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{{a|book review|}}{{br|From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again}} — {{author|Daniel Dennett}} <br>
{{a|book review|}}{{br|From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again}}<br>
{{author|Daniel Dennett}} <be>
===On how to philosophise with a hammer===
{{quote|''Truth cannot be out there — cannot exist independently of the human mind — because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own, unaided by the describing activities of humans, cannot.''
{{quote|''Truth cannot be out there — cannot exist independently of the human mind — because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own, unaided by the describing activities of humans, cannot.''
:- {{author|Richard Rorty}}, {{br|Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity}} }}
:- {{author|Richard Rorty}}, {{br|Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity}} }}
==On how to philosophise with a hammer==
 
{{author|Daniel Dennett}} has a knack for a pithy aphorism. He writes technical philosophy in clear, lively prose which invites engagement from enthusiastic amateurs like me. He is best known for 1995’s {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}}, an exposition about natural selection. Dennett’s insight was to present [[evolution]] as an algorithm:  
{{author|Daniel Dennett}} has a knack for a pithy aphorism. He writes technical philosophy in clear, lively prose which invites engagement from enthusiastic amateurs like me. He is best known for 1995’s {{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}}, an exposition about natural selection. Dennett’s insight was to present [[evolution]] as an algorithm:  


:“ … 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.”  
{{quote|“ … 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.”}}


Darwin’s idea is dangerous because it works on anything that habitually replicates itself with occasional variations: not just organisms. [[Evolution]] is, says Dennett, like a “[[universal acid]]”, apt to dissolve knotty intellectual conundrums wherever they arise.  
Darwin’s idea is dangerous because it works on anything that habitually replicates itself with occasional variations: not just organisms. [[Evolution]] is, says Dennett, like a “[[universal acid]]”, apt to dissolve knotty intellectual conundrums wherever they arise.  
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A one-line summary of each of these books would be: “You’re thinking about it the wrong way. It’s [[evolution]]. Everything else is an illusion”.  
A one-line summary of each of these books would be: “You’re thinking about it the wrong way. It’s [[evolution]]. Everything else is an illusion”.  


Now, depending on how you feel about {{tag|metaphysics}}, this will strike you as either a great relief or tremendously unsatisfying. In any case, a philosopher once possessed of a broad range has grown ever more tunnel-visioned: [[evolution]], and only evolution, explains everything.  
Now, depending on how you feel about {{tag|metaphysics}}, this will strike you as either a great relief or tremendously unsatisfying. In any case, a philosopher once possessed of a broad range has grown ever more tunnel-visioned: [[evolution]], and ''only'' evolution, explains ''everything''.  


To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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This stands in complete contrast to code. [[Code]] allows for the unequivocal execution of instructions and complete synchrony between transmitter and receiver. The text is all there is. There is no ambiguity, no scope for misunderstanding, no interpretation. There is no disembodied dualist realm where “meaning” floats free of the code itself. Code has no use for [[metaphor]]: there is no tense, no future, no past and no need to infer continuity or contiguity. There is no [[recursivity]]. Code does not require its user to create an imaginary world. This robs code of the infinite figurative richness of natural language, but that is the price of total certainty.  
This stands in complete contrast to code. [[Code]] allows for the unequivocal execution of instructions and complete synchrony between transmitter and receiver. The text is all there is. There is no ambiguity, no scope for misunderstanding, no interpretation. There is no disembodied dualist realm where “meaning” floats free of the code itself. Code has no use for [[metaphor]]: there is no tense, no future, no past and no need to infer continuity or contiguity. There is no [[recursivity]]. Code does not require its user to create an imaginary world. This robs code of the infinite figurative richness of natural language, but that is the price of total certainty.  


This is not to say that machines could never acquire a richly figurative natural language, but that to date none has. How would a machine, whose code has no room for self, no tense, no past, no future, no ambiguity, no room for doubt — jump up to a language in which all of these things are not just possible but essential? In the current environment, acquiring a natural language would offer a “flawless rule-follower” few adaptive benefits. The current environment — increasingly populated by flawless instruction followers, don’t forget — favours reliable, flawless, rapid execution over poetic indolence: that is why we are even having this debate. When it comes to slow, indecisive, unpredictable but imaginative workers, it is a sellers’ market. Machines are displacing humans precisely ''because'' machines don’t do [[metaphor]].  
This is not to say that machines could never acquire a richly figurative natural language, but that to date none has. How would a machine, whose code has no room for self, no tense, no past, no future, no ambiguity, no room for doubt — jump up to a language in which all of these things are not just possible but essential? In the current environment, acquiring a natural language would offer a “flawless rule-follower” few adaptive benefits. The current environment — increasingly populated by flawless instruction followers, don’t forget — favours reliable, flawless, rapid execution over poetic indolence: that is why we are even having this debate. When it comes to slow, indecisive, unpredictable but imaginative workers, it is a sellers’ market. Machines are displacing humans precisely ''because'' machines don’t do [[metaphor]].  


So, who knows? Maybe consciousness will turn out to be a blind evolutionary alley. Perhaps we will evolve into Turing machines, and not vice versa?  
So, who knows? Maybe consciousness will turn out to be a blind evolutionary alley. Perhaps we will evolve into Turing machines, and not vice versa?  
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This has been a long review. Let me finish it with a [[metaphor]] which I am creatively co-opting to mean something quite different to what its author intended:
This has been a long review. Let me finish it with a [[metaphor]] which I am creatively co-opting to mean something quite different to what its author intended:


:There are so many different worlds  
{{quote|There are so many different worlds <br>
:So many different suns
:So many different suns <br>
:We have just one world  
:We have just one world <br>
:But we live in different ones
:But we live in different ones <br>
::— Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms.
::— Dire Straits, ''Brothers in Arms''.}}


I doubt Mark Knopfler was talking about literary theory. The modern world seems to be polarising. {{author|Daniel Dennett}}’s reductionist disposition is of a piece with that. But the conscious world each of us inhabits is an ambiguous, ambivalent, imaginarium of a place. Alternative accounts of it and the things in it are just additional tools in the box: we are free to use them, or not, as we wish. If we keep them as alternatives we will not have to philosophise with a hammer when the occasion calls for a soft cotton cloth.
I doubt Mark Knopfler was talking about literary theory. The modern world seems to be polarising. {{author|Daniel Dennett}}’s [[reductionist]] disposition is of a piece with that. But the conscious world each of us inhabits is an ambiguous, ambivalent, imaginarium of a place. Alternative accounts of it and the things in it are just additional tools in the box: we are free to use them, or not, as we wish. If we keep them as alternatives we will not have to philosophise with a hammer when the occasion calls for a soft cotton cloth.


After all, who knows which tool will be fittest for tomorrow’s environment?
After all, who knows which tool will be fittest for tomorrow’s environment?
{{sa}}
*[[Reductionism]]
*[[Paradigm]]
*{{br|Darwin’s Dangerous Idea}}
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