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Evolutionary Theory An Introduction to Four Themes: Epistemology, Cross-Domains, Consciousness, Teleology
Epistemology: what constitutes valid knowledge? Esalen’s 2000 conference on evolutionary theory started with the subject of epistemology, which, broadly speaking, is the study of how we know something, but, more particularly, the study of what constitutes valid knowledge. For the most part, mainstream academic evolutionary theory has limited itself to the epistemological rules of the scientific paradigm, which considers "objective" 3rd person observational data as capable of producing the only valid and reliable knowledge we have. To introduce the conference to the rich and complex topic of epistemology, Jay Ogilvy began by remarking on the famous Austrian philosopher of science, Karl Popper, whose"3 Worlds Hypothesis," articulated a more inclusive epistemology by distinguishing three valid domains of knowledge: the objective domain (world 1), the subjective domain (world 2), and the inter-subjective domain (world 3). According to Popper, each domain has its own validity claims and cannot be judged by the rules of the other. Interestingly, Ogilvy pointed out that in Europe in the 1970s Popper himself, along with W.W. Bartley, participated in a series of conferences on evolutionary theory that resulted in the publication of Evolutionary Epistemology (Open Court, 1987). One of the key questions asked by this conference and addressed in the book was: What does evolutionary thinking contribute to epistemology? Ogilvy addressed this question by describing briefly the history of traditional Western epistemology. Noting that the central theme of early modern (17th and 18th centuries) epistemology was a search for a solid and reliable foundation for knowledge, Ogilvy offered the image of Western philosophers justifying their truth claims by building up inductive pyramids of empirical observations. In short, knowledge started with firm foundations and was built upwardly, step by step. In the late 18th century, the Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was one of the first to challenge this foundational approach in Western epistemology. He asserted that humans can never actually "know" the external world in the first place because all we ever experience is our representation of it in our brains. All we ever know are the appearances of the external world (phenomena). We never know the world as-it-is (noumena). In an attempt to reconcile and up-date early modern epistemology with the discovery of evolution, more contemporary thinkers, such as Karl Popper, W.W. Bartley, and Gregory Bateson, have taken a developmental approach to epistemology. Coming from an evolutionary perspective, Bartley, for example, wrote that "adaptation is an increment in knowledge." In other words, the evolutionary process itself is a process of increased knowing. This theme is taken up in Gregory Bateson’s book, Mind and Nature, where Bateson essentially argues that evolution is the learning of a species and that learning is an evolutionary program of experimental trial, selection, and change. If we take Bateson’s perspective, Ogilvy pointed out that the Kantian dilemma of knowing only the represented appearances of the world is obviated. Increases in knowledge do not have to be built up inductively; they are inherent in the evolutionary process itself. As Bartley put it, "There is no justification ever. The process that began with unjustified variations ends with unjustified survivors." In other words, looking at the process of evolution as an increase in knowledge circumvents the traditional need to justify one’s epistemological foundations. What we know is simply what works in evolution. Next, Ogilvy addressed a well-known essay written by the neuroscientist Warren McCullough and mathematician Walter Pitts, titled "What does the frog’s eye tell the frog’s brain?" These scholars made the point that what a frog sees in the world is quite selective. A frog’s vision is attuned to its own survival. Addressing the difference between what a frog sees and what a human sees, Bartley wrote, "From the vantage point of our own cognitive achievements we would not take seriously the claim of an idealistically disposed frog—that the limits of his experience define the limits of the world. Or that it is meaningless to speak of the sorts of things he cannot perceive." Summarizing this approach, Ogilvy intimated that it was no longer necessary for post-modern thinkers to be constrained by Kant’s assertion that we only know the "appearances" of the real world. Proposing a new angle on the epistemological question, Ogilvy drew upon the writings of the contemporary Pragmatist philosopher, Richard Rorty. Rorty has strongly challenged the "foundational myth" of traditional Western philosophy in his book, Philosophy and Social Hope, where he called the traditional approach of building up sense-data into a solid foundation of true knowledge "the foundational myth." Approaching the topic from a new angle, Rorty quoted Walt Whitman as the