Daniel Dennett & Michael Heller debate on chance and necessity

[Music] professors Daniel Dennett's Michael Heller thank you for coming here delighted and the subject of today's conversation would be necessity and chance and you deal most with the subject of mind and how it evolved and you deal mostly with the subject of the universe also to some extent how it evolved so my question to both of you would be with a short intro the classical point of view that you both seem to be slightly against is that everything is planned everything is designed by a mind and I mean everything but now we know that both the solar system and even possibly laws of physics have some freedom in it and that the human mind as well has not necessarily been designed in detail what memory does were thinking that what planning does to the mind so how would you locate your points of interest on the line chance and necessity what is necessary in mind nature what is coincidental in mind major but I don't know where to start so maybe somebody would like to go first alphabetic alphabetically alright um I think we have I had a perspective for 200 years not quite 150 plus since Darwin that we can conceive of nature the biosphere as having evolved but by a process which itself has no mind behind it no designer no no lawgiver even and that the regularities of nature fall out of the processes the patterns of differential reproduction that make all the biosphere all the various species now when we push back and say yes but how about the laws of nature how about the laws of physics and now we're into professor Heller's territory I'll just be a bit provocative and say it seems to me that the laws of physics also can be accounted for as falling out of a process which has no intelligent lawgiver behind it it's a difficult question and I would start just from the remark that human mind and living being in spite of the fact that any organism is a strictly localized thing in space and time by the very fact that it is a living thing or thinking thing it is also in a sense a global idea to see what I mean it's enough to to remember that our organism is made up so to speak of an organic chemistry that means a carbon and to produce carbon you need a long history we now are able to reconstruct the evolution of carbon starting from the very first moment after the Big Bang and then how all these nuclear reactions went on in the several generations of stars and how carbon was our mother released our son and then if we look at our hand these atoms which compose our hand were in a couple of generations of stars yep we are global things look and since since the evolution of carbon required such a long history and we know that the universe is expanding so during this well for fourteen billion years the universe expanded into a very huge volume future space this means that the very fact that we exist here even if the life is present only in the single planets then the universe in order to produce it had to be old and big and in this sense our mind and our organism is a global thing so if we are dealing with we are thinking about that chance and necessity we cannot separate biological evolution from the cosmic about us no I think that's right I like the way you put it too even the elements are not elemental that is to say they had to be constructed and they had to be sort of sorted out and different processes responsible for achieving different chemical elements and so as you say takes a long time to make a human behavior in fiber in so everything depends on the initial conditions of the universe and as we know they are extremely sensitive for small changes so the universe had to be at the beginning very fine finely tuned in order to produce carbon any single you know perturbation of the initial conditions for instance if the speed of the expansion was a little bit faster or a little bit slower carbon would not be able to produce because if the universe the speed of expansion is smaller than it was but a teeny tiny tiny fraction then the universe would wreck elapse immediately and there will be no time to produce to anything interestin and if it's too fast there would be no chance for galaxies to form for starts to fall and there will be probably no conditions for place for true planets planets and to start by oracle evolution so everything is extremely fine-tuned and this is it's it's fine-tuned or it isn't fine-tuned it's the amplification of noise I like to point out to people that in evolution by natural selection it's a process which amplifies noise that's why it's so hard to predict the future of evolution is mutations hardly ever occur but without mutation you don't get any evolution mutations that are good hardly ever occur but if there weren't very rare instances of it we wouldn't have any any natural selection and as you're pointing out it took a very rare if you sort of try to count the different ways things could have been the conditions under which carbon could develop very very rare in the set of physically possible apparently physically possible States and so our universe is 114 billion year amplification of that initial moment there is a great problem with what you have mentioned this initial noise in physics we want to say that the noise is completely round and we say sometimes white noise like white wavelength and there was an idea and cosmology that in the beginning the initial conditions were chaotic and a kind of select natural selection among them produced something but unfortunately this idea seems not to work in cosmology in present cosmological models which which well very well correspond to that experimental observational data itself are very powerful criterion everything shows that in the beginning the the initial conditions of of our universe are more strictly of the present phase of the expansion of because we do not know what was before even whether there was something before we see meaningless or not there are many such you know suspicions that time did not exist before