
effort. And I can tell someone, “This feels very effortful”. And indeed, I
will say, eventually, something like, “I’m too tired. I can’t do this
anymore”.
Now there was a very nice experiment—not by me, first from Carol
Dweck’s group. They were investigating this phenomenon called “ego-
depletion”—which is very famous and well-established, but now under
attack—that if you do a difficult mental task or if you have to inhibit
yourself from eating nice food, it exhausts your mental resources and
you will have difficulty with another executive task immediately
afterwards.
Now what these people did is they added an additional group. So they
had similar experiments, but now there were two groups. One group is
told when you do a difficult mental task, it’s like a muscle and you will
feel tired and it will be difficult to do something further. The other
group is told when you do a difficult mental task, you will feel energized
and ready for more work. And lo and behold the people who were told
that they would feel tired, made more Stroop errors after the executive
task and the people who were told they would be energized, made
fewer Stroop errors after the task.
So that seems to me to be a direct example of how you being told
how your mind works, influences your behaviour at this low level.
HB: So that’s a sign of concrete interaction between these different
levels. But then, what I’d really like to know is what’s...
CF: The mechanism?
HB: Yes.
CF: Well, now this is becoming extremely hand-wavy.
There’s another experiment that I think gets us a bit closer to the
mechanism. You know that there are all these “common goods
games”—you interact with someone and you have to learn whether
they’re trustworthy or not. If you invest money and they give you some
money back then they’re more trustworthy, and if they didn’t give you
the money back they are less trustworthy, and you can have a
completely standard learning algorithm using prediction errors: if they
give you more money back, their trust goes up, and if they give you less
money back, the trust goes down.
You can see these prediction errors happening in the brain where the
dopamine is. That’s all fine. The interesting thing is that, if you tell
them, “This is a very trustworthy person”, they stop noticing the
prediction errors both behaviourally and in terms of brain function. So
they’re less influenced by the actual behaviour of the person, you see
less prediction-error activity in the middle of the brain and in the
Bayesian terminology if you say the mechanism here is that you’ve
been given the prior information that this is a trustworthy person, so
you down-weight how much attention you pay to their actual
behaviour.
HB: This is almost analogous to the tickling thing.
CF: Yes—that’s a good point, I hadn’t thought of that. With respect to
the question of mental effort and related issues, it’s a matter of
interpretation, but I think you can explain it all on these very high-level
priors (prior information). So the issue of ego-depletion is fascinating
because now almost everybody in the world who’s read the books and
knows about it has this high-level prior, but you can change this.
And there are other interesting, analogous experiments on free will,
where you can say to people, “No sensible people these days believe in
free will. Francis Crick has shown in his book that there’s no such thing:
everything is predetermined”. And if you tell people that, they believe it
—which you can assess through a follow-up questionnaire—they will
then be more likely to cheat on tests, they will become less helpful in
social situations—”
HB: Because they are now convinced that they’re not responsible.
CF: Yes. Another thing that is fascinating to me involves this
phenomenon called “post-error slowing”. If you do a reaction time task,
for example, after you’ve made an error you will slow down, because
you’re monitoring yourself and you’re saying “I’m doing it too fast”. And
it turns out that people who don’t believe in free will showed less post-
error slowing, and the amplitude of their readiness potential in the
brain becomes smaller. I think the prior here is about how much top-
down control an individual believes she has over her behaviour. So if
you now believe you have less top-down control—”
HB: Or none.
CF: Yes—or none—that will have a considerable impact. So I think
these are hints of the kinds of mechanisms that are involved, and my
current research project is precisely about that: trying to discover
something about these mechanisms.
 Questions for Discussion:

1. How might detailed studies that show differences between

the brains of Italian-speakers and English-speakers due to
neuroplasticity impact the so-called Sapir-Whorf debate on the
extent to which the language we speak influences our thoughts?

2. To what extent could it be validly argued that psychology

experiments should avoid using psychology undergraduate
students as subjects, due to the effect that our prior beliefs
might have on the results?

3. Is there a significant link between the concept of “energy

expended” and “desire”? Might it be the case that those who
“relish a challenge” and enjoy spending their “mental energy
reserves” act differently from those who deliberately opt to
conserve such “reserves”? Those interested in the link between
energy and decision-making are referred to Chapter 3 of
Being Social with Roy Baumeister, while those curious about
the impact of how embracing a challenge is reflected in the
notion of a “growth mindset” are referred to Chapters 1–3 of
Mindsets: Growing Your Brain with Carol Dweck.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
and who attribute to the general government a right utterly
incompatible with what all acknowledge to be its limited and
restricted character; an error originating principally, as I must think,
in not duly reflecting on the nature of our institutions, and on what
constitutes the only rational object of all political constitutions.
It has been well said by one of the most sagacious men of
antiquity, that the object of a constitution is to restrain the
government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals. The remark is
correct, nor is it less true where the government is vested in a
majority, than where it is in a single or a few individuals; in a
republic, than a monarchy or aristocracy. No one can have a higher
respect for the maxim that the majority ought to govern than I have,
taken in its proper sense, subject to the restrictions imposed by the
Constitution, and confined to subjects in which every portion of the
community have similar interests; but it is a great error to suppose,
as many do, that the right of a majority to govern is a natural and not
a conventional right; and, therefore, absolute and unlimited. By
nature every individual has the right to govern himself; and
governments, whether founded on majorities or minorities, must
derive their right from the assent, expressed or implied, of the
governed, and be subject to such limitations as they may impose.
