Dan Dennett and Q/qualia, the manifest image and more

Tim Bayne has a very good retrospective on some of Dan Dennett's thought at Aeon.

Two main things jumped out at me. One is his claim that Gilbert Ryle wasn't the only major philosophical influence on Dennett. 

He says we should also look at Wilfrid Sellars:

As the contemporary Oxford philosopher Anil Gomes observed in the London Review of Books in 2023, the key to understanding Dennett lies with another 20th-century American philosopher, Wilfrid Sellars – something of a philosopher’s philosopher. Sellars distinguished between two images of reality, the manifest image and the scientific image. The manifest image is the ordinary, everyday conception of reality – the conception of reality that human beings have prior to science. The scientific image, of course, is the conception of reality delivered by science.

Everybody knows a big part of Dennett's schtick was folk psychology, and Bayne says this was Dennett's version of the manifest image.

The biggie is — where is Dennett at in trying to incorporate some ideas from folk psychology into real psychology as a philosophy of mind? And, Bayne eventually looks at Dennett's idea of the self as a center of narrative gravity. He says this, essentially, stays in the manifest image and not the scientific image, and is based on stories. From this, he goes back to Wittgenstein as ordinary language philosopher. Here's his take on storytelling in general.

Indeed, if Dennett’s analysis of the self was driven by anything, it was driven not by science but by stories – and by stories about stories. At the heart of his paper ‘The Self as a Centre of Narrative Gravity’ (1992) is a story about a story-writing machine

From this, he says Dennett's idea is that, based on Ryle, "we" aren't looking for a causal explanation of behavior but rather sense-making. And, that's where Bayne discusses "the intentional stance."

That said, Bayne says Dennett himself was retreating from his view of intentionality by the end of his life.

Beyond that, aren't "we" as professional and amateur philosophers looking for a causal explanation of mind, beyond but including behavior?

Here qualia pop up.

The Philosophers’ Lexicon – first published by Dennett a decade before ‘Quining Qualia’– defines ‘to quine’ as to deny ‘resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant’. Dennett coined the term in homage to his undergraduate advisor W V O Quine, who had tried to construct a metaphysics with as few entities as possible. That’s ‘quining’; what about ‘qualia’? Dennett distinguished two senses of this term. In one sense, qualia (singular: quale) are simply the ways that things seem to us in perceptual experience. (To use Dennett’s example, consider how a glass of milk looks at sunset – that’s a quale.) To deny that there are ways the world appears to us in perceptual experience would indeed be in the running for ‘the silliest claim ever made’, but Dennett made no such claim. Instead, his eliminativism was directed towards a certain conception of perceptual experience – Qualia-with-a-capital-Q. To believe in Qualia is to think that the experiential character of consciousness (‘the ways things seem to us’) involves properties that are intrinsic, private, ineffable and directly available to introspection. It is Qualia – and not qualia – that Dennett quined.

As I told Massimo Pigliucci, assuming Bayne has a good interpretation of Dennett's thought, then Dennett comes off as essentially creating a fictive (sic) Platonic idea of Qualia capital Q, and then using that as a strawman to beat down opponents of his thoughts.

Dennett was good at other strawmanning, which leads me to endorse that Bayne IS at least in the right neighborhood. Further confirmation comes further down:

Note, in passing, the absence of science here. There is no mention of single-cell recordings; no appeal to computational models of brain activity; no measures of entropy. Instead, we’re asked to consider a purely fictional scenario. Dennett’s case against Qualia rests on a purely philosophical argument that would not have been out of place in the 1950s. (Indeed – as Dennett himself points out – it is a variation on a purely philosophical argument that was given in the 1950s: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘beetle in the box’ argument.) Although there is background concern here with scientific methods – in effect, Dennett is challenging the Qualia-phile to explain how Qualia might be studied – nothing in the way of ‘brain learning’ is assumed.

Dennett’s rejection of Qualia wasn’t a rejection of consciousness – it was a rejection of a certain conception of consciousness. But if Dennett didn’t reject consciousness, what explanation did he provide of it?

None, of course. Hence wags noting that the proper title for a mid-1990s book of his was "Dan Dennett's Ideas of Consciousness Explained."

There you are. That's our Danny boy!

And hence, while I noted his passing, and followed up on that, I wasn't philosophically crushed. Per that first link, I agreed with John Horgan that Dennett's rejection of at least capital-Q Qualia was a back door to Chalmers' p-zombies. Horgan's piece has a section on this. Second, I also agreed with John that Dennett was a practitioner of scientism, namely in his philosophy. His lack of actual science in his ideas on consciousness is one example. His claiming that evolution was algorithmic and a universal acid beyond biology is another.

In fact, Dennett deserves some Horgan pull quotes. I know Horgan actually deserves them:

Like many philosophers, Dennett clearly gets a kick out of defending positions that defy common sense. But his primary agenda is defending science against religion and other irrational belief systems. Dennett, an outspoken atheist, fears that creationism and other superstitious nonsense will persist as long as mysteries do. He thus insists that science can untangle even the knottiest conundrums, including the origin of life (which he asserts that recent “breakthroughs” are helping to solve) and consciousness.

Followed by:

Dennett accuses those who question science’s power of bad faith; these doubters don’t want their “beloved mysteries” explained. Dennett can’t accept that anyone might have legitimate, rational reasons for resisting his reductionist vision.

Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real. Science has real enemies—some in positions of great power--but Dennett doesn’t do science any favors by shilling for it so aggressively.

There you are.

