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His facile understanding (1971) of the way computers work has been replaced by a deeper insight -- especially contrasting the machine with the living cell.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.