Daniel Dennett: "From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds"

This talk introduces a recent book by Dennett, rehashing and updating his theories on the mind. I have the hard copy of the book on order. These comments refer to his summary of it delivered as part of the Google Talks series.

It is much to Dennett's credit that, as he goes along, his ideas become more precise and articulate. His examples are more apt, his analogies closer to the "essence". He never seems to say, "I was totally wrong about this", but he does make progress - partly by not taking himself too seriously. It is much to Dennett's credit that he is rarely caught in an "argument" -- he sees an element of truth in almost everything, always putting his own ideas on the table without allowing opposition to get personal. This is good because he gets a lot of opposition.

"Consciousness Explained" (1991) was a serious over-reach. Rather a mess that didn't come close to delivering on the promise in its title.

Yet, in the intervening 25 years or so, Dennett has wrestled with the ideas in "Consciousness" and made them almost work. There are many signs of progress ...

COMPUTERS

His facile understanding (1971) of the way computers work has been replaced by a deeper insight -- especially contrasting the machine with the living cell. Yet he manages to navigate the tricky issue of what is and is not alive ("Animus"). It's about "internationality" - behavour that makes little sense if you don't take into account a future "purpose". He's very good at showing that this behavour does not necessarily involve consciousness. I note that this particular talk was delivered to the folks at Google, who arguably know more about computers than anyone else on the planet. There were not patronizing giggles from the audience. Questions from the audience were respectful - it was a dialogue between peers.

COMPETENCE

He makes it clear that some entities are more "competent" than others even if they don't actually know what they are doing. Increasing competence is happening in evolution even though it is a mindless process. It is, in the end, governed by a close partnership between the entity and its environment. Not all things are possible but "R&D" is required to find out what is actually possible. In a sense, "thinking" takes place in partnership with reality! How very Zen!

It's worth noting that he sees his pet 3D vision of the evolution of mind from blind chance to intelligent design as not a picture of what is real but an arbitrary choice of 3 axes for the purpose of explanation. In other words, he's very aware of the role of analogy (as brilliantly explained in "Surfaces and Essences"). There are good analogies and bad ones. Dennett is aware of these things as "memes" - (thinking tools) things that evolve to become more useful or are discarded as misleading. This applies to the meme of the meme itself, which may become much more useful than it was when it was born in the pages of "Selfish Gene".

REDUCTIONISM

In his early years, Dennett was literally the poster child for "reductionism", the idea that behavour of systems was "merely" the result of the behavour of their constituent parts. Dennett has become very good not only at accepting the idea of emergence (the whole is more than the parts) but explaining how this becomes true. A good theory of emergence (the classic being the theory of gases based on basic Newtonean physics) don't just explain emergent behavour but explicity tie it down to what is going on at a simpler level. This is never easy.

MEMES

Dennett is still very respectful of the ideas of his friend Richard Dawkins and recommends the book that made Dawkins famous (Selfish Gene). It is interesting to note that Dawkins has since downplayed the idea of memes presented in that book. Dennett, on the other hand, has picked up the idea and run with it. Dennett's "memes" are useful and, in fact, it's possible for Dennett to talk about memes without using the word. An echo of the talking points of "four horsemen" of Atheism is still to be found here, as Dennett speaks of the virus-infected ape - the viruses being memes. This is gratifyingly close to my term: "The Programmable Ape". In both cases, we are referring to the fact that our minds consist largely of culturally determined "memes". To understand this idea, it is not necessary to see the genetic evolution theory of memes as literally true (it is hopelessly imprecise) but it's a great analogy and points precisely to what Zen would claim the "mind" is an illusion - there are only "ideas" running around in our heads. No "observer".

It is culture and especially language that is evolving and getting smarter at an exponential rate over the last 100 years or so.

Dennett's little talk is perhaps the clearest explanation I've seen of what is going on and why. My old "Dragon Theory" (now Programmable Ape) blog explores a special case of this insight - especially the darker implications.

