I recently read Republican Presidential candidate Sam Brownback’s op-ed in the New York Times explaining why he doesn’t believe in evolution. I have so many problems with it that I don’t know where to start. I think this whole evolution debate is very similar to the debate over whether the Earth revolved around the sun in the 1500s. It’s so important to some people that we be “special” and have a place at the center of the universe. In the previous debate, hundreds of years ago, they literally believed that we were at the center of the universe. And no matter how much evidence there was, people wanted to believe we were at the center of the universe. The same thing is going on today. It’s very hard for some people to accept that we’re not “special” and that we weren’t place here by “God” for some special purpose. I’m not really sure why people think this takes so much away from us. So we randomly evolved. Is that so terrible? We should just enjoy the fact that we’re here and savor every instant of our lives.

To go specifically into Sam Brownback’s op-ed, he makes a number of points that bother me. First he claims that “Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love.” So apparently without faith we can’t understand suffering, love, values, meaning, or purpose? I’m not sure why believing that we evolved instead of being created by some God would prevent us from understanding these things.

Then he goes on to say that evolution isn’t science but philosophy and that any “theory” that says we weren’t created by some guiding intelligence must be false.  Basically Brownback wants to reject the institute of science any time it conflicts with his pre-assumed beliefs.  Science is fine, but if it disagrees with what he believes, then its just “atheistic theology” instead of science.

Finally, Brownback gets the point that I brought up at the beginning of this post, that we must be unique and special. Specifically, he says “The unique and special place of each and every person in creation is a fundamental truth that must be safeguarded. I am wary of any theory that seeks to undermine man’s essential dignity and unique and intended place in the cosmos. I firmly believe that each human person, regardless of circumstance, was willed into being and made for a purpose.” Evolution does not undermine our dignity or uniqueness. We’ve evolved into what we are and we will continue to evolve and I don’t see anything wrong with that. If we were “willed into being and made for a purpose” what was that purpose? I understand how difficult it can be to accept reality and understand that we evolved. But it doesn’t make us any less special or mean we have any less capacity to love or suffer or find meaning in life. I would much rather believe and understand the truth of life and enjoy the great luck we have in being here than believing in a creation by some superior being for an unspecified purpose.

Here is a great video of a talk given by Richard Dawkins at Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University is in the same town and its students showed up with all sorts of entertaining questions, making for an lively Q&A session.  Here’s the link for the video.

Here is another good link, a short Wired interview with Marvin Minksy and Daniel Dennett on the mind and emotions.

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times on free will.  It seems that the scientific evidence is starting to build up showing that we don’t really consciously make our decisions, more likely they are made by the brain in the subconcsious somewhere and then our consiousness is informed of it.  This has led to a debate over what free will is and whether we have it.  In my earlier post I said that although our decisions may be made by deterministic processes and the brain and could be predicted if we understood it, since it is our brain making those decisions, isn’t that still free will?  In the article there are some interesting mathematical discussions of Godel’s theorem and how even if our decisions are made through a deterministic process in the brain, it may remain too complex for us to ever predict what decisions we’ll make.

There is a great talk by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins available on the web from TED talks called Queerer Than We Can Suppose: The Strangeness of Science. He talks about how our understanding of the world is something we evolved. Our models of the world evolved because they were the most useful to us and helped our survival. Even though these models may not be entirely accurate in reality, they evolve because of their usefulness to us in the world we live in. The aspects of the world we normally live in, based on our size, our lifespan, our normal daily lives, greatly affect the understanding of the world that we develop.

For example, we see rocks as solid objects because that is what is useful for us in the world. We pick up and use rocks as solid objects so we understand them that way. In reality, rocks just have a denser collection of atoms than air, but there is no clear distinction between these two patches of atoms. If our bodies were on the scale of atoms, then we would have evolved an understanding that saw things as collections of atoms rather than solid objects and the facts of quantum physics would be standard knowledge for us. If our bodies were on the scale of universes then we would have evolved an understanding of relativity. One example that he gives is that water striders probably have a model of a 2-dimensional world (the flat surface of the water) and surface tension is a key component rather than gravity.

Dawkins also applies this theory to our personification of things. Since we live in a social world and interacting with others is important to our lives, we have evolved this theory of self and personality. We don’t attribute someone’s actions to the fact that they have extra dopamine in their brain at this moment or because some certain set of neurons just fired, we attribute their actions to their personality and decision making. This model makes it easier for us to interact with others. Since it works so well with other people, we often apply it to cars, dogs, etc, giving them names and personalities as well. It is quite interesting that something as ubiquitous as idea of selves and personality could exist just because they were the best ways of understanding the world around us.

