I’m just going lecture-crazy, aren’t I?  The Distinguished Lecture Series here at Wisconsin is pretty cool; they bring in big-name speakers a half-dozen times a year, and tickets are free for students.  I just wish I had known about it earlier.  In particular, I’m pretty frustrated that I missed Richard Dawkins a few years back.  I’m definitely not going to make that kind of mistake again.  Of course, I say that, but only a few months ago I missed Neil deGrasse Tyson because I was running late to the lecture from the gym.  That’ll teach me to exercise … dammit, I’m still pissed about that.  Let’s just move on.

It’s good that I started off this entry more bloggy and less structured than usual, because this isn’t going to be my typical lecture deconstruction.  (That is, assuming something can be called ‘usual’ or ‘typical’ after two occurrences.)  The main reason for this is simply because I don’t really disagree with Professor Dennett.  This probably isn’t too surprising to you, since he’s one of those newfangled New Atheists everybody’s talking about.  Beyond that, I made something of a conscious decision early in the lecture to not do my usual inquiry thing.  Boy, how skeptical of me, right?  Well, let me explain.

Wow … That Is, Well, Probably the Appropriate Approach

Professor Dennett did not start his lecture with the evidence for evolution.  This bothered me.  I wondered what any creationists in the audience would think.  I figured people might just dismiss what he was saying because he “assumed” evolution was correct.  I especially worried about on-the-fence folks jumping ship because of this.  Regardless of these concerns, he hopped right into his talk without bothering to demonstrate the validity of evolution or the vapidity of its competitors.  He certainly discussed nuts-and-bolts evolution as necessary throughout his talk, but left out this beginning section I’ve come to expect from lectures related to evolution (Entries 23 and 24).

At this point, a stark realization struck me:  I shouldn’t expect this evidence out of him.  Creationism and its spawn are not scientific critiques of evolution; they are cultural phenomena.  As such, they don’t really have a place in an academic lecture.  This might sound like a strange statement coming from a member of the skeptical community, but note that I’m not saying we should ignore creationism.  On the contrary, I think it needs to be combated at every turn.  However, Professor Dennett’s talk was not about creationism or the public understanding of evolution; it was a philosophy-based examination of evolution and its future.  Creationism really didn’t have a place, and he was justified in not defending evolution.

As an analogy, let’s imagine that Stephen Hawking gives a lecture here next year.  (This is apparently a possibility, and it would be awesome.)  If he mentions general relativity early in the lecture, should I expect him to spend half an hour explaining the evidence for it?  Should I expect significant time spent debunking Newtonism and geocentrism?  Or, if he mentions quantum mechanics, should I be worried if he doesn’t devote two-thirds of his lecture to the consilience of evidence for it?  What if there are Bohrists in attendance?

This is a better analogy than you might think.  I’m guessing most people’s response to that analogy would be a chuckling oh, come on, now.  After all, there are some pretty big holes at the edges of evolution; things like abiogenesis and consciousness have certainly not been figured out.  Well, what do you think happens at the edges of physics?  For example, black holes pretty much break both general relativity and quantum mechanics.  One might be able to argue that evolution is stronger than either general relativity or quantum mechanics, actually.

Not Your Father’s Creationists

Speaking of people worried about the evolution of consciousness, Dennett mentioned early on some prominent scientists who feel that the human brain just cannot be explained by mere evolution.  They’re fine with the molecules-to-monkeys part, but they just don’t like last bit about humans and consciousness.  Dennett’s term for these people is mind creationists.  As he hastily pointed out, these are not dumb people; Roger Penrose ranks among them, and I’m pretty sure he’s one of those guys who might just be the smartest person on the planet.

While this sounds like a glib dismissal of these folks, all Dennett has done is recognize a pattern.  From day one, creationists’ main tactic in fighting evolution has been to cite various things that seem too complicated to have arisen naturally via evolution.  Look at creationism’s latest cheap tuxedos, Intelligent Design and Michael Behe’s Irreducible Complexity:  some parts of biology are supposedly irreducibly complex, so they must have been intelligently designed.  After a century and a half, biologists have addressed virtually all the creationists’ concerns.  This is why the creationism movement must resort to playing linguistic games to retain their patina of science; there’s just no meat there.