the Big Bang well and so the color almost consensus nowadays in cosmology is that the initial conditions had to be very very special and we do not know why and we have some hopes that if the finally the quantum gravity theory is invented it will probably answer that question that's I know the hope and I appreciate the reason for the hope yeah in that it would would permit an answer to the question but it seems to me just as easy to suppose that the hope will not be fulfilled and we are left with a meta question instead of asking why is there something rather than nothing yeah that we just say why not it's not as if this universe is somehow more expensive or I think the the very question has a perspectival presupposition which is optional and well Mike Scioscia guiding idea in doing science is a methodological rule that we always have an obligation to explain the universe in terms of the universe itself but I think that's a methodological well postulate and probably we'll never know for sure whether it's also kind of ontology behind that or perhaps there is something which exceeds other possibilities my point is simply I think consistent with what you just said not all well-formed questions have answers for instance if I go down to the beach and I point to one grain of sand and I say why is this fan of sand here you know rather than there or in China there's no reason it just happens to be here it's it's there's no reason why it has to be here but it is well do you think excuse me do you think there are major unanswerable questions because this is an example of a trifle sort of question why this grain of sand is here and not there but here we have a question of why is there carbon why are there stars why is there humanity at small why why why is there are there is there the possibility that even the largest questions are unanswerable because you seem to be sort of against mysterion ISM yes you like to call it well first we have to distinguish two really distinct quiet questions one is in English how come and the other is what for if we ask why does ice float we can answer that in terms of physics it's we could postulate an answer in terms of what for and we could say well it was arranged for ice to float so that the fish could swim comfortably under the ice during the winter that's why ice floats it could have sunk but now I met prefer the how come answer I think there's no no shred of evidence before the what for so we have to distinguish when they're asking why does carbon exist if we just ask the howcome question well professor Haller has just told us very very succinctly how come carbon exists how how there was a his a historical process of process in time over billions of years that generated the kind of that's that's how come it's here you might say a process narrative but that leaves an asked the question of whether or not there's also a purpose there that's a different question but if you ask how come there's carbon the answer would be if I'm not mistaken because laws of physics are the way they are is there how come laws of physics are the way they are is there an answer to that one because the laws of physics are behind what we are talking about from the very beginning and this is a big question roughly speaking perhaps there are two possibilities either the laws of physics are the only possible the laws of physics we know or we think we know there are the set of these laws of physics is the only one possible and the argument is that if you change anything a little little small detail then the whole idea piece of law was it confusing would collapse so it has a very rigid well in mathematics this is called the concepts are rigid it the concept is rigid if you try to change it it collapses and so if the laws of physics are such a construct that they are very rigid you cannot do anything with them because they will collapse to - well to form contradiction and many physicists believe that this is what is constitutive property of the logos physics the other philosophy which nowadays perhaps more fashionable at least in the popular literature is that anything goes any any combination of physical constants and everything which can be mathematically imagined could be implemented as the laws of physics and this is a philosophy behind the idea of multiverse there are many universes because are possible various sets of physical laws well the word set is not correct because there are entities which are bigger than sets and we call them collection paradoxes on the Trinity and so on and so on but I could let's leave that aside and well and we do not know which which of these two options is is correct whether the laws in if there are many possibilities infinite number of possibilities then perhaps could be a kind of natural selection between them yes but if there is only one then it's a rigid structure excuse me just very quickly there is only one but it could have been different it's logically possible for instance there is actual freedom in the laws of physics and natural constants it could have been different but the universe is just one isn't it a possibility well as far as I know the adherents of that idea claim that it's only one possible set and any other any other entity like that is excluded by the very nature or necessity well yes let's let's see if we can make that a little sharper when we talk about logical possibility I mean if we distinguish as many philosophers want to do between logical possibility and some other kind of possible it's call it physical possibility then of course we might say the laws of physics that we seem to get a pretty good handle on today not logically necessary but they're the only laws of physics that yield a universe where there can be physicists for instance so this is also one way putting the multiverse yeah it's also I think multiverse idea to make our discussion more concrete we should impose some boundary condition of this set of immense possibilities in verse number of possibilities so let's let's