Do we have free will?  This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.  If (1) our mind and our intelligence are just emergent properties of the neural networks of our brain and (2) these networks are based on electrochemical reactions that follow basic rules then we should be able to predict all our actions and decisions (assuming that random quantum fluctuations do not come into play, but then our actions are random, not our free choice).  The reactions and interactions involved would be very complex but it seems at least that all our actions are predetermined on the basis of a series of chemical reactions .  Does this mean we do not have free will?

I believe we still do have free will.  Although it may be possible to predict what decision someone is going to make by looking at the current state of their brain and knowing the experiences they are about to encounter, are they not still making the decision freely?  The very chemical reactions we would watch to predict their decision are in fact their decision being made.  Although these reactions are predetermined on a set of physical laws, the very reactions themselves are us, they are our decision making processes.  They are based on the development of our brain through our life and our experiences.  I do not think the fact that these chemical reactions may be pre-determined takes away from the fact they are, in fact, us making these decisions.  Being able to predict someone’s choice does not necessarily mean they had no free will to make the choice.

I was thinking about how things will happen in the future when we are able to download our minds into a computer or robot or some other device to allow our consciousness to live on forever. When Gerard and I were discussing this a while ago he was complaining that the living entity would no longer be you. Imagine these two scenarios:

• First scenario: You are getting old and so as a backup “insurance” copy of yourself, you have your mind downloaded into a robot. You and the robot are both active for a few more years until you eventually die. However you also live on in the robot with all the same childhood memories, experiences, etc from when you were little.
• Second scenario: You are getting old so you decide transfer your mind to a robot so you can continue living. Your mind is downloaded to the robot, your body is put to rest, and you wake up in your new robot body. You have all the memories and experiences that you used to have, but now you have a shiny robot body.

To me the first scenario does not seem too pleasant, even though your mind lives on in the robot, “you” still die. Of course you also live on but the human version of you does still die and even when you decide to backup your mind to a robot you will still know you are going to die, just some copy of you will live. However in the second scenario, it seems like you are just getting a new body, like a snail changing shells. It doesn’t seem as bad, it seems like you can live forever and you won’t die. Even though that robot is the same and the only difference in the two scenarios is that in the second one the human body is killed much earlier. It’s weird how little changes like that can make such a big impact on how something seems or feels.

Brad and I were listening to an NPR special on the nature of time the other day. One interesting segment was on how different societies and cultures viewed time. Some were more present oriented and some were more future-oriented. For example, the “hippie” culture was really about becoming more present-oriented and trying to enjoy themselves in the present. Meanwhile most people are more future-oriented, for example working during the present so you can enjoy yourself in the future during your retirement. Delayed gratification is one of the key features of a future-oriented society. I’m not sure what a past-oriented society would be like.

What I find interesting is that religion is really the extreme of future orientation. They’re oriented on a time so far in the future that its actually after your life is over. Your entire life is spent trying to ensure that you have a happy afterlife after you die. It seems so bizarre that you could work your whole life for a goal that you won’t receive until you’re dead and therefore most likely not receive at all.

In the book AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence by Daniel Crevier, Crevier brings up an interesting question: what is common to all forms of intelligence?  When we do eventually develop artificial intelligence, it will surely not be exactly the same as human intelligence.  And if do eventually meet some alien race, their intelligence would probably be different.  What aspects of the mind are required for intelligence to come about?  What would be common between these different types of intelligence and what would be different.

One interesting example is the android Data on the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation.  He is an artifically intelligent lifeform, yet he has no emotions.  Is it possible to be intelligent without emotions?  Could intelligence develop on its own without them?  Emotions are important for motivation, in the book I just read, Creating Mind: How the Brain Works by John Dowling, Dowling says “Without emotions, why bother?” It’s very true that emotions are the driving forces behind our lives and I can’t imagine we would ever have developed into the intelligent beings we are today without them.

