darwin‘s dangerous idea daniel den nett
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Daniel DennettRevolución DarwinTRANSCRIPT
Darwin‘s Dangerous Idea
Daniel Dennett
Revolución Darwin
Santiago, Chile
September 6, 2009
Why was Darwin‘s idea so great?
It united the world of purposeless causation
with the world of meaning.
From physics to ethics and poetry
in one unified perspective
The Pre-Darwinian worldview
The trickle-down theory of creation . . .
―Obvious‖ since Homo habilis?
The trickle-down theory of creation . . .
―Obvious‖ since Homo habilis?
vs the bubble-up theory of creation
Darwin‘s greatest idea
If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.
Origin of Species, end of chapter 4
Darwin‘s greatest idea
If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.
Origin of Species, end of chapter 4
An early critic of Darwin summed it up:
In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute
Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate
as the fundamental principle of the whole system,
that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO
KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be
found, on careful examination, to express, in
condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory,
and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's
meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning,
seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to
take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the
achievements of creative skill.
--Robert Beverley MacKenzie, 1868
In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute
Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate
as the fundamental principle of the whole system,
that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO
KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be
found, on careful examination, to express, in
condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory,
and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's
meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning,
seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to
take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the
achievements of creative skill.
--Robert Beverley MacKenzie, 1868
AlanTuring
Turing‘s
strange inversion of reasoning
Pre-Turing computers
In the old days, computers had to
understand arithmetic,
had to appreciate the reasons.
Turing recognized that this was not
necessary.
Darwin
IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT
REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE
IT.
Turing . . .
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL
Turing . . .
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE,
Turing . . .
IN ORDER TO BE A PERFECT AND
BEAUTIFUL COMPUTING MACHINE, IT
IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW WHAT
ARITHMETIC IS.
Darwin and Turing
Competence without comprehension!
Understanding (mind, consciousness,
intention) is the effect, not the cause!
von Kempelen‘s Turk
1770- 1854
von Kempelen‘s Turk
Unmasked in the USA
by Edgar Allan Poe
In 1836
von Kempelen‘s Turk
Poe thought it was impossible for a
mindless machine to play chess.
It isn‘t.
There may be a little man inside Deep Blue,
but if so, he may well be sound asleep.
Some people think today that it is impossible
for a mindless process to produce
evolution.
It isn‘t.
There may be an intelligent God hidden in
the evolution process, but if so, he might
as well be asleep, since there is no work
for him to do!
Compare
Amoeba, Difflugia coronata
Sand castles
Caddis fly larva
Caddis larva food sieve
lobster trap
What‘s the difference?
There are reasons for the arrangement of
parts
in the caddis larva‘s food sieve
and in the lobster trap.
But the caddis reasons
are not represented anywhere
The free-floating rationales
of evolution:
Cuckoo chick
The free-floating rationales
of evolution:
Cuckoo chick
Natural selection tracks reasons,
creating things that have purposes but
don‘t need to know them.
The ―Need to Know‖ principle reigns in the
biosphere.
Natural selection itself doesn‘t need to know
what it is doing!
A common error:
We attribute more understanding to the
agent than Need Be.
We lack a familiar concept of semi-
understood quasi-representations
(or hemi-semi-demi-understood pseudo-
representations)
Turing gives us all of these.
10,000 years ago: human population plus livestock and pets was approximately 0.1% of terrestrial vertebrate biomass.
Today: 98%!
Over billions of years, on a unique sphere, chance has painted a thin covering of life–complex, improbable, wonderful and fragile. Suddenly we humans . . . have grown in population, technology, and intelligence to a position of terrible power: we now wield the paintbrush. –Paul MacCready
10,000 years ago: human population plus livestock and pets was approximately 0.1% of terrestrial vertebrate biomass.
Today: 98%!