Where the interests are the same, that is, where the laws that may
benefit one will benefit all, or the reverse, it is just and proper to
place them under the control of the majority; but where they are
dissimilar, so that the law that may benefit one portion may be
ruinous to another, it would be, on the contrary, unjust and absurd
to subject them to its will: and such I conceive to be the theory on
which our Constitution rests.
That such dissimilarity of interests may exist it is impossible to
doubt. They are to be found in every community, in a greater or less
degree, however small or homogeneous, and they constitute,
everywhere, the great difficulty of forming and preserving free
institutions. To guard against the unequal action of the laws, when
applied to dissimilar and opposing interests, is in fact what mainly
renders a constitution indispensable; to overlook which in reasoning
on our Constitution, would be to omit the principal element by which
to determine its character. Were there no contrariety of interests,
nothing would be more simple and easy than to form and preserve
free institutions. The right of suffrage alone would be a sufficient
guarantee. It is the conflict of opposing interests which renders it the
most difficult work of man.
Where the diversity of interests exists in separate and distinct
classes of the community, as is the case in England, and was formerly
the case in Sparta, Rome, and most of the free states of antiquity, the
rational constitutional provision is, that each should be represented
in the government as a separate estate, with a distinct voice, and a
negative on the acts of its co-estates, in order to check their
encroachments. In England the constitution has assumed expressly
this form, while in the governments of Sparta and Rome the same
thing was effected, under different but not much less efficacious
forms. The perfection of their organization, in this particular, was
that which gave to the constitutions of these renowned states all of
their celebrity, which secured their liberty for so many centuries, and
raised them to so great a height of power and prosperity. Indeed, a
constitutional provision giving to the great and separate interests of
the community the right of self-protection, must appear to those who
will duly reflect on the subject, not less essential to the preservation
of liberty than the right of suffrage itself. They in fact have a common
object, to effect which the one is as necessary as the other—to secure
responsibility; that is, that those who make and execute the laws
should be accountable to those on whom the laws in reality operate;
the only solid and durable foundation of liberty. If without the right
to suffrage our rulers would oppress us, so without the right of self-
protection, the major would equally oppress the minor interests of
the community. The absence of the former would make the governed
the slaves of the rulers, and of the latter the feebler interests the
victim of the stronger.
Happily for us we have no artificial and separate classes of society.
We have wisely exploded all such distinctions; but we are not, on that
account, exempt from all contrariety of interests, as the present
distracted and dangerous condition of our country unfortunately but
too clearly proves. With us they are almost exclusively geographical,
resulting mainly from difference of climate, soil, situation, industry,
and production, but are not, therefore, less necessary to be protected
by an adequate constitutional provision than where the distinct
interests exist in separate classes. The necessity is, in truth, greater,
as such separate and dissimilar geographical interests are more liable
to come into conflict, and more dangerous when in that state than
those of any other description; so much so, that ours is the first
instance on record where they have not formed in an extensive
territory separate and independent communities, or subjected the
whole to despotic sway. That such may not be our unhappy fate also,
must be the sincere prayer of every lover of his country.
So numerous and diversified are the interests of our country, that
they could not be fairly represented in a single government,
organized so as to give to each great and leading interest a separate
and distinct voice, as in governments to which I have referred. A plan
was adopted better suited to our situation, but perfectly novel in its
character. The powers of the government were divided, not as
heretofore, in reference to classes, but geographically. One general
government was formed for the whole, to which was delegated all of
the powers supposed to be necessary to regulate the interests
common to all of the states, leaving others subject to the separate
control of the states, being from their local and peculiar character
such that they could not be subject to the will of the majority of the
whole Union, without the certain hazard of injustice and oppression.
It was thus that the interests of the whole were subjected, as they
ought to be, to the will of the whole, while the peculiar and local
interests were left under the control of the states separately, to whose
custody only they could be safely confided. This distribution of
power, settled solemnly by a constitutional compact, to which all of
the states are parties, constitutes the peculiar character and
excellence of our political system. It is truly and emphatically
American, without example or parallel.
To realize its perfection, we must view the general government and
the states as a whole, each in its proper sphere, sovereign and
independent; each perfectly adapted to their respective objects; the
states acting separately, representing and protecting the local and
peculiar interests; acting jointly, through one general government,
with the weight respectively assigned to each by the Constitution,
representing and protecting the interest of the whole, and thus
perfecting, by an admirable but simple arrangement, the great
principle of representation and responsibility, without which no
government can be free or just. To preserve this sacred distribution
as originally settled, by coercing each to move in its prescribed orb, is
the great and difficult problem, on the solution of which the duration
of our Constitution, of our Union, and, in all probability our liberty,
depends. How is this to be effected?
