Casey Luskin Promotes a Flawed XOR Epistemic Filter. Part I

The eager faced "theist-in-the-Street", 
Casey Luskin, perpetuates the usual
muddled NAID ideas about
design detection, intelligence, 
creation and theism

The North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community have some very incoherent habits of mind which thoroughly muddy the waters of Intelligent Design theory. NAID pundit Casey Luskin is no exception and in an article on "Evolution News" he perpetuates NAID's conceptual incoherence.   

Like so many other pundits in the NAID community whom I have criticized over the years Casey assumes from the start that he can impose on the subject a natural forces vs intelligent design dichotomy.  Well, that dichotomy does work reasonably if one is trying to detect the activity of intelligent beings who are part of the created order such as human beings, aliens sending SETI signals, little gray men from Zeti Reticuli or even intelligent earth animals. But as I have said so often in this blog this dichotomy falls over badly when it is applied to Christian theism where omniscient divine intelligence not only transcends the world it has created but is so totalizing that it somehow also permeates every part of it (See Acts 17:28). Moreover, the Christian God is an omnipotent and omniscient sovereign which means that nothing happens in the cosmos without His permission; that is, everything is subject to His power of veto. In someways God's relationship with His creation has parallels with that of an author who sustains and maintains the content of his story inside his/her mind. 

Christian theism throws a huge spanner into works of the simplistic "natural forces vs Intelligent design" dichotomy taken for granted by many IDists. After criticizing NAID dualism for so many years on this blog it is amusing to see them still perpetuating their old, hackneyed thought forms. The source of much of their grief, if not all of it, traces back to their so-called "explanatory filter" (See here where I criticised this simplistic epistemic).  The result is that Casey's arguments, along with that of his colleagues are incoherent. This doesn't mean to say that standard evolutionary theory holds good, but I don't have confidence in the NAID's critique of it. 

Anyway, let's go through Casey's article....

***

CASEY: In his book The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, [Theologian Rope Kojonen, at the University of Helsinki] offers a model in which evolution succeeds because it is intelligently designed......Kojonen argues that evolutionary mechanisms produced the complexity of life. But there’s an intriguing assumption implicit in this: on its own, blind evolution is very unlikely to produce the complex features we see in living organisms. Thus, Kojonen envisions that the evolutionary process receives help from above in the form of the fine-tuning of the initial conditions and natural laws that allow evolution to get the job done.

MY COMMENT: We can see that Casey is starting to go off in the wrong direction already: Exactly what Casey means by "blind evolution on its own" is unclear: Perhaps he's thinking of a process that is unconditionally random? (which of course has no chance of generating the high organization of organic forms even in the lifetime of our immense universe) Or is he thinking of those philosophers who do not believe there is a Christian God but are able to live with the idea that the cosmos with all it's wonderful complex order can be accepted on the basis that "it just is" (See for example Galen Strawson whom I quote here). But at this juncture I am assuming the validity of a Christian theological context and therefore the question of how atheists come to terms with the enigmatic givenness of "natural" organized complexity is not part of my brief. That leaves us with the conundrum of just what Casey means by an independent blind evolution; that seems an impossible conception in a Christian theological context where God is the totalising Sovereign minder of His own creation. Given that the Christian God is the omniscient omnipotent immanent creator Casey's last statement above, which seems to demote God to the level of an assistant, in fact almost a helpful side kick of evolution, would be better written without the phrase "the evolutionary process receives help from above". For example:

Thus, Kojonen envisions that the evolutionary process has been created with sufficient fine-tuning of the initial conditions and natural law to ensure that evolution would get the job done.

In the context of Christian theism it is difficult to coherently imagine a created process working by itself with the occasional nudge from God who is otherwise an absentee landlord; that kind of thinking is the road to deism..... and ultimately even atheism. 

Casey goes onto quote just what Kojonen is trying to tell us (I've retained Casey's emphases):

***

KOJONEN: According to this view, then, the possibility of evolution depends on the features of the space of possible forms, where all the forms must be arranged in a way that makes an evolutionary search through it possible. This argument shows how the preconditions for the working of the “blind watchmaker” of natural selection can indeed be satisfied by nature in the case of protein evolution, despite an extreme rarity of functional forms. According to this view, then, the possibility of evolution depends on the features of the space of possible forms, where all the forms must be arranged in a way that makes an evolutionary search through it possible. This argument shows how the preconditions for the working of the “blind watchmaker” of natural selection can indeed be satisfied by nature in the case of protein evolution, despite an extreme rarity of functional forms. Behe (2019, 112) argues that Wagner does not yet solve the puzzle of evolving irreducible complexity, arguing that “it doesn’t even try to account for the cellular machinery that is catalysing the chemical reactions to make the needed components. ” However, suppose that, in the case of the bacterial flagellum, though the vast majority of possible arrangements of biological proteins are non-functional, there nevertheless exists a series of possible functional forms, little “machines” that happen to contain increasing numbers of the flagellum’s vital parts while still serving some other function. This then would allow for the seamless transition from no flagellum to a flagellum over time, through small successive steps. In this manner, by moving through such a suitable library of forms, the blind process of evolution would have the ability to produce even the most complex structures without the intervention of a designer. This is the kind of fine-tuning of the landscape of forms that seems to be required to evolve the kind of biological order described by Behe.

