In my last post, I explained why so many words used in describing god are literally incoherent because they are being used in ways that don’t have anything to do with their established use. Life is biological, so describing something as non-biological life is nonsense. Mind is a product of a brain, so speaking of disembodied intelligence is nonsense. There are plenty more examples, but the point in each case is exactly the same. We humans have an intuitive understanding of what the word means, but intuition is not good enough for scientific description.
The same problem occurs when we try to dilute the god concept to its most banal and benign form — universal intelligence. Many people posit that the universe itself might be alive, or that there might be some kind of meaningful information flow within the universe itself that deserves the label “Intelligence.”
To begin, we must ask what intelligence is and what it does. It’s very difficult to speak of it without getting very complicated, for intelligence is not really a single quality. It is a related set of abilities displayed by living organisms, including the capacity for logic, foresight, abstract thought, communication, and problem solving. Each of these concepts in itself presents a big problem for universal intelligence, for each of them is intrinsically tied to organic life.
The capacity for logic is certainly not restricted to organic life. Computers are capable of using it, but we must not be fooled into thinking this to be extraordinarily important. Computers are tools made by humans to serve a purpose, and that fact is crucial to understanding why logic is such a big deal. In order to need logic, we need a problem. In order to have a problem, we need to have a goal. In order to have a goal… we must have a mind.
Similarly, foresight, abstract thought, and communication are all manifestations of purpose. A living being has a need or a want, and each of these abilities is an evolutionary adaptation which developed to facilitate the achievement of a goal. So intrinsically joined are these concepts with purpose that it becomes quite nonsensical to discuss a non-living thing having any of them.
We are left with a horrible dilemma. Either the concept of universal intelligence is total nonsense, or there is a way to describe how an enormous system of non-living matter, literally speeding itself towards heat death, has not only some physical mechanism for meaningful information exchange, but a system of incredibly complex organization sufficient to manifest as analogs to our concepts of intelligence. In other words, the universe has to want or need something. It has to have purpose. If there is no purpose, there is no mechanism to describe how or why there would be any point in directed information exchange between any parts of the universe.
I leave it to the cosmologists to talk about the immense physical barriers to meaningful dynamic information exchange within the universe, but these barriers are considerable. More accessible is the very simple concept that the universe, so far as we can tell, has had no reason to become intelligent. As we know from both cosmology and evolution, simplicity begets complexity in our universe. That is, before you have iron, you must have hydrogen. Before you have intelligence, you must have autonomy. Before that, you must have life. Before that, you must have replicators.
Again, we find that the burden of proof is not on the atheist to show that there’s no possibility of “universal intelligence.” We have but to do what we always do — sit back and wait for someone on the other side to say something intelligible enough to either accept or reject.
If there is no intelligence in the universe outside of organic life, how did intelligence originate? Theology has a theory of how intelligence could come from physical matter or ex nihilo, but I haven’t ever heard an atheist be able to explain how intelligence can come from non-intelligence.
Posted by meaningthief | June 18, 2009, 5:53 pmIntelligence is an emergent phenomenon that arose through evolutionary means. Humans are not at all the only intelligent species. A number of species are even self-aware (chimps, gorillas, bonobos, dolphins). Intelligence in the animals kingdom is a spectrum, exactly what we would expect to see if it arose from evolutionary means. Small changes in genes and their timing in brain development is all it takes. Evo/Devo will figure prominently in learning how the brain evolved to produce the mind.
I take issue that theology offers any explanation at all other than “God did it”. This is not an explanation because it does not address the central issue of an explanation: the how. I see “God did it” containing no more information than “I don’t know”. Less, even, because it gives the impression that it is an answer, when it is nothing of the kind.
I am not going to tell you that we understand intelligence or the mind completely. That would be foolish. But what can be said is that the mind is a product of the physical brain, and only the physical brain.
That being said, it is an exercise in premature curiosity satisfaction to immediately jump to a supernatural ‘explanation’ (again, I do not consider the supernatural as explaining anything). Like other premature events, it’s not a good thing.
Posted by Shamelessly Atheist | June 18, 2009, 7:22 pmIntelligence originated as an evolutionary adaptation to dynamically changing environments. Game theory explains how strategies manifest in large groups. That is, when two or more groups of interacting units perform differing actions in response to their environment, there is a mathematical description of how such interactions will turn out. Natural selection throws the element of chance into Game Theory. That is, random mutations alter strategies in each new generation, and when a random mutation turns out to produce a slightly more beneficial strategy, the replicator will tend to replicate more effectively, and will soon dominate the environment.