agree that the universe is like it is we have these laws of physics and how chance and necessity operate in this concrete universe fair enough ok ok so let's use a very specific example the human mind you are one of the champions of the method of dealing with the human mind by taking into account evolution so the mind could have been completely different or not it's not a clearly formed question first of all how different is different there no two minds are alike it could have been the case that it was the descendants of ostriches that were the language using science making entities on the planet and if that happened now I'm sure that the minds would be in some ways very different on the other hand if you have science discovering minds then I think probably Euclidean geometry will be in common however different the symbols that are used or a collective might like like ants or bees possibility and it was our rival possibility I think during the evolution yes in some sense yeah not a very close rival yeah there's not very direct competition but no that's true and in fact they may win there were some philosopher for instance they are disorder who dreamed and had a dream that at one stage of our future evolution the humanity will form a collective mind yes and there's a lot of people talking about that today in rather more detailed and I would say disciplined ways but yeah it's a possibility in principle to some extent this has already happened I mean as one of your points in from bacteria to bar that we don't invent the tools that we use every day it's not our tool to use English to be able to plug a microphone and to speak about they are de Chardin this is the tools over - yeah ours nothing well they are our tools but we didn't design them we didn't have to mind no button but another point I make is that we're getting more and more comfortable with the idea of a distribution of labour in the business of comprehension if you have a paper from CERN with a thousand authors know one of them now single one of them has to understand the whole thing and yet we can the system has enough is itself well enough designed that we can have high confidence in the products and say yes we as as a collective week we understand this no individual does entirely but as a as a species so could we understand this could we say that 5000 people working in CERN as a collection as a group understand CERN but neither this or that or this person understands it is it like the Chinese room argument no wow well the Chinese room argument was that if you you know have a group of people with no comprehension at all then the room itself can have sort of like a comprehension but sir-- was against this idea but now you say that there is distributed comprehension well I think I'm not happy with your gloss of Searles argument but indeed I think we already know this not a single neuron in your brain understands English or polish or or the question you just asked but you do and your understanding of it unless we want to be really mysterious is some function of the organization of those individual neurons in your brain and and so in that sense we already have existence proofs of of collective understanding whether the same sorts or principles of organization or different ones are what will what would explain you know real genuine group understanding at the scientific level you know five thousand scientists and engineers at CERN I think that's an interesting question buddy you get down in the weeds pretty fast it's not very easy to explain what the problems are it reminds me the idea of popper of three words the first word is the physical world the second world is our subjective world aware of our thing faults and and feelings and so on and then there is a third world the world of ideas were all you know products of our scientific thinking of our Arts exist in a quasi platonic well real and well and this you know we give some inputs into that third world and we also profit of it so it's a kind of interaction between our individual thinking and there is this huge magazine of human achievement but I like everything about that except the interaction I don't I think you can have poppers three worlds without postulating an interaction between world three and world - thank you well contributed so much to that world well you don't think I don't look if I have a sagging screen door and I put a diagonal cable or board to make a triangle then thanks to the Euclidian theorem of the rigidity of a triangle I have fixed my door and the the explanation of why the door doesn't sag sites Euclid but I don't think there's interaction between the triangle and the door or between the Euclid and the door I think interactions suggest a sort of mysterious process I think the everything depends on the definition of interaction yes that's why I raised the yes I just think that that the poppers use of the term interaction I was a mistake I don't think I don't know where the popper has used that oh yes I know that Penrose who oh yes he he uses that extent yes and popper and Eccles in their notorious book the South in the rain popper used the term interaction there I think one of the one of the great philosopher but that I think was a mistake speaking about definitions I would like and this is central topic of our discussion the chance I would like to ask you and myself what in fact is trance and I have some answers working answer I do too and it'll be interesting this he well stop all right one of the one of our everyday paradigm examples of the chance event is flipping a fair coin now strictly speaking that's not a random it's not a quantum if it is we don't know it the the the whether the coin comes up heads or tail is dependent on the location of every particle in the universe and it's completely unmanipulated the an uncaused we say there is what is the cause of it coming up heads or tails the answer is there isn't a cause it's chance and that's I think a legitimate use of the word chance which has nothing to