In Part 6. of this series (which starts here), I discussed the fantastic power of “error”—how the compounding of tiny infidelities over long periods can yield a grand diversity of properties in self-replicating molecules/molecular systems. And yet, alongside the physical complexities that arise through this Natural Selection, there lies another kind of complexity—a complexity so mysterious to us we’ve made-up all sorts of gods, spirits, demons and alternate realities to explain how it came to be. I am speaking of the inner-experience of ourselves. Not just our consciousness, but our conscience, our intuitions, logic, desires, emotions, pains, and pleasures. I am talking about what all started with our ability to sense.
Sensing the outside world is a really big deal—even if it is something so mild as “seeing” brightness or “tasting” the presence of a certain chemical—it starts us on a path of internal complexity, a complexity that neuroscience shows corresponds to externally observable structures. These structures are usually, but not always, located in the brain, and should they be injured they can alter or even destroy the internal sense to which they correspond. We call this “brain damage.”
The evolution of internal-sensing, like the evolution of external structures, builds on it’s own back—that is to say, the ability to sense heat combined with the ability to sense an increase in one’s heart-rate both contribute to a “higher-order” sense of fear.
The evolution of our senses has followed a sequence that goes (very roughly) something like this:
Now one should not be tempted to think of this progression as a hierarchy; I am not proposing that the pinnacle of natural selection is a Starbuck-drinking, Whole-Food shopping, relatively moral, male homo-sapiens as pictured above. It’s important to keep in mind that in a sense every living thing is just as “evolved” as every other—we all lie at the (current) end of that great path of errors I previously spoke on. Certain types of errors have simply accumulated in certain types of organisms, giving them particular characteristics (and advantages)—while other characteristics have accumulated in others. The internal-sensing capabilities of our species are, in a way, no more highly-evolved than a star-nosed mole’s specialized capabilities to score a meal in places we’d not long survive.
In any case, it is in this sequence of our developing inner-experience that many people will say I have gone too far. They will not accept that the brain and body are responsible for the rich vastness of our interior lives or that combinations of brain functions present a solution to the “problem of consciousness.”
But that discussion we will save for next time…
NEXT: Part 8. More on Body and Soul
June 29, 2010 at 3:55 pm
I’m still with you up to this point….a good break-down (or reverse break-down) as the evolution of our conciousness in a very basic sense.
And to clarify, the theory you are speaking on is that our first ancestor to develop a sense (or senses) of the outside world was through an error in it’s DNA which proved to be beneficial and an advantage which made it pass on to it’s offspring and this error is always completely random.
To think that the error which turned out to be an advantage is not random; that there is motive behind the error would be which gives the illusion of a “higher power”.
I’m keeping an open mind all along the way and so far you’re doing a great job, keep it up.
p.s.- that mole is disturbing
June 29, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Tx Jess! And yes, I think you got it, with two clarifications below:
First: I’m using the word “error” more for poetic than accuracy reasons 🙂 In a sense, there are never any errors there is only the fact that when molecules copy, sometimes the new copy is not an exact match to the original. So what I mean by error is that the two copies are not exact.
The second thing is that all changes from one “generation” to another are the result of these copy errors. Now the copy error may have no result on the function of the molecule/organism or it may have a very slight change (or even a very big change). So what you end-up with is a bunch of different molecules/organisms together, each with unique changes—some of the changes help survival, other changes hinder it. The only changes that make it to the next generation, however, are the ones that aid survival. This is Darwinian Natural Selection.
This post points out simply that the changes organisms go through are not just externally-observable changes–like limbs, there are also internal ones–like sensing light. So in the same way that better apparatuses for moving evolve, so too do better apparatuses for sensing the environment evolve. Our consciousness lies at the end of a long line of internal-sensing changes.
So yeah, the illusion of design is created in large part because we are viewing billions of years worth of accumulated changes ALL AT ONCE–and we are only seeing the changes that helped the organism survive–we are not seeing all the trillions and trillions of changes that had no effect or hindered survival. Why? Because those organisms never made it.
Does all that make “sense”?
June 30, 2010 at 11:15 am
Yes it does make “sense”, haha, i see what you did there. I understood your using the word “error” as not a negative but rather a difference from the parent organism, so there was no confusion. I did want to point out that your main objective was to pin down the origin of our evolution and to show that it’s completely random. Only by seeing all the steps and possible differences along the way is it clear to our “pattern-seeking” brains.
I understand this concept…just one thing nags at my “intellect”. When i think i have something figured out, there’s always one exception to the rule to keep doubt “alive”. I don’t have any examples and i don’t know enough to be an expert in this field. But as much as i know gravity holds me to the Earth, i know that there is always an exception to the rule. Maybe when your done with this groundwork we can analyize specific examples and look for those controversial exceptions?
June 30, 2010 at 9:36 pm
How does an inherently meaningless and utterly contingent biological system generate ‘meaning’ or ‘transcendence’ or ‘love’? Isn’t ‘meaning’ something we essentially make up? Aren’t feelings like meaning, love, and transcendence just transitory chemical brain states? One day I can find life meaningful, and another day I find it pointless. Which assessment is ‘true’? Are meaning, love and transcendence convenient delusions? Aren’t those just fancy words for human primates (a highly socially cooperative species) finding various highly cooperatively social ways to take care of the four evolutionary Fs? Are we all that different from star-nosed moles or fluke worms?