 It seems, then, that defending the power of the evolutionary mechanism requires assuming that the landscape of possible biological forms has some fairly serendipitous properties.

MY COMMENT: Now, unlike Casey what Kojonen is trying to say here is at least intelligible and makes sense.  He is simply telling us that a condition of a working evolutionary system is what I referred to several years ago as the "spongeam". That is, that functional forms (i.e. self-maintaining, self-perpetuating organic structures) must constitute a connected-set in configuration space to allow the evolutionary diffusion process to diffuse throughout that space. The post below contains links to other posts where I introduced this idea mathematically:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Evolution by (Naked) Chance? (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Kojonen, whether right or wrong, is at least making coherent sense here; so much so that even Casey has understood what Kojonen is trying to say. However, Kojonen does make one bad move in my opinion: He talks about configuration space requiring serendipitous properties; that's a rather inappropriate way of putting it in a Christian theistic context: If the spongeam is a mathematical property and an implication of the initial conditions and laws of physics of our cosmos then given God's relationship with that cosmos it would not be serendipitous, but deliberately chosen and created. But in noting this point does not mean I'm accepting that the spongeam even has a mathematical existence let alone asserting its reification in our cosmos. 

***

CASEY: There’s a great irony here in the structure of Kojonen’s argument: He implicitly concedes that evolution is very unlikely to work in your average universe that isn’t finely tuned. He says if evolution is going to work, that’s only because natural laws and initial conditions are specially “fine-tuned.”

MY COMMENT: That's right Casey I think I can agree. It seems fairly intuitively compelling that any old randomly chosen physical regime is unlikely to set up the right conditions (i.e. the spongeam) facilitating the kind of evolution as currently understood; it looks as though a physical regime capable of generating lifeforms in a paltry few billion years has to be carefully chosen!  

***

CASEY: Thus, the universe has some pretty lucky properties.  The question then becomes: Are we in Kojonen’s universe? His argument for the feasibility of evolution requires a great degree of “fine-tuning” of nature where functional forms are “arranged in a way” such that it is easy to move from one functional state to another functional state via blind evolutionary mechanisms. Are we in a “universe designed to allow for evolution” in this manner? Or are we in a universe where evolutionary mechanisms don’t seem capable of producing the complexity of life — meaning that they didn’t?

MY COMMENT: Yes, I largely agree Casey, but I would have thought that "a great deal of fine tuning" is exactly the job description of the Great Omniscient, Omnipotent Creator and therefore I wouldn't talk of "pretty lucky properties"! If we are in a universe designed for evolution then in the context of Christian theism it wouldn't be a lucky property, would it? I didn't think that Christians believed in luck when it comes to the creation. Nevertheless, good question Casey:  Are we in a “universe designed to allow for evolution” in this manner? Or are we in a universe where evolutionary mechanisms don’t seem capable of producing the complexity of life?

All we can be sure of is that over millions, if not billions of years, life forms have emerged, changed and adapted. In that trivial sense of mere natural history, evolution has occurred whatever the precise nature of the engine/mechanism driving it that the Good Lord has provisioned it with.  

***

CASEY: As my colleagues and I have shown both in a review of Kojonen’s book and in an occasional series of posts here, from protein evolution to the origin of irreducibly complex molecular machines like the flagellum (here and here), the universe we live in does not seem to allow evolutionary mechanisms to produce the complexity of life. We live in the wrong universe for Kojonen’s proposal. But there’s a problem with the structure of Kojonen’s argument that goes even deeper.

MY COMMENT: The NAIDs' believe that functional forms don't constitute a connected-set in configuration space; that is, they believe that most functional forms are irreducibly complex. They may be right on this count. I personally feel that this claim is at least plausible but proving it is notoriously difficult and sometimes ingenious evolutionists will fill in the gaps between the "islands" of functionality with proposed functional "missing links" that start to give a possible gradualist path through configuration space. Really, the NAID case should stop here and focus on assembling the necessary logic and evidence for the case that organic forms are truly irreducibly complex structures. Irreducible complexity, if it can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, would certainly falsify bog-standard evolution. But no! sensing they're on a very debatable wicket here Casey and colleagues, in their search for a clincher, stick their necks out too far into that "deeper problem" Casey mentions, the land of NAID smoke and mirrors.

For more on the question of irreducible complexity see here:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Evolution and Islands of functionality (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

(*See also my footnote below on computational irreducibility)

***

CASEY: Kojonen differs with me. He seeks to preserve and defend the theist on the street’s intuition that life was designed. But in his mind this is not because natural processes are incapable of producing life. In fact, he thinks they are capable of that. That is, while evolutionary processes are inadequate on their own, natural processes in general are capable of producing life. Kojonen thinks this reflects the fact that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe themselves are fine-tuned and designed to make the origin and evolution of life possible — by natural processes.

