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alva noe
February 2010 
"Out of Our Heads" by Alva Noë
buddhacious
It’s probably not news to most people that philosophers have a tendency to get stuck in their heads. This is especially true in the field of cognitive science, where for several decades the dominant paradigm has lead philosophers (and scientists) to look in the brain for evidence of thought and consciousness. The core metaphor guiding this paradigm is that human cognition is computational—in other words, that the brain is a computer.
While it may still be mainstream, this disciplinary matrix has a growing number of critics. Those philosophers, like David Chalmers, who take consciousness seriously point out that even a complete computational account of brain activity (which is itself still far from feasible) would fail to explain why said activity should be accompanied by experience. If the brain is merely a computer processor—if it is capable of performing all its tasks in a mechanical, algorithmic fashion—why should a world have to show up for it at all?
Proponents of computationalism, like Daniel Dennett, claim that we have too inflated a view of conscious experience. Dennett points to certain visual inadequacies like change and inattentional blindness as proof that our consciousness of the world is far less complete than we are lead to believe. In fact, Dennett goes so far as to argue that our first-person experience of a richly textured environment is largely an illusion. We don’t see what is there; rather, we see the choppy, low-resolution fantasy the brain clumsily constructs for us.
One might begin by criticizing Dennett for his reduction of consciousness first to perception, and then to visual perception specifically, but even supposing he was right about the over-inflation of consciousness more generally (an insight of Jungian depth psychology as well as contemporary mind science), the claim that conscious experience is a phantom still hasn’t even begun to explain why we (the brain) should experience such appearances at all. Why can’t the brain perform its functions without “our” having to be aware of the illusion of a world? The computationalist theory of cognition would be true even on an earth populated entirely by zombies or robots. It therefore fails to adequately account for the world we actually live in, that of purposeful projects and meaningful, moral relationships with others.
Dennett’s is one of a family of greedily reductionistic views criticized by Alva Noë in his new book. The book is made not merely of ink, glue, and paper—at least if what he argues for in it is true. If he is right, and consciousness is not lodged in the skull, then his book is literally a piece of his mind. “Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness” presents Noë’s case that the dominant paradigm within the cognitive sciences is off the mark.
Rather than looking for consciousness within the confines of the skull by supposing the brain’s job is to internally represent a world it has access to only through the filters of five fallible senses, Noë reminds the forgetful philosopher and scientist alike that thought and perception are tied to action, and that the mind is embodied and embedded in the world. The senses are not windows through which a pre-existing world is mentally reconstructed. Rather, sensory perception is always already motor activity, always already participating in the appearance and subsequent course of worldly events. We see the horizon not because of "information" encoded by neurons in our visual cortex, but because we are living bodies that can stand upon the earth, turn our heads, and look.
Noë does not believe that Chalmers’ so-called “hard problem” of consciousness is a problem at all. He and Dennett are in agreement about this much, but for entirely different reasons. Dennett believes the word “consciousness” is nothing but a cultural idol that continued neuroscience will soon call down off its pedestal. Eventually, he assures us, the “hard problem” will go away because we simply won’t recognize our conscious experience as anything other than an illusion generated by unconscious neural activity.
Noë is of the opinion that though the brain is necessary for consciousness, it is not sufficient for it. He dismisses the “hard problem” as the product of misplaced concreteness: it asks how brain matter might be in the possession of mind and experience, when really these emerge through the dynamic relationships between brain, body, and world and are never “possessed” (or simply located) in the first place.
I am conscious not merely because my brain is doing something special, but because it is coupled to others and the world via language, various levels of emotive intentionality, and a series of sensorimotor (or perception-action) loops. From Noë’s point of view, a brain in a vat would not be conscious. Only contact with and access to an actual world is sufficient for conscious experience. Being conscious is something we must do, something we constantly achieve together with others and the help of the world itself. Organisms and their environments can only be studied in the abstract as separate systems. To fully understand the evolutionary process of phylogenic adaptation, or the ontogenic process of skillful coping (learning), one must develop a sense for the dynamics of whole organism-environment systems [my essay, “Unearthing the Earth” investigates what the implications of this approach are for our being-on-the-earth].
Noë writes:
We are, to use Merleau-Ponty’s phrase, empty heads turned to the world. The world is not a construction of the brain, nor is it a product of our own conscious efforts. It is there for us; we are here in it. The conscious mind is not inside us; it is, it would be better to say, a kind of active attunement to the world, an achieved integration. It is the world itself, all around, that fixes the nature of conscious experience. (p. 142).
The computational approach to consciousness assumes that consciousness is equal and reducible to intra-cranial neurochemical processes. Noë’s rejoinder is a refreshing reminder that such solipsistic misplaced concreteness is, ironically, a product of the same Cartesian tradition most mainstream theorists rail against. That consciousness is located in the brain, that it has no direct access to the real world but through some internal language of ideas (or mental representations)… these are thoroughly Cartesian presuppositions. Noë suggests we begin not with the abstract thought experiments of lonely philosophers, but with the lived body and its everyday being-in-the-world among others (life-world).
