MAN A MACHINE, LOVE A VIRUS:

System error, reboot mind: New theory claims that brains catch ideas the way computers catch software viruses (David Nartonis, September 26, 2002, CS Monitor)

Two assumptions underlie much contemporary study of the human condition: First, that humans are nothing more than complex, organic machines. Second, that as we learn to build more complex machines, their internal workings will increase our understanding of the human machine.

Some biologists believe that the role of DNA in biology and evolution goes a long way toward justifying the first of these assumptions.

In this view, genes that produce loving humans survive because the children of such parents are more likely to survive. Similarly, genes that produce people who believe in God are more likely to survive because such people are less anxious and less vulnerable to disease produced by stress. [...]

Aunger credits biologist Richard Dawkins with the next step in reducing humans to machines. According to Dawkins, not only are humans controlled by the brains and bodies that genes give them but also by ideas that they catch from other humans. [...]

What does this theory claim, then, about the mechanism of the human mind? Up to a point, what humans think, say, and do is determined by their genetic makeup. Beyond that point, much of what humans think, say, and do is determined by whatever memes have infected their brains.

What kind of human thinking and behavior might be controlled by these memes? "Something as small as a sound or as large as a religious tradition," Aunger writes.

He readily admits that memes and genes may not be all there is to being human. But "this doesn't mean that the ancient philosophical notion of 'free will' can survive the coming onslaught of neuroscientific advances," he warns. "It is still likely that we will have to recognize that the mind is an emergent property of the brain, and nothing more."

Lay partisans of evolution keep telling us that this isn't the logical outcome of their beliefs, but the experts keep saying otherwise. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 5, 2002 10:57 AM