do with quantum and determinism and my answer would be to ask a mathematicians what is chance first of all I would like to notice that the term chance it's not a scientific term it is from the everyday language from gambling yeah because in physics for instance we have a clear criterion what is scientific term and what is not for instance mass is a scientific term energy because we know how to measure the mass and energy but matter is not because we don't know how to measure matter matter they just come from the common language the similar thing is with with chance but if we want to make wrister more strict then we can say that we should ask for help probability calculus and we could agree for a definition that chance is a chance event is an event which the probability of which before it happened so-called a priori probability is less than 1 if it is 1 it is not chance it would happen for sure it will 0 it will never happen if it is closer to 0 that is more chancy it's closer to 1 is less chancy so I think it's the only reasonable use of the term chance as far in physics and mathematics is concerned but this poses the question of the probability calculus you mentioned the throwing of dice well at probability calculus there is also a philosophical remark we usually regard in philosophical discussions probability as a sort of as as a sort of ontological explanation if the probability of something to happen is great then we think that it is well source sort of proved that it will happen but mathematically theory of probability is a special case of the measured theory and I will explain that in very briefly and for instance what what is measured theory you regard the Euclidean space just abstract and you consider some subsets of of this space and you ascribe you define a function to each subset you describe a number and you conventionally that this number is a measure of all that subset volume of it or mass of it or electrical charge of it the idea is to ascribe a number to a subset this set of subsystem has to fulfill some conditions but they are technical thing and this is a measure of theory the very very important mathematical theory and if this measure has one additional condition fulfilled if it is in technical terms if it is normalized to one that means to say if the number you ascribe to the whole appliance place is 1 then it's called probability because because because this enforces that the measures of smaller parts will be a fraction between 0 this is probability and theory of probability is a purely mathematical idea with no indeterminacy the feeling of uncertainty it's pure mathematical and this what we usually in foreign language regard as a chance chance properties of chance some well some well indeterminacy in predictability this comes through in interpretation of that function and one of the interpretation is the so called frequency of yeah this and the frequency interpretation which we ascribe to the throwing of dice so we define a dispatch called distribution function which says that if we have correct not falsified dice then two to number six for instance two to have a number six the probability to get some number six is one well over six this is a distribution function and that and we take the distribution function from the experience not from mathematics wait a minute if we're talking about a die a six-sided die we are not taking one over six from experience we're taking it from geometry from experience because hey well if we have experience with the die and know that it's fair if it's a loaded die well that's not a story but then it's not one over six yeah it's only one over six in the ideal so it's not from experience but if we want to know how much it deviates from one over six we must make a long series of absolutely so and this is experience so and what I wanted to say that the interpretation this frequency of repeating rotation is the property of the world lot of mathematics yeah so so what in this way a chance is composed into a mathematical structure which we use to describe or to model it's better than to describe the universe so so the chance is is not something unreasonable which comes from nothing but it is a part of mathematical structure yeah I'm more of a Bayesian myself but there's good news of frequencies to buy as an interpretation is one of many possible interpretations and even more than that which are always fascinates me that in mathematics there are many improbability theories for instance so-so so the probability theory we know it's only one of course of possibilities because there are many measures normed to 1 and probability we use in quantum mechanics is bit different on the macroscopic probability and the problem is when we are speaking about the fundamental level of physics we are not a priori sure which probability measure is over there obligatory yeah so so there are many open questions and we have to perform experiments yes the other but it's sort of a begs the question you can't ascribe probability to an event that only happened once right because if I understand ascribing the measure to an event happens after many many many tries right so we spoke about the probability being the way it is or the mind being the way it is well we only know one universe we only know one type of mind the human mind so how could we even use the first chance when it would formally require a number of X 2 days ago I discussed with my friend the physicist who is working with quantum information and he quoted a recent article which supports the idea that in quantum mechanics the single event behaves in a probabilistic manner so we can use statistics to a one electron and this is something in order to interpret some recent results of experiments there were long ago there were subsidies suspicious that in quantum mechanics artistic could be done on a single entity which which is something which our common sensor is repugnant to I'm not sure but I'm not sure that the mathematical puzzles about probability have much