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Even if it is a problem of misplaced concreteness, I still think cognitive processes has something to do with this thing we call consciousness.
Cognition and consciousness are closely linked. I don't think either is achieved by the brain alone, though.
Hey Matt, hope you are well…I enjoyed reading this and plan to start reading the actual book by Alva Noe within the next few days… thnx as always for a very interesting post…always, star…
It seems that when Mr. Dennett encounters a unicorn in the forest, he tells us not to worry, the creature is not a unicorn at all but merely a “unicorn,” i.e. a snow-white, cloven-hoofed ungulate with a single horn. When Mr. Dennett encounters the shimmering phantom of consciousness, he tells us not to worry, the shimmering phantom of consciousness is not a shimmering phantom at all, but merely the “shimmering phantom” of consciousness.
In a sense, Dennett is correct. The intellectual, self-narrating mind is a purely natural (and not supernatural) instrument. As a Christian, I think the reflections of the intellect can lead the philosopher, the magician and theologian to a certain kind of very wonderful natural happiness. But supernatural joy can only be experienced by the loving soul and the soul is a spiritual entity that belongs with the One beyond the periphery of the observable universe.
So maybe Dennett can keep his biological machine of a brain. Our numinous qualities are realized not in our natural consciousness but in the supernatural, self-sacrificing love that burns the heart of the mystic and lifts his soul to the throne of his self-sacrificing Lord, the One Homer Simpson called Jeebus.
Well done, Matthew. I read the book this summer and agree with much of what he was saying. My major complaint was that while Noe spent a great deal of time and detail pointing out the shortcomings of the reductionists' view, his alternative seemed pretty surface-level – that consciousness is a process of interacting with others and the world around us. While I agree with that, I wish he had been able to dig deeper into the hows and whys.
Also, Noe seemed to imply that all reductionists are mind-bogglingly tunnel-visioned. I find it hard to imagine that all of these scientists (with some exceptions) are so incapable of a broader viewpoint. Surely many of them believe that you can learn much about consciousness through reductionist analysis of the chemical processes in the neurons while also understanding that consciousness is more interactive than simple chemistry and more encompassing than a human brain.
Good points, Jackalope. I don't think Noë is doing much beyond Merleau-Ponty. It's called phenomenology. That's something else than providing exlanations.
I'll defend Dennett, first by distinguishing him from Crick's position that 'consciousness is the brain', which does indeed seem problematic. Furthermore, Dennett is not an eliminative theorist that claims that folk psychology (talk about consciousness, beliefs, desires etc.) is false and should be given up. He claims the 'patterns' that we discern in this discourse are real, and the discourse works wonderfully well. We should be careful however to objectify consciousness as some kind of cartesian theatre projected somewhere, for a homunculus to be observed (which wouldn't explain anything). In the end he has something of a functional theory of mind I guess, which fits really nice with Noë's claim that 'Maybe consciousness is like money' (p. 4). The value of money of course is not real in any metaphysical sense, but you needn't call it an illusion either. Unfortunately Dennett sometimes uses this term, I'll admitt; but usually Dennett calls himself a 'mild realist' with respect to consciousness. The value of money is mildly real: it's something that 'emerges' out of the economical system which consists on trust-based practices. Still, I admitt this is a VERY DIFFICULT, very abstract perspective on consciousness to grasp, and it often slips me. The sense of an ontological real ´I´, a real consciousness is nearly irresistable.
You mention zombie's. Remember that a zombie is by definition behaviorally indistinct from a human being. If it turned and old friend of yours tells you he discovered he's a zombie (he discovered the design plan from his engineer), what exactly would change for you? Seriously, I think this is an interesting thought experiment.
Furthermore, Dennett agrees with Noë and Clark that external stuff is a functional part of our mind: notebooks, maps, GPS etc. Dennett even radicalizes this by claim that our minds are formed by cultural stuff (memes). So to him too, we are in a sense out of our heads.
But then, to the echo “we are empty heads turned to the world”, I would suggest: please speak for yourself.
To reject the computational theory of the mind is to me incomprehensible.
1. Computational theory CAN explain the kind of cognitive functions that we possess. Look up some of the stuff modern day robots can do. Noë claims wildly that 'No computer actually performs a calculation' (p. 183) Neither does a chess computer play chess. This is because it does not 'understand' what it's doing (Searle's Chinese Room argument). Well, a Wittgensteinian would ask: what would count as a meaninful criterion for understanding something? Sure those would be public criteria - and calculators (or a more sophisticated programs if necessary) can provide those! Similarly he claims that an expert does not make use of rules, consciously or unconsciously. (p.111). (But then he brags on about 'habits' that constitute our understanding of the world. Silly wordgame?) But, again the Wittgensteinian might ask: what counts exactly as following a rule? We 're back at public criteria; and surely in that case there are countless rules to be mentioned watching a novelist (grammatical rules?), footballer or pianist at play.