Over billions of years, on a unique sphere, chance has painted a thin covering of life–complex, improbable, wonderful and fragile. Suddenly we humans . . . have grown in population, technology, and intelligence to a position of terrible power: we now wield the paintbrush. –Paul MacCready
John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary,
The Major Transitions in Evolution, 1995
Major transitions
1. Eukaryotic revolution
2. Sex
3. Multicellularity (and cell differentiation)
4. Language
5. Human Culture (art, religion, politics,
science, engineering. . . )
Major transitions
1. Eukaryotic revolution
2. Sex
3. Multicellularity (and cell differentiation)
4. Language
5. Human Culture (art, religion, politics,
science, engineering. . . )
Where did culture come from?
A divine gift?
Human genius?
Over the centuries, intelligent (human)
designers created cultural treasures. . . . ?
The inherited treasures model
of cultural evolution
(prevailing wisdom)
Culture is
composed of ―good‖ things
invented by innovators with insight,
recognized and valued as such by
adopters,
Who transmit and tinker. . . .
(an economic model of possessions)
The inherited treasures model
of cultural evolution
A problem:
Who invented
words,
arithmetic,
music,
maps,
money?
Nobody.
The inherited treasures model
of cultural evolution
Then how did they get to be such perfect
tools for the jobs they do?
They evolved.
Just the way animals and plants
and viruses did.
By natural selection.
Words
—the most important cultural items.
The diversity of words
Where did they all come from?
thousands of languages
Could they have a common ancestor?
Phylogenetic trees . . .
Glossogenetic trees . . . .
Proto-Indo-European languages
Finno-Ugric languages
Languages of China
Proto-Mayan languages
Horizontal word transfer
is rife in languages. . . .
So words are more trackable items than
whole languages.
memes
as cultural items analogous
to genes
or to viruses.
They evolve by natural
selection.
For evolution to occur, copying must be high
fidelity (but not perfect).
Are there any memes?
Words are memes that can be pronounced.
Repeat after me. . . .
norms of correction
Information about kayaks is stored in Inuit
brains
AND in kayaks!
But only on the (default) presumption that
the design is good.
Even if it isn‘t understood.
A kind of digitization.
Correction to the norm
Polynesian canoes
"every boat is copied from another boat... it
is the sea herself who fashions the boats,
choosing those which function and
destroying the others" (Alain, 1908)
Memes are like software viruses.
Memes are software viruses.
To understand this, you need to adjust your
imagination re computation and software.
The inherited treasures model
of cultural evolution
(prevailing wisdom)
Culture is
composed of ―good‖ things
invented by innovators with insight,
recognized and valued as such by
adopters,
Who transmit and tinker. . . .
(an economic model of possessions)
The Darwinian (memetic) model
Culture is composed of
Good, bad and indifferent things
Created by processes with variable insight
(ranging from 0 to genius)
Adopted with variable recognition of value
(ranging from -100 to +100!)
Having an economic model as a limiting
case. . . .
Compare
Traditional Darwinian
good things good, bad, soso
invented with insight insight 0-100
valued value -100 - +100
passed on passed on
w/improvements with mutations
economic model as a limiting case.
Once we have cultural software ‗installed‘
it creates ‗top down‘ patterns of causation.
Our minds can be
dominated, or driven,
by an idea—or ideas.
This is the fulcrum for
intelligent design.
Compare
Top-down design
Turing‘s computer!
We are the first
Intelligent designers in the Tree of Life.
Our natural tendency to interpret all design
as top-down.
as representation-driven,
is both anachronistic and
anthropocentric.
―In the beginning was the word . . . .‖
NO.
Words are a very recent invention,
one of the most recent products of blind,
purposeless natural selection.
We, the reason representers,
can now look back and discover the reasons everywhere in the tree of life.
It took Darwin
to figure out that a mindless process discovered all those reasons.
We intelligent designers are among the effects, not the cause, of all those purposes.
DARUUIN
Delere
Auctorem
Rerum
Ut Universum
Infinitum
Noscas
DARUUIN
Delere Destroy
Auctorem the Author
Rerum of Things
Ut Universum in order to
Infinitum Understand the
Noscas Infinite Universe
Thanks for your attention.