MY COMMENT: How paradoxical and confusing: On the one hand Casey talks of evolutionary processes [which are presumably viewed as "natural"] that are inadequate on their own and then juxtaposes that with Kojonen's view that "natural processes in general are capable of producing life." 

But for Christians there really is no such thing as fundamentally natural processes, unless we trivially define them as simply the workings of the physical regime; but fundamentally all such processes are highly unnatural in the sense that they have no necessary existence that we can comprehend (i.e they have no Aseity. See here for more). But thinking in terms of fundamentals rather than superficial definitions we find that: 

a) The cosmic physical regime is highly contingent and unless we have the kind of mentality which allows us to be intellectually satiated with Bertrand Russell's "it just is", the organized complexity of the cosmos remains profoundly puzzling and prompts curiosity to push for deeper meanings. Moreover, as I've said here science, being ultimately a descriptive discipline can never attain to explanatory completeness in sense of Asiety. Hence there will always remain a deeply intuitive unnaturalness about the cosmos. 

b) But even on its own terms our current physics is clearly descriptively incomplete: We still don't have a complete descriptive understanding of our physical regime in terms of succinct laws. So, who knows just how The Good Lord has provisioned this regime to work. Perhaps it has inherited its creator's ability to work miracles? And above all who knows if it has a subtle declarative teleology that's difficult to detect?

In the context of Christian theism Casey's statement that evolutionary processes are inadequate on their own, is unintelligible: If the spongeam has a mathematical existence and has been reified by the Good Lord (and I'm not claiming it has) then evolution, by definition, would be adequate to produce life, and depending on one's definitions it would have done it "naturally". 

And who is this so-called "theist on the street" that we are hearing about? Well, as it turns out it's Casey's alter ego.....

***

CASEY: But if natural processes are capable of producing the complexity of life, then isn’t the “theist on the street” wrong to conclude that life was designed in the first place? On what basis can this theist know that the natural laws are “fine-tuned” to allow life to evolve? The theist must have some background knowledge that natural laws can’t produce living systems. But if Kojonen’s thesis is correct, then in our universe the theist ought not to have such background knowledge. After all, natural laws are capable of producing such complex systems!

MY COMMENT: If so-called "natural processes" via the contrivance of the spongeam are capable of producing complex life, then such a contrivance would clearly have to be built into the physical regime. Given the huge space of random possibilities such a specific arrangement is astonishing, perhaps even more so than the existence of life itself.  Therefore, any adequately educated Christian theist would be able to conclude that, assuming standard evolution, divine providence has worked yet another miracle of organization and the intelligent Christian would have no trouble understanding that a process can be both "natural" and designed......this is the basis on which an educated theist can know that the physical regime is fine tuned for life....but I can't speak for Casey's "theist on the street".

The so-called "theist on the street" (which I conclude can only be Casey's alter ego) is portrayed as only being able to view the situation through a pair of polarizing glasses which present a "natural processes vs intelligent agency" choice.  Given this epistemic straight-jacket Casey's street theist is only allowed to jump one way or the other; that is to choose either natural process or intelligent agency; you can't have both! This is a legacy of the simplistic explanatory filter which imposes on the evolutionary question an exclusive OR between "blind natural processes" and intelligent agency.  Casey insists that we all follow him and be channeled into choosing one or the other! NAID culture just seems to be unable to transcend this entrenched habit of mind.  

Casey asks: 

 

On what basis can this theist know that the natural laws are “fine-tuned” to allow life to evolve?  

...... as I've said above: "It seems fairly intuitively compelling that any old randomly chosen laws of physics and initial conditions are unlikely to set up the right conditions (i.e. the spongeam) facilitating evolution as currently understood; it looks as though a physical regime capable of generating life forms in a paltry few billion years has to be carefully chosen!". Therefore, if our educated theist accepts evolution, he therefore knows that this entails that the "natural" physical regime is fined tuned with a vengeance! It is not going to be lost on the average theist as to the deeper explanation as to why this fine tuning might be, although I can't speak for Casey's "theist on the street" whoever that is!

Casey and his ID friends really go off the rails in the next paragraph....

***

CASEY & Co: This analogy invites us to consider the epistemological effects of living in a universe described by Kojonen’s model (in which evolution is true, design is confined to the advent of the laws of nature, and biological data are in view). In this universe, it is not clear that humans (including theists on the street) would have the basic epistemological dispositions or beliefs that Kojonen believes undergird our ability to detect design in biology. For example, people who grew up in this universe would not likely believe that nature (i.e., non-agent processes) have only limited ability to build biological complexity. After all, in this universe, the continuity of non-agent processes across the advent of everything from bacteria to blue whales seems to suggest that non-agent causes are quite creative. Similarly, people who grew up in this universe would not likely believe that our own experience of creating complex things is at all relevant to the claim that ‘minds have greater creative power than nature does’. Instead, they would likely believe that our minds are simply a manifestation of nature’s creativity (or the creativity of non-agent causes). 

