Scientific American recently published an article by two biology professors, an article on the origin of mind. We have a clickbait title of "New Clues About the Origin of Biological Intelligence," followed by a misleading subtitle of "A common solution is emerging in two different fields: developmental biology and neuroscience." Then, contrary to their subtitle, the authors (Rafael Yuste and Michael Levin) state, "While scientists are still working out the details of how the eye evolved, we are also still stuck on the question of how intelligence emerges in biology." So now biologists are saying they are still stuck on both of these things?
Funny, that's a claim that contradicts what biologists have been telling us for many decades. For many decades, biologists have made the bogus boast that the mere "natural selection" explanation of Charles Darwin was sufficient to explain the appearance of vision, a claim that has never made any sense, because so-called natural selection is a mere theory of accumulation that does not explain any cases of vast organization such as we see in vision systems and their incredibly intricate biochemistry. Vastly organized things (such as bridges and cells and TV sets and protein complexes) are not mere accumulations (examples of which are snowdrifts, leaf piles and drain sludge buildup). And biologists have also for many decades been making the equally bogus boast that they understand the origin of human minds, based on the claim that it was just an evolution of bigger or better brains (a claim that is false for reasons explained in the posts on this blog).
It would be great if our Scientific American article was a frank explanation of why scientists are stuck on such things. But instead the article is an example of a staple of science literature: an article that not-very-honestly kind of claims "we're getting there" on some explanatory problem which scientists are actually making little or no progress on. To read about the modus operandi of many articles of this type, read my post " 'We're Getting There' Baloney Recurs in Science Literature."
We quickly get an inkling of a strategy that will be used by the authors. It is a strategy similar to the witless or deceptive strategy Charles Darwin used in The Descent of Man when he claimed this near the beginning of Chapter 3: “My object in this chapter is to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties." The statement was a huge falsehood, and it is easy to understand why Darwin made it. The more some biologist tries to shrink and minimize the human mind, like someone saying the works of Shakespeare are "just some ink marks on paper," the more likely someone may be to believe that such a biologist can explain the mind's origin. The more a biologist dehumanizes humans, making them sound like animals, the more likely someone may be to think that such a biologist can explain the origin of humans.
Rather seeming to follow such a strategy, the authors (Yuste and Levin) try to fool us into thinking there is nothing very special about intelligence. They write this:
"In fact, intelligence—a purposeful response to available information, often anticipating the future—is not restricted to the minds of some privileged species. It is distributed throughout biology, at many different spatial and temporal scales. There are not just intelligent people, mammals, birds and cephalopods. Intelligent, purposeful problem-solving behavior can be found in parts of all living things: single cells and tissues, individual neurons and networks of neurons, viruses, ribosomes and RNA fragments, down to motor proteins and molecular networks."
Notice the gigantically shrunken and downgraded definition of intelligence, as a mere "purposeful response to available information." Under such a definition, a smoke detector is intelligent, and bicycle brakes are intelligent (because they respond to information about foot pressure or hand pressure); and an old round 1960's Honeywell thermostat is also intelligent, because if I set the thermostat to 70, and it got much colder outside, the thermostat turned up the heat to keep the temperature at 70. But smoke detectors and bicycle brakes and old Honeywell thermostat are not intelligent, and neither are the much newer computerized thermostats that are marketed as "intelligent thermostats."
The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives us two definitions of intelligence:
"(1) the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : REASON.
(2) the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests)."
Very obviously, such a definition does not apply to some of the things that our Scientific American biologists have claimed are intelligent: "single cells and tissues, individual neurons and networks of neurons, viruses, ribosomes and RNA fragments, down to motor proteins and molecular networks." Such things may be driven or may have been designed by some mysterious intelligent power greater than the human mind, but they are not intelligent themselves. Protein molecules, ribosomes and individual cells do not have minds or intelligence. Rather than referring to such things as examples of "biological intelligence," Yuste and Levin should have merely called such things examples of "biological responsiveness."
Our authors then give us a paragraph that is misleading and poorly reasoned. We read this:
"A common solution is emerging in two different fields: developmental biology and neuroscience. The argument proceeds in three steps. The first rests on one of natural selection’s first and best design ideas: modularity. Modules are self-contained functional units like apartments in a building. Modules implement local goals that are, to some degree, self-maintaining and self-controlled. Modules have a basal problem-solving intelligence, and their relative independence from the rest of the system enables them to achieve their goals despite changing conditions. In our building example, a family living in an apartment could carry on their normal life and pursue their goals, sending the children to school for example, regardless of what is happening in the other apartments. In the body, for example, organs such as the liver operate with a specific low-level function, such as controlling nutrients in the blood, in relative independence with respect to what is happening, say, in the brain."
The claim that "modularity" was one of "natural selection's first and best design ideas" is false. A module is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "one of a set of separate parts that, when combined, form a complete whole." In computing and spacecraft and education, each module is itself a complex thing that can exist independently, and such complex modules can be combined to form units of greater complexity. A classic example of modularity is the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) of the Apollo spacecraft, which detached from the main spacecraft to land on the moon, returning later to reunite with the main spacecraft. Nowhere did Darwin discuss modules. Darwin's idea was that complex things arise by an accumulation of countless tiny changes. Such an idea is very different from thinking that very complex organisms arise from a combination of modules. And complex organisms do not arise from a combination of independent modules. The organs of the human body are not at all independent of each other. Every organ in the body depends on the correct function of several other organs in the body, besides having additional bodily dependencies.