That last paragraph may seem a bit harsh, but I would at least halfway accept it, including Horgan's "nuttier."

Too bad I wasn't famous enough to know Dennett while he was still alive and call him a Platonist, too.

RIP Dan Dennett follow up

I posted my own RIP three weeks ago, with links to much previous blogging about Dennett, as well as links to Massimo Pigliucci's and John Horgan's takes on him.

Last week, via Firefox, I saw Dan Falk's take on Nautilus, and it needs some refutation on its "10 brilliant insights."

1. The mind is a user illusion. True to fair degree. But, the user is itself an illusion. One of these areas where Dennett didn't go as far as he could have.

2. Free will is an fantasy, but a welcome one. Not so totally. Per Daniel Wegner, I see subconscious varieties of something like free will existing. As for the idea that our legal system would fall part without traditionalist ideas of free will? "Fall apart" might be too harsh, but, more importantly, contra Dennett's larger implications, maybe it NEEDS reformation.

Beyond that, Dennett's comment there and elsewhere that we need free will sounds like the reverse side of Robert Sapolsky saying "I love determinism but I refuse to draw logical conclusions from that."

Actually, even more, it sounds like the type of comment about religion that would be on the lips of a stereotypical 19th century Anglican divine, that we need it to enforce morality, even if none of it is true.

And, Dennett himself didn't really believe this.

After all, his first big book hit was "Brainstorms." Dan didn't repudiate free will in that book.No. 2 was "Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting." He certainly didn't repudiate free will there, as shown by the subtitle alone. It's been long ago, and I don't have reviews posted on either, but I know this. In fact, he doubled down on that 20 years later in "Freedom Evolves," and that one IS a review. 

In short, on this one, Dan Falk is either repeating a lie by Dennett, badly misunderstanding him, some combo of those, or worse.

3. Consciousness on parallel tracks? First, what Dennett described running on parallel tracks, or perhaps more accurately, what Falk thinks Dennett is calling "consciousness," is not. It's subselves of subconsciousness. And, is it "brilliant"? Only if one thinks it's new. Falk obviously either hasn't read or doesn't remember his Hume. Hume's only lack was not to talk about multiple streams running at the same time. That said, maybe Dennett isn't so totally right on that. His idea was ultimately a Darwinist one, and I've already rejected his algorithmic claims about "dangerous acid." As in ...

4. The power of Darwinism? Dennett's extolling of the power of algorithms and Darwinian universal acid is all tosh and tommyrot. Period.

5. No miracles allowed? True? Yes. But? Not brilliant and not Dennett's.

6. Cultural evolution can mimic biological evolution. "Can," but Dennett's own fine print hedges — and undercuts Point 3. (Oh, Dennett was wrong about memes, too, and Susan Blackmore has repudiated most of her early thought and comments on them. Fanbois don't like to hear that.)

7. Religion doesn't need to be abolished, merely fixed. The reality of Dennett on religion elsewhere, per Horgan, undercuts this. And, of course, I think Dennett, like Dawkins, did think that Islam did indeed need to be abolished.

8. Behavior is predictable? Not as much as Dennett claimed, per his fine print. But, to the degree that a  "light cone" (not a narrow ray) of behavior is predictable, not totally brilliant and not totally new.

9. The truth really does matter. Uttered in part by Dennett against things like "woke" versions of the sciences, and true there, on the hard sciences. Not so true on the social sciences, but bespoke by Dennett from his hoity-toity, OSS-dad, New England past.

10. Reality is more magic than miracles. Unequivocally true.

RIP Dan Dennett

I would normally, upon hearing the death of a figure like this, one more “pedestaled” than deserving, write up some sort of “takedown” obit. In the world of politics and public policy, at my Blogger site, I’ve done that regularly, not just for the easy targets like Henry Kissinger, but also the likes of John McCain, per my “obituaries” label there. Beyond the world of straight politics, I’ve done it for the likes of Christopher Hitchens.

And now, there’s Dan Dennett from the world of philosophy — and also, like Hitchens, from the world of Gnu Atheism. (And, yes, that’s how it’s spelled.) But, I really don’t have to do anything beyond color around the edges on this one.

That’s because the same person from whom I heard of Dennett’s passing, John Horgan, had updated a 2017 piece about him that fills in all the basics.

The biggie? Scientism is bad enough coming from a scientist; it’s far worse coming from a philosopher. (Sadly, Dennett’s not alone in that.)

On the issue of consciousness in general as illusion? To nuance Horgan, I think that “something like consciousness” exists below the surface, and is connected to something like Dennett’s subselves.

That said, I’ll go further than Horgan in one way and call Dennett a big old hypocrite. If no “Cartesian meaner” exist, then neither does a “Cartesian free willer.” Across Boston at MIT, Dennett’s peer Daniel Wegner got that one totally right. (But, per Wegner, I think “something like” free will exists in the same way as “something like” consciousness; Wegner also notes that “free will” is as much an affect, an emotional state or value judgment, as anything.)

Back to Horgan. First, he’s totally right in Dennett being wrong in claiming qualia don’t exist. The Samuel Johnson refutation suffices. Horgan rightly also notes that Dennett’s stance on this is a backdoor to David Chalmers’ p-zombies. Hard pass there, as I wait for Dennett to come back as a philosophically undead p-zombie.

Hard pass there, as I wait for Dennett to come back as a philosophically undead p-zombie.

The scientism? This really raised its head with “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” First, no, the equivalent of “evolution by natural selection” is NOT some “universal acid.” Second, Darwin included sexual selection as part of his idea. What’s the analogy to that elsewhere? Beyond that, life in general is simply not algorithmic in the way Dennett claimed.