MY COMMENT: What Casey&Co are trying to get past us here is that in a universe with a spongeam sufficient to support evolution humans would not have the epistemological instincts to detect design because they would grow up to assume that evolution (i.e. a "natural process") shows that intelligent agency isn't needed to create those organic marvels. That view, as a generalisation, is clearly false, although it looks to be true for those like Casey&Co whose culture has imposed a strict "natural processes XOR intelligent design" epistemic filter on the debate. Using this filter means that once it's decided that a structure is a product of "natural forces" the possibility of intelligent activity is thrown out of the window! Casey&co are then stuck.... although I suspect they know in their hearts that such wonderfully creative natural forces must trace back to some kind of Intelligent Aseity.

I propose that the NAID XOR epistemic filter is a cultural construction that depends on the community one is in. The NAID XOR is not as Casey is trying to imply a deeply held instinct somehow bound up with the particulars of the created physical regime. In fact, Romans 1:19-20 tells us that regardless of the details of the creation the general form of that creation alerts an instinct which prompts us that we should at least give some attention to the possibility that a great mind of totalising power and presence may be behind it all; OK, many reject the idea, but at least they can't help such an idea popping up in their heads. So, with regard to a universe where evolution actually works, I would invert one of Casey's statements above thus: 

In an evolutionary universe, it is not clear that humans would not have the basic epistemological dispositions or beliefs giving them the ability to detect design in standard evolutionary biology. 

Now consider this statement by Casey&Co...

After all, in this [evolutionary] universe, the continuity of non-agent processes across the advent of everything from bacteria to blue whales seems to suggest that non-agent causes are quite creative.

...yes, in an evolutionary universe so-called "natural processes" would be very creative. But notice that Casey&Co have slipped in the phrase "non-agent processes"! This is where the NAID's simplistic and non-recursive epistemic explanatory filter lets them down; it prevents them from submitting those very creative natural processes to the explanatory filter itself: Therefore, in NAID culture "natural processes" stay as "non-agent processes" and they are unable to move on from that. 

Evolution, (if it indeed evolution as commonly understood has actually occurred) necessarily entails a highly contrived and contingent process at work. But evolution presents no necessary problem to the educated Christian theist who isn't influenced by the epistemic straight jacket of NAID culture. Beyond that culture and in a Christian theistic context which posits a transcendent creator of omnipotent intelligence and power, the highly sophisticated contingency demanded by a working standard evolutionary model wouldn't be a problem. But for those who like Casey have been affected by a particular branch of secularism which grew out of the enlightenment, the discovery of the mechanical universe at best entailed deistic notions and at worst atheism. Ergo, Casey&Co have imbibed crypto-atheist categories shared by the likes of Richard Dawkins, a man who really does believe that evolution allows him to be an intellectually satisfied atheist; that is, if one deems "it just is" to be intellectually satisfying! As IDist William Dembski has pointed out, in the final analysis evolution is just a way to push the origins question back a stage to just another seemingly improbable and very surprising (= high information) state of affairs; that is, another astonishing status quo where one is still left wondering why "it just is"!

***

CASEY & Co: A similar line of thinking applies to the other elements of design detection discussed above. The bottom line is that human cognition would likely be significantly different in Kojonen’s universe than we actually experience it to be. Conversely, the fact that we have the particular cognitive dispositions and beliefs that we currently possess — instead of the ones we’d have in Kojonen’s universe — suggests that we live in a world notably different than captured in Kojonen’s model. Thus, in a particular sense, Kojonen’s model is inconsistent with the lived experience of some humans, including some theists on the street. This seriously harms the plausibility of his proposal, including its defense of everyday theists.

MY COMMENT: Human cognition would likely be significantly different in Kojonen’s universe? Speak for yourself Casey because I don't know what you are talking about! Romans 1:19-20 makes no mention of your natural forces vs intelligent design XOR; it just tells us we can't escape the wonder of the creation regardless of its specifics. Evolution or no evolution the instinct of wonder is there whether one is an atheist or not. See for example atheist Galen Strawson in this post; he is clearly as confounded as anyone else by the astonishingly rich organized contingency of what he believes to be the evolutionary universe. But in spite of his amazement in the end Strawson plumps for a "it just is" philosophy (a very unsatisfactory response for the Christian believer of course). So, I conclude that the instincts which inform Casey&Co that evolution entails the absence of intelligent agency is purely a construction to be found only in the cultural universe of NAID's and Dawkinites. 

***

CASEY: Thus, even if Kojonen’s argument were correct and the laws of nature were capable of producing living systems, then his “theist on the street” should not be able to detect design in living systems in the manner he suggests. If the laws of our universe are rigged to produce life, then such an event would be fully natural and should not trigger a design inference. We would see no reason to invoke anything other than normal natural processes to explain life’s complexity. The very fact that life does trigger a design inference for Kojonen’s theist suggests that our experience teaches us such events don’t happen due to natural laws. That means Kojonen’s thesis is self-defeating and cannot be true.

