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

132 THREADS OF ACTUALITY IN DESIGN SPACE
or words that refer to him, but Clinton is a man, not a word, and numbers
aren't symbols either—numerals are.) Here is a vivid way of seeing the
importance of the distinction between numbers and numerals; we have just
observed that it would not be surprising at all to find that extra-terrestrials
used the same numbers we do, but simply incredible if they used the same
numerals.
In a Vast space of possibilities, the odds of a similarity between two
independently chosen elements is Vanishing unless there is a reason. There
is for numbers (arithmetic is true and variations on arithmetic aren't) and
there isn't for numerals (the symbol "§" would function exactly as well as the
symbol "5" as a name for the number that follows 4).
Suppose we found the extra-terrestrials, like us, using the decimal system
for most informal purposes, but converting to binary arithmetic when doing
computation with the aid of mechanical prosthetic devices (computers). Their
use of 0 and 1 in their computers (supposing they had invented computers!)
would not surprise us, since there are good engineering reasons for adopting
the binary system, and though these reasons are not dead obvious, they are
probably within striking distance for average-type thinkers. "You don't have
to be a rocket scientist" to appreciate the virtues of binary.
In general, we would expect them to have discovered many of the various
ways things have of being the right way. Wherever there are many different
ways of skinning a cat, and none is much better than any other, our surprise
at their doing it our way will be proportional to how many different ways we
think there are. Notice that even when we are contemplating some Vast
number of equivalent ways, a value judgment is implicit. For us to recognize
items as things falling in one of these Vast sets, they have to be seen as
equally good ways, as ways of performing the function x. Function-alistic
thinking is simply inescapable in this sort of inquiry; you can't even
enumerate the possibilities without presupposing a concept of function. (Now
we can see that even our deliberately antiseptic formalization of the Library
of Mendel invoked functional presuppositions; we can't identify something
as a possible genome without thinking of genomes as things that might serve
a particular function within a reproductive system.)
So there turn out to be general principles of practical reasoning (including,
in more modern dress, cost-benefit analysis) that can be relied upon to
impose themselves on all life forms anywhere. We can argue about particular
cases, but not about the applicability in general of the principles. Are such
design features as bilateral symmetry in locomotors, or mouth-at-the-bowend,
to be explained as largely a matter of historical contingency, or largely a
matter of practical wisdom? The only issues to debate or investigate are their
relative contributions, and the historical order in which the contributions
were made. (Recall that in the actual QWERTY phenomenon,
Forced Moves in the Game of Design 133
there was a perfectly good engineering reason for the initial choice—it was
just a reason whose supporting circumstances had long ago lapsed.)
Design work—lifting—can now be characterized as the work of discovering
good ways of solving "problems that arise." Some problems are given at
the outset, in all environments, under all conditions, to all species. Further
problems are then created by the initial "attempts at solution" made by
different species faced with the first problems. Some of these subsidiary
problems are created by the other species of organisms (who must make a
living, too), and other subsidiary problems are created by a species' own
solutions to its own problems. For instance, now that one has decided—by
flipping a coin, perhaps—to search for solutions in this area, one is stuck with
problem B instead of problem A, which poses subproblems p, q, and r,
instead of subproblems x, y, and z, and so forth. Should we personify a
species in this way and treat it as an agent or practical reasoner (Schull 1990,
Dennett 1990a)? Alternatively, we may choose to think of species as
perfectly mindless nonagents, and put the rationale in the process of natural
selection itself (perhaps jocularly personified as Mother Nature). Remember
Francis Crick's quip about evolution's being cleverer than you are. Or we may
choose to shrink from these vivid modes of expression altogether, but the
analyses we do will have the same logic in any case.
This is what lies behind our intuition that design work is somehow intellectual
work. Design work is discernible (in the otherwise uninterpret-able
typography of shifting genomes) only if we start imposing reasons on it. (In
earlier work, I characterized these as "free-floating rationales," a term that
has apparently induced terror or nausea in many otherwise well-disposed
readers. Bear with me; I will soon provide some more palatable ways of
making these points.)
So Paley was right in saying not just that Design was a wonderful thing to
explain, but also that Design took Intelligence. All he missed—and Darwin
provided—was the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny
and stupid that they didn't count as intelligence at all, and then distributed
through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic
process. The work must get done, but which work gets done is largely a
matter of chance, since chance helps determine which problems (and
subproblems and subsubproblems) get "addressed" by the machinery.
Whenever we find a problem solved, we can ask: Who or what did the work?
Where and when? Has a solution been worked out locally, or long ago, or
was it somehow borrowed (or stolen) from some other branch of the tree? If it
exhibits peculiarities that could only have arisen in the course of solving the
subproblems in some apparently remote branch of the Tree that grows in
Design Space, then barring a miracle or a coincidence too Cosmic to credit,
there must be a copying event of some kind that moved that completed design
work to its new location.