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Editor's Foreword to Special Issue of American North American Philosophical Publications EDITOR’S FOREWORD TO SPECIAL ISSUE Author(s): Daniel Dennett Source: American Philosophical Quarterly , JANUARY 2021, Vol. 58, No. 1, SPECIAL ISSUE: Cultural Evolution and Generalized Darwinism: Theory and Applications (JANUARY 2021), pp. 1-6 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the North American Philosophical Publications Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48600681 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48600681?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. 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Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms North American Philosophical Publications and University of Illinois Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Philosophical Quarterly This content downloaded from 92.72.139.75 on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:18:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Editor’s Foreword to special issue CULTURAL EVOLUTION AND GENERALIZED DARWINISM: THEORY AND APPLICATIONS Daniel Dennett Natura non facit saltum —Leibniz, Linnaeus, and others Evolutionary theory has been a magnet than the desire not to pick a fight with our for revolutionaries since Darwin’s “strange many colleagues in the humanities and social inversion of reasoning” (Beverley 1867) over- sciences who unaccountably find evolution- turned the idea of Intelligent Design in 1859. ary thinking to be philistine, reductionist, And hence it has also been home over the and somehow disrespectful of the glories of decades to redoubtable champions of the day’s human civilization. Are there better reasons? orthodoxy, intent on squelching whatever William Paley (1802) was right about one upstart iconoclasts were currently mounting thing: mechanisms as intricate as watches do the barricades with their manifestos. It has not coalesce by coincidence, and neither do all been thrilling, with ringing denunciations exquisitely designed ribosomes or motor pro- of heresy from the defenders of echt (neo- ) teins. These are all the products of substantial Darwinism and equally ringing declarations histories of R&D, research and development, of the impending death of neo-Darwinism, and one way or another all that design work whether by the “hardening of the modern must be accounted for, as a series of gradual synthesis” (Gould 1983), or by evo-devo or or not so gradual transits away from chaos by epigenetics, or whatever other “revolu- to more ordered structures, preserving gains tionary” idea is in the limelight. Those who by some sort of ratchet. Before Darwin all would prefer to stay out of battle have often design was seen to trickle down, directly taken the reasonable precaution of avoiding or indirectly, from the Intelligent Designer: anything that smacked of heresy, denying God designed the eagle’s eye and the hum- themselves the dangerous luxury of anything mingbird’s wings, and if Leonardo da Vinci that looked remotely “Lamarckian” (e.g., the or Jane Austen or John Harrison (inventor Baldwin Effect) or “saltationist” or, shall we of the chronometer) were able to produce say, imperialist: the greedy application of Dar- intelligent designs, it was because they were winian theory beyond its “proper” limits. The blessed with God- given talents. As Alexander widespread reluctance to extend Darwinism Pope proclaimed in a charming couplet: to account for features of human culture is, Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: I suspect, in large part due to nothing deeper God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. ©2021 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois This content downloaded from 92.72.139.75 on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:18:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY Since Darwin, we have come to appreciate invented language, not even a succession of the tremendous power of gradual bubble- up dedicated would- be language- inventors, and processes of non- intelligent design, com- for that matter, even in the modern cases of petence without comprehension (Dennett quite sudden giant steps in technology, no 2017). Why, then, should researchers who single author or inventor deserves all the wholeheartedly endorse natural selection as credit—not Tim Berners Lee or Al Gore! the central mechanism that illuminates the Edison’s oft- quoted line about genius should origins of the sub- cellular nanomachinery actually be amended: 99 percent perspiration, of biology, as well as the macro- machinery 0.01 percent inspiration and 0.99 percent of eyes, wings and circulatory systems built luck. out of those brilliantly designed pieces, shrink Today we all—even the least “creative” from extending these powerful evolutionary of us—engage in the recursive construction ideas to the many excellent products of hu- activity of intelligent design so naturally that man culture? It is unlikely that they agree we can hardly imagine any other way things with Freeman Dyson, who has opined: might come to be designed. Whether writing a letter or painting a picture or inventing a Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life machine, we fix on a (revisable) goal, take it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. stock of the necessary ingredients, and set about trying to make something. When we If not God’s gift, then whose? The tradi- notice a novelty of some interest or potential tional answer has been that technology—and utility, we ask what it’s called or give it a culture more generally—is the gift of human name, and thereby add a new ingredient to geniuses, intelligent designers. Most of them our capacious cultural storehouse. “Hmm, if are anonymous, like the unknown inventors of I were to attach one of these thingamajigs to the spear, the plow, the wheel, and the sail, but a couple of those gizmos just so, I’d have a a few of them are celebrated as heroes, from whatchamacallit that might be able to do X.” Archimedes to Thomas Edison and Tim Bern- Recipes, drafts, blueprints, plans, scale mod- ers Lee. Did all these geniuses have language, els, analyses, brainstorming sessions, explicit or were some of their innovations produced predictions, deliberate trial and error explora- and propagated by pre- linguistic hominins? tion of variations—all the conscious activi- Language, the chief enabler of cumulative ties of an intelligent human designer seem culture, is a “communication technology” to depend at least indirectly on language, (Dor 2014), and so it, too, is not a gift of God even when the designer works wordlessly but something that had to evolve. It is tempt- with diagrams and silent manipulations of ing to suppose that without language, there materials. It is the designer’s ability to explain would be no mechanism, no memory ratchet what she is doing (and why) that persuades system (like DNA), for preserving cultural us of her comprehension, and satisfies our innovations long enough to build further inno- curiosity about her intelligence, about her vations on top of them. So it is also tempting authorship of whatever she produces. But are to see all the well- functioning elements of all the design innovations of human culture culture as the result of conscious, intellec- such brainchildren of intelligent designers, tually explicit processes. We should resist inhabitants of the cognitive niche (Pinker these temptations, since they lead to awkward 2003; 2010)? Why would that be, and would conclusions about early giant steps in Design it even be possible? Space that are as improbable as the “hopeful When we turn to the capabilities of other monsters” of Goldschmidt (1944). Nobody species, we see a rich variety of talents, This content downloaded from 92.72.139.75 on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:18:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Foreword / 3 roughly placed on a gradual scale from in- gaps between the world of wild animals and nate “instincts” that genetic evolution pro- the world of civilization and culture. Why, vides “hard- wired” at birth, through readily then, do so many thoughtful researchers on learned, or triggered, adaptive responses, human culture largely ignore the Darwin- through quite mindless trial-and- error ian processes that one would think could conditioning, through stimulus- enhanced explain this accumulation of talent? Perhaps (attention- directing) learning with help from because they think that once such processes parents to a few remarkable instances where have designed human brains, the activities parents adopt methods or systems of instruc- of those intelligent brains suffice to explain tion (in flying, hunting, hiding, . .), but, of all the further design work that has gone course, no explicit instruction (Dor 2014). into culture. Mesoudi (this issue) shows that How much comprehension should we at- there is a better idea: a transition from blind tribute to the participants in these various trial- and- error to intelligent trial- and- error. instances of learning or design-enhancement? Cultural evolution has itself evolved, as its How much do corvids understand when they accumulated products have enabled ever observe their conspecifics solving a novel more directed (and disruptive) innovations problem? How much do lionesses understand (Dennett 2017). when they lead their cubs through what seem Heyes’ (2018) suggests that meta- cognition, to be hunting drills? We should be wary of our capacity to reflect on our own thinking, over- attributing comprehension in these cases is a strongly distinguishing talent, and Distin of highly appropriate behavior.
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