quintessential voice of the pragmatist tradition: "America counts as I reckon it for her justification and success almost entirely on the future." Or to put it in Rorty’s own words, "With a willingness to refer all questions of ultimate justification on the future, Pragmatism substitutes a better future—the substance of things hoped for—for the notion of reality and truth." In sum, Ogilvy noted that traditional pre-evolutionary epistemologies sought firm foundations for "true knowledge." Repudiating this whole approach, post-evolutionary epistemologies are turning to the future for their validation—to "the substance of things hoped for." Ogilvy summarized the new epistemological outlook with a short aphorism: The future has replaced objectivity as the horizon of validation. In other words, in a world of evolutionary emergence, we now look to the future as the source of validation for our knowledge. No longer do we need "objective" knowledge (none is possible). Instead, we look to see what will happen, what will succeed, what will survive—and evolve. Evolution across the domains: continuities and discontinuities Turning to the second topic of the conference, Ogilvy quoted from Karl Popper, "The main task of a theory of knowledge is to understand in what way it is continuous with animal knowledge and discontinuous with animal knowledge." Or more broadly speaking, what are the continuities and discontinuities that stretch across the great domains of evolution (matter, life, and mind)? One continuity in evolution Ogilvy described simply as the pattern of "getting out." Those who get out and see the world, survive. And those who don’t, don’t. Quoting Bartley again, "change relevant to nourishment appears more rapidly if one moves around than if one stands still. A simple philosophy but one adequate to the life of a paramecium." Stretching from the life of a simple bacterial organism to the complexity of human life, the theme of "getting out" is apparent. A simple paramecium explores the world by searching for its food source, glucose. Likewise, humans explore the world by building telescopes, radars, and satellites to scan the universe in its entirety. Quoting Stuart Kauffman from At Home in the Universe in support of a pattern of evolutionary continuity, Ogilvy read, "Whether we are talking about organisms or economies, surprisingly general laws govern adaptive processes on multi-peaked fitness landscapes." And for discontinuities in evolution? Capturing some of the features in evolution that highlight points of separation between the great domains of matter, life, and mind, Ogilvy quoted from the The Cerebral Symphony, written by the neurophysiologist Bill Calvin, who has looked at the defining characteristics of homo sapiens: "If one focuses on the primary traits via which we differ from the apes in an order of magnitude way, we wind up with a curious trio: 1) language; 2) scenario spinning (consciousness); and 3) music." And the emergence of these human characteristics happened by the same Darwinian selection processes as in other realms of evolution. As Calvin again put it: "The basic phenomenon that allows each of us to have a sense of self, to contemplate the world, to forecast the future, and make ethical choices. These things we may owe to the same kind of process that gave the earth abundant life." Focusing on number 2 from Bill Calvin’s list, the human ability to spin scenarios of the future, Ogilvy quoted Calvin a couple more times: "The ability of this mental Darwinism to simulate the future is the fundamental foundation of our ethics. What sets us apart from the animal kingdom." "It is this sort of scenario spinning involving both past and future that makes human consciousness so different from the behavioral choices of the cormorant, the skunk, and even the chimpanzee." Taking in the big sweep of evolution, Ogilvy pointed to trends that show both continuity and discontinuity. Indeed, evolution has some common patterns, such as "getting out," but it also has clear moments in which novel forms emerge and break off from the past. In short, emergent properties display new ways of living and evolving unlike any previous structures. Consciousness: body, emotion, and the narrative construction of meaning Turning to the third topic, Ogilvy synthesized the work of the neurologists Antonio Damasio and Bill Calvin while offering some notable ideas about the enigmatic subject of consciousness: 1) Consciousness is the unique human ability to choose between alternative scenarios for what we are going to do. This ability had survival value in evolution, because it allowed us to review various potential images and options of action and then choose accordingly. As Antonio Damasio put it in his book, The Feeling of What Happens: If actions are at the root of survival and if their power is tied to the availability of guiding images, then it follows that a device capable of maximizing the effective manipulation of images in the service of the interests of a particular organism would have given enormous advantages to the organisms that possessed the device and would probably have prevailed in evolution. Consciousness is precisely such a device. 