The claim the authors make of a liver existing "in relative independence" is untrue. A liver would shut down within a single day if either the heart or the lungs or the brain were removed (brains are necessary for the autonomic function of the heart and the lungs). The liver would not last more than a few weeks if the kidneys or the stomach were removed. Instead of being independent modules, the cells and organs of the body are gigantically interdependent. The existence of such massively interdependent objects in bodies (with so many cross-dependencies) makes it a million times harder for biologists to credibly explain biological origins, and makes a mockery of their boastful claims to understand such origins. So it is no surprise that biologists frequently resort to misleading statements denying or downplaying such massive interdependence, statements like the statement I quoted in italics above.
The diagram below gives us a hint of the cross-dependencies in biological systems, but fails to adequately represent them. A better diagram would be one in which there were fifty or more arrows indicating internal dependencies.
Our authors have not even got apartment buildings right. I live in an apartment that is one of many in my building. My apartment is certainly not an independent module. It is dependent on the overall plumbing system and gas system and heating system and electrical system shared by the entire building.
The authors (Yuste and Levin) then discuss hierarchical organization. Hierarchical organization is certainly a very big aspect of physical human bodies. Subatomic particles are organized into atoms, which are organized into amino acids, which are organized into protein molecules, which are organized into protein complexes, which are organized into organelles, which are organized into cells, which are organized into tissues, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems, which are organized into organisms. This is all the greatest embarrassment for today's biologists, who lack both a theory of the origin of hierarchical organization, and any theory at all of biological organization (Darwinism being a mere theory of accumulation, not a theory of organization).
Contrary to what our Scientific American authors insinuate, hierarchical organization is not a good description of minds. Our minds have no organization anything like the hierarchical organization of our bodies. So our authors err by suggesting hierarchical organization as some kind of "new clue" in understanding the origin of minds. Here is their vaporous reasoning with no real substance behind it:
"In biology, different organs could belong to the same body of an organism, whose goal would be to preserve itself and reproduce, and different organisms could belong to a community, like a beehive, whose goal would be to maintain a stable environment for its members. Similarly, the local metabolic and signaling goals of the cells integrate toward a morphogenetic outcome of building and repairing complex organs. Thus, increasingly sophisticated intelligence emerges from hierarchies of modules."
This is nothing remotely resembling a credible explanation for the origin of human minds that can do math and philosophy and abstract reasoning. The last sentence of the paragraph uses "thus" in a very inappropriate way, for none of the preceding talk explains how humans could get minds. Our minds are not "hierarchies of modules." Instead of being independent modules, different aspects of our minds are very much dependent on other aspects of our minds. Complex thought and language and memory and understanding are not independent modules. With very few exceptions, you cannot engage in complex thought without language and memory; and every time you use language you are relying on memory and understanding (your recall of the meaning of words); and you can't understand much of anything without using your memory.
Next our Scientific American authors speak in a not very helpful way, using the term "pattern completion" in a very strange way. Very oddly, they state this:
"A third step in our argument addresses this problem: each module has a few key elements that serve as control knobs or trigger points that activate the module. This is known as pattern completion, where the activation of a part of the system turns on the entire system."
Whatever the writers are talking about, it does nothing to explain minds. Yuste and Levin end by trying to cite some research dealing with this "pattern completion" effect they referred to. They cite only a paper that seems to be guilty of the same Questionable Research Practices that most neuroscience experiments are guilty of these days. It is a mouse experiment that used too-small study group sizes, such as study groups of 6 mice and 7 mice and 9 mice. The authors of the paper state, "We did not use a statistical power analysis to determine the number of animals used in each experiment beforehand." Such a confession is usually made when experimenters have used way-too-small sample sizes, using far fewer than the 15 subjects per study group recommended for robust results. The authors tell us "experimental data were collected not blinded to experimental groups," and makes no claim that any blinding protocol was used. The paper is therefore not robust evidence for anything supporting the claims of the authors of the Scientific American article. Because of its procedural defects, the paper provides no robust evidence for what Yuste and Levin claim, that "fascinating pattern-completion neurons activated small modules of cells that encoded visual perceptions, which were interpreted by the mouse as real objects." The only other paper cited by Yuste and Levin is a self-citation that has nothing to do with the origin of minds.
Instead of giving us any actual encouragement that scientists have "new clues" as to the origin of minds, the Scientific American article rather leaves us with the impression that mainstream scientists have no good clues about such a thing. You could postulate a credible theory about the origin of human minds, but the "old guard" editors of Scientific American would never publish it.
What is going on in Levin's latest Scientific American article is the same kind of inappropriate language that Levin abundantly used in a long article he co-authored with Daniel Dennett, one entitled "Cognition All the Way Down." In that article, Levin and Dennett use the word "cognition" and "agents" to refer to things like cells that have neither minds nor cognition. I don't think either Levin or Dennett actually believe that cells have minds or cognition. Their article reads like something a person might write if he did not believe that cells actually have minds and selves and thoughts, but if he merely thought that speaking as if cells are "agents" with "cognition" is a convenient rhetorical device. The Cambridge Dictionary defines cognition as "the use of conscious mental processes." The same dictonary defines an agent as "a person who acts for or represents another."
What seems to be going on is simply that words are being used in improper ways, like someone using the word "gift" to describe a bombing. It's just what we would expect from Darwinists, for improper language has always been at the center of Darwinism from its very beginning. At the heart of Darwinism is the misnomer phrase "natural selection," which refers to a mere survival-of-the-fittest effect that is not actually selection (the word "selection" refers to choice made by conscious agents). We should not be surprised that some thinkers who have for so long been talking about the selection-that-isn't-really-selection are now speaking about agents-that-aren't-really-agents and cognition-that-isn't-really-cognition and intelligence-that-isn't-really-intelligence.
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