bearing on the everyday notion with probability that and the way we use it in our daily lives which is important to know yeah certainly that we are in living in a macroscopic world yes but nevertheless we are speaking about chance and chance events are unexpected anyway everything which happens in the macroscopic world is a kind of average result of the quantum level and some things we are using everyday some signals from that quantum world for instance our our elevators and opening doors are full of photocells and there are quantum effects using to that so you never know where there this bigger name lower level will reveal itself in in our everyday life but of course there are theories of mind I mean very controversial like Penn roses favorite theory for a time at least that tried to involve the quantum level in in mind do you feel sympathetic to those models no I don't fact I think I was one of the first critics of Penrose I wrote the first review of of his emperor's new mind and I think it's a in many ways a brilliant book wonderful pedagogy on how physics works great stuff on the second law of thermodynamics of other other important topics but then he uses a caricature of what a computational theory of mind would be to argue that the Breton's of brain can't be the mind and that we need not just he's not saying we need a quantum computer he said we need a quantum gravity computer and I mean that's getting pretty mysterious and I don't think he's that you do not think that some quantum effects are going on in our brain of course they are but the question is whether they're playing a role that made a difference that makes a difference yeah because with one day we have a working quantum computer I am sure next day there will be a lot of models of our brain using the analogy with quantum computation oh I'm sure as a sociological factors yeah that's a good death but the emergence of the classical computer was a big stimulus to theory of mind absolutely so would would there be a difference if the quantum computer popped out and you know the probabilities in the computer work slightly different so the role of chance for instance I mean the classical computer is deterministic in out but yes but there's a point that people often overlook and that is computer software today almost any computer software that does anything interesting consults random numbers all the time it's it's the way to design software whenever you have a choice point a decision point and and the program doesn't have the information it needs to make it a reasoned choice if throws the throws the dice and and tries one thing or another it's the way you solve the problem with puritans asked in the computer perhaps but notice the computer use when the computer uses randomness it simply calls up the pseudo-random number generator which is not random of course but it does just as well the the simulator simulation is a gradual well it simulates but the thing is the Simula is artificial respiration and simulated respiration or real respiration that's created by artists it works and the fact is that that to take to take a recent example the alphago zero go program uses pseudo-random number generator obviously works just fine you don't need quantum indeterminacy when you've got physical chaos when you've got a pseudo-random number generator so so I think that's important because Penrose tried very hard to find something that mines could do that you couldn't do without quantum indeterminacy he failed to find that I mean he has not demonstrated to anybody any power of the human mind that that requires that so that's why I don't have faith and I can understand controllers you know longing for such a thing finding something in the mind because he's fascinated with this very mysterious quantum process when the probability wave is which is well it's very fuzzy and unpredictable in retirement indeterminacy it works in the in deterministic way and when you make a measurement it collapses to a single number and this is something which physicists can understand and he I think he has an idea that such a mysterious process which certainly has some natural explanation but we don't know we don't know that explanatory explanation yet that this extremely interesting process should somehow be reflected in the structure of our mind yes I think that's very well put I think I think that's exactly his motivation and I appreciate and respect the motivation if if I were a physicist and working on those issues I would hope with all my heart and soul that something in my domain would be the key through you know I would explain one mystery with another mystery and if I can explain my mystery then maybe I can explain both mysteries and I understand the motivation but I don't think the grounds for it are very promising and this motivation goes even further because by training mathematicians and physicists and mathematics and our mind are two things which are so close to each other our mind is creating mathematics but at the same time mathematics is something much greater than our brain so the mathematicians who have some philosophical inclinations integrations cannot be indifferent in this affinity between our mind and and mathematics and this is I think provides another motivation for Penrose and Nagin different pen rolls well yes but remember a few mathematicians who thought otherwise touring and fan women they were both deeply interested in these questions of mind and they thought they'd found the secret in in computation theory yeah we talked about the freedom in what minds could be like but the topic already popped up I mean let's imagine that we throw that dice number of times and each fro is different mind on a different planet evolving naturally would all of them have to discover arithmetic I mean Oh you mentioned ostrich intelligence or swarm intelligence but let's go further non-carbon intelligence on the faraway planet pure science fiction but would they also have to discover Euclid's elements or arithmetic