The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin

by Keith E. Stanovich

Overview

The idea that we might be robots is no longer the stuff of science fiction; decades of research in evolutionary biology and cognitive science have led many esteemed scientists to the conclusion that, according to the precepts of universal Darwinism, humans are merely the hosts for two replicators (genes and memes) that have no interest in us except as conduits for replication. Richard Dawkins, for example, jolted us into realizing that we are just survival mechanisms for our own genes, sophisticated robots in service of huge colonies of replicators to whom concepts of rationality, intelligence, agency, and even the human soul are irrelevant.

Accepting and now forcefully responding to this decentering and disturbing idea, Keith Stanovich here provides the tools for the "robot's rebellion," a program of cognitive reform necessary to advance human interests over the limited interest of the replicators and define our own autonomous goals as individual human beings. He shows how concepts of rational thinking from cognitive science interact with the logic of evolution to create opportunities for humans to structure their behavior to serve their own ends. These evaluative activities of the brain, he argues, fulfill the need that we have to ascribe significance to human life.

We may well be robots, but we are the only robots who have discovered that fact. Only by recognizing ourselves as such, argues Stanovich, can we begin to construct a concept of self based on what is truly singular about humans: that they gain control of their lives in a way unique among life forms on Earth—through rational self-determination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226770895
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/15/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Keith E. Stanovich holds the Canada Research Chair in Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Toronto. A fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, he is the author of Who Is Rational? Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning and How to Think Straight About Psychology, now in its seventh edition.

Read an Excerpt

The Robot's Rebellion

Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin

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By Keith E. Stanovich

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2004 University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-226-77089-3

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Chapter One

We are in a period of history in which the assimilation of the insights of universal Darwinism will have many destabilizing effects on cultural life. Over the centuries, we have constructed many myths about human origins and the nature of the human mind. We have been making up stories about who we are and why we exist. Now, in a break with this historical trend, we may at last be on the threshold of a factual understanding of humankind's place within nature. However, attaining such an understanding requires first the explosion of the myths we have created, an explosion that will surely cause us some cognitive distress. This is because the only escape route from the untoward implications of Darwinism is through science itself-by adopting an unflinching view about what the theory of natural selection means. Once we adopt such an unflinching attitude, however, the major thesis of this book is heartening. It is that certain underdeveloped implications of findings in the human sciences of cognitive psychology, decision theory, and neuroscience can reveal coherent ways to reconcile the human need for meaning with the Darwinian view of life.

Why Jerry Falwell Is Right

In his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett (1995) argued that Darwin's idea of evolution by natural selection was the intellectual equivalent of a universal acid: "it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landscape still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways" (63). In short, the shock waves from Darwinism have only begun to be felt, and we have yet to fully absorb the destabilizing insights that evolutionary science contains.

One way to appreciate that we have insufficiently processed the implications of Darwinism is to note that people who oppose the Darwinian view most vociferously are those who most clearly recognize its status as the intellectual equivalent of universal acid. For example, the adherents of fundamentalist religions are actually correct in thinking that the idea of evolution by natural selection will destroy much that they view as sacred-that, for instance, a fully comprehended evolutionary theory will threaten the very concept of soul.

In short, it is the middle-of-the-road believers-the adherents of so-called liberal religions-who have it wrong. Those who think they know what natural selection entails but have failed to perceive its darker implications make several common misinterpretations of Darwinism. Tellingly, each of the errors has the effect of making Darwinism a more palatable doctrine by obscuring (or in some cases even reversing) its more alarming implications. For example, the general public continues to believe in the discredited notion of evolutionary progress, this despite the fact that Stephen Jay Gould (1989, 1996, 2002) has persistently tried to combat this error in his numerous and best-selling books. An important, but misguided, component of this view is the belief that humans are the inevitable pinnacle of evolution ("king of the hill ... top of the heap" as the old song goes). Despite the efforts of Gould to correct this misconception, it persists. As Gould constantly reminds us, we are a contingent fact of history, and things could have ended up otherwise-that is, some other organism could have become the dominating influence on the planet.

There is, however, another misconception about evolution that is much more focal to the theme of this book. This misconception is the notion that we have genes "in order for the species to survive" or the related idea that we have genes, basically, "so that we can reproduce ourselves." The idea in the first case is somehow that the genes are doing something for the species or, in the second, doing something for us-as individuals. Both forms of this idea have the genes serving our purposes. The time bomb in Richard Dawkins's famous book, The Selfish Gene, a time bomb that is as yet not fully exploded, is that the actual facts are just the opposite: We were constructed to serve the interests of our genes, not the reverse. The popular notion-that genes "are there to make copies of us"-is 180 degrees off. We are here so that the genes can make copies of themselves! They are primary, we (as people) are secondary. The reason we exist is because it once served their ends to create us.

