Intelligent Evolution: A response to Daniel C. Dennett
by Sachin Gupta
In his op-ed piece, "Show Me the Science" published in the New York Times on August 28th 2005, Daniel C. Dennett makes a crisp attack on the proponents and motives of the intelligent design movement. However, he ignores the fact that some versions of the intelligent design theory do not challenge evolution or its mechanism of natural selection but actually adopt them. These versions of the intelligent design theory only challenge the 'randomness' of the mutations that occasionally prove beneficial and are therefore propagated. To help sort out this debate, let us review some definitions.
Evolution: "A process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage". Thus an entity's evolution means that it changes over a period of time. One can trace a path between the original version of an entity to its current form.
Natural Selection: "A natural process resulting in the survival of entities best adapted to the environment". This means that at any given time entities that possess features that help them maintain their form and to reproduce in the current environment continue to survive in preference to those that are less suited to that environment.
Mutation: "A change or alteration in form or qualities" In layman's terms, a mutation is a tweak (for better or for worse) to something that already exists.
Darwinian evolution suggests that 'random' mutations in a species causes that species to change over a period of time. It does so by producing newer versions of that species' members that are chosen to propagate based on natural selection i.e. they are chosen if they are fitter compared to other members of the species. Over time these changes accumulate and cause a new version of that species to emerge, i.e. a new species to emerge.
A flavor of intelligent design, which I shall call 'intelligent evolution' to distinguish it from other flavors of intelligent design, offers exactly the same mechanism as Darwinian evolution with one significant difference. It suggests that those mutations were not 'random'. It suggests that the same process that results in the phenomena of human consciousness and intelligence is also active at smaller scales and causes those mutations (I proposed intelligent evolution in an online paper in March 1998). Intelligent evolution does not assume either a God or a supernatural being. It proposes that the same natural process occurring inside you as you read this article somehow occurs at smaller scales (such as at the genetic level) in much the same way it occurs as you read, write, think or talk. This is a simpler explanation than Darwinian evolution. This is because intelligent evolution has the potential to explain not just biological evolution but all other forms of evolution as well.
Let us consider a thought experiment that I call: 'Car Carcasses'.
"It is the year three thousand twelve. We are all dead. A spaceship carrying scientists from an alien civilization lands on our planet. With one notable exception, they find no trace of our existence. They find no bodies, no buildings, no books, no computers and no animals. But they do find something strange. They find the carcasses of our cars. Lots of them. Of different shapes, sizes and color. Some in groups. Some isolated. Some so broken, that they have to carefully piece them together from old withering fragments. They discover how cars were born en masse in large wombs. They discover what they ate and how they ate it. They discover how they ran around on roads. They find smaller cars in places with smaller roads and bigger cars in places with larger roads. They see how older cars buried in deeper layers are less powerful, less robust and less efficient than the newer ones they discover higher in the Earth's soil."
After several alien-years (but only one Earth-day) of research, they came to an astonishing conclusion about the existence of this car-species. All alien scientists unanimously agree that this car-species had formed in exactly the same way that their own species had formed on their own planet: Evolution"
Indeed everything, from
televisions to cars and even scientific theories, has evolved from a primitive
predecessor to its modern sophisticated version. Does the first plane look
anything like the modern fighter jet? Does the modern corporation with its
multiple divisions handling sales, marketing, human resources and other
functions resemble at all the ancient trading entities of the past?
Do modern physics or modern biology have anything in common with
the primitive theories of ancient
In all cases, whether it be modern fighter jets, corporations or theories, the progress was achieved through incremental tweaks. Sometimes these tweaks happened quite frequently while at other times those tweaks were slower to occur. Some tweaks were merely ornamental and had no clear purpose other than a 'human' aesthetic (Hence we have flamboyantly designed cars or clothes or buildings) Many tweaks were 'intended', however, to improve upon the original. Some of these tweaks helped the original and some of them weakened it. In a manner that is parallel to natural selection, the beneficial tweaks accumulated and caused drastic changes to the original. What was the natural selection process? A plane that could fly faster and more safely was selected over others. A corporation that could produce valuable goods with less resources was selected over others. And theories that could explain existing phenomena with more accuracy and precision were selected over others.
These tweaks could not be considered 'random'. At least not from our human perspective. These tweaks were made with conscious intent. Every tweak was made with an 'intent' to improve but with no certainty that an improvement would actually occur and be accepted by the environment. A faster plane that was unsafe and crashed more often probably did not make it. Organizations with different structures, strategies or products that were inefficient died away. Tweaks to theories that couldn't explain more precise evidence did not stand. A human intelligence was behind each of these tweaks. Both ones that succeeded and ones that failed. It cannot be argued that just because there were tweaks in planes, organizations and theories that in hindsight looked like mistakes, that an intelligence could not be their author. Similarly, potential design flaws in tweaks or mutations made at a genetic scale cannot rule out an intelligent designer. In fact the opposite is probably true. Those very flaws support the possibility of an intelligent designer. In his op-ed article Dennett offers the blind spot in human eyes as a design defect to argue that an intelligent designer could not have been responsible for the eye's design since such a designer would not make a design error. One can find several defects in the Internet, the healthcare system, airlines, subway systems, computers and even the democratic form of government as it exists today. All have flaws. Does that mean we did not design them?