Of course, on things like that, Dennett’s hypocrisy again raised its head. In this case, he was a greedy reductionist that he liked to claim others were, but never him. (This is similar to his denial of being a compatibilist on free will.)

The biggest issue in his scientism? Per Horgan, the claim that the mind is like a computer. That was a tired old trope decades ago, and part of a series of generally wrong tropes on “the mind is like X” that started with the beginning of mechanization and industrialization in human society.

John then ties Dan’s scientism to his rejection of wonder. And, that gets its own quote:

Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real. Science has real enemies—some in positions of great power--but Dennett doesn’t do science any favors by shilling for it so aggressively.

Friend Massimo Pigliucci has dropped his own obituary thoughts. He is kinder than I, and far kinder than John, on Dennett’s relations to religion. Here’s the NYT obit that he says unduly savages Dennett there. Sorry, Massimo, he may have been the kindest of the “Four Horsemen” of Gnu Atheism, but he was one. (That said, I don’t know that, in his book on atheist preachers, he explicitly called them out for being the hypocrites there were. Having potentially been there, and having rejected their hypocritical road, I can state that with high conviction.)

On matters of will? Massimo and I are in the same ballpark, but I don’t think we’ll ever be at the same moment. I’ve encouraged him more than once to read Wegner; I don’t think he has. I don’t think Horgan has, either. I think Dennett was halfway in that ballpark, but not entirely. (Wegner’s “The Illusion of Conscious Will” talks about the illusion in a psychology of mind sense, not that of everyday sociology.)

On the Gnu Atheism, this obit also reminds me of his invention of the word “brights.” Dennett’s later claim that the religious could call themselves “supers” rang hollow.

Massimo does add one thing I’d forgotten all about, and that is Dennett’s hating on Steve Gould. Part of that was, per “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” that Dennett was an ardent ev psycher, which Massimo and I certainly are not. Part of it, IMO, with the recent death of sociobiology founder E.O. Wilson and his hating on Gould’s scientific and intellectual partner Richard Lewontin, was larger political issues. (At this point, I’ll interject that Dennett’s father worked for the OSS in World War II and most obits mention him being of “Old New England stock” or similar. )

But, let’s also end with Dennett’s good. I, too, got an introduction into non-formal logic, non-technical modern philosophy with “The Mind’s I,” a collection of essays edited by Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter of “Gödel, Escher, Bach” fame. It was about 25 percent their own material, but much other, such as Nagel’s “What Is It Like to be a Bat?”, multiple items by the inimitable Raymond Smullyan and more. (That said, read here for a decade-old double-barrelled takedown of both.)

So, for a Facebooker in Horgan’s feed who talks about how much he learned from Dennett? So did I. But I then moved on. And unleared a fair amount.

RIP, Dan.

Anil Seth: a new thinker about thinking; but is he actually new?

He's new to me, at least, but this Guardian interview, with discussion of his ideas and his new book, means I think I need to do more to rectify that.

He says Dan Dennett was the biggest influence on his current ideas, but yet that he's plenty willing to argue with him. From the interview, "subselves" and an evolutionary battle idea on how consciousness emerges from fights between these subselves seems to be the biggest influence.

Based on the famous permanent amnesia case of Clive Waring, he then says it seems that personhood is not totally tied to explicit memory and related issues. To some degree, this would tie with subselves and multiple drafts (but refined from what Dennett says).

As for Dennett's denial of a Cartesian theater? What if, going beyond Seth in this interview, there is such a thing, but it's not permanent or ingrained. What if, per Seth and other new thinkers, that's part of our "hallucinating" our sense of the world "out there" into existence?

As for Dennett's refusal to deny, or even discuss, the non-existence of a Cartesian free willer on parallel grounds, will Seth discuss that or not? Will he discuss how much Dennett ripped off from HIS mentor, Gilbert Ryle, then tried to palm Ryle's ideas off as his own?

In light of all of the above, he has a great new riff on Descartes:

“I predict myself, therefore I am.”

Well put, per Tevye!

The book is "Being You."

It sounds interesting ... but, if Seth is really that enthusiastic about Dennett, it also sounds like something that needs to be carefully eyeballed. His Ted Talk may have had more than 10 million hits, but other than the idea that consciousness is a controlled hallucination, there's really nothing new.

AND? If he is a fan of Dennett (and hopefully, cutting through the chase, Ryle), then who's controlling the hallucination? Oops.

In addition, if he appeared on Sam Harris' podcast to talk to him, per his bio page on his website, he needs to be read very carefully. (The podcast is 115, yes ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN, minutes long. Pass. And not linking, even with a no-follow, as it's on Harris' website.)

==

Sidebar: On the subselves and struggle, the Guardian also interviewed David Eagleman a couple of months ago. Read it, too. (He's a bit too reductionist for my taste, and per an old piece on my main blog, too much a techie-enthusiast within neuroscience, but still.)

Dan Dennett's intuition pumps are leaking

"Intuition Pumps" is the name of Dennett's latest book. I probably should put "latest" in scare quotes because, like about anything he's written in the last decade, there's probably little new in it.

That said, it looks like the most subtly snarky of the original Four Horsemen of Gnu Atheism* hasn't lost that touch!

His new book, Intuition Pumps, seems like it is more of the same. Emmy van Duerzen has a good take on it, even if a bit too existential for me.

That said, while her review is more in depth, it's less scathing than this one by Eric Banks.

* I say this legitimately, with a couple of specific issues in mind.