2. Our brains surely SEEM to be processing information in the broadest sense. The experiments of Hubel and Wiesel really SEEM to explain a little bit of the way perception works. I can imagine a robot that uses such the kind of functional architecture that they discover, and that it would enable it to identify visual objects. (Maybe Jeff Hawkins is doing just this.) Noë's claim that 'we really have no reason to think H&W's discoveries tell us anything at all about the brain basis of vision', is very weakly argued for. Is there something I missed, or is this some kind of distaste for causal explanation?
Noë's right that we need the biological perspective if we want explanations (p. 39). The bacterium displays characteristics that aren't caught in a mechanical and physical vocabulary; it is a sort of agent. Indeed, and that's why we need the design stance or even better the intentional stance (Noë opts for 'nonmechanistic attitude' (p. 41)), which allows for wonderfully efficient and predictive explanations. That doesn´t mean a new metaphysical leven is reached though.
To round up, Noë's explicit criticism of Dennett (p. 140-1) isn't great. Noë simply states that the perceptual illusion of having overall detail in my visual horizon that Dennett points at is false. “It doesn't even seem to us as if we do [have the visual detail]! .. The world doesn't show up for me as present all at once in my mind. It shows up as within reach, as more or less present.” Well, then are people surprised when confronted with the simple experiments described?
macarius, thanks for that! Have you read “Meditations on the Tarot” by an Unknown Friend (whose name you can discover with a few clicks)? The trick is to perform the Great Work that transmutes the mercury of intellectuality into the gold of spirituality. Love's got everything to do with it.
Jackalope, I enjoyed Noe's book not because he said much that was original, but because he is a contemporary voice pointing what I believe to be a misguided cognitivist paradigm in a different direction. I have absolutely no gripe against reductionistic methodologies that study the neurophysiological characteristics of the brain. My reservations arise only when scientific materialists start making metaphysical claims about the true causes of consciousness hiding beneath our illusory phenomenological experience. Such materialists rest their philosophy of nature upon what they perceive to be the sheer facticity of matter. Matter is simply there, and it is all that there is. I, on the other hand, prefer to acknowledge the plainly evident fact that experience is neither “mental” or “material.” “Pure experience,” as William James called it (Essays in Radical Empiricism, 1912), is prior to the conceptual dichotomy between inside (mind) and outside (matter). Matter is simply given, it's a stubborn fact, without doubt; but so are bodily experience and consciousness. Metaphysics is impossible to avoid, but some cosmologies are more coherent, logical, and adequate to our experience than others (like, say, A. N. Whitehead's philosophy of organism). The thinkers I've mentioned (James, Whitehead) have already traveled very far down the road that Noe is pointing his colleagues toward.
I am not familiar with the “Meditations on the Tarot,” but with your alchemical language you describe exactly the process I was trying to describe above.
Matn79,
Thanks for reminding us that Dennett's philosophy is nuanced and complex. When one is writing about conflicting paradigms, it is astonishingly easy to caricature and straw man others. Perhaps the whole history of philosophy is a series of responses to straw men. But philosophy in the traditional sense can become a historical curiosity for all I care, so long as contemporary discourse has become fully acquainted (perhaps using traditional philosophical concepts as temporary scaffolding) with embodied phenomenological inquiry. Dennett's view, as you said, is very abstract and difficult to grasp. I'd say this is so because he has committed Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness, confusing an abstract concept (algorithmic functions) for the concrete and embodied reality of being-in-the-world.
I don't think language is essentially descriptive (though it can appear to function this way at times); rather, it is expressive and communicative. Scientific explanations, in this sense, are not transcendental, because there is no pure observer language that might describe the world as if from outside it. All cognition and/or representation, even of the so-called “objective” scientific sort, is situated and embedded. Phenomenological inquiry opens us to the possibility–not only of seeing the world again–but of hearing our words again as if for the first time, such that their meanings are no longer understood to be representations of an external world, but world-making. The Word (Logos) is the vehicle uniting what are called “spirit” and “matter,” “creator” and “creature.” It is in our conversations with each other that human beings bring forth their purposes and cares from what would remain an unspoken for irrelevancy but for the magic of these letters. The Word literally makes the worlds we live in. This isn't meant to be some kind of Whorfian linguistic reductionism. Phenomenology is, hopefully, a return to the things themselves, as Husserl said. But the things ARE the appearances! There is nothing beyond experience and perception, no more fundamental “stuff” that reality is made up of.
