No More Learning

What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished real world but a model of the real world, regulated and adjusted by sense data - a model that is constructed so that it is useful for dealing with the real world. The nature of that model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of world model from a walking, a climbing or a swimming animal. Predators need a different kind of model from prey, even though their worlds necessarily overlap. A monkey's brain must have software capable
372 THE GOD DELUSION
of simulating a three-dimensional maze of branches and trunks. A water boatman's brain doesn't need 3D software, since it lives on the surface of the pond in an Edwin Abbott Flatland. A mole's software for constructing models of the world will be customized for underground use. A naked mole rat probably has world- representing software similar to a mole's. But a squirrel, although it is a rodent like the mole rat, probably has world-rendering software much more like a monkey's.
I've speculated, in The Blind Watchmaker and elsewhere, that bats may 'see' colour with their ears. The world-model that a bat needs, in order to navigate through three dimensions catching insects, must surely be similar to the model that a swallow needs in order to perform much the same task. The fact that the bat uses echoes to update the variables in its model, while the swallow uses light, is incidental. Bats, I suggest, use perceived hues such as 'red' and 'blue' as internal labels for some useful aspect of echoes, perhaps the acoustic texture of surfaces; just as swallows use the same perceived hues to label long and short wavelengths of light. The point is that the nature of the model is governed by how it is to be used rather than by the sensory modality involved. The lesson of the bats is this. The general form of the mind model - as opposed to the variables that are constantly being inputted by sensory nerves - is an adaptation to the animal's way of life, no less than its wings, legs and tail are.
J. B. S. Haldane, in the article on 'possible worlds' that I quoted above, had something relevant to say about animals whose world is dominated by smell. He noted that dogs can distinguish two very similar volatile fatty acids - caprylic acid and caproic acid - each diluted to one part in a million. The only difference is that caprylic acid's main molecular chain is two carbon atoms longer than the main chain of caproic acid. A dog, Haldane guesses, would prob- ably be able to place the acids 'in the order of their molecular weights by their smells, just as a man could place a number of piano wires in the order of their lengths by means of their notes'.
There is another fatty acid, capric acid, which is just like the other two except that it has yet two more carbon atoms in its main chain. A dog that had never met capric acid would perhaps have no more trouble imagining its smell than we would have trouble
A M U C H N E E D E D G A P ? 373
imagining a trumpet playing one note higher than we have heard a trumpet play before. It seems to me entirely reasonable to guess that a dog, or a rhinoceros, might treat mixtures of smells as harmonious chords. Perhaps there are discords. Probably not melodies, for melodies are built up of notes that start or stop abruptly with accurate timing, unlike smells. Or perhaps dogs and rhinos smell in colour. The argument would be the same as for the bats.
Once again, the perceptions that we call colours are tools used by our brains to label important distinctions in the outside world. Perceived hues - what philosophers call qualia - have no intrinsic connection with lights of particular wavelengths. They are internal labels that are available to the brain, when it constructs its model of external reality, to make distinctions that are especially salient to the animal concerned. In our case, or that of a bird, that means light of different wavelengths. In a bat's case, I have speculated, it might be surfaces of different echoic properties or textures, perhaps red for shiny, blue for velvety, green for abrasive. And in a dog's or a rhino's case, why should it not be smells? The power to imagine the alien world of a bat or a rhino, a pond skater or a mole, a bacterium or a bark beetle, is one of the privileges science grants us
when it tugs at the black cloth of our burka and shows us the wider range of what is out there for our delight.
The metaphor of Middle World - of the intermediate range of phenomena that the narrow slit in our burka permits us to see - applies to yet other scales or 'spectrums'. We can construct a scale of improbabilities, with a similarly narrow window through which our intuition and imagination are capable of going. At one extreme of the spectrum of improbabilities are those would-be events that we call impossible. Miracles are events that are extremely im- probable. A statue of a madonna could wave its hand at us. The atoms that make up its crystalline structure are all vibrating back and forth. Because there are so many of them, and because there is no agreed preference in their direction of motion, the hand, as we see it in Middle World, stays rock steady. But the jiggling atoms in the hand could all just happen to move in the same direction at the same time. And again. And again . . . In this case the hand would move, and we'd see it waving at us. It could happen, but the odds
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against are so great that, if you had set out writing the number at the origin of the universe, you still would not have written enough zeroes to this day. The power to calculate such odds - the power to quantify the near-impossible rather than just throw up our hands in despair - is another example of the liberating benefactions of science to the human spirit.
Evolution in Middle World has ill equipped us to handle very improbable events. But in the vastness of astronomical space, or geological time, events that seem impossible in Middle World turn out to be inevitable. Science flings open the narrow window through which we are accustomed to viewing the spectrum of possibilities. We are liberated by calculation and reason to visit regions of possibility that had once seemed out of bounds or in- habited by dragons. We have already made use of this widening of the window in Chapter 4, where we considered the improbability of the origin of life and how even a near-impossible chemical event must come to pass given enough planet years to play with; and where we considered the spectrum of possible universes, each with its own set of laws and constants, and the anthropic necessity of finding ourselves in one of the minority of friendly places.
How should we interpret Haldane's 'queerer than we can suppose'? Queerer than can, in principle, be supposed? Or just queerer than we can suppose, given the limitation of our brains' evolutionary apprenticeship in Middle World? Could we, by train- ing and practice, emancipate ourselves from Middle World, tear off our black burka, and achieve some sort of intuitive - as well as just mathematical - understanding of the very small, the very large, and the very fast? I genuinely don't know the answer, but I am thrilled to be alive at a time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.
Appendix
A partial list of friendly addresses, for individuals needing support in escaping from religion
I intend to keep an updated version of this list on the website of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science: www. richarddawkins. net. I apologize for limiting the list below largely to the English-speaking world.