MY COMMENT: Once gain we can see that Casey is projecting his dichotomized XOR thinking onto the abstract so-called theist-on-the-street, a character who assumes this XOR to be valid and is therefore unable to detect design in living things if evolution, as conventionally understood, has taken place.

Notice in particular that Casey uses that emotive term "rigged" as if contriving a physical regime capable of manufacturing life is somehow an underhand and dishonest activity like election rigging or rigging the machines in a casino; it betrays the cultural value system embedded NAID's naive non-recursive explanatory filter.  It's a bit like saying that a robotic automotive factory is "rigged" to manufacture cars and concluding that these cars are a product of "natural forces" and therefore have nothing to do with intelligent design.  

The logic of the NAID explanatory filter is such that if one is a cultural NAID then it follows that if the physical regime of our universe is "rigged" (gasp!) to produce life, then such an event would be fully natural and should not trigger a design inference. As we have seen, on this question the NAIDs are really only speaking for themselves (and some atheists). The culture of which Casey is representative is blind to the fact that in the evolutionary scenario those so-called "natural processes" evoke enough wonder to trigger the need for a deeper explanation than "it just is", at least among those willing to accept Christian theism. But because NAID culture is so enamored with a non-recursive XOR epistemic filter then they are impelled by their logic to conclude that...

The very fact that life does trigger a design inference for Kojonen’s theist suggests that our experience teaches us such events don’t happen due to natural laws.

That is, imposing the logic of the NAID XOR epistemic filter on evolution one is forced to conclude that evolution did it XOR God did it. NAID Nonsense! But it's right up the street of the Dawkinites who believe that creation and evolution are necessarily at odds. 

***

None of the foregoing is to say that I am necessarily committed to believing that the spongeam is even a mathematical reality let alone a cosmically reified reality. All I'm saying is that Casey&Co's concepts are deeply flawed and don't work as the basis for competent arguments against evolution.  NAID culture has dug itself into an a priori anti-evilution position and is committed to disproving evilution at all costs. Part of the cost of this is a bias toward unwoke politics; probably an effect of their off-hand rejection by the academic establishment. 

Quantum Non-Linearity: Anti-Science or Anti Academic Establishment? (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Quantum Non-Linearity: Christian World Views. Part 2: The Christian Academic Establishment (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Footnote:

* Computational irreducibility is a concept introduced by Wolfram. A computationally irreducible task is one where it is not possible to find a faster analytical solution to a problem than that of actually carrying out a computational simulation, a computation which could potentially be very long winded. It may well be that the evolutionary question is a computationally irreducible problem and therefore it is not possible to analytically determine whether a given physical regime is capable of generating living structures unless one sets up the regime in a very literal sense and performs the simulation in real time.  Thus, the NAID desire to disprove the possibility of evolution via some shortcut analytical method may be a vain quest. If so, then the only way to verify or falsify whether or not organic forms are irreducibly complex isn't to be found through some shortcut analytical calculation but via sufficient observation on what has actually happened or not happened; that is, on natural history istelf. Natural history acts as the computationally irreducible "simulation" which reveals the answer to the question of whether organic forms are irreducibly complex or not.

***

I'll be commenting on this in my next post: 

Can Evolution and Design Work in Harmony? | Evolution News

In my next post on "Matters Arising" I will also be commenting on the ability of "natural processes" to create information and the relation of the spongeam to the second law of thermodynamics. 

Does this Interview Solve the Human Predicament? Part IV

 Spoiler Alert: Probably not, very probably not!

This boasting far exceeds even Donald Trump's bragging! 

The World Transformation Movement (WTM) is far too full of 

loud-mouthed hype to classify as a scientific movement. 

Self-praise is no recommendation. 

.

The previous parts of this series can be found here:

Part I

Part II

Part III,

The thesis proposed by WTM guru Jeremy Griffith, a thesis I have begun to criticize in the previous parts of this series, is this: That the human predicament with all its personal and social aggravations is down to a clash between inherited instincts and the conscious mind. 

I very much beg to differ with this analysis: As I've proposed in the previous parts of this series I find that the human predicament is grounded in the very physics of conscious cognition: Viz: That the private first-person perspective of the conscious mind means that it is not party to the experience of the second or third persons and therefore can only to infer, but not feel, the experiences of other minds. Consequently, reacting acceptably to other centers of conscious cognition presents both an epistemic and a moral challenge to the conscious individual ....Viz: The epistemic challenge of correctly inferring the experience of other minds and the moral challenge of rightly reacting to those inferences. 