In fact, a moment's thought reveals the "genes are there to make copies of us" notion to be a nonstarter. We don't make copies of ourselves at all, but genes do. Obviously, our consciousness is not replicated in our children, so there is no way we perpetuate our selfhood in that sense. We pass on half a random scramble of our genes to our children. By the fifth generation, our genetic overlap with descendants is down to one thirty-second and often undetectable at the phenotypic level. Dawkins's discussion of the misconception behind the "our genes are there to copy us" fallacy is apt. He argues that, instead, "we are built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you.... But as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. Our genes may be immortal, but the collection of genes that is any of us is bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king's genes. We should not seek immortality in reproduction" (199).

Our bodies are built by a unique confederation of genes-a confederation unlikely to come together in just that way again. This is an uplifting prospect from the standpoint of appreciating our own uniqueness, but a disappointing prospect to those who think that genes exist in order to reproduce us. We cannot assuage our feelings of mortality with the thought that somehow genes are helping us "copy ourselves." Instead, shockingly, mind-bogglingly, mortifyingly, we are here to help the genes in their copying process-we exist so that they can replicate. To use Dawkins's phrase, it is the genes who are the immortals-not us.

This is the intellectual hand grenade lobbed by Dawkins into popular culture, and the culture has not even begun to digest its implications. One reason its assimilation has been delayed is that even those who purport to believe in evolution by natural selection have underestimated how much of a conceptual revolution is entailed by a true acceptance of the implications of universal Darwinism. For example, one way that the issue is often framed in popular discussions is by contrasting science (in the guise of evolutionary theory) with religion (Raymo 1999) and then framing the issue as one of compatibility (of a scientific worldview and a religious one) versus incompatibility. Adherents of liberal religions tend to be compatibilists-they are eager to argue that science and religion can be reconciled. Fundamentalists are loath to go this far because they want the latter to trump the former.

There is an odd and ironic way in which religious fundamentalists are seeing things more clearly here. It is believers in evolution who have failed to see the dangers inherent in the notion of universal Darwinism. What are those dangers? Turning first to the seemingly obvious, the evolution of humans by processes of natural selection means that humans were not specially designed by God or any other deity. It means that there was no purpose to the emergence of humans. It means that there are no inherently "higher" or "lower" forms of life (see Gould 1989, 1996, 2002; Sterelny 2001a). Put simply, one form of life is as good as another.

Secondly, there is the issue of the frightening purposelessness of evolution caused by the fact that it is an algorithmic process (Dennett 1995). An algorithm is just a set of formal steps (i.e., a recipe) necessary for solving a particular problem. We are familiar with algorithms in the form of computer programs. Evolution is just an algorithm executing not on a computer but in nature. Following a logic as simple as the simplest of computer programs (replicate those entities that survive a selection process), natural selection algorithmically-mechanically and mindlessly-builds structures as complex as the human brain (see Dawkins 1986, 1996).

Many people who think that they believe in evolution fail to think through the implications of a process that is algorithmic-mechanical, mindless, and purposeless. But George Bernard Shaw perceived these implications in 1921 when he wrote: "It seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves. But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration" (xl). I am not saying that Shaw is right in his conclusion-only that he correctly perceives a threat to his worldview in Darwinism. Indeed, I do not think that beauty and intelligence are reduced in the Darwinian view, and I will explain why in chapter 8. The important thing here though is the part that Shaw gets right. He correctly sees the algorithmic nature of evolution. An algorithmic process could be characterized as fatalistic, and, because this algorithm concerned life, Shaw found it hideous.

I believe that Shaw is wrong to draw this conclusion, but for reasons that he could never have foreseen. There is an escape from the "hideous fatalism" that he sees (read on to see what I view as the escape hatch and the cognitive science concepts necessary to activate the escape hatch). However, Shaw is at least generically right that full acceptance of Darwin's insights will necessitate revisions in the classical view of personhood, individuality, self, meaning, human significance, and soul. These concepts will not necessarily be reduced in the manner Shaw suggests, but radical restructuring will be required-a reconstruction I will at least begin to sketch in this book.

