From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel Dennett

[Edward theurj Berge]

Google talk on his new book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. The blurb:

"How did we come to have minds? For centuries, this question has intrigued psychologists, physicists, poets, and philosophers, who have wondered how the human mind developed its unrivaled ability to create, imagine, and explain. Disciples of Darwin have long aspired to explain how consciousness, language, and culture could have appeared through natural selection, blazing promising trails that tend, however, to end in confusion and controversy. Even though our understanding of the inner workings of proteins, neurons, and DNA is deeper than ever before, the matter of how our minds came to be has largely remained a mystery. That is now changing, says Daniel C. Dennett. In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, his most comprehensive exploration of evolutionary thinking yet, he builds on ideas from computer science and biology to show how a comprehending mind could in fact have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection. Part philosophical whodunit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett’s legendary career at the forefront of philosophical thought."

[Edward theurj Berge]

Not saying I agree or disagree with him, but he does bring science to the discussion. From the wiki bio:

"Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science."

[Edward theurj Berge]

There has been hot and at times rancorous debates in the scientific community about the existence of cultural memes ever since Dawkins proposed them. And Dennett expands on them in his new book. But can we scientifically measure them? See what this article has to say: "Can we measure memes?" Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, 25 May 2011. The abstract:

"Memes are the fundamental unit of cultural evolution and have been left upon the periphery of cognitive neuroscience due to their inexact definition and the consequent presumption that they are impossible to measure. Here it is argued that although a precise definition of memes is rather difficult it does not preclude highly controlled experiments studying the neural substrates of their initiation and replication. In this paper, memes are termed as either internally or externally represented (i-memes/e-memes) in relation to whether they are represented as a neural substrate within the central nervous system or in some other form within our environment. It is argued that neuroimaging technology is now sufficiently advanced to image the connectivity profiles of i-memes and critically, to measure changes to i-memes over time, i.e., as they evolve. It is argued that it is wrong to simply pass off memes as an alternative term for 'stimulus' and 'learnt associations' as it does not accurately account for the way in which natural stimuli may dynamically 'evolve' as clearly observed in our cultural lives."

[Edward theurj Berge]

It occurred to me that memes are a lot like frames as Lakoff describes them. Lakoff has done extensive cognitive scientific work on schemas, metaphors and frames. Check out this lengthy article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014; 8: 958, "Mapping the brain's metaphor circuitry." Even though they don't relate this to the concept of memes, there are some striking similarities. E.g.: 

"Reddy had found that the abstract concepts of communication and ideas are understood via a conceptual metaphor: Ideas Are Objects; Language Is a Container for Idea-Objects; Communication Is Sending Idea-Objects in Language-Containers."

[Edward theurj Berge]

There's also a FB thread on this. Glenn Gaasland commented:

So with Dennett, he has his definition of "mind", and sees it largely in terms of its manifested properties which we can also relate to our own daily existence. Dennetts fear of theism is less interesting to me than his love of science. And as far as I can tell he seems to end up at many of the same basic insights as the contemplatives have: "I" is largely an illusion, consciousness is neither "on" nor "off" but a large spectrum. Free will exists, and it exists within laws of nature, not outside of them. And freedom is also relative, more freedom for some people in some situations, less for others in other situations, and this depends on the being and the state of the being ( "waking up" and "growing up" are ideas which seem not far away from Dennetts notion of "moral competence".

What especially interests me is Dennett's notion of "free floating rationale" which is a kind of intelligence which a being can manifest without really understanding it or representing it. This goes for animals, but also for humans, and a great deal of what we do makes a lot of sense and is guided by deep reasons, even when we are not aware of it. This it seems to me is very close to the notion of "the mind of Gaia" which we also manifest and play a role within.

Dennett's perspective clearly puts great emphasis on the role of information. He uses the expression "informational soul". And with this idea we see that even such "insanely theistic ideas" as reincarnation become highly relevant even from this hardcore naturalistic frame of reference. For if my essential being is the unique structure of the events I manifest, and if these structures transmit across beings and ecosystems, then in a very real sense we could say my soul will live on long after the death of the physical body. Yes, he is very hesitant at touching the theistic language. But his explorations into "taking materialism all the way" does lead to astonishingly similar conclusions. This is why I see something incredibly interesting in how these naturalistic third-person perspectives and contemplative first-person-perspectives seem to converge at almost the same insights about reality.

Just to make clear why I am interested in it: Not since it is complete in any way, but it seems we may be closer than ever to a real convergence between the scientific / materialistic / naturalistic worldview, and the worldview of spirituality, religion and mysticism, than ever before. The point of conversion I see is in Being. Following both these lineages of thinking seems to lead to the view that the most important issue to focus on is Being. This includes attention, lifestyle and a clearer understanding of reality. To see through illusions of the mind, and particularly the kind of illusions which come from bias and preconceptions, seems like an essential part of this process. A clearer understanding of the mechanics of how these illusions happen could be great for the contemplative, the scientist and a whole society. The tendency of humans to be attached and identified with theoretical models, and "being used" by the models, instead of using them intelligently, is a classic obstacle. Here the concept of "memes" which Dennetts view largely rests on may be a very helpful tool for understanding how this kind of hypnotic influence on human minds by informational structures work.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I also found this interesting blog post on the relationship between memes and metaphors.