Cerebral Inhibition Meeting The Macy Cybernetics Conferences were preceded by the
Cerebral Inhibition Meeting, organized by
Frank Fremont-Smith and Lawrence K. Frank, and held on 13–15 May 1942. Those invited were
Gregory Bateson,
Frank Beach,
Carl Binger,
Felix Deutsch,
Flanders Dunbar, Julie Eisenbud, Carlyla Jacobsen,
Lawrence Kubie, Jules Masserman,
Margaret Mead,
Warren McCulloch, Bela Mittelmann,
David Rapoport,
Arturo Rosenblueth, Donald Sheehan, Georg Soule, Robert White, John Whitehorn, and Harold Wolff. As chair of this set of conferences,
Warren McCulloch had responsibility to ensure that disciplinary boundaries were crossed. The Cybernetics were particularly complex as a result of bringing together the most diverse group of participants of any of the Macy conferences, so they were the most difficult to organize and maintain. The principal purpose of these series of conferences was to set the foundations for a
general science of the workings of the human mind. These were one of the first organized studies of
interdisciplinarity, spawning breakthroughs in
systems theory,
cybernetics, and what later became known as
cognitive science. One of the topics spanning a majority of the conferences was
reflexivity.
Claude Shannon, one of the attendees, had previously worked on
information theory and laid one of the initial frameworks for the Cybernetic Conferences by postulating
information as a probabilistic element which reduced the uncertainty from a set of choices (i.e. being told a statement is true, or even false, completely reduces the ambiguity of its message). Other conference members, especially
Donald MacKay, sought to reconcile Shannon's view of
information, which they called selective information, with their concept of
structural information, which signified how selective information was to be understood: a given true statement might acquire additional meanings in varied settings without further communication. The addition of meaning into the concept of information necessarily brought in the role of the observer. MacKay argued that in receiving and interpreting a message, the observer and the received information become indivisible: the receiver interprets the message relative to a preexisting internal state consisting of what is already known. MacKay further coflated the roles of information and its meaning through the idea of
reflexivity and feedback loops. The effect of the original message on the initial observer could be perceived by a second observer
mimetically, producing a possibly different interpretation, which could then reflect back on the initial observer or on others
ad infinitum.
Reflexive feedback loops became prominent during the later discussions on
behavioral patterns of the
human mind.
Warren McCulloch and
Walter Pitts, also attendees, had previously worked on designing the first mathematical schema of a
neuron, assuming it had a threshold level of excitation from incoming neurons, which caused it to firie its own
signal to others. Similarly to Shannon's arguments on
relay and switch circuits, McCulloch and Pitts proved that
neural networks were capable of all
boolean algebra calculations. McCulloch proposed that the firing of a
neuron can be associated with an event or interaction taking place in the external world which provides sensory stimulus that is then picked up by the
nervous system and processed by the
neurons. But he also showed how a
neural network's signal pathway could be set up
reflexively within itself, causing the neurons to fire a 'reverberating' circular
feedback loop without any original 'firing' signal or new incoming signals. McCulloch claimed this accounted for conscious phenomena in which individuals' world view, their interpretation of past sensory perception, was
cognitively distorted or missing, as seen in individuals with
phantom limb syndrome or
hallucinations of sensory perception without an external signal. The psychiatrist attendee Lawrence Kubie noted how repetitive and
obsessive behaviors in
neurotics resembled McCulloch's reverberating loops.
Shannon had developed a maze-solving device which attendees likened to a rat. ''Shannon's rat'' was programmed to find its marked goal when dropped at any point in a maze, being able to recall past experience, previous paths it had taken, which often enabled it to find its goal. However, Shannon showed the rat's design was prone to failure caused by
reflexive feedback loops. If the rat found itself in a location where its memory failed to recall a previous path to the goal, it could get stuck in an endless loop chasing its tail. Abandoning its goal-oriented design, the rat would seemingly become neurotic. The conferences failed to reconcile the subjectivity of information (its meaning) with the subjectivity of the human mind, but succeeded in showing how concepts such as the observer,
reflexivity,
black box systems, and