The question is new when applied to our peculiar political
organization, where the separate and conflicting interests of society
are represented by distinct but connected governments; but is in
reality an old question under a new form, long since perfectly solved.
Whenever separate and dissimilar interests have been separately
represented in any government; whenever the sovereign power has
been divided in its exercise, the experience and wisdom of ages have
devised but one mode by which such political organization can be
preserved; the mode adopted in England, and by all governments,
ancient or modern, blessed with constitutions deserving to be called
free; to give to each co-estate the right to judge of its powers, with a
negative or veto on the acts of the others, in order to protect against
encroachments the interests it particularly represents; a principle
which all of our constitutions recognize in the distribution of power
among their respective departments, as essential to maintain the
independence of each, but which, to all who will duly reflect on the
subject, must appear far more essential, for the same object, in that
great and fundamental distribution of powers between the states and
general government. So essential is the principle, that to withhold
the right from either, where the sovereign power is divided, is, in
fact, to annul the division itself, and to consolidate in the one left in
the exclusive possession of the right, all of the powers of the
government; for it is not possible to distinguish practically between a
government having all power, and one having the right to take what
powers it pleases. Nor does it in the least vary the principle, whether
the distribution of power between co-estates, as in England, or
between distinctly organized but connected governments, as with us.
The reason is the same in both cases, while the necessity is greater in
our case, as the danger of conflict is greater where the interests of a
society are divided geographically than in any other, as has already
been shown.
These truths do seem to me to be incontrovertible; and I am at a
loss to understand how any one, who has maturely reflected on the
nature of our institutions, or who has read history or studied the
principles of free government to any purpose, can call them in
question. The explanation must, it appears to me, be sought in the
fact, that in every free state, there are those who look more to the
necessity of maintaining power, than guarding against its abuses. I
do not intend reproach, but simply to state a fact apparently
necessary to explain the contrariety of opinions, among the
intelligent, where the abstract consideration of the subject would
seem scarcely to admit of doubt. If such be the true cause, I must
think the fear of weakening the government too much in this case to
be in a great measure unfounded, or at least that the danger is much
less from that than the opposite side. I do not deny that a power of so
high a nature may be abused by a state, but when I reflect that the
states unanimously called the general government into existence
with all of its powers, which they freely surrendered on their part,
under the conviction that their common peace, safety and prosperity
required it; that they are bound together by a common origin, and
the recollection of common suffering and common triumph in the
great and splendid achievement of their independence; and the
strongest feelings of our nature, and among them, the love of
national power and distinction, are on the side of the Union; it does
seem to me, that the fear which would strip the states of their
sovereignty, and degrade them, in fact, to mere dependent
corporations, lest they should abuse a right indispensable to the
peaceable protection of those interests which they reserved under
their own peculiar guardianship when they created the general
government, is unnatural and unreasonable. If those who voluntarily
created the system, cannot be trusted to preserve it, what power can?
So far from extreme danger, I hold that there never was a free
state, in which this great conservative principle, indispensable in all,
was ever so safely lodged. In others, when the co-estates,
representing the dissimilar and conflicting interests of the
community, came into contact, the only alternative was compromise,
submission or force. Not so in ours. Should the general government
and a state come into conflict, we have a higher remedy; the power
which called the general government into existence, which gave it all
its authority, and can enlarge, contract, or abolish its powers at its
pleasure, may be invoked. The states themselves may be appealed to,
three-fourths of which, in fact, form a power, whose decrees are the
constitution itself, and whose voice can silence all discontent. The
utmost extent then of the power is, that a state acting in its sovereign
capacity, as one of the parties to the constitutional compact, may
compel the government, created by that compact, to submit a
question touching its infraction to the parties who created it; to avoid
the supposed dangers of which, it is proposed to resort to the novel,
the hazardous, and, I must add, fatal project of giving to the general
government the sole and final right of interpreting the Constitution,
thereby reserving the whole system, making that instrument the
creature of its will, instead of a rule of action impressed on it at its
creation, and annihilating in fact the authority which imposed it, and
from which the government itself derives its existence.
That such would be the result, were the right in question vested in
the legislative or executive branch of the government, is conceded by
all. No one has been so hardy as to assert that Congress or the
President ought to have the right, or to deny that, if vested finally
and exclusively in either, the consequences which I have stated
would not necessarily follow; but its advocates have been reconciled
to the doctrine, on the supposition that there is one department of
the general government, which, from its peculiar organization,
affords an independent tribunal through which the government may
exercise the high authority which is the subject of consideration, with
perfect safety to all.
I yield, I trust, to few in my attachment to the judiciary
department. I am fully sensible of its importance, and would
maintain it to the fullest extent in its constitutional powers and
independence; but it is impossible for me to believe that it was ever
intended by the Constitution, that it should exercise the power in
question, or that it is competent to do so, and, if it were, that it would
be a safe depository of the power.
Its powers are judicial and not political, and are expressly confined
by the Constitution “to all cases in law and equity arising under this
Constitution, the laws of the United States, and the treaties made, or
which shall be made, under its authority;” and which I have high
authority in asserting, excludes political questions, and comprehends
those only where there are parties amenable to the process of the
court.[82] Nor is its incompetency less clear, than its want of
constitutional authority. There may be many and the most dangerous
infractions on the part of Congress, of which it is conceded by all, the
court, as a judicial tribunal, cannot from its nature take cognisance.