I don't think reality is made of words. Let me be clear: I am saying that we speaking animals continually make and remake worlds with/as/through language. There is still a stubborn fact of the matter, which we can refer to variously as the body, the earth, or the cosmos. These living, breathing realities cannot be made to dissolve with a simple poetic oration or a few lines of written prose. But they (flesh, planet, universe) can certainly be re-imagined–either covered over and forgotten or enlivened–by the world-making capacities of such alphabetic technologies. The way we speak (and as literate people, write) transforms our consciousness. Consciousness is not mine or yours, not “in here” (points to my head) or “in there” (points to yours). Consciousness is (or becomes) what we share in the process of being-in-the-world together.
I am fascinated by, but strongly in disagreement with the reductionistic discourse that Dennett defends. He damns “folk psychology” and 1st person experience with faint praise by saying they are merely useful illusions. Dennett, in my estimation, and at the risk of a straw man once again, has not fully cured himself of his Cartesian anxiety. We cannot perform the necessary metaphysical gymnastics required to step outside of our own conscious embodiment such that we might naturalistically explain it away. There is no such metaphysical ground to stand on.
This video is about Churchland, but the criticisms are general enough that I think they hold against Dennett, as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzSNVg9A47Y&feature=related
“Pure experience,” […] is prior to the conceptual dichotomy between inside (mind) and outside (matter). Matter is simply given, it's a stubborn fact, without doubt; but so are bodily experience and consciousness.”
So 'pure experience' is prior to the conceptual dichotomy between mind and matter. As with Heidegger (and maybe Noë) there is an ambiguity as to the nature of this priority: is it epistemological or ontological? The trouble with phenomenology is that it cannot very well distinguish the two, I think.
As for the structure of our own understanding (phenomenology), I'll agree, it may be a good point that the mind/matter distinction is not primary.
But talking about ontology, well, to me there's just the notion of evolution, the idea that life arose out of a lifeless universe. Evolution shows how sth purposeful and functional can arise out of a couple of simple algorithms. And so bodily experience and consciousness are not 'prior' in any meaningful way in the realm of ontology. It is somehow a (rather wonderful) end-product of a (rather wonderful) cumulative 'design' process of nature.
To suggest otherwise is to opt for ('transcendental') idealism. Do you?
I can see why you would speak of a fallacy of misplaced concreteness with reference to Dennett. But, trying an analogy, what about the alogrithms that explain the existence of a rainbow, with all it's beautiful concreteness? We can imagine the explanation is done only at a certain level of abstraction. There are just limits to our imaginative powers.
I'd also appreciate it if you could respond to my zombie-question.
matn79,
You ask if James' “pure experience” is epistemologically or ontologically prior to the mind/matter, subject/object duality. I would say “pure experience” concerns what is most fundamental to Being and to Dasein. Heidegger was unable to fully imagine an integral human-earth/human-universe relationship, giving existence only to the human (though he did see the extreme danger of the purely instrumental, techno-industrialist weltanschauung). I think James and Whitehead's philosophies remove the gap between epistemic and ontological concerns by moving beyond substance metaphysics (whether substance is conceived of as dual: matter/mind, reductive: particulate matter only, or pantheist/monist: only the whole, God/Nature). A process ontology already includes a radically phenomenological/experiential epistemology. Feelings become just as real as thoughts, intuitions just as tangible as sensations. Knowledge becomes a highly refined and abstracted, but still cosmically embedded, coming-together of prehensively motivated actual occasions (or drops of experience). The universe is not bifurcated into cultural and natural realms; human beings are not the only creative inventors–nature, too, is pulsing with value and intelligence.
I do not think we can account for human consciousness unless we understand it as a more evolved and integrated mode of the same primary experiential ground that permeates the cosmos. Science can assume for statistical efficiency that nature functions at appropriate levels (atomic, chemical, genetic, etc.) as if it were simple and algorithmic/mechanical; but in concrete verifiable fact, the norm in nature is complexity, non-linearity, synergy, reciprocal causality, emergent downward causation, evolutionary transformation, etc. Our ontology must reflect this dynamic/organic ambiguity.
Transcendental Idealism? I would say thinkers like Hegel, Schelling, and Goethe have had a deep influence upon my thinking, but so have Marx, Darwin, and Freud. I have both Vedantic leanings (toward non-dual absorption into universal Mind) and Tantric yearnings (toward dancing with powerful intra- and inter-bodily forces). Both of these tendencies are spiritual, as opposed to nihilist or positivist. So perhaps in that sense, you might want to stick me closer to the idealists than the materialists.
What are the algorithms that explain the existence of the rainbow (and by existence, I assume you mean its color)? There is nothing behind the appearance of the rainbow that might explain it, so far as I can tell. The rainbow (or blue sky) emerges within what Whitehead would call a nexus of actual occasions, having no independent self-existence apart from the community-of-concresence that brings it forth. In other words, our perceptual experience of redness, orangeness, yellowness, greenness, blueness, indigoness, violetness and the infinitely fine qualitative character of the shades between each is just as much a part of the occasioning of the rainbow as the water droplets in the air and the wavelengths of the photons passing through them. What more is left to explain beyond the experience of the rainbow?