First is Dennett's invention of the word "brights" for secularists, especially fellow Gnus. That was followed by his denial that he was implying religious believers were "dims" or anything similar. Hey, philosophers lie all the time, as well as attacking one another. (See "Wittgenstein's Poker" for the latter.) But they're usually less bald-faced in the lie levels.

Second is his hurling of the charge of "greedy reductionism" against others, while using that, either consciously or unconsciously, as a defense mechanism while refusing to look in the mirror and admit the same applies to him.

There's another good takedown here. And a longer blog post by me about both his and Doug Hofstadter's new books is here.

Dennett can't admit he's wrong, I guess — even with good thoughts

Dan Dennett/Edge magazine photo

Philosopher Dan Dennett has a very interesting interview in Edge.

Key takeaway? He junks a fair amount of what he's said in the past about the details of how the mind/brain is like a computer, 

BUT!

Still holds fast to the analogy that it's ... like a computer!

Let's look at some comments:

We're beginning to come to grips with the idea that your brain is not this well-organized hierarchical control system where everything is in order, a very dramatic vision of bureaucracy. In fact, it's much more like anarchy with some elements of democracy.  ...

The vision of the brain as a computer, which I still champion, is changing so fast. The brain's a computer, but it's so different from any computer that you're used to. It's not like your desktop or your laptop at all, and it's not like your iPhone except in some ways. ...

Control is the real key, and you begin to realize that control in brains is very different from control in computers. Control in your commercial computer is very much a carefully designed top-down thing.  I mean, with all that, there's no need to hang on to his analogy.  

I guess he simply can't admit it's a crappy analogy that just doesn't work, and walk away from it.

Because it was a crappy analogy a decade ago,. and it's in tatters now. (Ditto for his claim that evolution is algorithmic.) 

That said, it's not all hubris in the interview. Dennett admits his new ideas (and it's nice to hear him have some) are speculative enough he'd "be thrilled if they're 20 percent right." And, his comments about brain plasticity, findings that maternal and paternal  inheritance genes in our cells may "war" much more than previously thought, are refreshing. 

At the same time, there IS hubris in other ways. His admissions of plasticity in the brain, combined with the "20 percent correct," should lead him to say that cognitive science, and related things such as artificial intelligence, may have advanced from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in the last decade, but that's where they are and no further.'

Also unfortunately, his new ideas don't appear to extend to free will.

At the same time, though, the last section, about hypocrites in the pulpit, is great.

He's not talking about moral hypcrites, but unbelieving hypocrites in conservative Christian denominations. This is a follow-up to surveys and other work he and others have recently done.

Here's a sample:

How do they thread the needle so that they don't offend the sophisticates in their congregation by insisting on the literal truth of the book of Genesis, let's say, while still not scaring, betraying, pulling the rug out from under the more naïve and literal-minded of their parishioners? There's no good solution to that problem as far as we can see, since they have this unspoken rule that they should not upset, undo, subvert the faith of anybody in the church.

This means that there's a sort of enforced hypocrisy where the pastors speak from the pulpit quite literally, and if you weren't listening very carefully, you’d think: oh my gosh, this person really believes all this stuff. But they're putting in just enough hints for the sophisticates in the congregation so that the sophisticates are supposed to understand: Oh, no. This is all just symbolic. This is all just metaphorical. And that's the way they want it, but of course, they could never admit it. You couldn't put a little neon sign up over the pulpit that says, "Just metaphor, folks, just metaphor." It would destroy the whole thing. 

From personal experience with my own "coming out," I know how true this is.

Good stuff to end on. Go read it. 

AI, computers, minds, algorithms, evolution, Dennett

If even artificial intelligence advocates have largely abandoned the idea that AI is ultimately algorithmic, it’s time to question a lot of related assumptions, some of which I already have.

First, the human mind, then, is clearly not algorithmic. And, it’s likely even less algorithmic than a computer.

Second, being “kludged” together by evolution, it’s most surely not a black box, like a modern software program, routine, or subroutine.

Third, running off that point, contra Dan Dennett, evolution is most assuredly not algorithmic, either, as I’ve said before.

Fourth, the Turing test, as stipulated by Alan Turing himself, was NOT about whether a machine could think, but about whether a machine could simulate thinking. In other words, in modern philosophy terminology, Turing was a functionalist, as is Dennett (on this issue, at least), even as he continues to deny it.

Anyway, read the full story linked above.

Stuart Kauffman erects anti-reductionistic straw man

Kauffman, the former long-term scholar at the Santa Fe Institute, says we need spirituality to exorcise the demons of reductionism from science.

Here’s one example:

To take one example, I argue that the evolutionary emergence of the human heart cannot be deduced from physics. That doesn't mean it breaks any laws of physics. But there's no way of getting from physics to the emergence of hearts in the evolution of the biosphere.

Contrary to Kauffman playing pin-the-reductionistic-tail on Steve Weinberg, though, no mainstream scientist has tried to get evolutionary biology deduced from quantum physics. That’s what Dan Dennett calls “greedy reductionism,” not reductionism.

Then, Kauffman goes well beyond that nonsense to the major leagues of creating straw men. He claims that, in essence, we can’t appreciate value, can’t have a sense of aesthetics or awe at the world, etc., with a reductionistic stance.

This is the typical canard repeated, nay thrust at, atheists by theists. Coming out of the mouth of a professed atheist like Kaufmann, it’s disconcerting at the least and off-putting at the most. Even more than that, is his insistence that we should use the word “God” to discuss this non-reductionistic aesthetics or, as I will call it …

Stuart Kauffman’s metaphysics. Proof?