The tariff itself is a strong case in point; and the reason applies
equally to all others, where Congress perverts a power from an object
intended to one not intended, the most insidious and dangerous of
all the infractions; and which may be extended to all of its powers,
more especially to the taxing and appropriating. But supposing it
competent to take cognisance of all infractions of every description,
the insuperable objection still remains, that it would not be a safe
tribunal to exercise the power in question.
It is an universal and fundamental political principle, that the
power to protect, can safely be confided only to those interested in
protecting, or their responsible agents—a maxim not less true in
private than in public affairs. The danger in our system is, that the
general government, which represents the interests of the whole,
may encroach on the states, which represent the peculiar and local
interests, or that the latter may encroach on the former.
In examining this point, we ought not to forget that the
government, through all of its departments, judicial as well as others,
is administered by delegated and responsible agents; and that the
power which really controls ultimately all the movements, is not in
the agents, but those who elect or appoint them. To understand then
its real character, and what would be the action of the system in any
supposable case, we must raise our view from the mere agents, to
this high controlling power which finally impels every movement of
the machine. By doing so, we shall find all under the control of the
will of a majority, compounded of the majority of the states, taken as
corporate bodies, and the majority of the people of the states
estimated in federal numbers. These united constitute the real and
final power, which impels and directs the movements of the general
government. The majority of the states elect the majority of the
Senate; of the people of the states, that of the House of
Representatives; the two united, the President; and the President
and a majority of the Senate appoint the judges, a majority of whom
and a majority of the Senate and the House with the President, really
exercise all of the powers of the government with the exception of the
cases where the Constitution requires a greater number than a
majority. The judges are, in fact, as truly the judicial representatives
of this united majority, as the majority of Congress itself, or the
President, is its legislative or executive representative; and to confide
the power to the judiciary to determine finally and conclusively what
powers are delegated and what reserved, would be in reality to
confide it to the majority, whose agents they are, and by whom they
can be controlled in various ways; and, of course, to subject (against
the fundamental principle of our system, and all sound political
reasoning) the reserved powers of the states, with all of the local and
peculiar interests they were intended to protect, to the will of the
very majority against which the protection was intended. Nor will the
tenure by which the judges hold their office, however valuable the
provision in many other respects, materially vary the case. Its highest
possible effect would be to retard, and not finally to resist, the will of
a dominant majority.
But it is useless to multiply arguments. Were it possible that
reason could settle a question where the passions and interests of
men are concerned, this point would have been long since settled for
ever, by the state of Virginia. The report of her legislature, to which I
have already referred, has really, in my opinion, placed it beyond
controversy. Speaking in reference to this subject, it says, “It has
been objected” (to the right of a state to interpose for the protection
of her reserved rights), “that the judicial authority is to be regarded
as the sole expositor of the Constitution; on this subject it might be
observed first that there may be instances of usurped powers which
the forms of the Constitution could never draw within the control of
the judicial department; secondly, that if the decision of the judiciary
be raised above the sovereign parties to the Constitution, the
decisions of the other departments, not carried by the forms of the
Constitution before the judiciary, must be equally authoritative and
final with the decision of that department. But the proper answer to
the objection is, that the resolution of the General Assembly relates
to those great and extraordinary cases, in which all of the forms of
the Constitution may prove ineffectual against infraction dangerous
to the essential rights of the parties to it. The resolution supposes
that dangerous powers not delegated, may not only be usurped and
executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department
may also exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of
the Constitution, and consequently that the ultimate right of the
parties to the Constitution to judge whether the compact has been
dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated
authority, as well as by another—by the judiciary, as well as by the
executive or legislative.”
Against these conclusive arguments, as they seem to me, it is
objected, that if one of the parties has the right to judge of infractions
of the Constitution, so has the other, and that consequently in cases
of contested powers between a state and the general government,
each would have a right to maintain its opinion, as is the case when
sovereign powers differ in the construction of treaties or compacts,
and that of course it would come to be a mere question of force. The
error is in the assumption that the general government is a party to
the constitutional compact. The states, as has been shown, formed
the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities. The
general government is but its creature; and though in reality a
government with all the rights and authority which belong to any
other government, within the orb of its powers, it is, nevertheless, a
government emanating from a compact between sovereigns, and
partaking, in its nature and object, of the character of a joint
commission, appointed to superintend and administer the interests
in which all are jointly concerned, but having, beyond its proper
sphere, no more power than if it did not exist. To deny this would be
to deny the most incontestable facts, and the clearest conclusions;
while to acknowledge its truth, is to destroy utterly the objection that
the appeal would be to force, in the case supposed. For if each party
has a right to judge, then under our system of government, the final
cognisance of a question of contested power would be in the states,
and not in the general government. It would be the duty of the latter,
as in all similar cases of a contest between one or more of the
principals and a joint commission or agency, to refer the contest to
the principals themselves. Such are the plain dictates of reason and
analogy both. On no sound principle can the agents have a right to
final cognisance, as against the principals, much less to use force
against them, to maintain their construction of their powers. Such a
right would be monstrous; and has never, heretofore, been claimed
in similar cases.