I agree, zombies are an interesting thought experiment. But I do not think that particular thought experiment is relevant considering that in actual life we cannot but assume the sentience of appropriately-acting persons (at least if we wish to maintain sanity).
Thanks for your extensive, challenging, and thoughtful comments!
To respond a bit more to your question as to whether I opt for transcendental idealism because of my tendency to see evolution not only as pushed from behind, but pulled from ahead (as Teilhard would say), I offer a few lines from Sri Aurobindo (written circa 1911 in misc. notebook entry on Philosophy) that might be relevant (and express my position better than I could):
Spirit may precede matter metaphysically, but it is only by way of the spatio-temporal limits of matter that spirit comes to realize its full creative potential to will, feel, and think. Transcendence is not the (only) point–the point is (also) to get involved.
I agree, we should be careful not to fall into the trap of sophistry, mere philosophising for its own sake, and focus on the way in which we can live our lives in the most meaningul and fulfilling way, which is, in practice, to get involved. But I think sincere intellectual engagement also counts as a meaningful possibility. Clarification of the human condition, reduction of fallacious thought and conceptual confusion can be a worthwhile entreprise. Your inclusivist non-reductivist position reminded me of Wilber’s Sex, Ecology and Spirituality, which I saw indeed on your 'bookself'. I think this is pseudo-science; it describes (and structures) a kind of evolutionairy path, but doesn’t explain it, in any scientifically meaningful way. Popper would ask for falsifiable claims in his theory. Is there any empirical fact that Wilber’s theory would forbid, with it the theory’s validity at stake? Something similar seems to go for your claim that you “see evolution not only as pushed from behind, but pulled from ahead”. You should be aware that, although the statement may be motivated by an idealist metaphysics, it is also a (rather rebellious) empircal claim about causation. In order for this empirical statement to be meaningful, the conditions under which it can be tested must be specifiable. For instance, you could point to the existence of ‘higher’ phenomena that cannot be explained by a mere-bottom-up process. I think this strategy has proved unsuccessful so far. Or you could try to derive predictions from the push-and-pull-theory that would’t follow from the mere-push–theory of evolution, and test those. Or, to put it more simply, let’s just try to imagine both types of processes in parallel universes, how would we be able to distinguish the two at all? For instance, do you find evolution in virtual environments a valid example of the mere-push-theory of evolution?
matn79,
My perspective on evolution is not meant to be a narrowly scientific or positivistic theory. It is part of a metaphysical scheme or cosmology, something that the positivist tradition loathes because of its philosophical assumptions. Is teleological evolution falsifiable? No. It's not a scientific theory, as I said. It is a cosmological perspective whose only test is its internal coherency and adequacy to the full breadth of our human experience and observation. When we look at the 14 billion year history of our cosmos, I think what Teilhard termed the arc of “complexity/consciousness” is clearly evident (not much of Wilber's work, aside from AQAL, is original).
I do agree that the “pulled from ahead” claim is a rebellious one in our materialistic age, where only mechanical/efficient causation is taken seriously. I think we need to take another look at Aristotle's 4 causes and acknowledge that any full explanation of phenomena would include material, formal, efficient, and final causes. I do not think the “higher” phenomena of consciousness can be explained by efficient causation alone. I'm curious to know how you think it could be?
I am not fond of making statistical arguments, but as an aside, one pretty good reason to doubt the possibility of an entirely mechanical evolutionary process might be the staggering odds against a universe randomly generating intelligent life in only 14 billion years (possibly earlier on other planets). 14 billion years seems like a long time, but relatively speaking, its not. Mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme estimates (in “The Universe Story”) that we'd need approx. 100 billion years in a randomly evolving universe for even a single amino acid (much less life or intelligence) to have any reasonable chance of emerging. I don't think this means we need to posit that “God done it.” Rather, perhaps we need to consider a principle not unlike the 2nd law of thermodynamics (which may already imply telos) which describes a non-random tendency toward complexity.
As for the simulation, I think it tells us more about our industrial capitalist mindset than about how the rest of life on earth has evolved. Competition is a small part of evolutionary adaptation in comparison to cooperation and symbiosis. See the work of molecular biologist Lynn Margulis, who has leveled many devistating critiques of the “red, tooth and claw” version of evolution (which, by the way, only ever gained popularity in the Anglo-American scientific world… coincidence?).
Also, the reason a merely “push” theory of evolution would fail is that it wouldn't even let us acknowledge the survival instincts of even the simplest of single-celled organisms. Darwin merely assumed such an instinct existed, and derived his theory of speciation from this assumption. But surival isn't all life is after, in my opinion. Rocks last way longer, and without any of the pain! Life exists not only to survive, but to thrive. If all evolutionary change and biological structure/function were the result of mere mechanism, how could consciousness (feeling, emotion, desire, etc.) ever have been selected for? (I'm assuming, of course, that consciousness has a downward causative influence).
