More summary of this Brian Greene book. Earlier: post 1, post 2. Today’s chapters concern how life gave rise to consciousness, and how mind gave rise to the imagination, and to stories.
Ch5, Particles and Consciousness: From Life to Mind, p115
We’ve imagined ‘souls’ for thousands of years; only recently have the hard sciences grappled with consciousness. Descartes didn’t think matter could produce consciousness. Much of what our brain does we are not aware of, there have long been ideas of the subconscious. The ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is how we’re *aware* that something is yellow, say, in a way no camera is. There is more to being aware of red than any intellectual knowledge about wave-lengths would supply.
Ideas about consciousness began with the idea of ‘vitalism,’ since abandoned. The panpsychist belief is that all particles are conscious in some sense. But what does this mean? The mind does more than process information. [Key point] We tend to simplify sensations that are actually complex. (Example of a ‘red Farrari’ that we actually perceive in many different shades of red, depending on lighting.) Just as our ‘theory of mind’ forms representations of other animals and people, so we do with all experience — this is why conscious experience seems unmoored from physical reality. p141m.
QM doesn’t explain anything, because the math of QM, though probablistic, is just as deterministic as Newtonian physics. As for free will, our choices seem free because we don’t witness nature’s laws acting in fine details. [[ I find this insightful: human cognition simplified the world, in ways we’re unaware of, in the same way it simplifies the world to the extent needed to survive… thus intuitive physics and whatnot. ]]
Greene considers the ways a person is much more complex than, say, a rock, and thus we do have a freedom to behave in ways unavailable to most other collections of particles. This is a kind of freedom that does not depend on ‘free will.’
Finally, learning does not require free will; a Roomba learns. Greene invokes again the idea of nested stories. We’re not content with the most fundamental stories. We’re bound by physical law in a reductionist sense, but ideas of cause and effect still make sense in higher-level stories. So there’s a role for responsibility. And we know our perceptions can change with mind-altering substances. The sensation of free will is real, even if the capacity to exert it is not. We know that our sense of consciousness arose by 100,000 years ago.
Ch6, Language and Story: From Mind to Imagination, p160
Pattern is central to human experience, and mathematics articulates pattern. No one knows when language began, or how. Unlike animal communications, human language generates infinite combinations. Chomsky, and recently Pink and Bloom, argue for a hardwired universal grammar. Why speak at all? Motherese, gesturing, social grooming, the utility of gossip; to persuade others, to facilitate internal thought. In any case, language enabled the telling of stories.
Why do we tell stories? Perhaps because stories are lessons about other people, real or not, might behave; thus they would serve an adaptive function. Stories are how we rehearse for the real world; or perhaps they’re flight simulators. Stories need conflict; they are a way to move into other minds. How to inhabit the world in different ways. Allegory; how to communicate subjective experience. They are how we make sense of existence.
Science answers the big questions about reality, but cultures have always told stories that shape their view of reality. Thus myths, from Gilgamesh onward, almost always in some way about death. Or catastrophes, or winter. Usually larger than life, but otherwise familiar; one or two novel concepts to command the attention. They can be overdone–but sometimes it’s better to do so (with the familiar example of the rustle in the grass). Nice summary p187:
Evolution instilled a tendency for us to imagine our surroundings chock-full of things that think and feel, sometimes envisioning them offering help and counsel, but more often conceiving of them as plotting and planning, crossing and double-crossing, attacking and avenging. Overendowing the world’s sounds and stirrings with minds bent on danger and destruction can save your life. Having the cognitive flexibility to mash up elements of reality into concoctions of the fantastic can seed innovation. Empowering otherwise ordinary protagonists with surprising supernatural qualities grabs attention and facilitates cultural transmission. In combination, these elements illuminate the kinds of stories that captivated our ancestors’ imagination and provided narrative guidance for navigating the ancient world.
The most enduring of the mythic tales became the seeds for… religion.
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Five more chapters to go:
Ch7, Brains and Belief: From Imagination to the Sacred, p188
Ch8, Instinct and Creativity: From the Sacred to the Sublime, p220
Ch9, Duration and Impermanence: From the Sublime to the Final Thought, p244
Ch10, The Twilight of Time: Quanta, Probability, and Eternity, p280
Ch11, The Nobility of Being: Mind, Matter, and Meaning, p310
So probably two more posts. Maybe three.
