The
Design of Intelligent Nature and
the Nature of Intelligent Design.
In this presentation I will build on the previous one, Naturalizing
the magic of the mind, where I tried to communicate an
intuitive appreciation of how the massively-parallel processing
by about 100 billion neurons in our central nervous system creates a
model in our mind, a representation of reality that uses
sensory inputs
and associative recall of selected aspects from past experience, which
is available during
waking hours for ready reference in guiding our steps and appreciatiing
our place in the world. And when we dream, it's there without the
usual sensory inputs to tie it down to reality.
Consciousness is the repertoire
of recollections we might
reference as needed! It includes the internal images of what we
see and feel. It's
more than what's-on-our-mind at any moment because it includes the
potential for what-might-come-to-mind. We have the subjective
experience of reaching for the things we recall, but in fact we're
accessing the edifice we've built in our mind. And our perception
of external phenomena is itself an internal
phenomenon! The process goes both ways - sensual data coming in
causes experience of something "out there." We recognize the
external reality using the internal realm of associative recall and
creative imagination. Our viewpoint is usually outward - so we
must
reflect upon our own experience to articulate its processes. But
both phenomena are real, and both natural. And we can invent
ideas to understand them both. Now
we will
explore some consequences of
this inside-out viewpoint on how we think and what we know.
First, we need to realize that there's so much going on in our mind
that we can't possibly give all of it our conscious attention.
Our voluntary
bodily functions of balance and locomotion run mostly on
auto-pilot. We put step after step and we don't fall down because
those reflex functions are self-motivated and they respond
automatically to our conscious intent to go somewhere. We need to
realize that those guidance and control functions are doing their
job, with the sophistication of feedback to minimize the difference
between what is and what should be, often better automatically than
when we think about them. And of course the metabolic and
maintenance functions of our body are automatic, self-motivated, and
they call our attention only when needed. The servants do their
jobs perfectly
well when the
Master isn't home. A lot of thought going on there that we're not
aware of.
Second, our awareness of thought is cast in the mold of
verbal communication. In spite of its very
slow data rate, a few syllables per second, and serial mode, single
channel, one sound
at a time, we have achieved a very powerful subtlety of thought in that
medium. The speaker does a parallel-to-serial
conversion, choosing from a myriad of possibilities, the thoughts he
wants to express and the words to express them, and the sound patterns
to say the words in grammatical sequence. That's layer upon layer
of
massively parallel processing by self-motivated, associative, pattern
recognition machines, each a living nerve cell. The listener does
a serial-to-parallel conversion, guessing what the speaker is trying to
say, keeping in mind multiple syllables and words because their
meanings are ambiguous until the whole context is clear. We are
consciously aware only of the end result, because so many possibilities
are considered and rejected that we'd be lost in the shuffle. But
the subtleties of associated ideas are saved and contribute to the
significance of the speaker's expression and the listener's
understanding. Think of poetry. The miracle of
consciousness!
The sequential, cause-and-effect mode of conscious thought comes from
the serial
nature of our communication channel and we are aware of reasoning when
we explain our ideas to someone else. And we have developed a
self-awareness, to see ourselves as others see us, because it guides
what we say to be understood. The process of communication,
transferring awareness from one individual to another, is deeply
embedded in our sophisticated thought processes. Our language
capability has such survival value
that it evolved in under a million years and humans have taken over
the world. We need to play God, whether we want to or not..
The whole thing depends on parallel processing in our brain, in a
universe of separate systems that are self-motivated, but we need
a different conceptual system to do that justice. Processes like
biological evolution, which results from the accumulation of many
separate events of genetic inheritance, are easily misunderstood when
described as a cause-and-effect happening. Cause and effect are
ideas in our tool kit for understanding and explaining. When we
jump to a
conclusion we call that intuition, because we're unaware of the inputs
that went into that result. And we don't trust our own thoughts
until we rationalize them - put them into a format for explainuing to
someone else! And our rationale can be very creative,
after-the-fact, to justify what we've chosen to do without thinking
consciously.
We, and other life forms, have evolved
the scientific method!
For its survival value! We theorize
(imagine) what to expect, compare with empirical data, and correct the
theory so that it better
models reality. We automatically forget what was wrong in our
perception of reality
and replace it with the latest
information.