The “red, tooth and claw” version of evolution, you claim is ‘devistated’. Well, what do you make of the fact that something near 99% of the species that ever lived has gone extinct? Cooperation within species of between symbiont species are very important, but non-beneficiary interspecies altruism is rather unique in the animal world – and unfortunately with have a lot of problem with this one too. Also, to reduce a theory to an ideology is somewhat ad hominem. I hope you´ll point it out for me whenever I do it. (Although it’s also sort of interesting, if you’ll allow a little contradiction of mine; Darwin was influence by Adam Smith’s notion of the ‘invisible hand’ – but on the other hand Dawkins was very much harassed by Thatcherians looking for a scientific justification of their economical selfishness, very much missing the point of his book.) “Life exists not only to survive, but to thrive.” Yes, too reproduce successfully, to be a little more exact. If you find a species that has no interested in letting its genes pass on to the next generation, evolution theory (the standard one) is falsified. Successful reproduction as the telos of life – if we’re talking genetics, that is. Humans have culture which gives them a lot of autonomy with regard to their genetic ‘tasks’. “If all evolutionary change and biological structure/function were the result of mere mechanism, how could consciousness (feeling, emotion, desire, etc.) ever have been selected for?”. Well, emotions have important fitness’ functions that can readily be seen: anger and fear, both pumping up the adrenaline, focussing all attention, focussing the senses to a maximum. Damasio describes people with lack of emotions, and it doesn't help their fitness I assure you. Desire doesn’t even need explanation. Consciousness is the tough one. (Which Alfred Wallace and Benedictus XIV alike claim inexplicable by evolution.) The (mere-push) evolution-story has (at least?) two dark spots: the origin of life and the evolution from life to intelligent or conscious life. The origin of life, abiogenesis, is a topic that is very speculative because of the lack of traces. The attempt to ‘reconstruction’ of something similar in the lab is interesting though. Dawkins has a simple ‘just-so’ story in the beginning of The Selfish Gene, which I found interesting: the idea of a self-replicating amino-acid; evolutionary principles may have started already at the molecular level. Dennett’s story (DDI, Ch7.2) sort of builds on that, but of course many of theories run around. Given the level of vagueness here, it seems a rather bold claim to say it couldn’t be done in 14 (or 2?) but it could be done in 100 billion years. Dennett’s notion of crane may clarify this a little: the process of evolution is marked by the ongoing ‘invention’ of ever better ‘cranes’, that help speed up the process of evolution. Margulis’ notion of eukaryotes as symbiont prokaryotes is a crane, as is sex (shuffling of genes), the Baldwin effect, and language (creating the possibility of cultural evolution). So the speeding up is sort of exponential. As for the evolution of the ‘higher’ stuff, such as intelligence, consciousness, free will, art (artistic delight), science and so on: again, there are plenty of theories hanging around. Personally I find Geoffrey Millers theory of the Mating Mind fascinating, but indeed, it’s anything but conclusive. But that one of these ‘just-so’ stories will turn out right, neatly producting the right predictions and fitting the evidence, to me is very much to be expected. There have been so many successfull explanations of other, a little less fancy stuff (evolution eyes, lungs, wings), that I am confident that this will come too. People who want to resist this view I think should hook up with Wallace, the Pope, and Chalmers, claiming that consciousness is a fundamental mystery that is not explained or even explainable by some kind of evolutionary process. I agree that if you start from the subjective sphere (e.g. phenomenology or mysticism), an explanation of this sort will seem quite implausible. One has to stick consequently with objectivist (functionalistic) reasoning to get here. And see that it can be done. To me, this was quite liberating. It replaces the Mysteriousness of consciousness for an earthly wonderfulness. By the way I would claim that evolution is not without teleology, as I think you implied. Adaptationists such as Dawkins, Dennett and Pinker are often accused (e.g. by the late Stephen Jay Gould) of seeing evolution having too much teleology. They standardly use language like “of course Mother Nature has come up with a solution for that problem”, “the eyes are made for seeing”, very much resembling Aristotles perspective. The teleology is realized however by the process of evolution which blindly and randomly but also continually searches for ‘good trics’ that exist in the logical space of possibilities. The intentional/teleological language is very apt and useful for biologists, without is, they couldn’t do their job. But to reintroduce Aristotles’ other three causes next to the mechanical/efficient one, I almost begin to suspect you try to provoke me. In an age of airplanes, vaccination and nuclear armament, I think we shouldn’t mess too much with the standard causation theory. P.s. Sorry for the length of this one. Like all of us, the writing forces me to think, so I wander off sometimes.