Human instincts and motives are then layered on top of the basic physical fault line between individual minds, but I see no necessary clash between human instincts and the conscious mind. The repertoire of human instincts such as seeking social recognition and status, sexual motives, fear, joy, anger, aggression, hunger, love, the search for meaning, the search for coherence etc. etc. are all part of the human survival suite of goals, a suite which doesn't necessarily clash with the conscious mind, but rather works in partnership with it; Viz: it is these motives which constitute the interest suite of human life, a suite which motivates the intellect to work out the means and methods of achieving the goals of the whole person. Without the goal-seeking motivations provided by this suite conscious cognition would lose the spark, energy and purpose which drives it. Instincts, then, are a very necessary aspect of the conscious mind. The problems of the human predicament come about when there is a conflict of interest between individual centers of human cognition. But the fact is the relative isolation of those centers is built into the very physics and biology of life. 

In the following interview with Craig Conway, Jeremy Griffith fleshes out his thesis in more detail whereupon I will correspondingly criticize his thesis in more detail. Craig clearly thinks Jeremy's thesis makes sense; he then asks a question......

CRAIG CONWAY: Yes, that makes sense Jeremy, so what happened though when this animal became conscious and its whole life turned into a psychologically distressed mess?

JEREMY GRIFFITH: Well, the easiest way to see what happened is to imagine the predicament faced by an animal whose life had always been controlled by its instincts suddenly developing a conscious mind, because if we do that we will very quickly see how that animal would develop a psychologically troubled competitive and aggressive condition like we suffer from. So let’s imagine a stork: we’ll call him Adam. Each Summer, Adam instinctually migrates North with the other storks around the coast of Africa to Europe to breed, as some varieties of storks do. Since he has no conscious mind Adam Stork doesn’t think about or question his behaviour, he just follows what his instincts tell him to do. But what if we give Adam a large brain capable of conscious thought? He will start to think for himself, but many of his new ideas will not be consistent with his instincts. For instance, while migrating North with the other storks Adam notices an island full of apple trees. He then makes a conscious decision to divert from his migratory path and explore the island. It’s his first grand experiment in self-management.

MY COMMENT: Firstly, it seems likely to me that those animals who share with us a very similar neural basis for their minds also have consciousness, although what they are conscious about will likely considerably differ both in quality and quantity to ourselves: In fact, it is likely that the consciousness of human beings, with their relatively large brains, will qualitatively and quantitatively far exceed that of many animals. From this it follows that consciousness isn't an all or nothing affair but comes in degrees and in different qualities; it doesn't suddenly switch on when a cognitive threshold is reached.  

In the above scenario Jeremy is asking us to imagine a case where a migration journey is neurally hardwired into the mind of a stork. Presumably at one time this journey was a vital part of its survival strategy and was a solution to both breeding and feeding. But it seems that changing environmental conditions have brought about better potential solutions that the stork, if the stork had sufficient intelligence to work out those solutions, could have employed. In the above scenario Jeremy imagines that the intelligence of the stork has developed to the level where it is able grasp a more efficient survival solution.  What Jeremy has not told us is that the overriding urges servicing the need to survive such as an urge to feed, breed and conserve energy are instincts which are still very much in place. Therefore, in my view to characterize the human predicament as a conflict between instinct and intelligence is a misrepresentation. 

JEREMY GRIFFITH: But when Adam’s instincts realise he has strayed off course they are going to criticise his deprogrammed behaviour and dogmatically try to pull him back on his instinctive flight path, aren’t they! In effect, they are going to condemn him as being bad. Imagine the turmoil Adam will experience; he can’t go back to simply following his instincts. His instinctive orientations to the migratory flight path were acquired over thousands of generations of natural selection but those orientations are not understandings, and since his conscious mind requires understanding, which it can only get through experimentation, inevitably a war will break out with his instincts.

Ideally at this point Adam’s conscious mind would sit down and explain to his instincts why he’s defying them. He would explain that the gene-based, natural selection process only gives species instinctive orientations to the world, whereas his nerve-based, conscious mind, which is able to make sense of cause and effect, needs understanding of the world to operate. But Adam doesn’t have this self-understanding. He’s only just begun his search for knowledge. In fact, he’s not even aware of what the problem actually is. He’s simply started to feel that he’s bad, even evil.

MY COMMENT: As I have already suggested humans have a large suite of instincts motivating them: Let me list them more fully:

 e.g. feeding, breeding, sexual interest, seeking social status and recognition, seeking community, anger, seeking safety and security, seeking comfort and warmth, seeking meaning and purpose, curiosity, seeking understanding, artistic endeavor and above all an instinctual sense of what is and what is not just and moral. 

 None of these motivations can be labeled as bad or evil per se and as far as I'm aware none has a necessary conflict with the conscious mind: The conscious mind has a valuable partnership with these instincts in as far as the intelligence of that mind is able to find ways in which the goals behind these potentially life enhancing drives might efficiently be achieved. So, Jeremy's picture of a war between mind and instincts does not come over as true to life. Even anger, which we might see as potentially troublesome has its upsides:  For example, many people who face the tragic consequence of social injustices do not have to explode with an incoherent burst of anger but instead we often see them channeling their emotion of anger by dissipating it into constructive channels of endeavor as they seek to right the injustices in society and thus better society thereby. But what about egocentricity? Well, we will come to that next..... 