2) Consciousness is inherently embodied. In sharp contrast to the Cartesian legacy of the separation of mind from body, Ogilvy pointed out that Damasio’s research reveals a simple conclusion: no body, no consciousness. In fact, our bodies and emotions seem to be constitutive of our very way of "knowing" and "feeling" the world. This perspective is quite a shift from the prevailing paradigm that underlies research in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community, whose attempt to produce conscious computers has consistently failed. Under the sway of the computational metaphor, the false premise in AI is that consciousness is solely calculative. Ogilvy asserted that Damasio and others are part of a new wave in consciousness research that is revealing the presence of the body in the functioning of our mind. This new perspective on consciousness is even inclined to explain our conscious experience of the external object and the interior self as an abstraction from bodily-experience and bodily-based emotion. 3) Consciousness is intimately entwined with story-making and narrative. The human propensity for narrative emerges when our embodied desires come face to face with the limits of the environment. Humans are story-spinning creatures who recount and reassess the meaning of our actions. The head of the History of Consciousness studies program at UC Santa Cruz, Hayden White, put it this way, "the reality that lends itself to narrative is the conflict between desire and the law." Or put in evolutionary terms, the conflict between what is wanted and what the environment can afford. This difference between what we want and what we get is the conflict that feeds our narrative imagination, our desire to tell stories about the drama of living our lives. Furthermore, when this idea is connected with the embodied nature of consciousness, Ogilvy pointed out that our bodily desires and aversions—our embodied physical pains and pleasures—are the seeds of consciousness. The feeling of consciousness is inevitably incarnate. It involves our bodily desires and expresses itself through our story making and scenario spinning. 4) Consciousness does not begin in one exact place in evolutionary history but emerges gradually from rudimentary forms of wakefulness up to sophisticated language abilities. Consciousness is a confusing term used to describe a vast conflation of things. Ogilvy approved of Damasio’s scheme, which delineates between at least two types of consciousness: 1. Core consciousness: a simple biological form of consciousness not unique to humans, which provides creatures with a sense of self in the immediate moment. 2. Extended consciousness: a more complex form of consciousness, which has many grades and levels to it including the capacity for narrative, an awareness of the past and future, and an ability to master language. Telos: finding purpose in the hierarchy of desire Introducing the last of the conference’s four topics, Ogilvy commented on the often discounted issue of telos. Boiling down the spectrum of debate and discussion, Ogilvy suggested that those who believe there is a purpose to the evolution of life on our planet are essentially being criticized for the crime of "wishful thinking." In other words, random variation and selection is an accurate description of evolution as it really is, and the advocates of telos are just painting an optimistic picture they would like to see. Presenting a potentially plausible scenario in which telos plays a role in evolution, Ogilvy drew a chart representing how desire itself may be its hidden purpose:
The Hierarchy of Desire
Ogilvy pointed out that this hierarchy of desire is different from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, because desire is more particular than simple needs are. What we want is qualitatively different from what we need. Drawing upon the work of the Whiteheadian scholar, David Ray Griffin, who spoke at the first Esalen evolutionary theory conference, Ogilvy added that we might reflect upon whether telos is related to the desire for greater beauty. As life evolves, it wants to experience and create greater and greater degrees of beauty in the world. Conclusion Concluding his opening remarks, Ogilvy returned to his epistemological aphorism: the future has replaced objectivity as the horizon of validation. One way to interpret this is that the future we hope for, plan for, and desire acts teleologically in evolution. Our hopes, dreams, plans, and desires for a better and more beautiful world influence the future. Or to put it in Hegelian terms, desire is dialectically related to telos. There is an ontological reciprocity between what we desire and what happens. Summarizing the central role that our desire plays in the evolutionary story, Ogilvy closed by responding poetically to René Descartes’ famous words: Cogito Ergo Sum? I think therefore I am? No, no Rene. How about: Amo ergo sum. I desire therefore I am. I love therefore I am.
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