LIFE ITSELF AND "ANIMUS"

Dennett does us a big favor by breaking down the concept of "life" (not merely consciousness). We still don't know how life arose but Dennett has provided a way of talking about the emergence of life without the need for mystical language, a mysterious miraculous event or a whole set of new words to describe what is going on.

Animus

I want to make a brief note of the concept of "Animus". I'm almost pulling this term out of thin air to refer to an idea that is still crystallizing. The word does already have meanings and connotations which I will comment on when the  opportunity presents itself.

At the core of the idea is recognition of a "system" that shows intentional behavour. Lately I have been using "system" in preference to "thing" because I recognize that nothing really exists in isolation. We recognize a system by (somewhat arbitrarily) drawing a line around all the forms and relationships that determine the dynamic behavour of those forms and relationships (i.e., how they change with time).

Animus refers (or does it?) to the property of a system's behavour that cannot easily be described without reference to the future state of the system. The system is behaving in a way that tends to bring about some future states of affairs rather than others. One might say this of the Earth/Moon system, governed by gravity, but in this case and others not showing "animus", the behavour can be described by a physical "law" or simple cause and effect relationships.

Animus obviously covers the behavour of living things, which behave in ways to perpetuate their form into subsequent generations. Their behavour is described in Darwinian terms as "adaptive".

I would extend animus to cover machines, which behave (by definition) "mechanically" according to ordinary cause and effect like a falling rock, but cannot be sensibly described without reference to the purpose of their behavior. A theologically-minded philosopher would say something like the "animus", if any, was inherited by the designer of the machine who is the one who is "really" alive and the real possessor of "animus". I would reply that "animus" and "life" are not identical concepts. Life is a special case of animus.

It is animus that we see in the "Dragons" of dragon theory. It is animus that we do not see in the Universe as a whole, which is at the heart of the debate over the existence of God. Belief in God is just one way to "explain" animus (purposefulness) in the Universe in general. Other explanations, such as "fate" have their followers. Anthropomorphic  cosmology tries to show that the fundamental laws of the Universe are somehow chosen in advance to make human life possible.

So, while I'm not sure exactly how to define "animus", nor even sure what kind of a thing it is, I'm sure that attempting to put my finger on this slippery idea may help to add another key concept to my intellectual tool kit.

Western philosophy got itself in a tangle by mis-handling analogies to some fundamental ideas - many newly discovered in the Enlightenment:

• Machine. We have been in awe of our machines since the 17th century. Descartes and Hobbes took it for granted that animals "were" machines. The analogy persists with modern philosophers such as Dennett, who takes it for granted that our brains are "kinda" like computers. This is so ingrained and "obvious" that it's hard to make people realize that it's an analogy - maybe not a good one.
• Math Envy. The idea that everything can be reduced to a series of axioms and proofs, like Euclid's geometry. Descartes (whose lasting mark was in geometry) is a perfect example. On a more subtle level, the idea crept into politics: "We hold these things to be self-evident - that all men are created equal ...".
• Free Will. This idea is a relative of "animus". It attempts to distinguish humans from "mere machines" in that their behavour is not governed by mechanical laws. It became important when it seemed that Newton's "laws" were the first step in explaining everything that happens in the world, including human history, in terms of precise, inflexible, deterministic "law". Of course, this project did not proceed as predicted, but many cling to the idea that there exists some kind of distinction between behavour motivated by reason and behavour motivated by physical law. Moreover, this distinction is held by many to be the key to what we call the "soul".
• Physical Law.   It seems that Newton was the one that first developed what we now refer to as a "law" of nature. It's hard to take ourselves back to that period, where there was serious debate (even in the mind of Newton himself) as to just what sort of a thing this "law" was. Newton naturally took it to be a law decreed by God, bringing all of physics into the realm of "animus". We would now see this as mere superstition but it's a superstition that is buried in our language, most notably in the very word "law".