That the doctrine is applicable to the case of a contested power
between the states and the general government, we have the
authority not only of reason and analogy, but of the distinguished
statesman already referred to. Mr. Jefferson, at a late period of his
life, after long experience and mature reflection, says, “With respect
to our state and federal governments, I do not think their relations
are correctly understood by foreigners. They suppose the former
subordinate to the latter. This is not the case. They are co-ordinate
departments of one simple and integral whole. But you may ask if the
two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where
is the umpire to decide between them? In cases of little urgency or
importance, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from
the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor
compromised, a convention of the states must be called to ascribe the
doubtful power to that department which they may think best.”—It is
thus that our Constitution, by authorizing amendments, and by
prescribing the authority and mode of making them, has by a simple
contrivance, with its characteristic wisdom, provided a power which,
in the last resort, supersedes effectually the necessity and even the
pretext for force; a power to which none can fairly object; with which
the interests of all are safe; which can definitely close all
controversies in the only effectual mode, by freeing the compact of
every defect and uncertainty, by an amendment of the instrument
itself. It is impossible for human wisdom, in a system like ours, to
devise another mode which shall be safe and effectual, and at the
same time consistent with what are the relations and acknowledged
powers of the two great departments of our government. It gives a
beauty and security peculiar to our system, which, if duly
appreciated, will transmit its blessings to the remotest generations;
but, if not, our splendid anticipations of the future will prove but an
empty dream. Stripped of all its covering, and the naked question is,
whether ours is a federal or a consolidated government: a
constitutional or absolute one; a government resting ultimately on
the solid basis of the sovereignty of the states, or on the unrestrained
will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited
ones, in which injustice and violence, and force, must finally prevail.
Let it never be forgotten, that where the majority rules, the minority
is the subject; and that if we should absurdly attribute to the former
the exclusive right of construing the Constitution, there would be in
fact between the sovereign and subject, under such a government, no
constitution; or at least nothing deserving the name, or serving the
legitimate object of so sacred an instrument.
 How the states are to exercise this high power of interposition
which constitutes so essential a portion of their reserved rights that it
cannot be delegated without an entire surrender of their sovereignty,
and converting our system from a federal into a consolidated
government, is a question that the states only are competent to
determine. The arguments which prove that they possess the power,
equally prove that they are, in the language of Jefferson, “the rightful
judges of the mode and measure of redress.” But the spirit of
forbearance, as well as the nature of the right itself, forbids a
recourse to it, except in cases of dangerous infractions of the
Constitution; and then only in the last resort, when all reasonable
hope of relief from the ordinary action of the government has failed;
when, if the right to interpose did not exist, the alternative would be
submission and oppression on the one side, or resistance by force on
the other. That our system should afford, in such extreme cases, an
intermediate point between these dire alternatives, by which the
government may be brought to a pause, and thereby an interval
obtained to compromise differences, or, if impracticable, be
compelled to submit the question to a constitutional adjustment,
through an appeal to the states themselves, is an evidence of its high
wisdom; an element not, as is supposed by some, of weakness, but of
strength; not of anarchy or revolution, but of peace and safety. Its
general recognition would of itself, in a great measure, if not
altogether, supersede the necessity of its exercise, by impressing on
the movements of the government that moderation and justice so
essential to harmony and peace, in a country of such vast extent and
diversity of interests as ours; and would, if controversy should come,
turn the resentment of the aggrieved from the system to those who
had abused its powers (a point all important), and cause them to
seek redress, not in revolution or overthrow, but in reformation. It is,
in fact, properly understood, a substitute where the alternative would
be force, tending to prevent, and if that fails, to correct peaceably the
aberrations to which all political systems are liable, and which, if
permitted to accumulate, without correction, must finally end in a
general catastrophe.
 Speech of Henry Clay

In Defence of the American System[83] in which is given the Previous

History of Tariff Contests in the Senate of the United States,
February 2d, 3d and 6th, 1832.
[Mr. Clay, having retired from Congress soon after the establishment of the
American System, by the passage of the Tariff of 1824, did not return to it till 1831–
2, when the opponents of this system had acquired the ascendency, and were bent
on its destruction. An act reducing the duties on many of the protected articles,
was devised and passed. The bill being under consideration in the Senate, Mr. Clay
addressed that body as follows:]
In one sentiment, Mr. President, expressed by the honorable
gentleman from South Carolina, (General Hayne,) though perhaps
not in the sense intended by him, I entirely concur. I agree with him,
that the decision on the system of policy embraced in this debate,
involves the future destiny of this growing country. One way I verily
believe, it would lead to deep and general distress, general
bankruptcy and national ruin, without benefit to any part of the
Union: the other, the existing prosperity will be preserved and
augmented, and the nation will continue rapidly to advance in
wealth, power, and greatness, without prejudice to any section of the
confederacy.