Where the angst and predicaments arise is when human beings are unable to fulfill these primary instinctual motivations, especially so because life is full of zero-sum games and therefore inter human-interests conflict and egos clash. But again, like other instincts ego is not a bad motivator per se: We all have a sense of dignity and worth and have a right to protect that sense of self-worth when it is challenged with a threat of belittlement or even extinction. Naturally enough each centre of conscious cognition seeks to enhance itself and its experience of life - nothing wrong with that in itself. But the zero-sum games of life mean that the interests of individual centres of conscious cognition have the potential to collide and conflict. So, the primary potential source of conflict isn't between one's instincts and one's mind but between individual centres of conscious cognition. Ego isn't the problem; the problem is egocentricity: that is when a particular human ego seeks solutions to his life experience by enhancing his experience regardless of and at the expense of the egos of other human beings; in short, egocentrics are people who ignore their super-ego. 

CRAIG: Okay, so what you’re saying is a war has broken out between his conscious mind and his instincts, which he can’t explain, and it’s left him feeling bad or that he is bad in some way, or even evil. So what happened then?

MY COMMENT: Well, Craig if you had the nous, you'd understand that there is no necessary clash between instinct and the conscious mind but there is a potentiality for a clash between the interests of individual conscious minds, a potentiality that results of the experiential isolation of the first-person perspective. This isolation is imprinted on the very substance of which we are composed.  I refer to it as a potential clash of interests because self-denial in favour of others (which is what morality is all about) should in theory kick in at this point. Human beings have a choice on this score; they can either give deference to the inferred feelings and experiences of their fellows or put the priority entirely on the self, the ego and become egocentric. Which is it to be? I must also point out that compounding the challenge of self-denial are the epistemic difficulties of being able to correctly extrapolate into other minds. 

JEREMY: Well, tragically, while searching for understanding, we can see that three things are unavoidably going to happen. Adam is going to defensively retaliate against the implied criticism from his instincts; he is going to desperately seek out any reinforcement he can find to relieve himself of the negative feelings; and he is going to try to deny the criticism and block it out of his mind. He has become angry, egocentric and alienated— which is the psychologically upset state we call the human condition, because it was us humans who developed a conscious mind and became psychologically upset. (And ‘upset’ is the right word for our condition because while we are not ‘evil’ or ‘bad’, we are definitely psychologically upset from having to participate in humanity’s heroic search for knowledge. ‘Corrupted’ and ‘fallen’ have been used to describe our condition, but they have negative connotations that we can now appreciate are undeserved, so ‘upset’ is a better word.) So Adam’s intellect or ‘ego’ (ego being just another word for the intellect since the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘ego’ as ‘the conscious thinking self’ (5th edn, 1964)) became ‘centred’ or focused on the need to justify itself—Adam became ego-centric, selfishly preoccupied aggressively competing for opportunities to prove he is good and not bad, to validate his worth, to get a ‘win’; to essentially eke out any positive reinforcement that would bring him some relief from his criticising instincts. He unavoidably became self-preoccupied or selfish, and aggressive and competitive.

So our selfish, competitive and aggressive behaviour is not due to savage instincts but to a psychologically upset state or condition. Basically suffering psychological upset was the price we conscious humans had to pay for our heroic search for understanding. In the words from the song The Impossible Dream from the musical the Man of La Mancha, we had to be prepared to ‘march into hell for a heavenly cause’ (lyrics by Joe Darion, 1965). We had to lose ourselves to find ourselves; we had to suffer becoming angry, egocentric and alienated until we found sufficient knowledge to explain ourselves.

MY COMMENT: That diagnosis of the human predicament is far from the truth. As I keep saying the existential angst of the human condition comes not from a clash between instinct and the conscious mind; after all, as we have seen our instinctual motivations, if properly served, are life enhancing and the conscious mind has an important role in finding ways of fulfilling those profound instinctual goals.

Summing up: The real clash at the root of the angst in the human condition has its origins in....

1. Conservation laws which mean that life is full of zero-sum games.

2. The physics of human conscious cognition which entails private first-person perspectives isolated from the first-person perspectives of other sentient beings. This privacy entails a potential clash of interest between humans who do not directly share one another's consciousness. I stress potential clash because cooperation, self-denial, compromise and the urges of moral instincts present to us choices which have the opposite potential of heading off clashes of interest between egos.

3. The epistemic problems of putting oneself into the experiential shoes of others. 

Given this context our life enhancing instincts are not to be shunned or blamed for our existential angst; our conscious cognition has no necessary argument with those instincts; they are important motivating and goal seeking urges. As we have seen even anger has an upside as a justice seeking motive. 