Kauffman goes Paul Tillich at the end of the interview:

Not that there's a supernatural god. I think that there’s something else. I think the creativity in nature is so stunning and so overwhelming that it's God enough for me, and I think it’s God enough for many of us if we think about it.

Ridiculous. But not the first time I’ve heard such stuff out of the mouth of a professed philosopher.

Darwinism looks to explain collective behavior

Wired has a great article on what the next frontier, or hurdle if you will, is for the explanatory power of modern neo-Darwinism — the development of groups and collectives. This includes bees in a hive, ants in a colony, bacteria in a collective, and even more complex things such as the vast array of bacteria that make up 90 percent of the cells in our own “human” bodies.

The main question is, how can neo-Darwinian theory as currently constituted explain these developments of evolutionary biology — if it can?

Down in front, creationists and IDers. Wired is a serious magazine and isn’t asking for “explanations” from you.

But, some of the evolutionary biologists quoted in the story say that something, either a greatly modified neo-Darwinianism or else some appended theory of emergent properties, based on things like chaos theory, complexity theory, and the “tipping points” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, is going to be needed to do the trick.

”There’s nothing wrong with neo-Darwinian evolution in its own right,” Carl Woese said, “but it’s not large enough to encompass what we know now.”

Woese’s specialty is bacteria, and he’s not afraid of bold theories that turn conventional scientific wisdom on its head. In 1977, he and colleague George Fox rearranged the animal kingdom from five branches into three, two of which comprise microbes.

Microbes make up much of Earth’s biomass, and they also cast into relief the shortcomings of neo-Darwinian evolution. A bucket of seawater can contain 60,000 bacterial species, and to Woese, these must be seen as a collective rather than as disparate units.

At the collective level, said Woese, bacteria exhibit patterns of organization and behavior that emerge suddenly, at tipping points of population variation and density called “saltations.” Natural selection still favors — or disfavors — the ultimate outcome of these jumps, but the jumps themselves seem to defy explanation solely through genetic changes or individual properties.

Such jumps don’t just call into question whether evolution is capable of producing sudden rather than gradual change. That debate raged during the later stages of the last century, but has been largely settled in favor of what paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould termed punctuated equilibrium. By contrast, Woese invokes yet-to-be-quantified rules of complexity and emergence. These, he said, may also explain other exceptional jumps, such as the transition from protein fragments to single cells and from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones.

Contrary to IDers, creationists, or New Agers, etc., Woese works with rules that have a basis in science and/or mathematics, rules that are ultimately testable through construction of hypotheses.

Part of the issue hinges on debate over an idea stated most forcefully by philosopher Daniel Dennett: Is neo-Darwinism algorithmic or not? I am guessing Woese would either say “I don’t know,” or “possibly not.” Other evolutionary biologists might agree with Dennett, yet others might reject his claim forcefully.

”Selection probably happens at all scales, from gene to individual to species to collection of species to ecosystem to we don’t even know what,” said Maya Paczuski, head of the Complexity Science Group at the University of Calgary.

Paczuski’s group sees evolution as taking place at all these levels, with what happens in ecosystems rippling down to individuals, back up to populations, across to other populations, and so on — all simultaneously, and in tandem with the mysterious dynamics of networked complexity.

But does it all happen mechanically? Or does evolution obey some larger imperative?

University of Nevada evolutionary biologist Guy Hoelzer calls that imperative biospheric self-organization. "The idea of evolution is embedded within self-organization,” he said. “It coordinates the ecological roles of species so that ecosystems persist and process a great deal of energy.”

I, too, doubt Dennett’s idea, though as a scientific layperson (but not a philosophical one), I don’t think I have enough of a scientific background to be able to reject it forcefully. I do think that, to some degree, the developmental processes we eventually discover in the emergent properties of biological groups, collectives and ecosystems will show enough discontinuity with neo-Darwinism to be likely to develop as separate subfield within evolutionary biology.

Scott Atran does a disservice to “new atheism”

Anthropologist Scott Atran, an atheist himself and author, most notably of In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, but a strong critic of the so-called “New Atheists,” even to the point of approaching talking about the “ineffability” of religious belief, was recently in an extended conversation with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris about their critics of the degree of harm religion causes.

The discussion also included side points on the validity, and degree of validity, of ideas of evolutionary group selection vs. individual selection.

Here’s my take on the whole thing, which is well worth a read.

The “new atheists” are right, in my opinion and empirical observation, that religion is harmful from the standpoint of groups, whether that be individual religious groups, faiths, sects, etc. other social groups, or the largest group of all, Homo sapiens. However, that then said, Atran is right that religion can be very valuable for the groups holding on to it.

That said, religion may well still have value for individuals. The psychological value of greater control that religion appears to give, greater control through its apparent, even if now known to not be real, explanatory value is still strong. But, its value minus its detriments is fading, especially in countries scientifically advanced not named the United States.

That said, the cohesiveness value of religion for groups still appears to offset those detriments in this country. But, as the United States exhausts its natural resources, faith-based stances from a fair amount of more literalist Christians on environmental issues, blank-check defense of Israel, and other items, will certainly grow more costly, especially to individuals within religious groups as individuals.

And, that said, while not dismissing David Sloan Wilson’s ideas on group selection, as many of the Dawkinses of the world do appear to do, and while noting that Darwin himself discussed group selection, ultimately, individual selection trumps group selection. Genes are passed on at the individual level.