Don't forget that this is the “Planet of Bacteria,” as Gould put it. Inter-species altruism may be rare in the animal kingdom, but when it comes to prokaryotic bacteria (representing most of the biomass on earth), what the classification “species” may mean becomes unclear. Bacteria are usually classified by “ecotype,” which is more like a genus than a species (but it is best not to try to squeeze unique phenomena into inadequate Linnaen categories). They also share genetic material laterally, meaning they are functionally immortal (individual cells die, but isolated, individual cells are never found in nature–bacteria exist only in colonies). All animals, and even some insects, require bacterial endosymbionts to digest food. I'd say symbiosis (or cooperation) is the norm in the biosphere; the predator-prey relationship and the red-queen strategies which result are rare in comparison. Extinction is essential to evolution, but I think pointing to it as evidence of the “struggle for existence” of nature “red, tooth and claw” is based upon the arbitrary valuing of the abstraction “species” over actual biological individuals (of whatever kind) that have existed and continue to exist today. Perhaps the point of organic existence is not to remain the same static species forever, but to experiment and innovate, to evolve. Reproduction is definitely a big part of life, but from an autopoietic perspective (see Maturana and Varela), it is not logically essential to it. Organisms are primarily self-producing, and only secondarily reproducing. Therefore, we cannot rely upon magical “selfish genes” to explain why organisms want to continue to live. Something is missing, namely a sound theory of ontogenic autonomy (which autopoietic theory may supply). Successful reproduction cannot be the telos of life; reproduction is the effect of life's telos.
I ask how consciousness or emotion can be explained by a mechanistic theory of life because there is no reason at the level of physical structure and function that organic movement need be accompanied by experience (whether emotional or conscious). It could all just be done via stimulus and response, like a programmed cybernetic system. So why experience? Why the felt-sense of agency (that we know immediately from personal experience, but that is apparent in a more primitive way even in the behavior of single-celled organisms swimming toward sugar? It seems there is a phenomenology to life that mechanistic biology fails to consider. I think objectivist reasoning misconstrues the phenomenological/experiential facts of our embodiment. There is no way to get out of consciousness to see the world from a purely 3rd person perspective. I don't think scientific understanding need cover over the lifeworld with mechanistic abstractions in its attempt to shed light on reality. Science is a kind of applied phenomenological inquiry, an intersubjective coordination of technical skills, focused observation, and mathematical/formal representation. All of what emerges from scientific activity is still rooted in the lifeworld. “Nature,” as if it were some pre-existing collection of discrete objects “out there” separate from the human subject is nothing more than a modern myth. Have you read my essay ”Unearthing the Earth”? It is my attempt to make consciousness more earthly.
Your critique of the ‘red tooth and claw’-bias is edifying. I think I’ll subscribe to it. I will stick to the gene-centric interpretation however. For autopoietic systems – if I understand it right – it still needs to be explained how they came about (as the evolutionists auto-reply goes). And surely natural selection (differential replication) must be key here, sifting the bad self-producing systems from the ones that have some potential – through reproducing versions of themselves. Wonderfully self-producing systems with very poor reproducing skills will indefinitely fade out. The selfish-gene explanation of the reason why organisms keep desiring life after they’ve reproduced, (I think your challenge was,) is possibly simply that ‘desire for life/fear of death’ is a succesfull ‘instruction’ for genes to build into their ‘survival machines’ as Dawkins provocatively has it. Some species do die immediately after copulation however, such the male praying mantis, the male black widow and the exhausted salmon come to mind. For mammals this can’t be done in principle, because they need to raise their offspring to give them a proper chance. Why do you call the selfish genes magical? The ‘selfishness’ is of course a shorthand for “producing phenotypic effects that increase the chances of the reproduction of this gene”. Many biological/genetic phenomena can only be explained by the gene-centric perspective, such as certain ‘viral’ parts of dna, that are destructive for the cell and organism, but do succeed in reproducing themselves. The ‘selfishness’ as raison d’etre is very clear in this case. But it should be stressed that even though genetic selfishness is the biological ‘essence’ of life (in that it explains pretty much every phenotypic phenomenon), this does not mean for instance that altruism can’t be real - they are real phenotypic phenomena encountered throughout the lifeworld. Just because they arose because they enhanced genetic fitness, doesn’t mean it’s ‘deep down’, ‘really’ selfish. There is a deep cleavage between the genetic level and the organisms level; it’s just that we’ve have received a number of instructions ‘like for sweet taste in mouth’, ‘like for laughing babies’, ‘like for orgasm’, ‘fear of heights’ etc. but we are in the fortunate position to renounce anything we don’t like. ‘My selfish genes can go jump in the lake’ as Steven Pinker has it, commenting on his choice not to have kids. I am not convinced about the political neutrality of the (huge) scientific entreprises either. But that’s not an excuse to reject the truth of theory on the basis of apparent affinities with an ideology. Or do you pick your theory on the basis of your prefered ideology? The human capability to acknowledge a demonstrated truth irrespective of the consequences is a truly noble one. As for consciousness, the experiential dimension, I realize I should be humble. I acknowledge that I have a heavy burden of proof here, to show how it’s not the Cartesian Theatre people take it to be. Many naturalists (Dawkins, Pinker, Robert Wright) side with Chalmers’ idea of ‘a hard problem’, which you’ve expounded rather well. In response to Chalmers, Dennett comes up with an analogy: Imagine some vitalist who says to the molecular biologists: The easy problems of life include those of explaining the following phenomena: reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair, immunological self-defense, … These are not all that easy, of course, and it may take another century or so to work out the fine points, but they are easy compared to the really hard problem: life itself. We can imagine something that was capable of reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair and immunological self-defense, but that wasn't, you know, alive. The residual mystery of life would be untouched by solutions to all the easy problems. In fact, when I read your accounts of life, I am left feeling like the victim of a bait-and-switch.