We have-living as we do in a scientific society-no choice but to accept Darwin's insights because there is no way we can enjoy the products of science without accepting the destabilizing views of humans in the universe that science brings in its wake. There is no sign that society will ever consider giving up the former-we continue to gobble up the DVDs, cheap food, MRI machines, computers, mobile phones, designer vegetables, Goretex clothing, and jumbo jets that science provides. Thus, it is inevitable that concepts of meaning, personhood, and soul will continue to be destabilized by the knock-on effects of what science reveals about the nature of life, the brain, consciousness, and other aspects of the world that form the context for our assumptions about the nature of human existence. The conceptual insights of Darwinism travel on the back of a scientific technology that people want, and some of the insights that ride along with the technologies are deeply disturbing.

The mistake that moderate religious believers in evolution make (as do many people holding nonreligious worldviews as well) is that they assume that science is only going to take half a loaf-leaving all our transcendental values untouched. Universal Darwinism, however, will not stop at half the loaf-a fact that religious fundamentalists sense better than moderates. Darwinism is indeed the universal acid-notions of natural selection as an algorithmic process will dissolve every concept of purpose, meaning, and human significance if not trumped by other concepts of equal potency. But concepts of equal potency must, in the twenty-first century, be grounded in science, not the religious mythology of a vanished prescientific age. I think that such concepts do exist and will spend most of this book articulating them. But the first step is to let the universal acid work its destructive course. We must see what the bedrock is that science has left us to build on once the acid has removed all of the superficial and ephemeral structures.

The Replicators and the Vehicles

In order to cut through the obfuscation that surrounds evolutionary theory and to let the universal acid do its work, I will make use of the evocative language that Dawkins used in The Selfish Gene-language for which he was criticized, but language that will help to jolt us into the new worldview that results from a full appreciation of the implications of our evolutionary origins. What we specifically need from Dawkins is his terminology, his conceptual distinction between the replicators and the vehicles, and his way of explicating the logic of evolution. The technical details of the evolutionary model used are irrelevant for our purposes here. Dawkins's popular summary will do, and I will rely on it here. No dispute about the details of the process has any bearing on any of the conceptual arguments in this book.

The story goes something like this. Although evolutionary theorists still argue about the details, all agree that at some point in the history of the primeval soup of chemical components that existed on Earth, there emerged the stable molecules that Dawkins called the replicators-molecules that made copies of themselves. Replicators became numerous to the extent that they displayed copying-fidelity, fecundity, and longevity-that is, copied themselves accurately, made a lot of copies, and were stable. Proto-carnivores then developed that broke up rival molecules and used their components to copy themselves. Other replicators developed protective coatings of protein to ward off "attacks" from such carnivores. Still other replicators survived and propagated because they developed more elaborate containers in which to house themselves.

Dawkins called the more elaborate containers in which replicators housed themselves vehicles. It is these vehicles that interact with the environment, and the differential success of the vehicles in interacting with the environment determines the success of the replicators that they house. Of course it must be stressed that success for a replicator means nothing more than increasing its proportion among competitor replicators. In short, replicators are entities that pass on their structure relatively intact after copying. Vehicles are entities that interact with the environment and whose differential success in dealing with the environment leads to differential copying success among the replicators they house.

This is why Dawkins calls vehicles "survival machines" for the replicators, and then drops his bombshell by telling us that:

survival machines got bigger and more elaborate, and the process was cumulative and progressive....

Continues...

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Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Staring into the Darwinian Abyss
Why Jerry Falwell Is Right
The Replicators and the Vehicles
What Kind of Robot Is a Person?
Whose Goals Are Served by Our Behavior?
All Vehicles Overboard!
Your Genes Care More about You than You Should Care about Them!
Escaping the Clutches of the Genes
The Pivotal Insight: Putting People First

Chapter 2. A Brain at War with Itself
Two Minds in One Brain
The Autonomous Set of Systems (TASS): The Parts of Your Brain that Ignore You
Characterizing the Analytic System: Avoiding the Homunculus Problem
One Step at a Time: Figuring Out the Way the World Is with Language
Hypothetical Thinking and Representational Complexity
Processing without Awareness: There are Martians in Your Brain!
When the Different Kinds of Minds Conflict: The Override Function of the Analytic System
The Brain on a Long Leash and the Brain on a Short Leash
Try It Yourself—Can You Override TASS in the Famous Four-Card Selection Task and the Famous Linda Task?
Don't Be Sphexish
Putting the Vehicle First by Getting the Analytic System in the Driver's Seat

Chapter 3. The Robot's Secret Weapon
Choosing Humans over Genes: How Instrumental Rationality and Evolutionary Adaptation Separate
What It Means to Be Rational: Putting the Person (the Vehicle) First
Fleshing Out Instrumental Rationality
Evaluating Rationality: Are We Getting What We Want?