In very early replicators, the precursors of intelligence were incredibly helpful. Consider an early eukaryote. We can imagine that this early organism has very rudimentary ways of detecting its environment. Perhaps it can sense changes in the water in its immediate vicinity that indicate the presence of a suitable “prey” organism. We can also imagine that it will move towards its prey to try to capture it. This is all fine, but we must remember that both prey and predator experience random mutations. Suppose a particular prey organism developed the tendency to perform a sharp left turn while running from a predator. This wouldn’t need intelligence. Just a slight change in its genes. This sharp left turn might be enough to evade the predator most of the time. This prey variant would soon dominate the environment.
The poor predator at this point might begin to die off because it can’t catch prey, but suppose one randomly develops a new ability — it begins veering slightly left while chasing prey. This would mean it would travel along the hypotenuse of a triangle while the prey would travel the longer two sides. The predator would have the advantage again.
This may not seem like much, but it’s rudimentary prediction. It requires no intelligence, but it is certainly the beginning of intelligence. As behaviors became gradually more and more complex, the ability to adjust to behaviors became more and more complex. Suppose a prey developed which either veered sharply left or right. The predator might then develop a very simple ability. It could detect whatever environmental factor determined which way the prey would turn, and veer accordingly. It’s a baby step towards intelligence.
Through millions and millions of baby steps, there would have been organisms of significant complexity with the rudimentary beginnings of a brain — a set of central internal mechanisms which “remembered” things it “learned” in its life. After all, an organism that can alter its behavior is far better equipped than one that never does.
That, meaningthief, is the key to understanding [em]why[/em] intelligence evolved. As complexity accumulated, it became a huge advantage to adapt to a highly variable environment. The more adaptive an organism was, the better it survived and therefore the better it reproduced. After rudimentary memory came basic prediction. After basic prediction came more complicated algorithms involving what we would call more complex logic. Logic, after all, is not something man invented. It’s the description of the ways in which the universe is consistent. The universe was consistent before we described it as such.
The net result of this truth is that long before we figured out that we can use logic, natural selection stumbled upon genes that caused certain organisms to behave logically. By tiny increments, organisms behaved slightly more and more logically. By tiny increments, organisms became able to process information from their environment and react to it. The ones that reacted logically lived.
That’s the beginning of intelligence.
Posted by hambydammit | June 18, 2009, 8:45 pmAs much as I agree with you on the gist of your blogs/articles, I would like to see you explore the evolutionary differences of global perspective amongst humans. My own experience is one of unbridled curiosity, yet I have nieces who are compelled to tell others what is right and other nieces who wish to discover the possibilities. I understand the frustration of waiting for all humans to catch up with critical reasoning and don’t want to give the regressive members a convenient excuse, yet, evolution does not say all members advance together, only that the better adapted live to produce more progeny. Damn those altruistic genes! I appreciate that you are fighting the good rearguard fight, but the proof is still in the ability to pass on our genes( and memes). Slowly, reason has an evolutionary advantage. I sure could wish it was settled in my life time, yet the burden of superstition will eventually so mire the theists that they will no longer be able to attract mates. Sure it’s painful and slow, but dinosaurs didn’t have what it takes to survive and still took eons to remove them from the contenders.
Posted by Scott Paulus | June 18, 2009, 11:24 pmScott, I’m afraid you’re only partially correct. Reason has only a limited evolutionary advantage. In fact, non-reason, in many cases, is quite a bit more evolutionarily advantageous than reason. Consider parenthood. I can’t recall which blog entry it is, but I detailed just how odd it is that humans feel — quite intuitively — that reproduction is inherently a good thing. Reason tells us that it is not in many cases, and yet, we reproduce. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a half a dozen women I’ve known who were dead set against having children until they got pregnant, and then it was as if they became an entirely different person.
Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? They were onto something. Less educated people do breed more. Since we know that sheer numbers are the tools of evolution, and that diversity is the only “goal” we can really ascribe aside from reproduction itself, the proof is right there in front of us. Reason is NOT evolutionarily advantageous in the most important matter of all.
There is a dangerous elitism lurking in the shadows of pseudo-evolutionism. There is a humbling truth inherent in real evolutionism. Our big brains are good for figuring out how to fuck and keep us alive long enough to fuck more. Beyond that, any benefit they give us is really quite extraneous, and is not pointed toward some “perfection of humanity.” Quite the opposite, in fact. Natural selection cares not a whit about our happiness, or whether we form egalitarian societies, or whether women have equal rights. These are convenient and happy coincidences that have resulted from our particular society at this particular time in history, but they are not crucial to our evolution. Note that there are millions of species that have no such concepts and do quite well. We also have the pesky us-them instinct, which seems to insist that no matter how good intentioned we may be, we cannot help but automatically lump people quite unconsciously into “US” and “THEM.” This is why we survived the Savannah, but it might be what kills us in the end.
Fickle, fickle natural selection!
In any case, I will think a bit about evolution and global perspectives. Thanks for the suggestion.
Posted by hambydammit | June 19, 2009, 12:54 am