I'm going to try and explain why it made a difference in my life as briefly as I can.
I read it in the early 90s as a teenager at a community college in the suburbs, along with the Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, at a point in my life when I was struggling with having a lot of doubt about Catholicism, and the _one_ thing that was keeping me from just giving up on religion entirely was that I just couldn't understand how the experience of _being_ could be anything but a spiritual soul, and those two books gave me the intellectual tools to basically completely rebuild my entire conception of what and who I was -- which is to say that I could finally see consciousness as the an emergent property of ordinary matter, and the relationship between consciousness and computation.
It's an experience you can only have if you read the right books at the right time in your life. You can only be exposed to any particular idea for the first time once in your life, and if they ideas in those books are not new to you, I'm sure you'll find GEB pretentious and ponderous or whatever, but for me it was like fireworks going off on every page. I read it and reread it and took notes on it and used it as a launching point for more reading for years afterwards.
edit with some extra thoughts: Keep in mind this book was written in 1979, when vanishingly few people had access to computers, let alone the internet. There was no wikipedia you could go to to scratch an itch about some topic. GEB is encyclopedic in scope and meandering because it _had to be_, he couldn't expect an audience who were familiar with _computers_ let alone artificial intelligence and set theory. It's really extraordinary that it's accessible as it is, given the breadth that it covered.
Today, given the advances in all the things he was talking about, I would think it's mostly interesting to read for historical reasons.
Funny, I did pretty much the same journey when I was young. As I grew older, I became disenchanted and eventually journeyed all the way back.
There are questions about conscience, the origin of the universe, the ultimate nature of reality, etc. that we haven't answered yet and perhaps never will. We have theories and we have models. We don't know which theories are correct yet and, if we eventually find a model that seems to work, we might not even be sure if it reflects reality or simply predicts it (like Newton's equations).
Furthermore, not all questions can be answered in this way. Every ethics system is grounded on metaphysics in one way or another: on concepts which are completely human-made, culturally-dependent, non-observable. Even the most Darwinian doctrines do this: genes don't actually "want" to be preserved and passed on, any more than rocks "want" to fall. Religions are simply more explicit about this than other belief systems.
Finally, it certainly doesn't help Dawkins and his followers that, despite claiming to be on the side of reason and truth, systematically let their judgements be influenced by their prejudices and preconceived notions. A more informed and grounded view of history would understand that a notion of the transcendent and the divine was the foundation for much of the progress of humanity.
So true. In the end, any truth is anchored in a beliefs system and you have to chose yours (or ignore that you've chosen one). Better chose one that helps you live a good and happy life...
I find Penrose's argument uncompelling: he doesn't see how ordinary physics could result in the sensation of beingness and experience, and we don't really understand quantum mechanics, therefore quantum mechanics is responsible for consciousness. (obviously, his book works on it for 500 pages so my summary is a parody, but that was the gist as far as I can remember)
Or one could speculate that consciousness arises from as-yet-undiscovered noncomputable laws of quantum gravity operating within brain structures called microtubules, as Sir Roger Penrose did in his 1994 book *Shadows of the Mind*
Heh yeah doesn’t seem great. I think it’s you nailed it. This is from one of the reviews posted above
The Lucas-Penrose argument is not generally accepted among philosophers. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it fails - truth isn't a popularity contest - but it does indicate there are some subtleties at play here; it's not so obvious Emperor of the Mind/Shadows of the Mind succeeds in its argument.
Speaking of Scott Aaronson he has more recently (2013) wrote a much longer exposition about consciousness and (quantum) computation, and has a chapter specifically for Penrose: https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/giqtm3.pdf
I can't recommend The Selfish Gene enough. I wish it was mandatory reading in school or something. Contrary to GEB it is very accessible and a phenomenal introduction to the theory of evolution. It gets a point across, school books don't.
However, Richard Dawkins has become a very detestable person, cringeworthy culture warrior, rage beneficiary. So, make what you want with that info. Maybe consider a library or pirate the audio book.
I found the book a little depressing eg. the quote on the cover of some editions “We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
He got a bit more upbeat in later books. I'm not sure Dawkins is detestable but he's a bit humorless at times. The Telegraph has quite a good article on his culture war stuff https://archive.ph/kNJXN
> robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes
I think, his proposed theoretical framework about genes as the sole target of selective pressure, seems to be widely rejected by evolutionary scientists, these days. Anyway, the way he argues and illustrates evolution on the "atomic" level, that's what I consider extremely valuable. He inspires an intuition for evolutionary processes transcending "living matter". At least in me.
> The Telegraph has quite a good article on his culture war stuff
In what way do you think this is a good article? Do you think it's a very sincere and thorough representation of the extent of his activism?
This is a culture war piece itself, white-washing Dawkins as someone who is "just concerned" about debate and free speech, when in fact he seeks the legal abolition of transgender people, all the way up to the UN's declaration of human rights [1]. Not quite the neutral portrait, full of journalistic integrity, you linked there.
Now, I don't want to get into that argument.
However, should be no matter your political opinion on the issue, if someone in a position of power uses his influence to kick down massively at basic legal protections of a tiny, tiny, tiny and weak minority, without need, just to stay relevant ... that should classify as detestable in my books.
Sorry, I wasn't clear: Dawkins signed and promoted it [1].