July 1, 2010 at 2:14 pm
We get there by being there. If you love, there is love. If you do not love there is not.
July 1, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Hmmmm. I’ll be frank, this topic is something I’ve struggled with for a long time, that is what’s the difference, where’s the line between feeling something and being able to say that it actually exists. Which feelings should we trust? Which should we test and question? Which should we dismiss as being misleading or not connected to reality? What are the grounds for making the distinctions?
I guess what I’m getting at (being involved with a church and all), is that I know a fair number of people who will tell you straight out that they believe because they feel the presence of God or the presence of Jesus, all of which gets wrapped up in these issues of meaning, transcendence, transformation, love . . .
My friend the Sunday School teacher told me he became religious again because he had this intense experience — which really boils down to a powerful feeling — that Jesus was present. To him, that’s a statement of fact: He knows Jesus exists and teaches that Jesus exists because he has felt his presence. If you ask him, that’s what he says.
I said, But how did you know?
He said, Because I felt his love, and at that moment, I knew he was real.
You said above that we get there by being there: if we love, there is love, and if we don’t, there isn’t. Does that also mean if Jesus is present, then Jesus is present, and if he’s not, he’s not? Does that mean Jesus is present for the people who feel Jesus’ presence, but not present for those who don’t? Does that mean then that my friend is right to say that Jesus is alive, because Jesus is alive to him? That’s enough?
I guess the whole thing with inner experience that bugs me is that in this model, we start out with sensory inputs and feedback — the animal senses food and moves toward the food, or senses a source of physical danger, and moves from the danger. We’re in star-nosed mole territory: The animal reacts to observable externals, right? We can all observe and agree about the presence or absence of food or threats and of the externally observable behavioral responses of the mole.
But when we come to inner experience that doesn’t lead to direct and uncomplicated observables, when we come to stuff like meaning, love, transcendence, to people who say that Jesus is still alive because they feel his spirit — this is where I’m confused by the model. We can look at behavior changes (my kids’ Sunday School teacher went from being a guy who wasn’t that involved in church to being a guy who teaches a confirmation class — that’s observable) but if assessing this internal stuff comes back to the measure you’re proposing — “If you feel it it’s there, it’s there; and if you don’t, it’s not” — I just wonder if we need something more than that; otherwise, why medicate schizophrenics?
I mean, if I veer back and forth between perceiving meaning and then not perceiving it, does that mean things are meaningful on the Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays I perceive meaning, but meaningless on the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I don’t? (I take Sundays off from existential questions.)
Is it enough to say that something exists because someone feels that it does?
Or with this part of the model, are you simply pointing out that these are internal feelings people have (which is inarguably true, I think), and you’re not getting into how they relate to other aspects of reality?
Sorry if I seem dense on this.
July 1, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Ty, that was a really nice haiku you wrote there…haha. Very Zen-like, which i’m all into. I was trying to hold back all the reality vs. imaginary until your model was all done since i realize you’re setting groundwork, but Anna had to go and bust open the box early!
No problem with that, just a bit early Anna! I can remember Ty and I having an animated and heated debate one night about if i truely believed that i could walk through a wall, attempted it with no hesitation and knocked myself out cold, woke up and remembered that i had walked through the wall….then to me, i actually did walk through the wall.
Since we can only experiance our own senses and hold only the “truths” that we determine to be true, it’s only logical to believe that whatever we believe is ultimate truth. But that’s not where the story ends.
As a collective, we will always quest for more truth and probably never find it…it’s the quest that is important. We seem to thrive within the constantly moving grey area between truth and non-truth.
whatcha think?
July 1, 2010 at 11:57 pm
a) Any box that crosses my path will get shaken, opened as soon as is decently possible, and perhaps even surreptitiously regifted if, like the French with the Holy Grail, I already got one. 😀
b) I consider it a testament to both of your intellectual versatility, to my obtusity, or to all of the above, that I’m not sure which one of you was arguing for someone’s having really passed through a solid wall if he rememberd doing so; and which was arguing for simply having passed out. Personally I would split the difference by saying that people can sincerely believe something which is nevertheless wrong. Sincerity of belief is not equivalent to knowledge. (This is a conversation we have repeatedly with the children.) The guy with the goose egg on his forehead who genuinely believes he passed through the wall is entitled to his sincere belief, but we who gaze upon his purpling goose egg are entitled to believe that our walls, our locked windows and doors, and our large and jumpy German shepherds still provide adequate security.
Jesse wrote: “Since we can only experiance our own senses and hold only the “truths” that we determine to be true, it’s only logical to believe that whatever we believe is ultimate truth. But that’s not where the story ends.”
Agreed. I think much of the benefit of learning and practicing critical thinking and other reflective practices is precisely the introduction of certain question points between whatever we (think we) experience(d) and whatever we declare to be ultimate truth. I think often as not this leads to humility rather than certainty.
Jesse wrote: “As a collective, we will always quest for more truth and probably never find it…it’s the quest that is important. We seem to thrive within the constantly moving grey area between truth and non-truth.”
Agreed! It would be boring if we had absolute certainty and knew everything. Or, at least to me, people who seem certain they know everything also seem boring! 😀
I doubt we’ll ever stumble upon Truth-with-a-capital-T, but I hope we can find small-t truths that are good enough to navigate our collective ignorance with.
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