Biological evolution has been proven through experiments and fossil records. That it occurs through natural selection has also been established. No one, however, has proven or disproved that purely random events can accumulate over any period of time to result in biological evolution. Intelligent evolution, unlike other variants of intelligent design, does not claim that an external 'power' or a God is responsible for biological mutations. Instead it claims that the same processes that result in human consciousness and intelligence operate at smaller scales, just like those processes operate at the scale of cars, jets, corporations and theories. These processes cause mutations with the conscious intent of improvement. Many of these mutations do not succeed. Just like many more ideas for products, companies or theories fail than succeed.
In his article, Dennett
argues that intelligent design proponents are confusing the brilliance of the
product of evolution with that of the processes that result in those products.
He calls this cognitive illusion. This is a specious argument. Look at
any mountain and one can say through geological examination that
it has evolved over several millennia to now look as it does. Or look at
images of Meridiani Planum
returned from Mars by the rover
The best counterpoint to Dennett's cognitive illusion argument lies in the test for intelligence itself. For if one could test for intelligence, then a form of that test could be applied to the products of evolution.
Ultimately the theory of intelligent evolution does merge the question of evolution with that of human consciousness and human intelligence. To test if these mutations are indeed the product of human-like intelligence, we must first be able to test for intelligence and consciousness. As of this writing, no one truly understands the scientific basis for human consciousness or human intelligence. The best known test for intelligence, formulated by Alan Turing in 1950, is called the Turing test. It proposed that one way to test for consciousness in computers is for a human (i.e. a conscious entity that we all trust is conscious) to try and distinguish the actions of a computer from that of another human (i.e. another conscious entity that we all trust is conscious). If the human couldn't distinguish between the two then the computer would be considered conscious according to the test. No computer to date has succeeded in passing a formal Turing test. Although there isn't a formal test for intelligent evolution, it will probably utilize some form of the Turing Test. Therein lies the problem with Dennett's claim of a 'cognitive illusion'. If one believes the cognitive illusion argument then one must also believe that a machine that succeeds in passing the Turing Test cannot be considered conscious. That the brilliance of the product (i.e. intelligent conversation produced by the computer) should not be confused with purposelessness or the stupidity of the process (i.e. the mindless processing of 1s and 0s inside a computer that produces that conversation). Indeed such arguments have been presented against the Turing Test in the past, most notably Searle's Chinese Room argument. Dennett, however, supports the Turing Test.
Dennett accuses intelligent
design theorists of unjustifiably taking advantages of gaps in existing
evolutionary theory. But those gaps are exactly what a theory like intelligent
evolution hopes to fill. The biggest challenge with current biological
evolutionary theory is not the fact of evolution or natural selection, but that
the mutations underlying the evolutionary process are random. What is random
and what is intentional? How do we tell? One plane crashing into the
Which brings up the question: "How do we test intelligent evolution?" Just because intelligent evolution is plausible does not mean that is what happened or what continues to happen today.
Let us consider another thought experiment first.
"An accomplished geneticist completes a minor mutation of a single gene in one of his own sperm cells and mates it with his wife's egg. He does this modification with the specific intent of modifying a protein produced by that gene in order to achieve a beneficial effect on the eyesight of the person bearing the modified gene. The resulting child, his daughter, turns out to have significantly better eyesight than anyone in her paternal or maternal extended families. This experiment could easily have gone bad and caused harmful damage to the scientist's daughter. The success of the geneticist's tweak will be determined by natural selection, i.e. if better sight does help his daughter and her future children survive and reproduce more effectively than others."
This scenario is not science fiction. This is a real possibility today. In developing a test for intelligent evolution, how would one distinguish the geneticist's obviously 'intentional' modification from a 'random' one? Dennett ridicules the idea of intelligent design by asking us to consider the possibility of scientists visiting from outer-space who conduct large-scale modifications on primates. The idea being that we could test an alien-scientist hypothesis by finding a 'smoking gun' genetic user manual in the human genome. But why look for aliens when humans can make genetic modifications today. For example, how could you tell if the modification in the geneticist's daughter is random or intentional? The geneticist did not insert a ‘user manual’ in his daughter. He modified a single gene in the reams of genetic code encoded in his sperm cell DNA. The question devolves immediately into what is human intelligence and what isn't. The final chapter on evolution cannot be closed without also answering the ultimate puzzle: that of human consciousness. The scientific test for and a proof of intelligent evolution will, in the end, be based on a scientific understanding of human consciousness and intelligence.
I agree that none of the intelligent design theories are ready for school textbooks. But I think they are ready to be taken seriously.