So, Atran is somewhat right in an oblique way. Until individuals feel for their own selves the costs of religious belief, especially of a literalist or semi-literalist fashion, at the individual level, individuals won’t break out from the group benefits they get.

But, contra Atran, since at the group level, we have a conflict between in-group value and out-group cost for religion, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc., are absolutely right to expose the cost that religion imposes on outgroups.

In the U.S., the amount of tax deductions for religion would be one example. From President Bush on down to school superintendents, the increasing preference given to “faith-based” social organizations to perform government services, the cost religious groups impose on other groups, as well as individuals, across metagroup swaths of society is a big issue.

In other words, not as individuals within a particular group, but religious groups as “individuals” within metagroups, there is a huge, highly legitimate “free rider” issue.

In other words, let David Sloan Wilson talk about group selection with religion. He’s hoisting himself by his own petard.

Atheism is NOT reductionism, be it scientific or philosophical

And speaking of “scientific or philosophical,” I think the two leading representatives of those schools as public speakers on issues atheistic, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, need to remember this, be reminded of this, called out on this, or whatever.

On issues both philosophical and mathematical (and extending toward evolutionary biology), Douglas Hofstadter presents the case for a holistic naturalism well in “Gödel, Escher, Bach.”

And, though evolutionary psychology, let alone Evolutionary Psychology, wasn’t riding high on the radar screen at the time of GEB, Hofstadter’s writing puts paid to the capital-EP philosophy vs. the small-ep science.

In fact, beyond its metaphysical bent, I believe that’s one of the main problems with Ev Psych. Per Dennett’s comments in some of his books about warranted vs. unwarranted reductionism, I believe Ev Psych engages in unwarranted reductionism.

Back to this post’s title.

So do many of the varieties of atheism plied today by intellectual leaders. No, we don’t know everything yet about evolutionary biology, let alone evolutionary psychology. The same is true of cognitive science. Too strong a degree of reductionism is unwarranted on lack of epistemological grounds alone.

Given that Hofstadter and others (chaos and complexity theories, Malcolm Gladwell’s pondering in this areas, etc.), the Dawkins/Dennett degree of reductionism is also unwarranted as a logical inference.

What's wrong with the core assumptions of Evolutionary Psychology

In writing this post, I am working with Imre Lakatos’ philosophy of science understanding of the development and refinement of scientific theories, rather than Popper’s falsification theory. (A great oversimplification of Lakatos is that rather than putting one theory up for falsification against a null set, a falsifiability-based potential counterexample, instead, multiple theories running on somewhat parallel explanatory tracks are thrown into the same “warm little pond” of a quasi-Darwinian intellectual evolutionary contest. The “fittest,” especially if clearly the fittest, emerges as the working theory until the scientific-evolutionary design space changes sufficiently enough (and perhaps suddenly enough, a la Kuhn) to put this working theory into a new intellectual evolution arms race.

Lakatos talks about “hard-core” portions of a theory without which it is, in essence, not the same theory. I just used “core” in my headline, but by it, I mean hard core.

It’s clear the hard core of Ev Psych is an strongly adaptationist understanding of evolutionary biology. I’ve made an initial statement here on what’s wrong with that, and made a first observation here on one item of fallout from adaptation being wrong, namely the idea that evolution is an algorithmic process.

More specifically than that, though, what’s wrong with adaptationism?

Optimality, just as I noted in my initial post on this subject.

More specifically than I mentioned there, what’s wrong with optimality? (I there said it was at least quasi-utopian, and hinted that it could be seen as quasi-idealistic, in the Platonic sense. In both ways, I called it “Leibnitzian,” as in it claims we are in essence living in the best, or at least nearly the best, of all evolutionarily possible worlds. I also said this smacked of Paley’s argument from design for the existence of God rather than drinking from the better waters of David Hume.

First, a series of rhetorical questions:
Who defines what “optimal” is? (Ev Psychers claim they can look at the EEA, but can they really define it that clearly?

For what length of time is a evolutionary change supposed to be optimal? Five minutes? (That can be a lifetime for a single-celled creature.) Five hours? Five days? Five years? Five centuries? Five millennia? Five eons? Even if optimality is true, a trait might be optimal today, non-optimal a century from now, but optimal again a century after that.

Now, I have no problem admitting that many evolutionary changes are adaptationistic — but not all of them.

However, that needs a further, and larger, caveat: a better definition of what it means for an evolutionary trait to be adaptationistic.

Just because a change is adaptationistic, this does NOT mean that it is optimal. Rather, it may simply be melioristic, that is, better than what was before but not the best. And it seems to me that hard-core adaptationists have totally blown by this distinction, or else tried to run it over and grind it into the dirt.

Now back to the critique that Ev Psych is some secular equivalent of the argument from design. To that degree, especially when a Dan Dennett in “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” can laud evolutionary nature as a quality creator, we are getting very close to a secular equivalent of Intelligent Design.

The teleological nature of trying to define what is “optimal” further parallels the teleological basis of intelligent design.

Beyond that, I have philosophical problems with an absolutist, or quasi-absolutist, theory, which a theory based on claims of optimality really is. Also, given that scientific understanding is normally understood to be provisional, and optimality is, in essence, a static state, it seems frozen in amber.

Another way of understanding this particular point is to see that the adaptationist program has a teleological view of progress, or, should we say Progress with a Platonic Idea capital P?

If we see adaptationism having this mindset to some degree, even if not entirely, it is then arguable that it is a metaphysical program. Especially taking φυσις in its original Greek meaning of “nature,” a program of Progress is arguably meta-physical, that is, going beyond nature.