So - We say we believe in Reason
rather than Faith! A
very concise statement, but it's inadequate. Reason is only
part of the scientific method, and we too have faith in our
independently confirmed facts.
If Reasoning means the
orderly derivation of consequences from accepted ideas, it's part of
applied science and rhetoric, that is, engineering and argument.
If Faith means believing the
unbelievable it's an abdication of responsibility for what we
believe. In both contexts we need to keep an open mind, and use
critical judgement to guide our thoughts, and of course we do.
But that is usually part of the uncouscious, parallel processing
of our associative access to a wider horizon. And the sequential,
stream of consciousness, cause and effect of verbal argument is all we
are aware of.
Isaac Newton thought he discovered the Word of God.
God said Newton's law, F=Ma
- - Force = Mass times Acceleration - and that's
how His Creation had to
go!
Causality is a human
experience. The leader would command and the
followers would obey. Creation
is a human experience. We wish to make
something and that's motivation to do the job.
Newton's creation was in fact more subtle. He invented the
methods
of
Calculus to deal mathematically
with continuously changing variables. He could solve the
equations of
motion of planets around
the sun and explain their variable velocity and elliptical orbits that
Kepler had deduced from
astronomical observations.
Nowadays we think of Newton's equations as a model of
reality - an idea
that applies perfectly
to ideal systems - point masses and instantaneous
action at a distance - and real objects and
mechanical phenomena are near enough to the ideal that the equations
are useful. We can predict mathematically, to good accuracy, what to
expect given input data about the system we are studying.
Is gravity a thing? Yes, in a sense. It's an idea we use
to
understand physical systems. It's a force that acts at a
distance,
that causes acceleration of
masses. Or, it's a curvature of space due to
nearby masses, so that free-falling objects following straight lines in
their space
will appear, from our point of view, to follow elliptical orbits.
The
idea has a kind of reality that's different from physical objects - but
we can think about it the same way we think about real objects!
Because we think about real objects by manipulating our internal,
mental image, that is, ideas that represent things. And we think
about ideas that represent relationships, and processes, and categories
of all the above.
As explained in Naturalizing
the magic of the mind, our perception of real or imagined
objects is the model that our associative pattern-recognition neurons
create in our mind. Likewise the relations represented by
abstract ideas are modeled in our mind. The modeling function
serves a useful purpose - EXTRAPOLATION
!
We can imagine what-to-expect from sensory inputs and past
experience.
We know where to go to catch that fly ball
when it comes down.
And today we have information theory to clarify our thoughts about
communication and control. And the experience of programming
computers to do subtle tasks, using an algorithm - the idea of what to
do - and an implementation - the steps that serve the purpose in a
practical context. We can develop a better understanding about
the nature of intelligent design - and the design of intelligent nature.
For millennia philosophers have been mystified by what they
call the mind-brain problem.
They recognized the power of ideas and thought they existed, like
things, but in some supernatural world. The idea "dog" was more
universally applicable - more doggy -
than any particular dog, so obviously it had some special kind of
existence. And our everyday experience of dogs was just a shadow
of that ideal world. If the essence of dogs existed forever, then
the essence of a human being was an everlasting soul! And our
minds dealt with ideas so they must partake of that magical
existence. If we have sexual sensations in our dreams that must
be some kind of reality because we could feel it. There must be a
devil doing magic on us! They had words for them - Incubus or
Succubus depending on gender. And real-life sexual sensations
must be magic because we don't understand them.
What an opportunity for charlatans! The ancient oracles and the
contemporary churches live off of gullible people by combining their
mystery with enough real good, and hoped-for wish fulfillment, that
they don't completely discredit
themselves. And they evolve by natural selection. Those
that find a prosperous niche in their contemporary society survive and
become
gospel for the future, and the ones that don't are gone so they're not
our concern.
Christianity - the religion of slaves - was adopted by the failing
Roman Emperors and formalized / rewritten to serve their
purposes. It survived the Feudal Aristocracy of local tyrants by
proclaiming an ideal of poverty and an implementation in monastic
societies that could be self-sufficient without any portable wealth
worth plundering. And after-the-fact they shared a common purpose
of converting the local agricultural Pagan culture to accepting the
tyrannical status quo. Enough of that digression.
