Friday, June 10, 2005
A case of mistaken identity crisis
"As Daniel Dennett, the philosopher, puts it: 'Complex systems can in fact function in what seems to be a thoroughly 'purposeful and integrated' way simply by having lots of subsystems doing their own thing without any central supervision.' The self, then, is not what it seems to be. There is no soul, no spirit, no supervisor. There is just a brain, a dull grey collection of neurons and neural pathways -- going about its business. The illusion of self is merely a by-product of the brain's organisational sophistication." (Via KurzweilAI.net.)
I cringe at the use of the word "merely," as used here. I think the evidence that our brains -- gnarled masses of meat -- can produce a sense of self (or, even more fantastically, two or more of them) is genuinely awe-inspiring. I don't know about you, but I don't find the notion at all demeaning; if anything, it's liberating because it suggests that we can duplicate the feat, eventually re-engineering our neural system architecture at will.
As for the non-existence of the so-called "soul": I'm not so sure. Parapsychology is patiently but inexorably teaching us we're much more than the sum of our molecules. Dennett may be comfortable dismissing centuries of conflicting evidence (anecdotal and empirical), but I'm not as easily swayed.
"As Daniel Dennett, the philosopher, puts it: 'Complex systems can in fact function in what seems to be a thoroughly 'purposeful and integrated' way simply by having lots of subsystems doing their own thing without any central supervision.' The self, then, is not what it seems to be. There is no soul, no spirit, no supervisor. There is just a brain, a dull grey collection of neurons and neural pathways -- going about its business. The illusion of self is merely a by-product of the brain's organisational sophistication." (Via KurzweilAI.net.)
I cringe at the use of the word "merely," as used here. I think the evidence that our brains -- gnarled masses of meat -- can produce a sense of self (or, even more fantastically, two or more of them) is genuinely awe-inspiring. I don't know about you, but I don't find the notion at all demeaning; if anything, it's liberating because it suggests that we can duplicate the feat, eventually re-engineering our neural system architecture at will.
As for the non-existence of the so-called "soul": I'm not so sure. Parapsychology is patiently but inexorably teaching us we're much more than the sum of our molecules. Dennett may be comfortable dismissing centuries of conflicting evidence (anecdotal and empirical), but I'm not as easily swayed.
8 comments:
Good critique of what appears to be Dennett's attitude in this matter.
Have you read his book "Consciousness Explained"? It seems like a quite lucid deconstruction of one Western classical view of the self, i.e. the Cartesian theatre of a singular observing Self that has supreme executive control of the mind-body. This he replaces with a more epiphenomenal/emergent brain-based model that he calls the Pandemonium model of consciousness.
Reading it, I got the attitude that whatever awe and wonder Dennett finds in "a dull grey collection of neurons and neural pathways -- going about its business," he does not seem to express it. Though I suspect it is there, somewhere, or he would not be thinking so heavily about the subject.
I wonder how many scientists and philosophers find a shift towards more emergent models of complexity in systems as somewhat of a let down. It might seem a bit disheartening to some to find that amazing aspects like the Self and Consciousness may possibly be seen not as separate self-existing objects, but absent altogether and side-effects of more tangible (and thus, I suppose, more mundane?) natural processes.
I personally find emergent phenomena -- the kind Rudy Rucker might classify as "gnarly" -- much more appealing and interesting than the Cartesian model; but that's just me.
A) Dennett commits the (now common) mind-brain misidentification fallacy, a case of especially egregious pseudo-scientific reductionism at work. It is easy to demonstrate that the brain is not the mind using the computer hardware/software analogy (not perfect but good enough for the purpose).
B) I would like to see Dennett apply his "philosophy" to his own writings. If, indeed, even language is just the brain going about its "dull grey business," then his writing is also a product of this dull grey business and so essentially meaningless and purposeless. This does seem to be the case, so maybe he's right after all! (Talk about your twisted logic!)
Mac, I agree. I find emergent phenomena to be a wonderful source of inspiration.
I did an independent study that lasted for a number of years into what is called "swarm intelligence," a model for artificial intelligence that is derived from complex behavior in social insects such as ant colonies and some bee hives and termite nests.
In an example of this model, we notice that ants individually do not have much neurological intelligence about the global environment encountered by their colony, yet the colony as a whole is able to make intelligent (by human standards) decisions about utilizing food sources and other tasks. Individual ants are simple agents in comparison to the activity of the colony, but it is the manner in which they process information collectively that leads to emergent higher-order intelligence.
Each ant leaves a pheromone trail leading from the nest to wherever they wander randomly. When one ant happens to find a food source, other ants will follow the pheromones left by that ant and begin to utilize that source en masse. It happens that this process will optimize the global behavior of the colony to utilize the most efficient (nearest) food sources first, despite the knowledge of the individual ants being limited to their local surroundings. This mechanism of individuals making changes in their environment, which can be used by others at another time, is called stigmergy.
I see parallels between this mechanism and that behind the operation of neural networks.
the only thing we experience directly is our own consciousness- everything else, including what we call a "brain" is a later interpretation of colors and shapes, made with concepts. All this stuff is provisional, our immediate experience of our own consciousness is not.
I've never seen my own brain, all I know is that textbooks and photos (as interpreted by my consciousness) say that I must have one. Fine, but I'm not going to give a supposition like that any kind of epistemic priority.
Consiousness is a direct experience, brains are inferred. This cannot be reversed no matter how many hoops you try to jump through conceptually.
dante r -- You're a phenomenologist after me own heart!
"I've never seen my own brain, all I know is that textbooks and photos (as interpreted by my consciousness) say that I must have one. Fine, but I'm not going to give a supposition like that any kind of epistemic priority."
Dante, find a corpse (or just a head if need be). Find a saw. Apply one to the other.
Solves the problem rather thoroughly, dunnit?