I recently watched a lecture by Daniel Dennett (Thank you for the suggestion Dr. Oliver) titled From Bacteria to Bach (Radbound Reflects). Dr. Dennett, walks us through his thought process on how the brain works and the possibility of consciousness being a byproduct. He does so by exploring and giving examples of both evolution and biological processes being the cause of consciousness.
In his lecture, Dr. Dennett spends the first few minutes explaining the difference between evolution and intelligent design, “You’ve got to think of it as R&D, research and development. It’s a design process exploiting information in the environment to create, maintain and improve the design of things. R&D takes time and energy. Lots of energy, billions of years and uncountable trillions of failures in order to gradually optimize the design of these (cells) most organisms are made of. And there are two types of R&D, natural selection and intelligent designers. Now, evolution is purposeless, foresightless, extremely costly, slow where as intelligent design is purposeful, somewhat foresighted, governed by cost considerations and is relatively fast. But, as slow as evolution is, it’s brilliant.” He goes on to give the example of how countless time scientists will come across something in nature and not understand it’s purpose. It may look messy, or irrational or random or without function, only to eventually stumble upon its true meaning and purpose or function which shows, in the words of Dr. Dennett paraphrasing Francis Crick, “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”
As the lecture continues, Dr. Dennett begins to explain how comparing the products of evolution and intelligent design can support his theory. He compares a termite castle mound to the La Sagrada Familia (a church in Barcelona). When comparing the two side by side (both structures built by animals), it is hard to deny the similarity in construction. So much so it admittedly startled me. How can a group of termites build a mound that could be mistaken as the shadow of a magnificent church constructed by the brilliant Gaudi? They are both constructed by animals, however one animal seems to be clueless without any deeper thought on why they do what they or what they do where as the other does. As pointed out in the video, there is no boss termite, no architect termite, no blueprints, etc. yet they are able to build an incredible structure. In the case of La Sagrada Familia, there were thinkers and builders and designers and assistants and workers and all sorts of intelligent designers involved and the product, yet again, is incredible. Now here is where Dr. Dennett initially lost me, but I think I understand what he is trying to say. He makes the comparison, if a termite colony which is comprised of, say, 70 million clueless termites, and your brain is full of 86 billion even more clueless neurons. How do you get a Gaudi type mind out of a termite colony brain? Meaning, a group of termites will never be able to produce what Gaudi’d brain produced, but why if Gaudi’s brain is just a bunch of clueless neurons communicating somewhat with each other just like a mound of termites? The answer according to this lecture are tools. “A termite mound is much like a bare brain, it doesn’t have any tools” (Dennett, Redbound). Intelligent designers have tools, such as language, actual physical tools they can use to build and construct and forethought. We acquired these tools over time by means of cultural evolution through technology.
Dr. Dennett goes on to explain how this evolution of culture is ultimately what brings us from competence without comprehension to competence with comprehension. Through the development of things like math, inventions, language and ideas, over time this cultural evolution advances our minds and gets passed on from brain to brain.
The lecture continues on with more of this but to be honest, I was getting frustrated and admittedly hit pause and went to the internet. Dr. Dennett had yet to explain HOW consciousness exists. What is actually going on in the brain that makes us aware. He may have answered it in the lecture at a later point but my frustration was getting the best of me. So I started looking online and found somewhat of an answer. Neural Darwinism. Neural Darwinism is Gerald Edelman’s theory which suggests the human body is capable of developing and creating necessary complex adaptive systems from sensory feedback from the body through events and experiences. His experiments, which Edelman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology in 1972, showed how the population of lymphocytes capable of binding to a foreign antigen is increased by differential clonal multiplication following antigen discovery. (Edelman).
This is suggesting that consciousness is the adaptation of the human body to its surroundings, environment and experiences out of necessity for survival and continuation of the species. And it is here that I sit with a heavy heart. This makes sense but I cannot help but feel a sense of loss. This view to me seems to take the awe and wonder out of consciousness. Perhaps it is my naive mind that there could be or should be some grandeur explanation behind why we are here and why we are the holders of our own awareness. There is an innate need in me to long for a greater meaning behind our existence. There has to be some cosmic key we have yet to discover that will explain our true meaning and purpose as to why we are here and what we are meant to do, doesn’t there? Or am I finally figuring out I am guilty of having the ego centric mindset that humans are in some way responsible due to our higher level of consciousness for this world and in turn the understanding of our place on it, the worlds place in the universe and in turn the universe itself. Dennett’s view an Edelman’s explanation is understandable but deflating.
“Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection: Gerald M. Edelman, (Basic Books; New York, 1987); Xxii + 371 Pages.” Artificial Intelligence, Elsevier, 10 Feb. 2003, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0004370289900040.
Reflects, Radboud. “From Bacteria to Bach I Lecture by Philosopher Daniel Dennett.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Oct. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wE8Y1g8yz0&feature=youtu.be.
"This view to me seems to take the awe and wonder out of consciousness" - To the contrary, for me, the notion of consciousness as a grand adaptation which emerged from originally humble and chaotic origins is, as Darwin said, true "grandeur"... but I need to elaborate this perspective, which I'll do as soon as I get a chance. Stay tuned...
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