or logic I think the answer is a qualified yes probability equal 1 mm we would rather put it this this is a case of convergent evolution there's some pretty deep mathematical reasons why there's only one arithmetic so either you find it or you don't have mathematics at all and chimpanzees don't have mathematics dolphins and whales don't have mathematics we do and we've and other planets in other galaxies there may be scientific intelligences and if they have any opportunity to explore this part of the space of possibility then what they will find is arithmetic now if we found that that they used Roman numerals for the numbers we would be mortally certain that there was some transmission between us and them either we got it from them or they got it from us that would be too great a coincidence but but that they had whatever the notation if they had if they had arithmetic it would be our arithmetic how far does it go I mean arithmetic yes differential geometry with the aliens by necessity have to have this sort of I know Mandelbrot set what about language I mean how far does mimesis well if there are mines what do they have to have alright well well that wouldn't have it any other way we have great warning in this respect also from the mathematical side there is a mathematical theory which is called category theory which was developed well after the Second World War and is now rapidly not only evolving back well conquering all the domains of mathematics and this is a very very fascinating domain because it shows it is the first theory ever where the logic is not something imposed from outside of the categories but it is something emerging out of categories in various categories can be different logic and we can compute in simple cases which logically should be and also the arithmetic there could be something which is more general are not numbers but the natural number object which is called which in some cases reduces to our numbers but in other cases it does not so this is a warning that in other civilization which would say started with not with adding digits but with some abstract thinking they could invent first category theory and then the mathematics could be different but of course I believe that there will be a translation between our and there that absolute wristing I I delved into category theory many years ago and was even obliged to respond to a paper on category theory by Michael R Beebe dharmic yeah the neuroscientist got very interested in category theory and I did my best to get my head around the and I have to say I gave up I I never I to this day I don't understand category theory but I also know because I asked I asked mathematician friends of mine professional mathematicians to explain it to me even some that knew about it and they said they couldn't understand it either so maybe in the last 25 years this understanding has grown but somewhere in the sixties and seventies that's when I first heard about jump by curb it reminds me a nice anecdote once he asked me during the scientific conference whether God it was a provocative question whether God knows mathematics and I had and I illumination how to answer him because I knew that it was a provocation and I said no he does not he was astonished why my hands because he is mathematics the world becomes its likeness but if we enter the speculative territory even third I mean again let's let's go back if the mind is somewhat constrained at least by the results it has to achieve I mean logically does it I mean if God has a mind if there is a super mind would it also have to by necessity be of a certain kind if there is no other way for a mind than to you know if it's supposed to discover mathematics then the mind is construed answer never mind never mind I I think well I agree about this as a Darwinian convinced Darwinian I want to avoid essentialism always as my first option and I think we can't say what a mind must have because there's going to be all sorts of quasi pseudo proto Minds on the boundaries of whatever we're calling our mind and and they'll be different and and we we don't want to try to give the essence of the species and we shouldn't try to give the essence of a mind either okay but you did say that even an ostrich mind or a swarm mind would have to by convergent evolution come to certain same I would even say results no certainly territories if I said it would have to then I was I guess speaking a little bit loosely because I would say that there would be as it were a basin of attraction to these ideas and and it would be a even a predictable resting point or or transit point it would get there but it might not get there and then we'd have to argue about whether it was a mind or not I wouldn't want to argue so there could be completely different minds that have very little in common certainly the mind of a chimpanzee the mind of a whale we are talking about evolution and the Darwinian evolution and of course Darwinian evolution would be impossible if not if we were not based on physical laws again yeah and from the point of view of physics every evolution is what physicists and mathematicians call is a dynamical system and what is a dynamical system it consists of three things first is a great space of of possible States we have a we consider a physical system or biological system and it can be in various states well if if our system consists of a single material point under the Newtonian force then it's state is two numbers position and velocity position has three components velocities the three components of the space the cult's the so-called phase space it has six dimensions of course if it is a biological system the number of the enormous but we can simplify the toilsome reasonable for instance we it's a textbook example the multiplication of bacteria it's a dynamical system the second thing is a path which goes through the sequence of states the evolutionary path and this is a curve in a space space and the third very important point is that must be a