Zombies will eat Richard Dawkins. Can Emily Dickinson save him?

I like Richard Dawkins. He has a pleasant accent, charming snark, and an elegant way with words. I wish I could write as well as he can. He’s also Kenya born as am I.

Dawkins is an elder now at 83 years of age. He seems to be in good health, speaking and rallying the science faithful with a youthful vigor and I wish him many more good years. But I fear even his advanced age won’t deter the zombies after him!

You see, according to the theory of evolution —Dawkins has been a prolific and articulate messenger for the Church of Darwin —all that matters is the “Four Fs”: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproducing.

Life is without purpose beyond passing on genes, specifically those well adapted for the Four Fs. With five children from three wives, at least one paid off mistress, along with other F attributes, naturally Donald Trump is a hero of human evolution based on it logic. (Is it true he wants to rename the Atlantic Ocean to “the Ocean of Florida”?).

But if the Four Fs are all that matter, why are humans not zombies? I am serious. Excuse me here as I bring in another Brit, philosopher of mind and consciousness Philip Goff:

The word ‘zombie’ is something of a technical term in consciousness research. We don’t mean the lumbering, flesh-eating monsters we know from Hollywood movies. We’re rather thinking of an imaginary creature which, in terms of its behavior and the physical processing in its brains, is indiscernible from a normal being but which totally lacks conscious experience. If you stick a knife in a zombie, it screams and runs away but it doesn’t actually feel pain….A philosophical zombie is just an unfeeling mechanism set up to behave like a normal human being.

David Chalmers popularized the concept of “philosophical zombies” and Goff expands on it by introducing “meaning zombies”:

Meaning zombies are a development on this idea. In contrast to their regular zombie cousins, meaning zombies have conscious experience. But the conscious experience of a meaning zombie is restricted to meaningless sensation: colours, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. A meaning zombie has no experiential understanding of the world.

Goff contrasts experiential understanding with functional understanding. The computer that beat the top human chess grandmaster the year 1997 (Garry Kasparov) clearly had functional understanding of chess. But did it understand chess in the grounded, experiential way humans do?

Experiential understanding is seeing your child crying and understanding she is sad, as Goff points out. It is so innate to humans that we hardly notice it, and thus it is largely ignored in consciousness research. A.I is pretty advanced now and some car company may soon produce a robot that can scan all the data in your house and by sound wave frequency and pitch accurately tell your child is sad. (Text message to Mama at office: Baby Joe is sad. Shall I order some snacks from Amazon?). Such a robot will like the triumphant Deep Blue have functional understanding, but would you trust it with your child?

Why is it, Goff asks, that humans are not meaning zombies?

Natural selection has no interest in the quality of your inner life, so long as you’re going to do the kinds of things that’ll make you live longer and pass on your genes. On the face of it, we cannot explain in evolutionary terms why we are not meaning zombies.

This strikes me as an important question, and Goff elucidates his own theory in his book. Where will we find the answer? Science? Maybe, although lately we’re hearing science chatter that says: consciousness is illusion.

But maybe science isn’t the right place for an answer, and I think many scientists may agree. Personally I think we should look more to poetry for answers than peer-reviewed prose. There’s no doubt Emily Dickinson, a reclusive spinster, failed the Four Fs. She’s no heroine of Darwinian evolution that’s for sure; the fawning devotion of English teachers everywhere be damned. But is Dickinson just another woman who lost to Donald?

My brain thinks not, but let yours decide!

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

For—put them side by side—

The one the other will contain

With ease—and you—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—

For—hold them—Blue to Blue—

The one the other will absorb—

As sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—

For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—

And they will differ—if they do—

As Syllable from Sound—

Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

Resources:

• Why? The purpose of the Universe by Phillip Goff

  • Goff often writes on the concept of panpsychism. Here is Federico Faggin, inventor of the CPU, discussing the subject: Quantum Information Panpsychism Explained.