Here are a few more random thoughts that I’ve had from reading Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained:

• Not only are regions of the brain multi-functional, but so are some of our genes. So when one trait or gene is selected and continued on, other aspects affected by that gene are affected as well, this is called collateral evolution. In Olivia Judson’s blog on the New York Times, she mentions a case were hunters bred foxes to be more friendly to humans, but in addition to that the foxes got shaggier ears and wider heads.
• Color was evolved as an imporatant way for us to spot predators and food. Much more than just the frequency of light reflected by something affect what color we see it as and the ability to see these differences evolved so we could spot a red fruit in a forest of green. But Dennett says that not only did we evolve to see that difference but also the apple evolved to be a color that we could spot (so we could spread its seeds). Dennett says “first there were various reflective properties of surfaces, reactive properties of photopigments, and so forth, and Mother Nature devloped out of these raw materials efficient, mutually adjusted “color”-coding/”color”-vision systems, and amont the properties that settled out of the design process are the properties we normal human beings call colors.” It’s interested to note that there are some humans who are red-green colorblind and there are some other species (some types of birds) who can see things in the UV range. Dennett says “Why is the sky blue? Because apples are red and grapes are purple, not the other way around.”
• The Baldwin effect - Dennett describes another aspect of evolution were “good tricks” are learned. Suppose there is some “good trick” that will help a creature in their environment. Creatures that are born with the trick are better off but others are able to re-wire their brains to learn it as well. If you assume that the amount of re-wiring needed depends on their genes, then animals that have genes that put them closer to learning the trick will be better off than animals that have a difficult time re-wiring for the trick (learning it). So genes that are close to the wiring of the brain for the trick continually get selected until eventually the gene that starts with this brain wiring could be selected. In this way the plasticity of the brain helps to speed up the evolution of the genes (this is known as the Baldwin effect).
• Memes - Memes are similar to genes, but they are instead ideas that try to reproduce themselves. Our brains and our cultures are were memes are stored and they are transferred through communication. Similar to the way life is just a vessel for the propagation of genes, our conscious minds may just be a vessel for memes to propagate. It’s interesting that the memes replicative power is based on its “fitness” rather than its contribution to our fitness. So memes or ideas that are harmful to us but spread easily are good replicators. This is a very interesting way to think about ideas, first proposed by Richard Dawkins.
• The concept of self is very abstract. It is important for us to be able to separate ourselves from the outside world so that we do not eat ourselves, etc. But in reality this is not such a clear line. There are lots of bacteria inside us that help us digest but are they really part of us? Dennett says that each normal person “makes a self. Out of its brain it spins a web of words and deeds.” He equates it to a snail building a shell or a spider making a web. Its just something we do. It is important for our self-preservation. And with the parallel thoughts (Multiple Drafts) theory of consciousness it is possible that a person could have multiple selves (multiple personality disorder) or even that one self could be spread across two people (in the case of the twins I mentioned in my last post).
• From what I understand about consciousness and the mind now, I find it hard to believe that we actually do have any free will. Our thoughts and mind are completely a result of physical and electro-chemical reactions in the brain. Do we really have any control over these reactions? Any control we would have would just be other electro-chemical reactions. It may eventually be possible to predict these reactions and fully predict the decisions of the brain. Our idea of free will may just be an illusion that these various electro-chemical reactions create for us.  It may seem that we have free will because the process that creates our decisions and thoughts is so complex.  An analogy would be the weather, surely the weather patterns and tornados and hurricanes and things could be predicted if we better understood the system and all the inputs, but since we don’t it seems quite random whether a tornado or hurricane will be created or not.

I’ve been reading Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained and specifically looking at how his theory would be applied to creating artificial consciousness in a robot or software program.  Dennett makes a few key points that would have to be taken into account in developing artificial conscsciousness:

1. There is no central meaner, no executive decision maker.  Instead the brain is massively parallel, ideas come and go, actions and words are bubbling up everywhere and the best ones that fit best are the ones that get said or acted on.
2. Consciousness is effectively software running on the brains hardware.  The consciousness is a serial virtual machine running on the parallell architecture of the brain.
3. All of the parts of the brain are multifunction.  And different part’s functions overlap.  As Dennett says: “human engineers … design systems in which each element plays a single role, carefully insulated from interference from outside, in order to minimize the devestation of unforeseen side effects.”  He goes on to say the brain was designed by a process that thrives on “multiple superimposed functionality, something systematically difficult to discern from reverse engineering.”
4. The brain’s memory is not direct access memory (RAM) like a computer’s memory.  Instead things are brought back up and remembered by association and free thinking.  In addition, there is no definite boundary between program and memory as in a computer.
5. Many current researchers are working on modelling and researching the parts of the brain on the periphery, the parts that receive inputs from the vision or hearing.  But by working from the outside in, these researchers leave a lot to be explained by the eventual central point, where a lot of the consciosness may be in these peripheral parts of the brain.
6. The development of the brain and of life is very dependent on chaos.  Evolution depends on random variation in genes for it to select from, the brain was developed out of chaotic processes that hit upon chance processes and “serendipitous side effects.”

These are just a few of the ideas that I think need to be taken into account when drawing up a plan for artificial consciousness.