Thus viewing the question, I stand here as the humble but zealous
advocate, not of the interests of one State, or seven States only, but of
the whole Union. And never before have I felt more intensely, the
overpowering weight of that share of responsibility which belongs to
me in these deliberations. Never before have I had more occasion
than I now have to lament my want of those intellectual powers, the
possession of which might enable me to unfold to this Senate, and to
illustrate to this people great truths, intimately connected with the
lasting welfare of my country. I should, indeed, sink overwhelmed
and subdued beneath the appalling magnitude of the task which lies
before me, if I did not feel myself sustained and fortified by a
thorough consciousness of the justness of the cause which I have
espoused, and by a persuasion I hope not presumptuous, that it has
the approbation of that Providence who has so often smiled upon
these United States.
Eight years ago it was my painful duty to present to the other
House of Congress, an unexaggerated picture of the general distress
pervading the whole land. We must all yet remember some of its
frightful features. We all know that the people were then oppressed
and borne down by an enormous load of debt; that the value of
property was at the lowest point of depression; that ruinous sales
and sacrifices were everywhere made of real estate; that stop laws,
and relief laws, and paper money were adopted to save the people
from impending destruction; that a deficit in the public revenue
existed, which compelled government to seize upon, and divert from
its legitimate object the appropriations to the sinking fund, to
redeem the national debt; and that our commerce and navigation
were threatened with a complete paralysis. In short, sir, if I were to
select any term of seven years since the adoption of the present
constitution which exhibited a scene of the most widespread dismay
and desolation, it would be exactly that term of seven years which
immediately preceded the establishment of the tariff of 1824.
I have now to perform the more pleasing task of exhibiting an
imperfect sketch of the existing state of the unparalleled prosperity
of the country. On a general survey, we behold cultivation extended,
the arts flourishing, the face of the country improved, our people
fully and profitably employed, and the public countenance exhibiting
tranquillity, contentment and happiness. And if we descend into
particulars, we have the agreeable contemplation of a people out of
debt, land rising slowly in value, but in a secure and salutary degree;
a ready though not extravagant market for all the surplus
productions of our industry; innumerable flocks and herds browsing
and gamboling on ten thousand hills and plains, covered with rich
and verdant grasses; our cities expanded, and whole villages
springing up, as it were, by enchantment; our exports and imports
increased and increasing; our tonnage, foreign and coastwise,
swelling and fully occupied; the rivers of our interior animated by the
perpetual thunder and lightning of countless steam-boats; the
currency sound and abundant; the public debt of two wars nearly
redeemed; and, to crown all, the public treasury overflowing,
embarrassing Congress, not to find subjects of taxation, but to select
the objects which shall be liberated from the impost. If the term of
seven years were to be selected, of the greatest prosperity which this
people have enjoyed since the establishment of their present
constitution, it would be exactly that period of seven years which
immediately followed the passage of the tariff of 1824.
This transformation of the condition of the country from gloom
and distress to brightness and prosperity, has been mainly the work
of American legislation, fostering American industry, instead of
allowing it to be controlled by foreign legislation, cherishing foreign
industry. The foes of the American System, in 1824, with great
boldness and confidence, predicted, 1st. The ruin of the public
revenue, and the creation of a necessity to resort to direct taxation.
The gentleman from South Carolina, (General Hayne,) I believe,
thought that the tariff of 1824 would operate a reduction of revenue
to the large amount of eight millions of dollars. 2d. The destruction
of our navigation. 3d. The desolation of commercial cities. And 4th.
The augmentation of the price of objects of consumption, and further
decline in that of the articles of our exports. Every prediction which
they made has failed—utterly failed. Instead of the ruin of the public
revenue, with which they then sought to deter us from the adoption
of the American System, we are now threatened with its subversion,
by the vast amount of the public revenue produced by that system.
Every branch of our navigation has increased.

Whilst we thus behold the entire failure of all that was foretold
against the system, it is a subject of just felicitation to its friends, that
all their anticipations of its benefits have been fulfilled, or are in
progress of fulfillment. The honorable gentleman from South
Carolina has made an allusion to a speech made by me, in 1824, in
the other House, in support of the tariff, and to which, otherwise, I
should not have particularly referred. But I would ask any one, who
can now command the courage to peruse that long production, what
principle there laid down is not true? what prediction then made has
been falsified by practical experience?
It is now proposed to abolish the system, to which we owe so much
of the public prosperity, and it is urged that the arrival of the period
of the redemption of the public debt has been confidently looked to
as presenting a suitable occasion to rid the country of evils with
which the system is alleged to be fraught. Not an inattentive observer
of passing events, I have been aware that, among those who were
most early pressing the payment of the public debt, and upon that
ground were opposing appropriations to other great interests, there
were some who cared less about the debt than the accomplishment of
other objects. But the people of the United States have not coupled
the payment of their public debt with the destruction of the
protection of their industry, against foreign laws and foreign
industry. They have been accustomed to regard the extinction of the
public debt as relief from a burthen, and not as the infliction of a
curse. If it is to be attended or followed by the subversion of the
American system, and an exposure of our establishments and our
productions to the unguarded consequences of the selfish policy of
foreign powers, the payment of the public debt will be the bitterest of
curses. Its fruit will be like the fruit
“Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden.”