USA
American Atheists
PO Box 5733, Parsippany, NJ 07054-6733 Voicemail: 1-908-276-7300
Fax: 1-908-276-7402
Email: info@atheists. org
www. atheists. org
American Humanist Association
1777 T Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009-7125 Telephone: (202) 238-9088
Toll-free: 1-800-837-3792
Fax: (202) 238-9003
www. americanhumanist. org
Atheist Alliance International
PO Box 26867, Los Angeles, CA 90026 Toll-free: 1-866-HERETIC
Email: info@atheistalliance. org www. atheistalliance. org
The Brights
PO Box 163418, Sacramento, CA 95816 USA Email: the-brights@the-brights. net www. the-brights. net
Center For Inquiry Transnational Council for Secular Humanism Campus Freethought Alliance Center for Inquiry - On Campus
376 T H E G O D D E L U S I O N
African Americans for Humanism
3965 Rensch Road, Amherst, NY 14228
Telephone: (716) 636-4869
Fax:(716)636-1733
Email: info@secularhumanism. org
www. centerforinquiry. net
www. secularhumanism. org
www. campusfreethought. org www. secularhumanism. org/index. php? section=aah&page=index
Freedom From Religion Foundation PO Box 750, Madison, WI 53701 Telephone: (608) 256-5800
Email: info@ffrf. org
www. ffrf. org
Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia PO Box 242, Pocopson, PA 19366-0242 Telephone: (610) 793-2737
Fax: (610) 793-2569
Email: fsgp@freethought. org www. fsgp. org/
Institute for Humanist Studies
48 Howard St, Albany, NY 12207 Telephone: (518) 432-7820
Fax: (518) 432-7821 www. humaniststudies. org
International Humanist and Ethical Union - USA
Appignani Bioethics Center
PO Box 4104, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10162 Telephone: (212) 687-3324
Fax: (212) 661-4188
Internet Infidels
PO Box 142, Colorado Springs, CO 80901-0142 Fax: (877) 501-5113
www. infidels. org
James Randi Educational Foundation
201 S. E. 12th St (E. Davie Blvd), Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815 Telephone: (954)467-1112
Fax: (954) 467-1660
Email: jref@randi. org www. randi. org
Secular Coalition for America
PO Box 53330, Washington, DC 20009-9997 Telephone: (202) 299-1091
www. secular. org
Secular Student Alliance
PO Box 3246, Columbus, OH 43210 Toll-free Voicemail / Fax: 1-877-842-9474 Email: ssa@secularstudents. org www. secularstudents. org
The Skeptics Society
PO Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001 Telephone: (626) 794-3119
Fax: (626) 794-1301
Email: editorial@skeptic. com www. skeptic. com
Society for Humanistic Judaism
28611 W. 12 Mile Rd, Farmington Hills, MI 48334 Telephone: (248) 478-7610
Fax: (248)478-3159
Email: info@shj. org
www. shj. org
Britain
British Humanist Association
1 Gower Street, London WC1E 6HD Telephone: 020 7079 3580
Fax: 020 7079 3588
Email: info@humanism. org. uk www. humanism. org. uk
International Humanist and Ethical Union - UK 1 Gower Street, London WC1E 6HD Telephone: 020 7631 3170
Fax: 020 7631 3171
www. iheu. org/
APPENDIX 377
378 THEGODDELUSION
National Secular Society
25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tel: 020 7404 3126
Fax: 0870 762 8971 www. secularisrn. org. uk/
New Humanist
1 Gower Street, London WC1E 6HD Telephone: 020 7436 1151
Fax: 020 7079 3588
Email: info@newhumanist. org. uk www. newhumanist. org. uk
Rationalist Press Association
1 Gower Street, London WC1E 6HD Telephone: 020 7436 1151
Fax: 020 7079 3588
Email: info@rationalist. org. uk www. rationalist. org. uk/
South Place Ethical Society (UK)
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Telephone: 020 7242 8037/4
Fax: 020 7242 8036
Email: library@ethicalsoc. org. uk www. ethicalsoc. org. uk
Canada
Humanist Association of Canada
PO Box 8752, Station T, Ottawa, Ontario, K1G 3J1 Telephone: 877-HUMANS-l
Fax: (613) 739-4801
Email: HAC@Humanists. ca
http://hac. humanists. net/
Australia
Australian Skeptics
PO Box 268, Roseville, NSW 2069 Telephone: 02 9417 2071
Email: skeptics@bdsn. com. au www. skeptics. com. au
APPENDIX 379
Council of Australian Humanist Societies
GPO Box 1555, Melbourne, Victoria 3001.
Telephone: 613 5974 4096
Email: AMcPhate@bigpond. net. au http://home. vicnet. net. au/~humanist/resources/cahs. html
New Zealand
New Zealand Skeptics NZCSICOP Inc.
PO Box 29-492, Christchurch Email: skeptics@spis. co. nz http://skeptics. org. nz
Humanist Society of New Zealand PO Box 3372, Wellington
Email: jeffhunt90@yahoo. co. nz www. humanist. org. nz/
India
Rationalist International
PO Box 9110, New Delhi 110091 Telephone: + 91-11-556 990 12
Email: info@rationalistinternational. net www. rationalistinternational. net/
Islamic
Apostates of Islam www. apostatesofislam. com/index. htm
Dr Homa Darabi Foundation
(To promote the rights of women and children under Islam) PO Box 11049, Truckee, CA 96162, USA
Telephone (530) 582 4197
Fax (530) 582 0156
Email: homa@homa. org
www. homa. org/
FaithFreedom. org www. faithfreedom. org/index. htm
Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society Email: info@SecularIslam. org www. secularislam. org/Default. htm
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