Side note: A move, by an outspoken and activist atheist, celebrated by various christian think tank outlets. Can't make this up.
Then again, WDI founders themselves collaborated with United Families International, The Heritage Foundation and similar before [2]. All natural allies... lol. But hey, guess that 0.5% of the population, disproportionately affected by precarious living situations and suicide risk, certainly poses the greatest threat to civilization right now, so women's bodily autonomy has to take the L. Totally organic outrage Dawkins is participating in...
They don't straight up call for the extermination. Lol. The whole text is about abolishing protections granted by gender identity in a law and practice. It is based on the presumption there no such thing as gender identity, as recognized by the UN, most of the medical and psychology community, and advocates for manifestation of their own ideology - therefore implicitly abolishing transgender people legally, and effectively by restricting medical care and access existential resources.
But you know all that. Made an account just to spread some doubt. I wonder, if it's all that harmless and good, why not use your primary account?
No, it's about protecting women's sex-based rights. Having every point in the declaration enacted in law and policy would abolish no-one.
Men could still claim to be women and present themselves in a feminine manner if they so desire. There's nothing to prevent their freedom of belief and freedom of expression. The difference is that this wouldn't entitle them to access female spaces, and indeed would not grant them any special privileges under the law.
This isn't abolition, just like separation of church and state doesn't abolish religious folks, with them being free to practice their beliefs within their own communities of like-minded people. Same principle should apply to 'gender identity' beliefs.
If you disagree, please cite those parts of the declaration that you believe shows otherwise.
> However, Richard Dawkins has become a very detestable person, cringeworthy culture warrior, rage beneficiary.
Yeah.. My personal introduction to Dawkins was actually some TV documentary he made that covered about the same topics as the God Delusion, then I read the book itself. Only after that I read the Selfish Gene, which IMHO philosophically was a much more interesting book.
I did sort-of follow the "new atheism" movement for a time, the "four horsemen" and all that [1]. But it seemed to pretty quickly spiral into the cringy culture war thing you mention, so I stopped.
[1] I don't agree with many of the things Christopher Hitchens said, but damn he was a good orator and public debater.
It's sad really. I mean it. I adored him, his thorough, a bit arrogant style of argumentation. If he had stayed with biology and science education, he could have had a legacy of greatness. Now, he will die as just another edgelord, who thought they've become experts on everything; a content creator for the suck.
Dawkins is an old, old man, his days are counted. I hope with time The Selfish Gene will get a life of its own, with the person Dawkins becoming nothing more than a short side note, on a great educator falling victim to his ego. This book will endure, his Tweets won't.
Every book about the nature of consciousness has problems. It's not a solved problem. For me it wasn't the details but just laying out the landscape and I could see how to get there from here, if that makes sense.
Beautifully put! I recommend “Kants System of Perspectives” by Palmquist, it’s free online, short/skimmable, and explains in detail how Kant (200y ago!) was trying to do exactly this; acknowledge the unknowable parts of the problem, and instead focus on reasoning out the “landscape” or structure of it
What an unexpected connection: Stephen Palmquist used to run the Hong Kong Philosophy Café, until he left the city recently, possibly in the wake of the political changes.
Judging by the description on Skeptics I’d expect strongly Kantian views to not be very well received (they don’t particularly align with physicalism, and I find when people mention “science” they typically mean physicalism/materialistic monism), but who knows!
It's untestable. You cannot experimentally measure qualia, so there is no real way to differentiate between these theories. But any one of them fully explain the phenomenon, without resorting to nonsensical quantum woo.
I'm not arguing about the nature of consciousness. I'm just pointing out it's not the same as qualia. I am 100 percent sure animals experience the sensation of qualia. I don't know if they are conscious. Same with newborns. It's unclear. Qualia has nothing to do with awareness of oneself. It's different altogether.
If Hofstadter's book were right, it explains only consciousness. To put it another way.. he may really truly be a strange loop but what is the feeling of being a strange loop?
I read it in the early 90s as a teenager at a community college in the suburbs, along with the Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, at a point in my life when I was struggling with having a lot of doubt about Catholicism, and the _one_ thing that was keeping me from just giving up on religion entirely was that I just couldn't understand how the experience of _being_ could be anything but a spiritual soul, and those two books gave me the intellectual tools to basically completely rebuild my entire conception of what and who I was -- which is to say that I could finally see consciousness as the an emergent property of ordinary matter, and the relationship between consciousness and computation.
It's an experience you can only have if you read the right books at the right time in your life. You can only be exposed to any particular idea for the first time once in your life, and if they ideas in those books are not new to you, I'm sure you'll find GEB pretentious and ponderous or whatever, but for me it was like fireworks going off on every page. I read it and reread it and took notes on it and used it as a launching point for more reading for years afterwards.
edit with some extra thoughts: Keep in mind this book was written in 1979, when vanishingly few people had access to computers, let alone the internet. There was no wikipedia you could go to to scratch an itch about some topic. GEB is encyclopedic in scope and meandering because it _had to be_, he couldn't expect an audience who were familiar with _computers_ let alone artificial intelligence and set theory. It's really extraordinary that it's accessible as it is, given the breadth that it covered.
Today, given the advances in all the things he was talking about, I would think it's mostly interesting to read for historical reasons.