If the system of protection be founded on principles erroneous in

theory, pernicious in practice—above all if it be unconstitutional, as
is alleged, it ought to be forthwith abolished, and not a vestige of it
suffered to remain. But, before we sanction this sweeping
denunciation, let us look a little at this system, its magnitude, its
ramifications, its duration, and the high authorities which have
sustained it. We shall see that its foes will have accomplished
comparatively nothing, after having achieved their present aim of
breaking down our iron-foundries, our woolen, cotton, and hemp
manufactories, and our sugar plantations. The destruction of these
would, undoubtedly, lead to the sacrifice of immense capital, the ruin
of many thousands of our fellow-citizens, and incalculable loss to the
whole community. But their prostration would not disfigure, nor
produce greater effect upon the whole system of protection, in all its
branches, than the destruction of the beautiful domes upon the
capitol would occasion to the magnificent edifice which they
surmount. Why, sir, there is scarcely an interest, scarcely a vocation
in society, which is not embraced by the beneficence of this system.
 It comprehends our coasting tonnage and trade, from which all
foreign tonnage is absolutely excluded.
It includes all our foreign tonnage, with the inconsiderable
exception made by treaties of reciprocity with a few foreign powers.
It embraces our fisheries, and all our hardy and enterprising
fishermen.
It extends to almost every mechanic art: * * *
It extends to all lower Louisiana, the Delta of which might as well
be submerged again in the Gulf of Mexico, from which it has been a
gradual conquest, as now to be deprived of the protecting duty upon
its great staple.
It affects the cotton planter himself, and the tobacco planter, both
of whom enjoy protection.
Such are some of the items of this vast system of protection, which
it is now proposed to abandon. We might well pause and
contemplate, if human imagination could conceive the extent of
mischief and ruin from its total overthrow, before we proceed to the
work of destruction. Its duration is worthy also of serious
consideration. Not to go behind the constitution, its date is coeval
with that instrument. It began on the ever memorable fourth day of
July—the fourth day of July, 1789. The second act which stands
recorded in the statute book, bearing the illustrious signature of
George Washington, laid the corner-stone of the whole system. That
there might be no mistake about the matter, it was then solemnly
proclaimed to the American people and to the world, that it was
necessary for “the encouragement and protection of manufactures,”
that duties should be laid. It is in vain to urge the small amount of
the measure of the protection then extended. The great principle was
then established by the fathers of the constitution, with the father of
his country at their head. And it cannot now be questioned, that, if
the government had not then been new and the subject untried, a
greater measure of protection would have been applied, if it had been
supposed necessary. Shortly after, the master minds of Jefferson and
Hamilton were brought to act on this interesting subject. Taking
views of it appertaining to the departments of foreign affairs and of
the treasury, which they respectively filled, they presented, severally,
reports which yet remain monuments of their profound wisdom, and
came to the same conclusion of protection to American industry. Mr.
Jefferson argued that foreign restrictions, foreign prohibitions, and
foreign high duties, ought to be met at home by American
restrictions, American prohibitions, and American high duties. Mr.
Hamilton, surveying the entire ground, and looking at the inherent
nature of the subject, treated it with an ability, which, if ever
equalled, has not been surpassed, and earnestly recommended
protection.
The wars of the French revolution commenced about this period,
and streams of gold poured into the United States through a
thousand channels, opened or enlarged by the successful commerce
which our neutrality enabled us to prosecute. We forgot or
overlooked, in the general prosperity, the necessity of encouraging
our domestic manufactures. Then came the edicts of Napoleon, and
the British orders in council; and our embargo, non-intercourse,
non-importation, and war, followed in rapid succession. These
national measures, amounting to a total suspension, for the period of
their duration, of our foreign commerce, afforded the most
efficacious encouragement to American manufactures; and
accordingly they everywhere sprung up. While these measures of
restriction, and this state of war continued, the manufacturers were
stimulated in their enterprise by every assurance of support, by
public sentiment, and by legislative resolves. It was about that period
(1808) that South Carolina bore her high testimony to the wisdom of
the policy, in an act of her legislature, the preamble of which, now
before me, reads:
“Whereas, the establishment and encouragement of domestic
manufactures, is conducive to the interests of a State, by adding new
incentives to industry, and as being the means of disposing to
advantage the surplus productions of the agriculturist: and whereas,
in the present unexampled state of the world, their establishment in
our country is not only expedient, but politic in rendering us
independent of foreign nations.”
The legislature, not being competent to afford the most efficacious
aid, by imposing duties on foreign rival articles, proceeded to
incorporate a company.
Peace, under the treaty of Ghent, returned in 1815, but there did
not return with it the golden days which preceded the edicts levelled
at our commerce by Great Britain and France. It found all Europe
tranquilly resuming the arts and business of civil life. It found
Europe no longer the consumer of our surplus, and the employer of
our navigation, but excluding, or heavily burthening, almost all the
productions of our agriculture, and our rivals in manufactures, in
navigation, and in commerce. It found our country, in short, in a
situation totally different from all the past—new and untried. It
became necessary to adapt our laws, and especially our laws of
impost, to the new circumstances in which we found ourselves.