Medieval philosophers and theologians (They didn't differentiate.)
worked out a web of subtleties about Aristotle's causes (Formal,
material, efficient, final.) because in their mind an
event couldn't be understood without a cause. And they had their
God in
the shape of man to provide a first cause when they needed one.
Today we realize that events in a natural context have many causes, and
we can consider them all together or separately. Cause is an idea
we use to understand the process.
Experimental scientists go to great lengths to create an apparatus
where the cause they want to study will predominate.
There have always been a few intellectual leaders, whose thoughts were
way ahead of other people of their time, and we appreciate them today
as creators of our contemporary modes of thought. Plato,
Archimedes, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, are credited with
developing a scientific method which used rational inference
to explore the implications of an idea, and reliance on repeatable
experimental
evidence to judge its validity. What's now called the Age of
Enlightenment was a philosophical liberation from traditional beliefs
based on
revelation from on high, as conceived by priests and interpreted by
ecclesiastic higher
authority. Also known as the Age of Reason as used in a title by
Thomas
Paine. This led to a willingness to rethink the institutions of
political power. Today the idea
of
popular democracy has gone worldwide while the U.S. has become
the world's worst menace, in the name of democracy! So there's
hope. If we don't blow the world to hell our civilization will
pass us by.
But wait - Reason is only part of the scientific method, what we are
aware of when we communicate with others to convince them of the
validity of our new ideas and experimental methods. Scientific
Materialism was the idea that we can avoid confusion by leaving mind
and imagination out of the argument, out of the statement of
results. By expressing a theory in mathematical form we can use
very precise measurements to test its validity. And by comparing
quantitative data we can avoid prejudice about the result. Also
this was compatible with Descarte's idea of a dual reality - real and
spiritual. Mind was excluded from the reliability of physical
science.
Since we don't have objective evidence about the spiritual world we can
think whatever we're persuaded is the word of God! But the
Enlightenment philosophers and our own revolutionary founders used
critical judgement and original ideas, in the name of Reason, and they
created a new future for our civilization. Self-rule by popular
democracy is an ideal that we approach, bit by bit, as we become more
and more able to practice what we preach, in spite of the prevalence of
Religion and Politics and Advertising and Economics, all using
behavioral
science results about populations to bend public opinion. They
don't try to understand how our minds work, they just use statistical
results to know how to influence behavior.
What's called Modern Physics (dating from around 1895-1925) - the
discovery of
ionizing radiation and
sub-atomic particles and relativity - found that fundamental ideas
about the immutability of matter and space, including Newton's laws of
motion, were not universally
applicable. Atomic particles act like waves, spread out in space, with
intensity that can be interpreted as a probability of interaction, but
they act like point masses when they interact. But the
gravitational energy of idealized point masses would be infinite, so
that idea is unrealistic. Gravity, and the relativity of
space-time, have not been made compatible with Quantum Mechanics which
accounts for atomic scale phenomena with fantastic precision. We
find that any idea is only good for what it's good for, and we can
expect to need new ideas when we discover - or create - more
reality.
Did this put physical science and cosmology into the same indeterminate
bag as philosophy and religion? Yes BUT - it widened the horizon
for both. In retrospect, a few leading lights have shown
clarity. For
example, William James, about 1890, wrote "Consciousness is a
process, not a thing." And in the 1920s Alfred North Whitehead
and others
developed Process Philosophy with its emphasis on the interactions of
actualities rather than their passive existence. The term
"actualities" is chosen to include things and their interrelations and
ideas about them.
In that context Process Theology has developed the idea of a God that's
not
omnipotent and omniscient and supernatural, but rather is an idea that
we can use to comprehend the values inherent in real world
experience.
Our whole knowledge of
reality is itself a process, and we're missing opportunities for a
wider
horizon if we don't keep an open mind. Contemporary mainline
churches are including various developments of Process Theology in
their teachings.
