Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Rediscovering the Mind 41The encoding of information in genetic molecules introducedthe possibility of profound disturbances in the laws thatgoverned the universe. Before the coming of genetic life, forexample, fluctuations in temperature or noise were averaged out,giving rise to precise laws of planetary evolution. Afterwardhowever, a single molecular event at the level of thermal noisecould lead to macroscopic consequences. For if the event were amutation in a self-replicating system, then the entire course ofbiological evolution could be altered. A single molecular eventcould kill a whale by inducing a cancer or destroy an ecosystemby generating a virulent virus that attacks a key species inthat system. The origin of life does not abrogate the underlyinglaws of physics, but it adds a new feature: large scaleconsequences of molecular events. This rule change makesevolutionary history indeterminate and so constitutes a clearcutdiscontinuity.A number of contemporary biologists and psychologistsbelieve that the origin of reflective thought that occurredduring primate evolution is also a discontinuity tat has changedthe rules. Again, the new situation does not abrogate theunderlying biological laws, but it adds a feature thatnecessitates novel ways of thinking about the problem. Theevolutionary biologist Lawrence B. Slobodkin has identified thenew feature as an introspective self-image. This property heasserts, alters the response to evolutionary problems and makesit impossible to assign major historical events to causeinherent in biological evolutionary laws. Slobodkin is claimingthat the rules have changed and man cannot be understood by lawsapplicable to other mammals whose brains have a very similarphysiology.This emergent feature of man has, in one form or another,been discussed by numerous anthropologists, psychologists , andbiologists. It is part of the empirical data that cannot beshelved just to preserve reductionist purity. The discontinuityneeds to be thoroughly studied and evaluated, but first it needsto be recognized. Primates are very different from otheranimals, and human beings are very different from otherprimates.We now understand the troublesome features in a forcefulcommitment to uncritical reductionism as a solution to theproblem of the mind. We have discussed the weaknesses of thatposition. In addition to being weak, it is a dangerous view,since the way we respond to our fellow human beings is dependenton the way we conceptualize them in our theoreticalformulations. If we envision our fellows solely as animals ormachines, we drain our interactions of humanistic richness. Ifwe seek our behavioural norms in the study of animal societies,we ignore those