Accordingly, that eminent and lamented citizen, then at the head of
the treasury, (Mr. Dallas,) was required, by a resolution of the House
of Representatives, under date the twenty-third day of February,
1815, to prepare and report to the succeeding session of Congress, a
system of revenue conformable with the actual condition of the
country. He had the circle of a whole year to perform the work,
consulted merchants, manufacturers, and other practical men, and
opened an extensive correspondence. The report which he made at
the session of 1816, was the result of his inquiries and reflections,
and embodies the principles which he thought applicable to the
subject. It has been said, that the tariff of 1816 was a measure of
mere revenue, and that it only reduced the war duties to a peace
standard. It is true that the question then was, how much and in
what way should the double duties of the war be reduced? Now, also,
the question is, on what articles shall the duties be reduced so as to
subject the amounts of the future revenue to the wants of the
government? Then it was deemed an inquiry of the first importance,
as it should be now, how, the reduction should be made, so as to
secure proper encouragement to our domestic industry. That this
was a leading object in the arrangement of the tariff of 1816, I well
remember, and it is demonstrated by the language of Mr. Dallas. He
says in his report:
“There are few, if any governments, which do not regard the
establishment of domestic manufactures as a chief object of public
policy. The United States have always so regarded it. * * * The
demands of the country, while the acquisitions of supplies from
foreign nations was either prohibited or impracticable, may have
afforded sufficient inducement for this investment of capital, and
this application of labor; but the inducement, in its necessary extent,
must fail when the day of competition returns. Upon that change in
the condition of the country, the preservation of the manufactures,
which private citizens under favorable auspices have constituted the
property of the nation, becomes a consideration of general policy, to
be resolved by a recollection of past embarrassments; by the
certainty of an increased difficulty of reinstating, upon any
emergency, the manufactures which shall be allowed to perish and
pass away,” &c.
The measure of protection which he proposed was not adopted, in
regard to some leading articles, and there was great difficulty in
ascertaining what it ought to have been. But the principle was then
distinctly asserted and fully sanctioned.
The subject of the American system was again brought up in 1820,
by the bill reported by the chairman of the committee of
manufactures, now a member of the bench of the Supreme Court of
the United States, and the principle was successfully maintained by
the representatives of the people; but the bill which they passed was
defeated in the Senate. It was revived in 1824; the whole ground
carefully and deliberately explored, and the bill then introduced,
receiving all the sanctions of the constitution, became the law of the
land. An amendment of the system was proposed in 1828, to the
history of which I refer with no agreeable recollections. The bill of
that year, in some of its provisions, was framed on principles directly
adverse to the declared wishes of the friends of the policy of
protection. I have heard, without vouching for the fact, that it was so
framed, upon the advice of a prominent citizen, now abroad, with the
view of ultimately defeating the bill, and with assurances that, being
altogether unacceptable to the friends of the American system, the
bill would be lost. Be that as it may, the most exceptional features of
the bill were stamped upon it, against the earnest remonstrances of
the friends of the system, by the votes of southern members, upon a
principle, I think, as unsound in legislation as it is reprehensible in
ethics. The bill was passed, notwithstanding all this, it having been
deemed better to take the bad along with the good which it
contained, than reject it altogether. Subsequent legislation has
corrected the error then perpetrated, but still that measure is
vehemently denounced by gentlemen who contributed to make it
what it was.
 Thus, sir, has this great system of protection been gradually built,
stone upon stone, and step by step, from the fourth of July, 1789,
down to the present period. In every stage of its progress it has
received the deliberate sanction of Congress. A vast majority of the
people of the United States has approved and continue to approve it.
Every chief magistrate of the United States, from Washington to the
present, in some form or other, has given to it the authority of his
name; and however the opinions of the existing President are
interpreted South of Mason’s and Dixon’s line, on the north they are
at least understood to favor the establishment of a judicious tariff.
The question, therefore, which we are now called upon to
determine, is not whether we shall establish a new and doubtful
system of policy, just proposed, and for the first time presented to
our consideration, but whether we shall break down and destroy a
long established system, patiently and carefully built up and
sanctioned, during a series of years, again and again, by the nation
and its highest and most revered authorities. Are we not bound
deliberately to consider whether we can proceed to this work of
destruction without a violation of the public faith? The people of the
United States have justly supposed that the policy of protecting their
industry against foreign legislation and foreign industry was fully
settled, not by a single act, but by repeated and deliberate acts of
government, performed at distant and frequent intervals. In full
confidence that the policy was firmly and unchangeably fixed,
thousands upon thousands have invested their capital, purchased a
vast amount of real and other estate, made permanent
establishments, and accommodated their industry. Can we expose to
utter and irretrievable ruin this countless multitude, without justly
incurring the reproach of violating the national faith?
Such are the origin, duration, extent and sanctions of the policy
which we are now called upon to subvert. Its beneficial effects,
although they may vary in degree, have been felt in all parts of the
Union. To none, I verily believe, has it been prejudicial. In the North,
every where, testimonials are borne to the high prosperity which it
has diffused. There, all branches of industry are animated and
flourishing. Commerce, foreign and domestic, active; cities and
towns springing up, enlarging and beautifying; navigation fully and