So, if they must entertain the thought of God in their mind they
realize that
like any other idea it represents something - the universal facts of
life, or of nature, or
at least a process of becoming. And in that critical context we
can let
it run wild, for whatever that's worth, and rein it in when
necessary. Our efforts at comprehending ancient religious
doctrine needn't conflict with our appreciation of contemporary clarity
in understanding that ideas are tools of thought, that represent
something of reality, and are useful for practical purposes.
The sensation of wanting to do something is an epiphenomenon, as is the
whole experience of consciousness - it's the aggregate result of the
working together of many self-motivated neurological subsystems.
As an
analogy gas pressure is an epiphenomenon, the aggregate result of
free-flying gas molecules bumping against each other and the container
walls with a kinetic energy distribution that depends on
temperature. Therefore we can think of a gas as a fluid that
fills the available space but we need the kinetic theory to explain,
quantitatively, the relation between temperature, pressure, and
volume. Our
experience of wishes and intentions, and morals and values, is a
part of the
process of imagining what-to-expect. We are aware of the part of
that massively-parallel, associative recall, pattern recognition
process that we need to guide our steps in the world. We,
and other animals, have evolved the automatic systems to internalize
our knowledge for ready reference, without distraction by the millions
of sub-systems that make that possible. So we can direct our
attention as needed and imagine "What if?" and decide what objectives
to
pursue.
Free will is our subjective experience of
entertaining in our imagination, whatever thoughts come to mind,
and then following whatever course of action that we
choose. Determinism is
our belief that natural
processes can be understood, and will behave, according to ideal
concepts that we can invent, and that we can use to predict what will
happen.
But today we have the humility, and conceit, learned from modern
physics and information theory, to realize that ideas are useful tools
in spite of their limited applicability. And that critical
judgement is a window to a wider horizon of possibilities. Faith
is good for what it is good for, for commitment to a course of action,
but it shouldn't be a refuge for minds that are not comfortable with
the open-ended nature of reality.
The philosophers couldn't deal
with their "mind-brain problem" because they were looking the other
way! And they had a historical context of magical thinking, a
"spiritual world" where ideas were real in a different way, that was
too comfortable to abandon. But now the quandary of mind-brain
dualism is left behind in the trash bin
of word games that philosophers play on each another.
Understanding human motivation is a work-in-progress.
Paradox: With our modern
communications technology the world
has shrunk to
milliseconds!
Access to anywhere! And anything that anyone has put on the
Internet! Yes
but -- That wider horizon contains so much more
world! And we can
have it both ways. Our cognitive system has evolved - naturally - to do just
that! Associative pattern recognition, parallel processing, fan
in, fan out. A virtual reality like we do with computers.
Awareness automatically of what we need to know at the moment.
The design of
intelligent nature IS the nature of intelligent design!
Here
are some references which
have been important to me:
Chance and Necessity by Jacques
Monod who in 1970 wrote a popular book about the nature of life
and genetic evolution. The bulk of the book is detail about molecular
biology, but a gem of an idea is expressed there. Monod
said that life is "epigenetic" and "teleonomic".
The process of evolution works out with fantastic subtlety the ways
that life forms can grow out of the nature of their materials,
analogous
to the order with which atoms fit together in crystals. By
"teleonomic" he means the purpose that we see in adaptive variations.
He points out that our recognition of organization and purpose in
natural systems is a creative act on our part. We should take credit
for inventing the ideas that we use to understand nature instead of
postulating a miraculous Creator.
Unsnarling
the World-Knot - Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body
Problem. David Ray Griffin, U. of California Press,
1998. A detailed philosophical discussion of cognition as a
natural process.
Patterns,
Thinking, and Cognition - A
Theory of Judgement. Howard
Margolis,U. of Chicago Press,
1987. An evolutionary approach that emphasizes the dynamic balance
between
reconsideration and commitment to action, that is observed in "lower"
life forms as well as mankind. Margolis shows that pattern
recognition is an iterative process of successive approximation between
an internal representation and external stimuli, and that imagination
and invention are part of the process. He applies these insights
to societal behavior, in particular to the
century-long interval for the general acceptance of the Copernican
paradigm for our solar system, first by navigators and map-makers and
last by professional astronomers
An informative review, revised 8 Jan 08:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/
Synopsis of mainly medieval
discussions of causality:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-medieval/