Did you catch my weasel word?  I said that scientists have addressed virtually all the creationists’ concerns.  That is why intelligent, intellectually honest people can be mind creationists; human consciousness hasn’t been figured out yet.  Did you catch the sneaky little word this time?  Consciousness hasn’t been figure out … yet.  At this point, I again expected piles of hard evidence from Dennett, and again I was left wanting.  He didn’t spend an hour outlining the “materialist” explanation for consciousness, but I again realized that I shouldn’t have expected him to.  That’s not what he does, and that’s not what he was lecturing about.  He’s a philosopher, not a hard scientist, and he was giving a lecture on the philosophical considerations, not the hard evidence, for evolution.  I have no doubt that he knows the evidence (and likely covers it in appropriate settings, such as his books), but it had no place in the lecture.

Cranes and Skyhooks

Dennett had a neat metaphor about evolution and creationism, and I wanted to relay it to you so that I can borrow the useful terminology.  Imagine a design space, where complex things are “above” or “higher than” simple things.  Humans and other eukaryotes would be like tall buildings in design space, while prokaryotes or viruses would be shorter structures.  Evolution is a crane in design space; complexity is built up from simpler forms via natural means.  Creationists of all stripes invoke a skyhook in design space; at some point, an outside force had to pull a structure up in complexity.  Hardcore young-earth creationists would claim that you need the skyhook for every building, while mind creationists would only appeal to skyhooks to explain the human building (or perhaps the entire homo block).

Charles Darwin and … Alan Turing?

Dennett’s next point was to compare Darwin’s big idea to Alan Turing’s.  This struck me as an odd comparison, and also a tactically poor one.  Alan Turing is considered the father of computer science, and computers are definitely, well, intelligently designed.  Moreover, I definitely didn’t see the connection whatsoever going into the discussion.  But, Dennett pointed out that Darwin’s main observation was that he turned design on its head.  He proposed that stupid processes could pump out smart-looking results.  Random variation and natural selection certainly aren’t intelligent in any sense of the word, but they do a damn fine job of producing exquisitely complex designs.

I know virtually nothing about Turing, but Dennett explained his big idea as the realization that you don’t actually need to understand algebra or calculus to do algebra or calculus.  He took a look at the “computers” of his day (mainly women trained in math), and recognized that the meat-and-potatoes of their job didn’t actually require comprehension of any mathematics.  Thus, their jobs could be accomplished by stupid things (modern computers).  As with evolution, we have something completely unintelligent simulating something very intelligent.  The analogy can only be extended so far, but the concept of turning design and intelligence on their heads definitely resonates through both of these luminaries’ big ideas.

As a quick contrast along these lines, compare yourself to one of your cells.  You are intelligent, conscious, alive, and a whole host of other smart qualities.  However, you are made up of a bunch of dumb things: cells.  Cells are not conscious or intelligent, and they’re not really alive.  (If you think your cells are individually alive, you’re committing mass murder every time you scratch your arm, and the dusty corners of your bedroom are macabre mass graves.)  Even if you want to quibble about cells’ smart-ness, the constituents of cells (proteins, RNA, and DNA) are certainly dumb since they’re individually nothing more than inert chemicals.

This comparison extends nicely to consciousness.  Indeed, Turing’s lasting legacy (if any) in pop culture is the Turing Test.  The test proceeds as follows: a person attempts to have a regular conversation with two other entities, one computer and one human.  If the first person cannot distinguish between the other human and the computer, then the computer is said to have passed the Turing Test and perhaps ought to be considered intelligent and/or conscious.  This would be something dumb churning out something so smart that it’s considered the single best evidence for the existence of a skyhook (the human intellect).  While no computer has passed the Turing Test, there’s little reason to think that it won’t happen at some point in the near future.

Though critiques of the Turing Test as a valid criterion for consciousness abound, the analogy to biology cannot be ignored.  If silicon can simulate consciousness and free will, why couldn’t carbon?  Our brains need not necessarily “understand” consciousness to act in a manner that appears conscious.  That is, our mind can appear non-physical and supernatural yet still be the product of mere cranes.

Until Next Time …

If it’s not obvious, Professor Dennett’s talk really got my brain juices flowing.  This entry is already pretty hefty, and I haven’t even mentioned the word “meme” yet.  So, I’m going to truncate it here and get into the second half of Professor Dennett’s talk next time.  Have I already used the same skeptical time, same skeptical place bit?  If not, forget that I qualified it.  If so, hopefully you forgot about it, too.