neural networks could not be approached in isolation, but would have to be overcome together to form a complete working theory of the mind. :*First Cybernetics Conference, 21–22 March 1946. Titled "Feedback Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems in Biological and Social Systems". :*Second Cybernetics Conference, 17–18 October 1946. Title changed to "Teleological Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems" :*Third Cybernetics Conference, 13–14 March 1947. :*Fourth Cybernetics Conference, 23–24 October 1947. Title changed to "Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems". :*Fifth Cybernetics Conference, 18–19 March 1948 :*Sixth Cybernetics Conference, 24–25 March 1949 :*Seventh Cybernetics Conference, 23–24 March 1950. Title changed to "Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems". :*Eighth Cybernetics Conference, 15–16 March 1951 :*Ninth Cybernetics Conference, 20–21 March 1952 :*Tenth Cybernetics Conference, 22–24 April 1953 Participants: (as members or guests) in at least one of the Cybernetics conferences:
Harold Alexander Abramson, Ackerman, Vahe E. Amassian,
William Ross Ashby,
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel,
Gregory Bateson, Alex Bavelas, Julian H. Bigelow, Herbert G. Birch, John R. Bowman, Henry W. Brosin,
Yuen Ren Chao (who memorably recited the
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den), Jan Droogleever-Fortuyn, M. Ericsson, Fitch,
Lawrence K. Frank,
Ralph Waldo Gerard,
William Grey Walter,
Molly Harrower,
George Evelyn Hutchinson,
Heinrich Klüver,
Lawrence S. Kubie,
Paul Lazarsfeld,
Kurt Lewin,
J. C. R. Licklider,
Howard S. Liddell,
Donald B. Lindsley, W. K. Livingston,
David Lloyd,
Rafael Lorente de Nó,
R. Duncan Luce,
Donald M. MacKay,
Donald G. Marquis,
Warren S. McCulloch, Turner McLardy,
Margaret Mead, Frederick A. Mettier, Marcel Monnier,
Oskar Morgenstern,
F. S. C. Northrop,
Walter Pitts,
Henry Quastler, Antoine Remond,
I. A. Richards, David McKenzie Rioch,
Arturo Rosenblueth,
Leonard J. Savage,
T. C. Schneirla,
Claude Shannon, John Stroud,
Hans-Lukas Teuber, Mottram Torre, Gerhardt von Bonin,
Heinz von Foerster,
John von Neumann, Heinz Werner,
Norbert Wiener,
Jerome B. Wiesner,
J. Z. Young This is a sampling of the topics discussed each year. :* Semantic information and its measures
Neuropharmacological Conferences Five annual Neuropharmacological Conferences took place from 1954 to 1959 with a skipped year in 1958. While the conferences have developed a reputation as being primarily about
LSD, the drug was discussed extensively at the second conference and was not the primary focus of most of the sessions. In the first conference, for instance, reference to LSD appears only one time, as a side comment during discussion. ;First Neuropharmacological Conference, 26–28 May 1954 Participants: Hudson Hoagland (Chairman), Harold A. Abramson (Secretary), Philip Bard (absent), Henry K. Beecher (absent), Mary A. B. Brazier, G. L. Cantoni, Ralph W. Gerard, Roy R. Grinker, Seymour S. Kety, Chauncey D. Leake (absent), Horace W. Magoun, Amedeo S. Marrazzi, I. Arthur Mirsky, J. H. Quastel (absent), Orr E. Reynolds, Curt P. Richter (absent), Ernst A. Scharrer, David Shakow (absent) Guests: Charles D. Aring,
William Borberg, Enoch Callaway III, Conan Kornetsky, Joost A. M. Meerloo, John I. Nurnberger, Carl C. Pfeiffer, Anatol Rapoport, Maurice H. Seevers, Richard Trumbull Topics: "Considerations of the Effects of Pharmacological Agents on the Over-All Circulation and Metabolism of the Brain" (Seymour Kety) "Functional Organization of the Brain" (Ernest A. Scharrer) "Studies of Electrical Activity of the Brain in Relation to Anesthesia" (Mary A. B. Brazier) "Ascending Reticular System and Anesthesia (Horace W. Magoun) "Observations on New CNS Convulsants" (Carl C. Pfeiffer)
Group Processes Conferences The Group Processes Conferences were held between 1954 and 1960. They are of particular interest due to the element of reflexivity: participants were interested in their own functioning as a group, and made numerous comments about their understanding of how Macy conferences were designed to work. For example, there were a series of jokes made about the disease afflicting them all, interdisciplinitis, or how multidisciplinarian researchers were neither fish nor fowl. When
Erving Goffman made a guest appearance at the Third conference, he explicitly prefaced his comments by saying that his ideas were partly speculative, and
Frank Fremont-Smith responded by stating that their goal was to discuss ideas that had not been crystallized. :*First Group Processes Conference, 26–30 September 1954 :*Second Group Processes Conference, 9–12 October 1955 :*Third Group Processes Conference, 7–10 October 1956 :*Fourth Group Processes Conference, 13–16 October 1957 :*Fifth Group Processes Conference, 12–15 October 1960 Participants: (as members or guests) in at least one of the Group Processes conferences: Grace Baker, Donald H. Barron,
Gregory Bateson, Alex Bavelas,
Frank A. Beach, Leo Berman,
Ray L. Birdwhistell, Robert L. Blake, Helen Blauvelt,
Jerome S. Bruner, George W. Boguslavsky,
Charlotte Bühler, Eliot D. Chapple,
Stanley Cobb, Nicholas E. Collias,
Jocelyn Crane,
Erik H. Erikson, L. Thomas Evans,
Jerome Frank, Frank S. Freeman,
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann,
Erving Goffman,
Arthur D. Hasler, Eckhard H. Hess, Sol Kramer,
Daniel S. Lehrman, Seymour Levy,
Howard Liddell,
Robert Jay Lifton, Margarethe Lorenz,
Konrad Z. Lorenz, William D. Lotspeich,
Ernst Mayr,
Margaret Mead,
Joost A. M. Meerloo, I. Arthur Mirsky,
Horst Mittelstaedt, A. Ulric Moore, R. C. Murphy, Harris B. Peck,
Karl H. Pribram, Fritz Redl,
Julius B. Richmond, Bertram Schaffner,
T. C. Schneirla, Theodore Schwartz, William J. L. Sladen, Robert J. Smith,
John P. Spiegel, H. Burr Steinbach,
Niko Tinbergen, Mottram P. Torre,
William Grey Walter, E. P. Wheeler, II. == See also ==