Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

Interestingly, Boyd resembles Bateson in arguing for a thoroughly interdisciplinary approach.Like Boyd, Bateson’s interest was in addressing the very way we think about issues. He wasafter the very principles of organization that informed the thinking not only of organisms butof our culture as a whole 145 . And like Boyd, Bateson made the connection between evolutiontheory and mental processes, asserting that ‘if you want to understand mental process, lookat biological evolution and conversely if you want to understand biological evolution, go lookat mental process’ 146 .In similar vein, and very relevant for understanding Boyd’s comprehensive OODAloop graphic, from Monod Boyd learned that the prime functions of the nervous systemcould be defined in the following way 147 :1. To control and coordinate neuromotor activity, notably in accord with sensory inputs.2. To contain, in the form of genetically determined elements of circuitry, more or less complexprograms of action, and to set them in motion in response to particular stimuli.3. To analyze, sift, and integrate sensory inputs so as to obtain a representation of the outsideworld geared to specific performances [of an organism].4. To register events which are significant in light of those specific performances.5. To group them into classes according to their analogies.6. To enrich, refine, and diversify the innate programs by incorporating these experiences intothem.7. To imagine – represent and simulate – external events and programs of action for theorganism itself.Monod asserts that we observe and respond through a genetically determined programwhich is the result of ‘experience accumulated by the entire ancestry of the species over thecourse of its evolution’ (what Boyd would term culture), which in turn shapes action andcurrent experience after analysis of the effect of the action 148 . Here one can recognize theelements of genetics, culture, experience and new information Boyd includes in his graphicof the OODA loop.Boyd’s model, in line with Monod’s description, also reflects the criticism againstpurely cybernetic models. Research from the 1970s onwards in cognitive sciences have madeit clear that human intelligence is utterly different from a machine. Gardner told Boyd thatthe cognitive revolution deliberately de-emphasized culture, emotions, context and history 149 .As Grush observed, the cognitive revolution that occurred during the sixties and seventies inessence was the realization that any adequate theory of human and animal mentality wouldneed to posit representational states between sensory stimulus and behavioral response - atleast for a great many domains of behavior. The cognitive revolution brought about arenewed legitimacy of talk and theorizing about some types of mental or cognitive states,specifically, content-bearing states such as beliefs, desires, or more generally states whichwere about things, or carried information about things, and over which operations such asinference could be performed so as to solve problems and plan. Functionalism too receivedcriticism for the same reason. Genuine understanding is not just a matter of our mental145 Alfonso Montuori, 'Editors Introduction', in Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature, A Necessary Unity(Hampton Press, Cresskill, New Jersey, 2002), p.xvii..146 Sergio Manghi, 'Foreword', op cit., p.xi.147 Monod, p.149.148 Ibid, p.154.149 Gardner (1985), p.41.109