User:Jeremygbyrne/Consciousness

Dear Dr. Pinker--

I have just this evening finished _How the Mind Works_; I enjoyed it immensely--thank you. I found myself disagreeing with very little of what you wrote, and feel that my understanding (or, at the very least, my sense of _completeness_ of understanding) of many of the more apparently paradoxical aspects of cognition--particularly the origins of the emotions and of gender-related differences in sexuality--has advanced significantly.

In your convincingly argued _Slate_ dialogue with Alan Wolfe, you wrote:

"Evolution and neural computation are well-entrenched theories, so if a phenomenon appears to be inexplicable by them, it's important to see whether the discrepancy is fundamental or temporary. In the case of sentience, free will, and moral truth, I argue that the discrepancy is fundamental. But that is a radical conclusion, and most of my fellow scientists reject it. "

I can't really claim to have been disappointed by the final chapter of _How the Mind Works_, which puts this view in detail; it certainly offered a reasoned, consistent case for the existence of Hard Problems in the philosophy of mind. I must admit, however, that unlike the bulk of the argument in _How the Mind Works_, the last section didn't "ring true" for me; my "intuition" rejected it. I guess it felt a little too like a surrender to what my Catholic father used to call The Sacred Mysteries, a name which always seemed to imply something one shouldn't really be thinking about--and which thereby raised my intellectual hackles, even at twelve. If I were to be uncharitable, I might observe that the principal difference between your argument and Alan Wolfe's seems to be that he resorts to The Sacred Mysteries somewhat earlier in the game than do you.

In thinking on these issues, I have toyed longest with the po-mo notion that truth and meaning co-evolved with our ability to consider them, are no more a fundamental part of the universe than Cantonese or Cubism, and thus "The Meaning of Life" is semantic nonsense. At certain times though--one of them a few hours ago, standing in the shower, ten minutes after finishing your very fine book--I find myself wondering if this isn't as much a cop-out as my father's "explanation". Perhaps the neuro-cognitive system which gives us our sense of "I-ness" evolved alongside our complexifying societies, as a self-referential byproduct of our systems for mapping and predicting the highly complex behaviour of the other humans around us. Or maybe it's a motivational adaptation against some tendency for cognitively complex animals to "go haywire" and begin acting counter to the genes' secret agenda--if I'm not "me", why struggle to make and support all these kids to carry on my bloodline, my family, my traditions? (And, if sense-of-self is either a mis-application of an analytical technique or a clever piece of self-deception, would it be so strange that much of what seems to follow naturally from it is paradoxical, illogical or ineffable?)

I'm sure these ideas, and many others, have been floated in the field of evolutionary psychology, and I'd love to read about them. I wonder if you might have any references to work which further explores the computational theory of mind with respect to such phenomenon (offline would be great; online would be fabulous). I appreciate that your time is valuable and limited, and will be very grateful for any information you may be able to provide. Thanks very much, and thanks again for a terrific read!

Yours faithfully JEREMY G BYRNE

Postscript
Re-reading this in 2006, it makes me seem awkward, conceited and ungraciously disrespectful of my father (rather than Catholicism itself). It's worth leaving up as notes towards Xianist philosophy, though.