Or, to put it another way, hard-core adaptationists are trying to promulgate a “secularist theology,” or, if you want to nail the hide to the wall with a two-dollar word, what they’re doing is … scientism.

So, on this count, I distrust the mindset of adaptationists for the same reason I have distrusted the quasi-metaphysical mindset of some cosmologists who have insisted that the universe had to be closed — usually to prevent the anti-Progress eternal entropy increase of an open universe.

The universe IS, simply is. It is neither good nor bad. Neither is evolutionary biology good or bad. Therefore, neither one can be said to be progressing toward anything, whether or not a teleological stance is the best to take. And likewise for human nature per se, and the Ev Psych that would try to study it from such a point of view.

Evolutionary Psychology, Dan Dennett, and the supposedly algorithmic nature of evolution

In my previous post about the wrongness of Evolutionary Psychology, after connecting the dots that led to that conclusion, I then started thinking about Dan Dennett’s strong, even vociferous, support for the algorithmic nature of evolution.

Then, further dots connected, as I realized how connected this is to his being a strong adaptationist.

If adaptations cause traits that approach the optimal or even reach it, we can define “the optimal” as a specific point. This, then, gives us something analogous to convergent series in mathmatics, whether geometric or arithmetic series.

One formula for either type of series solves any convergent series.

I don’t know if Dennett — or other strong adaptationists who are also “algorithmists” — have consciously thought of this analogy, but I’m thinking it has had to be floating somewhere in their minds. Even if not, it’s one of the better arguments that I think could be mustered for the algorithmic reduction of evolution.

Well, first of all, I think this is a case of Dennett being hoist by his own petard, found guilty of not reductionism but greedy reductionism.

That, though, is a secondary point.

The main point is that, since adaptationism simply isn’t true, per my previous post, and not only isn’t true, but as quasi-utopian and arguably philosophically idealist isn’t good science, that an algorithmic understanding of evolution that is pinned to adaptationism also fails on both counts.

Evolutionary psychology — adaptationism defined sub specie Leibnitz

Adaptationism: “The Leibnitzian view of how gene-based evolutionary changes produce the optimal development of traits in individuals, therefore individuals as individuals, and secondarily, species composed of groups of such individuals.

Now, no confirmed Ev Psycher may like that definition, but if the shoe fits, that adaptationism claims this is the best of all evolutionarily possible worlds (or nearly so) …

How else can you describe a theory that says most or all traits are optimal adaptations? It’s too bad Gould was too mild-mannered, and neither Eldridge nor Lewontin among others has the pen of a Voltaire to have produced this definition already.

And that is why I am not an Evolutionary Psychologist, although I do certainly consider myself to be some sort of evolutionary psychologist (per Buller).

Another way to look at this, perhaps, is to see that adaptationism, whether specifically put in the service of Ev Psych or not, smacks of utopianism. Materialist utopianism, perhaps; less-than-all utopianism, when compared to religious utopias, dependent on the “omnis” of traditional theology. BUT, utopianism, nonetheless, and arguably a more dangerous utopianism precisely because it’s in the guise of a scientific theory.

Sure, the “optimal development” traits tend toward may be hedged, with “many” or “most.” OK, then I’ll hedge my previous paragraph and call adaptationism quasi-utopian.

Nonetheless, I am an ev psycher, in small letters. I’m a naturalist, it seems clear the brain is the mind (making allowance for neurotransmitter chemicals outside the brain), I believe in evolution, even as details of the neo-Darwinian synthesis get hammered out toward a neo-neo-Darwinian synthesis (influenced by developments in areas such as symbiosis). Anyhow, take a naturalist approach that brain=mind, combine that with an acceptance of evolutionary theory, and QED, the mind must evolve along with the rest of homo sapiens (and other critters).

Just not in the way that Ev Psychers claim, including not “optimally.”

Some critiques of Ev Psych are right; its proponents have sniffed too much Paley, not nearly enough Hume, else they’d be much more skeptical about “optimal” ANYTHING in evolutionary biology.

Consciousness and its disillusionments

Is consciousness all that it’s cracked up to be? For example, even if Dan Dennett’s explanation of consciousness in “Consciousness Explained” is correct, what of it?

If, to riff on the New Age urban legend that we only use 10 percent of our brains, it turns out that only 10 percent of our mental activity is conscious, then Dennett hasn’t explained very much.

But, the idea that much of our mental activity is unconscious is scary to many people. This includes not just John and Jane Does, but many educated people and even a certain amount of cognitive scientists. It’s of a partial piece, at least, with fears over the lack of free will. On that subject, note that even a Dennett, while denying the existence of a Cartesian Central Meaner, has spilled ink enough for two whole books illogically continuing to defend the existence of free will.

Some parts of fears of unconscious mental behavior touch on its free will aspects. A fair amount do. Probably the second biggest fear behind worries about unconscious mental activity is the risk that humans will look more, well, animalistic.

And that’s precisely what “The New Unconscious” addresses. Editors Ran Hassin, James Uleman and John Bargh have selected some of the best in research analysis and other writings on the definition, parameters and role of the unconscious mind as currently understood by cognitive science.

Without any of its authors putting percentages on conscious versus unconscious mental activity, the cognitive science essays collected here ask — and in large degree answer — just what all is happening in our minds out of the reach of our own selves.

Does subliminal programming work? Yes, to a moderate to modest extent, depending on the exact goals of specific subliminal ideas. At the same time, no, if it’s on New Ageish self-help audio tapes; to the degree subliminal programming works, it works far better with visual than with audio programming.

