Peter Payne 2006-06-02
16 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
Shortly after read THE MEME MACHINE, I had a dream in which I was arguing with Susan Blackmore about her denial of the existence of a self. She told me that I had just misunderstood her. Though quite sure that I had not misunderstood her, from past experience I know that my unconscious is aware of more things than I am, it seemed a good idea to further examine her ideas. Though an excellent book, this review will concentrate upon those parts with which I disagree, since those were the part that forced me to think more deeply about my own bias.
Susan Blackmore presents the strictly materialist view of consciousness. In other words, she believes that the self, free will, and consciousness are all illusions. To say that something is an illusion is not to deny that it exists, but that it is something quite different than it appears to be. Some years ago while working in a hay field after dark, my friends and I saw several rabbits jumping around near a hay bale. When we got closer, we saw that these rabbits were just paper beings rustled by the breeze. The paper really existed; the rabbits did not. As I understand SB, consciousness is more like papers blowing in the wind than real rabbits. This conclusion necessarily follows from SB's assumption that it has already been proven that consciousness is a product of blind evolution.
SB points out that "the underlying molecular processes are usually assumed to be deterministic, so this is one reason why there appears to be no room for free will." Quantum effects cause indeterminacy, but these infinitesimal effects merely provide for a range of similar, random outcomes rather than drastically altering the possible outcomes. This is also necessarily true for molecules functioning in the evolutionary process. It is a truism that life and human consciousness can only exist because molecules have to potential to form them. Blind evolution insists that this potential is accidental rather than intrinsic. Dennett's evolutionary algorithm - "If you have variation, selection, and heredity, you must get evolution" - glosses over the fact that for life to have formed there had to have been hundreds of molecules, each with a complex, highly specific structure, working together to capture and extract energy, replicate, and protect themselves. These molecules had to do these things because the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that they must assume the most stable, lowest-energy confirmation available. Why more reasonable to assume that these molecules did this by mere chance than to assume that life and consciousness are innate qualities of existence? We might assume, as many intelligent people do, that these qualities were put in the molecules by God, but explaining the existence of complexity by assuming that it was created by something infinitely more complex answers nothing. It is more reasonable to assume that life and consciousness exist in primordial form in non-living matter. If this is true, then evolution is not a consequence of selfish genes being by haphazardous gamma bombardment and fighting amongst themselves by survival of the fittest; genes are naturally self-mutating and survival of the fittest is merely the rule life must follow as it naturally progresses towards a level of complexity capable of self-reflective intelligence. This is the possibility that SB either completely ignores or derisively dismisses as "magic." The actual evidence is no better for accidental than intrinsic consciousness, and the latter assumption has the virtue of being optimistic. We are not required to imagine gene machines at odds with their constituent molecules, as Dawkins does, or that consciousness might actually be harmful, as SB does.
If consciousness exists in its own right, then asking what consciousness is for is meaningless. Consciousness just is. Matter is so that consciousness can organize itself into life and intelligence. SB quotes Searle's statement, "brains cause minds." True, but consciousness causes brains. Therein lies the conundrum of human existence, because brains, as SB tells us, function essentially as "mindless" meme machines. Meme machines form "selfplexes," arbitrary identities forged by whatever environment we happen to be in. One brain can even form multiple selfplexes. If our minds are cut off from the primordial consciousness that is the center of our being, our sense of self is indeed delusional, with only delusional free will, and with a pronounced tendency to ideology addiction. In SB's world, our being has no center, so there can be no true self.
According to Carl Jung, the main human task is to undergo the individuation process in order to realize the higher self. SB dismisses Jung's theories as frustratingly untestable, though this complain is equally true of her meme theory, and of Buddha's (SB is a Buddhist) notion that one can awaken to the fact that there is no self through meditation. I was surprised to discover that Buddha denied the existence of self. Jung favored Buddhism above all other religion, yet the doctrine of no self clearly contradicts Jung's notion of the higher self. However, this is really only so if Buddha was a materialist. If Buddha was not a materialist, it is surely misleading to call him a "bundle theorist," as SB does. What could it mean for a bundle of sensations to achieve enlightenment? There is no self beneath the delusional self to be free of delusion. SB quotes Wren-Lewis: "it is no longer the 60-year-old John who looks out at the world, but the shining dark infinite void that in some extraordinary way is also `I.'" D. T. Suzuki says, "Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being." These two men, at least, seem to experience a self beneath the delusions. However, when we once start giving this pure sense of "I" names such as "divine self," and claiming that Christ is a symbol of this higher self, we will most likely delude ourselves with memetic jargon. So if Buddha was not a materialist, I think I understand what he was getting at. Since SB is a materialist, I understand but disagree with what she is getting at.
(Peter Payne, author of CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA: A YOUNG MAN'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE EVIL WITHIN HIMSELF)
