The following pearl is quoted literally from a lengthy conversation of the TV documentary 'A Glorious Accident', or 'A Schitterend Ongeluk' in Dutch. A documentary that run in the 90s on Dutch public television. [1]
The conversation at a certain point was, two hours already, going on between Oliver Sacks, Daniel C. Dennett and Stephen J. Gould, among other eminent scientists, who had been mostly silent for the last 15 minutes or so. The question being discussed was how brains, humans and (possibly) other "wetware" organisms, evolve into having a specific identity. A specific sence of self. At that stage in the conversation the three of them allready agreed with each other that the some form of continues categorization is required as the underlying principle for organisms to have a self or identity; that what defines us individually is the way we categorize our perception of reality. The self, the identity grows on the continuation of that categorizing fueled by accumulating experiences over time. Sacks who provides an intuition for that idea reacts on Dennett calling the brain a machine that only executes algorithms. Gould acknowledges Sacks' instuition and provides more consice, more scientific language, to share the idea. He speaks of the 'ontogeny', which describes "the development of an individual organism or anatomical or behavioural feature from the earliest stage to maturity" and 'contingeny' which is the philosophical question whether the absence of necessity is a reality.
SACKSOf course you can, if you want, explain the word machine until it means the same as organism. But I need to be more specific. I think that by enlarge, at least in its higher functions if you want, the brain is not algorithmic and categorizes everything from the start in relation to self or rather some sort of self emerges through the categorizations. And this would be peculiar behavior for any sort of machine.
DENNETTWell most computers are non-algorithmic at some level. Your standard chess playing computer is non-algorithmic. It takes changes, it is a heuristic program. It beats me every time, but it doesn't have an algorithm for beating me. It just has an algorithm for playing what is legal chess.
GOULDWhat struck me with what you [Sacks] said is the relationship to self, it's the creation, there may be mechanical properties, but what an organism does is with respect to its personal contingency of its own ontogeny. And that's what makes it at least non-generalizable.
I was very pleased watching the conversation again. It gave me, all of a suden, in retrospect, and perhaps in an unfounded way, language and an argument to be more content with myself. But it was a difficult pill to swallow, at first, because literally (the only language Guild knew) he states a deterministic, but moral constrained, to everything a individual self does. The idea of responsibility for ones self, it was a hard pill. Previously I took the outside world as frame of reference and influence to the ontogeny of my developing self, now I was given a license by Sacks, and backed up by Gould, to take as frame of reference my own personal contingency. So who did I wanna be, that was the question! The issue of differences between that what I thought the outside world took as "the norm" and that what I thought "I was" was not a comparative norm at all, that was just my self being formed by categorizing those differences. Here where two scientists. Two out of three, the current brains in their fields, coming from different educational directions, one Neurology and one Paleontology, and, not focussing on the similarities between brain organisms or that what is generic, but they both thought the same about that what generically makes brain organisms individuals, gives them identity. And identity as something that grows, not something that is.
It must probably be me being raised in a Calvanistical environment, I have been born and raised as a Dutch egghead, a nerd before nerdom was even considered cool. But I really never thought of identity that way. We Dutch seem to have mostly evolved language for that what is not good about individualism, what is different from the frame of reference that the outside world provides, and not what makes individuals special, valuable, what makes them selves. We Dutch are brought up focussing on what is similar in people, and here I was given a reason, yes, a license, to accept what makes us different. A natural license to be different in an deterministic, hence non-conscientious way. I just never thought about selves, my self, from that perspective. It was actually pretty cool te be me.
It doesn't happen often, but I think, in retrospect, that Dennett is less articulate and actually missing the point, hopping on the "what is an algorithm" bandwagon. Sacks and Gould seem to have a better feeling for the underlying roots of organismic categorizational behavior. And please note, before this conversation occured, I never would even have thought that Dennett could lose an argument to either Sacks nor Gould.
Sacks remark about a self emerging from the categorizations that the brain, from the start of its lifespan, makes, and Goulds statement that organisms (not only brains) always act in respect to its future circumstances, from its earliest stage up to maturity [2,3], are particularly well phrased, and very concise also.
The organism, or brain in this case, doesn't need to be aware of these roots, as Dennett, in turn, and 15 years after the documentary, adds that "for an organism, in order to be competent, it is not required to be conscious about what it needs to be competent" [4]. A brain can be a competent brain in the sense that it competently creates a self, without that brain needing to be consciously aware that it is competently creating a self.
(I now even come to believe that trying to become conscious about that self creating process, trying to form it, trying to mold it, so to speak, and consciously I might add, into what it believes to be how that self, that I, should be; well, I believe that it actually works against the self that it would have become if it wouldn't have tried so hard to take ownership of the self that it already is. A sort of moral disallowance towards doing things, even towards the act of communicating, in an "my word forms reality" kind of meta-physical way. I know, totally bonkers, right, but here I am sharing, thus caring.)
More than 15 years had passed since I watched the conversation and the discussions for the first time in the 90s, and I remember my former self to be agreeing with Dennett on almost everything. (I was much younger then, but even now, I must say that I still agree with most that Dennett ever stated). I studied Dennett's books, his deterministic explanations, which contrary to his rather dry writing style where quiet nuanced and firmly grounded in deterministic compatibilism so still allowing for free will among thing. My 15 year ago self was more of a Dennett kind of guy, but not anymore.
Sacks then, was for me just a friendly old man, soft spoken, whose subtle use of the English language was way beyond my own capabilities, unnoticeable. I liked him, read his books, but didn't really hear what he said, was more interested in the way he described strange people and strange behaviors, the freaks of nature, not the normal ones. He's dead now, but he did have intuition!
And Gould back then, 15 years ago, was then just a paleontologist, and an spokesman of some theory that competed with one of Dennett's theories at that. He used, for my former self, incomprehensible words. And then he states out of the blue that 'what an organism does is with respect to its personal contingency of its own ontogeny'.
Beautiful.
- Een Schitterend Ongeluk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVrnn7QW6Jg
- Contingency a future event or circumstance which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty.
- Ontogenesis the development of an individual organism or anatomical or behavioral feature from the earliest stage to maturity.
- Don't remember and couldn't refind the presentation in which Dennett stated this, but I'm certain, it's how my brain works.