Related to that, do various forms of unconscious priming — such as priming one toward certain emotional or belief states, or reinforcing old ones — work? The answer is a pretty strong yes. Sometimes, as in how racial attitudes can be effective, this is somewhat scary, yet challenging to national issues of sociology, indicating that at least some change in racial attitudes in America is in fact, pardon the pun, only skin deep.

Can unconscious thoughts and processes be controlled? The answer appears to be yes. Does this mean we have unconscious free will? The authors of the main study in this area of the book say yes. They don’t answer, though, how that would square with the absence of a Central Meaner, and whether it might not imply an Unconscious Central Meaner. I say it does, until the authors further develop their idea. However, that’s just their theory of unconscious free will. Unless one believes that lack of a conscious central meaner is some weird form of an emergent property, I don’t see how unconscious free will, let alone an implied unconscious Cartesian Meaner, can actually exist. I charge that they don’t, and that Jack Glaser and John Kihlstrom need to do more work.

But that’s not all in here. Tying in to Malcolm Gladwell, the relative accuracy of thin-slice, quick-slice judgments of other people has been clinically upheld.

The power of assimilating to other people’s mannerisms and becoming unconscious mimics has also been demonstrated. Ditto on mimicry of emotional affect, similarity judgments and other things.

Our minds are less our own than we thought.

Of course, with no Cartesian Meaner, they’re really not “our” minds anyway.

Another way to look at this honestly is as Timothy D. Wilson says in “Strangers to Ourselves”:

When (Freud) said that consciousness is the tip of the iceberg, he was short of the mark by quite a bit — it may be more the size of a snowball on top of that iceberg.

Or, in my own words, you and I are not who we think we are; above all, since, like Ivory Soap, our minds are 99 and 44/100 percent unconscious, we can’t think who we are because it’s inaccessible.

Meanwhile, Jim Grigsby and David Stevens provide some parallel lines of thought in their “Neurodynamics of Personality.”

At one point, they refer to D.M. Buss, who says consciousness may just be a spandrel. In other words, it may just be an evolutionary byproduct of some evolutionary guided process for some other facet of mental development, i.e., consciousness itself was not evolutionarily selected.

Their own thoughts on the self is that there is no such thing as a unitary self; rather, a la some ideas of William James:

“The ‘self’ is actually composed of a large number of (often overlapping) internal representations of who one takes oneself to be.”

From there, I infer they are thinking along the lines of cognitive philosopher Dennett’s “multiple drafts” theory of consciousness. The internal representation that best survives the Darwinian mental battle (to riff on Dennett) and is most adapted for the psychological development space at that moment, is who we are at that time. William James, from a different perspective, was thinking somewhat along those lines when he talked of different social selves; however, he did not incorporate the idea of internal representations affecting selfhood.

And, speaking of Dennett …

One of Grigsby’s and Stevens’ most important statements goes contrary to the sometimes humdrum right, sometimes brilliantly right, sometimes humdrum wrong, and sometimes quite brilliantly wrong Dennett. They stress that, contra Dennett, the human mind is notalgorhithmic; in other words, in terms of cognitive science, different types of software may not be mappable onto different types of hardware.


Note: The specific aspects of study of the unconscious mind covered in this book relate closely to several posts on this blog with the common thread of “Who Am I,” all arguing that selfhood is less unitary than our conscious minds would have us believe, and also less under conscious control.

See here for parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Acceptance and no Cartesian Central Meaner — who’s accepting what?

In an earlier post, I indicated that I not only agreed with Dan Dennett on the lack of a “Cartesian Central Meaner,” but even went beyond that. In the years since I first read “Consciousness Explained,” (which waggishly should have the better title of “Dan Dennett’s Idea of Consciousness Explained”), I’ve become more accepting of this idea.

Who has? Well, I said that I have.

Oops.

I think I (dang it, did it again, like the Knights Who Used to Say Nee) have a paradox worthy of Zeno.

There is no “I” (can’t say “I have no ‘I,’” can I [“I”?]) to accept that “I” don’t exist.

What a tangled web I (“I”) weave. Doug Hofstadter would just looove this one.

Dennett’s wrong stance on free will

First, I use the word “stance” deliberately, pointing at his “intentional stance.”

The “intentional stance” (and “The Intentional Stance”) both overlook the elephant in the corner — Whose intentional stance?

In other words, who is having this intentional stance?

Well, I am, of course.

Really?

What “I” are you? Or am I?

I agree with Dennett that there is no “Cartesian meaner.” But, in so saying (and offering evidence toward that end), he has kicked the props out from under the “intentional stance” (and, yes, “The Intentional Stance”).

If there’s no “I” at the core, in the sense of a master controller, there’s no “intentional stance.”

Actually, that’s not quite right.

There’s no single intentional stance. Instead, there are several sub-intentional stances, some stronger, some weaker, some more permanent, some fleeting.

And now you, dear reader, know exactly where I’m going with the free will issue.

I’m not coming at it from Libet’s consciousness potential or any other ground-up approach. Instead, this is top down.

If there’s no Central Meaner, then, there’s no Central Willer. And no Central Free Willer. (Or Central Free Willy, if you’re a cetacean.)

Again, there are arguably sub-free wills, but if some are weaker or more ephemeral, well, then, “not all free wills are equally free.”

In short, I would say that at base, “free will” is no less an illusion than “I.”

It’s not that it’s philosophically impossible to have some variety of free will; I agree with the broad outlines of Dennett’s writing on this issue.

Rather, it’s that it’s psychologically impossible to have such a thing.