Chapter 4. The Biases of the Autonomous Brain: Characteristics of the Short-Leash Mind that Sometimes Cause Us Grief
The Dangers of Positive Thinking: TASS Can't "Think of the Opposite"
Now You Choose It—Now You Don't: Framing Effects Undermine the Notion of Human Rationality
Can Evolutionary Psychology Rescue the Ideal of Human Rationality?
The Fundamental Computational Biases of the Autonomous Brain
The Evolutionary Adaptiveness of the Fundamental Computational Biases
Evolutionary Reinterpretations of Responses on Heuristics and Biases Tasks
The Fundamental Computational Biases and the Demands for Decontextualization in Modern Society
The TASS Traps of the Modern World

Chapter 5. How Evolutionary Psychology Goes Wrong
Modern Society as a Sodium Vapor Lamp
Throwing Out the Vehicle with the Bathwater
What Follows from the Fact that Mother Nature Isn't Nice

Chapter 6. Dysrationalia: Why So Many Smart People Do So Many Dumb Things
Cognitive Capacities, Thinking Dispositions, and Levels of Analysis
TASS Override and Levels of Processing
The Great Rationality Debate: The Panglossian, Apologist, and Meliorist Positions Contrasted
Dysrationalia: Dissolving the "Smart But Acting Dumb" Paradox
Would You Rather Get What You Want Slowly or Get What You Don't Want Much Faster?
Jack and His Jewish Problem
The Panglossian's Lament: "If Human Cognition Is So Flawed, How Come We Got to the Moon?"

Chapter 7. From the Clutches of the Genes into the Clutches of the Memes
Attack of the Memes: The Second Replicator
Rationality, Science, and Meme Evaluation
Reflectively Acquired Memes: The Neurathian Project of Meme Evaluation
Personal Autonomy and Reflectively Acquired Memes
Which Memes Are Good for Us?
Why Memes Can Be Especially Nasty (Nastier Than Genes Even!)
The Ultimate Meme Trick: Why Your Memes Want You to Hate the Idea of Memes
Memetic Concepts as Tools of Self-Examination
Building Memeplex Self on a Level Playing Field: Memetics as an Epistemic Equalizer
Evolutionary Psychology Rejects the Notion of Free-Floating Memes
The Co-Adapted Meme Paradox

Chapter 8. A Soul without Mystery: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin
Macromolecules and Mystery Juice: Looking for Meaning in All the Wrong Places
Is Human Rationality Just an Extension of Chimpanzee Rationality? Context and Values in Human Judgment
There's More to Life than Money—But There's More than Happiness Too: The Experience Machine
Nozick on Symbolic Utility
"It's a Meaning Issue, Not a Money Issue": Expressive Rationality, Ethical Preferences, and Commitment
Rising Above the Humean Nexus: Evaluating Our Desires
Second-Order Desires and Preferences
Achieving Rational Integration of Desires: Forming and Reflecting on Higher-Order Preferences
Why Rats, Pigeons, and Chimps Are More Rational than Humans
Escaping the Rationality of Constraint
Two-Tiered Rationality Evaluation: A Legacy of Human Cognitive Architecture
The Spookiness of Subpersonal Entities
Desires Connected to Dollars: Another Case of Spooky Subpersonal Optimization
The Need for Meta-Rationality
The Formula for Personal Autonomy in the Face of Many Subpersonal Threats
Are We up to the Task? Finding What to Value in Our Mental Lives

Notes
References
Author Index
Subject Index

Editorial Reviews

According to Stanovich, we're only just beginning to grapple with the deep consequences of Darwin's theory of natural selection. One such consequence, Richard Dawkins's theory of the "selfish gene," implies that living creatures are mere vehicles constructed to facilitate the survival and replication of genes. While Stanovich (How to Think Straight About Psychology), a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto, agrees with the basic idea of the selfish gene, he finds fault with the conclusion that we are simply at its mercy. Drawing on recent research in cognitive science, he argues for an alternate conception of our relationship with our genes: we may be robots originally constructed as vehicles for genes, but our higher-level analytic reasoning abilities (themselves a product of evolution) enable us to rebel against our genetically programmed "autonomous set of systems," as well as the analogous cultural memes that infect our rational minds. Though framed as a revolutionary manifesto about how we can retain our autonomy and humanity if we are merely vehicles (robots) for genes and memes, this book is fundamentally a work of scholarship, bridging cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. As a consequence, though Stanovich's writing is clear, a reader without much background in these fields might find his argument quite difficult to follow at times, trading accessibility for a deep exploration of the philosophical and scientific ramifications of Darwinian evolution. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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