This imaginary vitalist just doesn't see how the solution to all the easy problems amounts to a solution to the imagined hard problem. Somehow this vitalist has got under the impression that being alive is something over and above all these subsidiary component phenomena. I don't know what we can do about such a person beyond just patiently saying: your exercise in imagination has misfired; you can't imagine what you say you can, and just saying you can doesn't cut any ice. (Dennett, 1991, p.281-2) The bottomline of this one is that biologists these days no longer subscribe to vitalism. But maybe you do. By the way, your case becomes problematic if you extrapolate consciousness to e.g. single-celled organisms. You say it a sense of agency is ‘apparent’ here. Well, what does ‘apparent’ mean? Is it ´just´ your projection or is it really there? And can such a meaningful distinction be made at all? Obviously I could point to a lot of man-made mechanical or virtual ‘agents’ that do arouse this same sense of agency. I am sure you wouldn’t want to attribute real agency to a chessplayingprogram, even though it shows a lot more agency than the single celled organism. (14. QB7-A6.. It believes you’re just trying to chase his queen, it completely misses how you’re also darn close to a forceful attack on the kingside!) I would suggest that there’s no principle way to claim that biological phenomena could have agency/consciousness/experience in a way non-biological intentional systems couldn’t. So sure, it’s uniquely useful to attribute agency to the single celled organism; just as its even more clarifying to attribute it to the chessprogram. Without it, you could never win. If you dislike this kind of functionalistic / pragmatistic position, - and you probably do - it’s safer to simply stick to the inexplicability of your own consciousness and perhaps extend it to you fellow language-using speciesmembers, but this is already rather difficult for the true phenomenologist. If you stick to the attribution of an 'real' experiential dimension in other species, you owe me a (non-functionalist) criterion that enables us to identify it (and distinguish it from non-biological 'agents'). ““Nature,” as if it were some pre-existing collection of discrete objects “out there” separate from the human subject is nothing more than a modern myth.” Well, this is either idealism or subjectivism. You know very well that we have many methods for measuring the age of stuff, and nature is a lot older that we are. It IS out there, as a pre-existing collection of objects, irrespective of our awareness of it. Your mentioned essay is stylistically a very fine peace of writing, although I think you ‘surf’ on the emotions of poetic language too much, at the cost of logic, coherence and intelligibility. For the philosopher, many critical questions are raised. This brings me to a meta-philosophical theme: you show a (romantic) tension or ambiguity with ‘rationality’. As the romantics would have it: reason is cold, abstract, impersonal, empty, alienated, sickening. Of course history has shown examples of terrible political consequences of the affiliation with certain abstract ‘rational’ concepts; and many scientists have been ‘greedy reductionists’ as Dennett calls it (E.g. DDI 16:3), dehumanizing man and its dignity. But my strategy would be to correct ´bad rationality´ with better rationality, not with less rationality. And the role of emotions is not a priori negative for the rationalist; Damasio has shown how emotions are vital to our reasoning power and coping-capabilities. So emotions sustain reason and ecause of that they are in a sense reasonable. Also, I agree scientific language should be rendered fitting within our lifeworld as much as possible. But often times our ordinary imagination just needs to be stretched out, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Science slowly transforms our lifeworld perception of cosmos, life, psychology, and so on. Your exposition of Copernicus is indeed an excellent example of that; it both deepens and transforms our ordinary understanding and experience. To me, this process is not fraught with Pascalian anxieties, but with an Aristotelian joy of deeper understanding.
Well, this conversation is getting way out of hand. For me, it’s a discpline problem: I can’t resist responding to your replies and it costs me too much of my time. So I won’t respond to your possible reply in order to protect myself. It's a bit unfair I'll admitt, because I threw quite a lot, with this one. My apologies for that. It has been very stimulating conversation though, so thank you very much!
p.s. But of course if you’re ever in need of a clearer exposition of some of Dawkins’ or Dennetts’ themes, don’t hesitate to ask
matn79,
Thank you, as well, for an edifying and challenging conversation. No need to respond, but it just so happens that most of what I would have wanted to say in response to your closing points I already did in this paper on the possibility of an integral biology.