dynamics without dynamics it does not work and this dynamics is usually given but not always but usually by differential equation this is a moving force and this this equation can have various shapes for instance could be a stochastic equation and we describe biological evolution it must be stochastic yes and moreover if the evolution had has to be a creative process then the equation must be nonlinear the non-linearity says that the result it cannot be the sum of its point all of its parts but it must be some interaction between this nonlinear interaction without that the evolution will not go and in order to have a truly creative process there must be an addict at the mixture of cares of the enzyme and this how how are you distinguishing there from stochastic well mathematic they have been different but of course you can combine both of them the the definition of chaos is the sensibility on the initial conditions if it a little bit disturb the initial condition the curve goes different well and stochastic is that well let us imagine the more random walk is an example but let's there are some differential equations when the evolution is deterministic to a certain point and this point that so called be few occasion point is Frank sensitive for for fluctuations and the solution to various so this is how and at the direction to which this system will go depends on external fluctuations don't chance and it can be that this bifurcation force the points are very densely packed on the curve at each point there is a visual location this is a very strongly stochastic and also so so evolution I want to say is a pure is a fundamentally mathematical concept so it is not only and and the biological idea of natural selection can be modeled by the fact that the system must be open because other well in order to be nonlinear must be open with the admission of cows and this interaction between cows between initial conditions or boundary conditions they can model natural selection this is this is the point in Darwin's dangerous idea in my book where I wrote that what Darwin had really discovered as an algorithm a family of algorithms yeah and yes exactly it's its substrate neutral it's completely abstract and you can prove all sorts of things about it considering a structure there is dynamical systems are extremely reagent possibilities are enormous and to answer your question whether the evolution could go different way well it is exactly a territory from which you can speculate just to have some possibilities to answer your question and it shows it also means that our own evolution had to go through a couple of those bifurcation points I mean one hundred thousand years ago hominids leaving one place and moving to another I mean the local conditions in barely made it was a tremendous bottleneck yes this might well go extinct and what theory of dynamical system shows that chance events are not something external which well prevents some action of physical laws it cooperate trends cooperate with the physical laws if you imagine the physical laws as a network of some influences so there must be some places in this net for a left for chances because otherwise the system would not work yeah well that's that's what I meant at the outset when I said that evolution amplifies noise yeah yeah it the later state of the of the curve is very much but the noise mace makes makes possible system to operate focus on this point there was this bottleneck the population was kinda low and at this point in evolution the genetic structure of the population sort of becomes amplified later I mean slightly different a different group of hunter-gatherers I mean the the neighbors survived and these didn't could this lead the really major macroscopic differences to us wouldn't this couldn't this be the case that for slightly different weather right now for instance we wouldn't be using abstract reasoning we use it or memory would work slightly differently or we wouldn't conceptualize with our bodies the way we do I mean very deep level of how mind works I mean this is a fascinating possibility that a chance event in Africa a hundred and fifty thousand years ago would influence how we have this conversation right now and how we think how I'm sorry I'm coming back to this problem but I think it's really fascinating the question how much freedom is there in just how our minds could be and how it depends on a lightning storm somewhere in Africa absolutely one time I was in Moscow with a group of philosophers including my American colleague Jaguar Kim who who was actually born in Korea and he was born practically on the border between North and South Korea and he said you know had his parents moved you know a few hundred yards in one direction he wouldn't be an American and think of all the differences between his life as an American philosopher and his whatever his wives whatever his life might have been in the medieval philosophy there was a nice time to describe this dependence of many conditions contingency yes our our faith is contingent dependent on so many of the almost infinite number of factors excellent okay so thank you thank you very much for being here for talking and I think we ended up on a high note which tends events caused our meeting here and just as we agreed we will start the conversation at a point and let it by a few K along its own videos yes well thank you a very dynamical system very late and a very careful thank you thank you

Channel: Copernicus

Views: 34,803

Keywords: Centrum Kopernika Badań Interdyscyplinarnych, Centrum Kopernika, Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Copernicus Center, Kraków, Daniel Dennett, Michał Heller, chance, necessity, evolution, mind, Universe, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, physics, cosmology, filozofia, psychologia, umysł, nauki kognitywne, fizyka, kosmologia, wszechświat, przypadek, konieczność

Id: 2PJpExHVfAE

Length: 66min 57sec (4017 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2017