Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meaning of Life

422 THE EVOLUTION OF MEANINGS
get any at all) from indirect reliance on the sense organs, life histories, and
purposes of their creators, Al and Bo. The real source of the meaning or truth
or semanticity in the artifacts lies in these human artificers. (That was the
point of the suggestion that in a certain sense Al and Bo were in their
respective boxes.) Now, I might have told the story differently: inside the
boxes were two robots, Al and Bo, which had each spent a longish "lifetime"
scurrying around in the world gathering facts before getting in their respective
boxes. I chose a simpler route, to forestall all the questions about
whether box A or box B was "really thinking," but we may now reinstate the
issues thereby finessed, since it is finally time to dispose once and for all of
the hunch that original intentionality could not emerge in any artifactual
"mind" without the intervention of a (human?) artificer. Suppose that is so.
Suppose, in other words, that, whatever differences there might be between a
simple box of truths like box A and the fanciest imaginable robot, since both
would just be artifacts, neither could have real—or original—intentionality,
but only the derivative intentionality borrowed from its creator. Now you are
ready for another thought experiment, a reductio ad absur-dum of that
supposition.
4. SAFE PASSAGE TO THE FUTURE 9
Suppose you decided, for whatever reasons, that you wanted to experience
life in the twenty-fifth century, and suppose that the only known way of
keeping your body alive that long required it to be placed in a hibernation
device of sorts. Let's suppose it's a "cryogenic chamber" that cools your body
down to a few degrees above absolute zero. In this chamber your body would
be able to rest, suspended in a super-coma, for as long as you liked. You
could arrange to climb into the chamber, and its surrounding support capsule,
be put to sleep, and then automatically be awakened and released in 2401.
This is a time-honored science-fiction theme, of course.
Designing the capsule itself is not your only engineering problem, since
the capsule must be protected and supplied with the requisite energy (for
refrigeration, etc.) for over four hundred years. You will not be able to count
on your children and grandchildren for this stewardship, of course, since they
will be long dead before the year 2401, and you would be most unwise to
presume that your more distant descendants, if any, will take a lively interest
in your well-being. So you must design a supersystem to protect your capsule
and to provide the energy it needs for four hundred years.
Here there are two basic strategies you might follow. On one, you should
Safe Passage to the Future 423
prospect around for the ideal location, as best you can foresee, for a fixed
installation that will be well supplied with water, sunlight, and whatever else
your capsule (and the supersystem itself) will need for the duration. The
main drawback to such an installation or "plant" is that it cannot be moved if
harm comes its way—if, say, someone decides to build a freeway right
where it is located. The alternative strategy is much more sophisticated and
expensive, but avoids this drawback: design a mobile facility to house your
capsule, along with the requisite sensors and early-warning devices so that it
can move out of harm's way and seek out new sources of energy and repair
materials as it needs them. In short, build a giant robot and install the capsule
(with you inside it) in it.
These two basic strategies are copied from nature: they correspond
roughly to the division between plants and animals. Since the latter, more
sophisticated, strategy better fits our purposes, let's suppose that you decide
to build a robot to house your capsule. You should try to design this robot so
that above all else it "chooses" actions designed to further your interests, of
course. Don't call these mere switching points in your robot's control system
"choice" points if you think that this would imply that the robot had free will
or consciousness, for I don't mean to smuggle any such contraband into the
thought experiment. My point is uncontroversial: the power of any computer
program lies in its capacity to execute branching instructions, zigging one
way or another depending on some test it executes on the data then available
to it, and my point is just that, as you plan your robot's control system, you
would be wise to try to structure it so that whenever branching opportunities
confront it, it will tend to branch down that path that has the highest
probability of serving your interests. You are, after all, the raison d'etre of
the whole gadget. The idea of designing hardware and software that are
specifically attuned to the interests of a particular human individual is not
even science fiction any more, though the particular design problems facing
your robot-builders would be profoundly difficult engineering challenges,
somewhat beyond the state of the art today. This mobile entity would need a
"vision" system to guide its locomotion, and other "sensory" systems as well,
in addition to the self-monitoring capacities to inform it of its needs.
Since you will be comatose throughout, and thus cannot stay awake to
guide and plan its strategies, you will have to design the robot supersystem
to generate its own plans in response to changing circumstances over the
centuries. It must "know" how to "seek out" and "recognize" and then exploit
energy sources, how to move to safer territory, how to "anticipate" and then
avoid dangers. With so much to be done, and done fast, you had best rely
whenever you can on economies: give your robot no more discriminatory
prowess than it will probably need in order to distinguish whatever needs
distinguishing in the world—given its particular constitution.
9. An earlier version of this thought experiment appeared in Dennett 1987b, ch. 8.