The tendency toward egocentricity is a potential outcome of the separation of conscious cognition into quasi-isolated first-person units each of which is tempted is to serve self above all: This situation has a far deeper grounding in the hardware of our cosmos than mere instinct: it is built into the very physics of living things. 

I simply can't identify with the thought that any existential angst I have has its origins in a clash of instinct and intellect: Which of my instincts gives me aggravation? None that I'm aware of!  Where the clash comes is when the implementation of my drives is likely to badly impact the experience and feelings of other human beings; it is then that the following language used by Jeremy (taken from the above quote) actually applies: Viz:  

Adam (that is myself)  is going to defensively retaliate against the implied criticism from his (moral) instincts; he is going to desperately seek out any reinforcement he can find to relieve himself of the negative feelings; and he is going to try to deny the criticism and block it out of his mind. He has become angry, egocentric and alienated— which is the psychologically upset state we call the human condition,

That correctly describes a human, like myself, a sinner sold under sin, when I know I've done a disservice to the goals of a fellow human; I am then tempted to engage in the deceptions of self-justification that Jeremy talks of. So Jeremy's description of the human condition is in some ways correct but his identification of the deep causes are wrong. Moreover, to call it an "upset state" is an understatement that makes light of a fundamental human fault line built into the very fabric of reality.

Jeremy goes on to continue to construct this straw man that our existential angst is because our instincts are rebelling against the search for knowledge. No way!... it is the very search for knowledge that is driven by our deepest instincts such as curiosity and the search for meaning and purpose. There is no way in which my heroic search and thirst for knowledge is being labeled by my instincts as bad or evil: That is simply not true. What does trouble my conscience and is liable to be labeled as bad or evil is if in life's zero-sum games, I short-change my fellow humans in favour of self. In spite of Jeremy's straw man depiction, just who is labelling the heroic search for knowledge as bad and evil? No one I know. But the label "corrupted and fallen" is appropriate to my frequent failure to give the first-person experience of fellow humans a rightful place in my life. 

CRAIG: Wow Jeremy, I mean this is just fascinating. So Adam Stork—we humans—developed a conscious mind and unavoidably started warring with our instincts, an upsetting war which could only end when we could explain and understand why we had to defy our instincts, which is the understanding that you have just supplied, yes?

MY COMMENT:  *shakes head*

JEREMY: Exactly, remember Adam Stork became defensively angry, egocentric and alienated because he couldn’t explain why he was defying his instincts, so now that we can explain why, those defensive behaviours are no longer needed and can end! That’s basically all there is to explain, that is the biological explanation of the human condition that so explains us that, as Professor Prosen said, it brings about ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’!

CRAIG: This is such a simple story but so far-reaching in its ramifications—I mean it is world-changing is what it is, because it truly enables ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’! I mean that is just wonderful.

MY COMMENT:  Simple story? Rather, it is simply false!  Once again: I'm personally unaware of my intellect being at odds with any of my instincts, least of all the heroic search for knowledge, meaning and purpose: Both intellect and instinct are life enhancing and especially so if they work cooperatively in tandem. But the temptation to serve exclusively within the purview of my first-person perspective is the only "instinct", if "instinct" it can called, that has the potential to open a door to a troubled world of angst, ambivalence and denial. Yes, I'd agree that the explanation of the human condition is biological, but Jeremy has nailed the wrong biological explanation. Moreover, because the perceptive fault-line between those centers of biological sentience is so fundamental to the fabric of reality the WTM's superficial analysis that the solution to the human predicament lies in the psychological rehabilitation of the human race falls woefully short of the mark.

Well, I don't suppose I can expect too much insight and critical analysis from Craig who seems to be utterly blown away by the presence and guru status of Jeremy Griffith and Harry Prosen both of whom clearly fail to see where the real challenge of the human predicament lies; namely, in good old fashioned "sin", the word with the "I" in the middle.

***

There is also one another source of human vexation which I really need to mention: That is the unfilled targets of our instinctive ambitions.  If we are thwarted in our aims, this can be a great source of frustration and unhappiness.  However, this is often related to the clash of human interests; viz: Selfishness, when it proceeds against a background of zero-sum games, leads to the goals and aspirations of many being at odds with one another and consequently in the subsequent scramble many dreams remain unfulfilled. 

ADDENDUM 13/02

I've been trying think of cases where there is a clash between instinct and intellect.  Possible cases: 

1. Eating habits: When there is a surfeit of food such as we find in rich industrial societies the instinct to eat as much as possible while the going is good  - which is appropriate when food is much scarcer - can impact health badly; that's even though our intellects understand this health impact.

2. Large anonymous industrial societies which are very much a product of human intellectual work may cut across human instincts which prefer smaller intimate tribes and communities close to the natural order of things. cf The Romantics. This instinct, if instinct it is, of tribal/group/class/community identification and its potential for inter-community competitiveness may be bound up with the factional human violence which we see so much of. 

***

....to be continued. 

'Hostilities began in an extremely violent way': How chimp wars taught us murder and cruelty aren't just human traits (msn.com)