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Hypothesis
Kris ROOSE
Summary
The next stage in evolution (in fact the current one) is a socialization, the
development of a Noosphere, consisting in a continuously progressing
integration of the individual mind contents. This process culminates into a global
or universal unanimity of minds, with an intense global interaction, but without
losing their individuality, and thus conserving the ability tp stay aware of, and to
consciously control reality, each individual at the highest possible intellectual
level. Of course, devices from Internet to direct computer-to-brain connections
will significantly enhance this ability. The arguments for this hypothesis state that
such a vision is perhaps more in compliance with the general laws of universal
evolution than the Global Brain hypothesis does.
Introduction
If we make projections for the future, i.e. the future of the current socialisation stage
(stratum 9 of the evolving Universe model), most of authors are unanimous that
probably a greater form of collective consciousness will be developed. Yet two major
hypotheses are advanced: the Global Brain hypothesis with the related Gaia hypothesis,
and the Global Mind hypothesis.
The Global Brain hypothesis is a "hardware" hypothesis, describing the ultimate
integration of all human minds, probably combined with powerful computers, forming
together one hyper-brain, functioning on a higher level than each separate brain, like
then human brain functions on a higher level than each separate nerve cell. As nerve
cells don't get a global image of the brain activities, ultimately the individual human
brains will no longer hold a global impression of the intellectual activities of the Global
Brain. A comparison can be made with company employees (or soldiers, or spies), each
working on some limited aspect of a big project, and just transmitting their results to a
board of directors, who assemble the details and are the ones to oversee the whole
operation.
Contrasting with this Global Brain hypothesis we can consider the Global Mind
hypothesis, developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, though without this name.
The most popular hypothesis of both is the Global Brain hypothesis. It is more
compatible with Science Fiction (the development of a electronic Superbeing), and
seems even to be obvious when one looks to certain schemes of Teilhard: the basic
entity of each stratum is built up from individual elements from the previous stratum. As
cells form metazoa (multicellular beings, including man), the development of a multi-
human super-organism seems to be the next logical step.
But along Teilhard and a number of other evolutionists (including Wildiers) individuality of
each human will be preserved, at least with some nuances.
Definition
The Global Mind hypothesis is a "software" hypothesis. It states that the individual
psyches can be considered as independent variants of a more general psyche
programme.
Other meanings
The notion Global Mind is currently used in a series of other although related meanings
(1.300.000 links from Google)
etc.
Application
The Global Mind hypothesis offers perhaps the most plausible explanation for the age-
old immortality dream. Immortality can be defined as the transition of the individual
"mind" towards another hardware, e.g. another person. Of course, this implies a
discussion of many personalization issues, discussed elsewhere. Individual people die,
but the Global Mind seems to be immortal. Computer software never exists outside a
computer (only as a "dead" printout or a file on a disk), but always needs a kind of
hardware "to come into life". The same way the Global Mind, the Psyche functions: it
never exists ouside a human.
Characteristics
To describe the Global Mind hypothesis we enumerate some of its most striking
characteristics:
1. The most important aspect of this hypothesis is the fact that each individual
consciousness keeps an integral awareness of what it/he/she is thinking about. Human
cooperation occurs along a synergistic, i.e. an egalitarian, democratic model
(comparable with a good relationship between two or more people), and not along a
hierarchic model (comparable with an army, religious community, etc.). The participants
of the synergy never delegate the globality of their consciousness to a kind of higher
authority, as the Global Brain hypothesis suggests.
2. The inevitable convergence of human thinking, defined as an increasing similarity
between independent (human) intelligences and minds, is not realised by replacing the
individuals by some or one super-brain (as suggested by the Global Brain hypothesis),
but by the simple fact that the utilized "software" becomes even more similar.
Also here the computer comparison can be very inspiring: although nearly everyone
nowadays uses the same text editor, probably Word, (while the competitors, e.g. Claris
Word have become surprisingly similar), this does not imply that all those individual
computers are replaced by one. Nor does it presuppose that each user knows the
process at every level.
One can delegate some aspects of the global process without quitting a global control,
even if one is responsible for a part of these subordinate processes.
3. Even with the same psychological "programme", each individual can react with
personal differences and variations.
Classical music illustrates this Global Mind phenomenon. It is not because musical rules
practically are the same for each piece of classical music, that any such piece sounds
identical. Each piece can exploit other aspects of the same rules, as each programme
user can install personal preferences within the same programme.
4. The Global Mind is a possible explanation for the human immortality desire. Although
individuals die, their dead has to be compared to a drop-out of the hardware for this
particular global psyche programme, that, in itself, continues its existence running on
billions of other biological hardwares. This Global Mind, at least up to now, never exists
ouside a human.
7. Probably the socialisation stage is the last phase of evolution. The individual
organisms progressively (but now very quickly) attain the maximum level of awareness
and conscious participation in the evolution of the universe.
8. Teilhard was aware of the probability of other inhabited planets, the existence of other
intelligent organisms. Along Wildiers his viewpoint was that there will occur some day a
socialisation with these other living beings, but not with these planets as building blocks,
adding a new complexification stratum on top of the nine we discern today, but with the
mixed individuals of these planets developing one interplanetary socialisation. Anyway,
the socialisation stage leading to the Omega Point, is the last stage of this evolution.
Arguments
the human elements infiltrated more and more into each other, their minds ... were
mutually stimulated by proximity. (p. 240)
the noosphere tends to constitute a single closed system in which each element sees,
feels, desires and suffers for itself the same things as all the others at the same time. (p.
251)
the plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing one
another in the act of a single unanimous reflection. (p.252)
In the perspective of a noogenesis, time and space become truly humanised ---or rather
super-humanised. Far from being mutually exclusive, the Universal and Personal (that is
to say, the 'centred') grow in the same direction and culminate simultaneously in each
other. (p. 260)
what is the work of works for man if not to establish, in and by each one of us, an
absolutely original centre in which the universe reflects itself in a unique and inimitable
way? And these centres are our very selves and personalities. The very centre of our
consciousness, deeper than all its radii; that is the essence which Omega, if it is to be
truly Omega, must reclaim. And this essence is obviously not something of which we
can disposses ourselves for the benefit of others as we might give away a coat or pass
on a torch. For we are the very flame of that torch. To communicate itself, my ego must
subsist through abandoning itself or the gift will fade away. (p.261)
the grains of consciousness do not tend to lose their outlines and blend, but, on the
contrary, to accentuate the depth and incommunicability of their egos. The more ' other '
they become in conjunction, the more they find themselves as 'self '. (p. 262)
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfil
them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. ...In truth,
does not love every instant achieve all around us, in the couple or the team, the magic
feat, the feat reputed to be contradictory, of ' personalising ' by totalising? (p. 265)
Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples, the paradoxical
conciliation of the element with the whole, and of unity with multitude --all of these are
called Utopian and yet they are biologically necessary. (p. 265)
Expressed in terms of internal energy, the cosmic function of Omega consists in initiating
and maintaining within its radius the unanimity of the world's ' reflective ' particles.
(p.269)
we have as yet no idea of the possible magnitude of ' noospheric ' effects. ...human
vibrations resounding by the million --a whole layer of consciousness exerting
simultaneous pressure upon the future and the collected and hoarded produce of a
million years of thought. Have we ever tried to form an idea of what such magnitudes
represent? (p.286)
Of course, the fact Teilhard suggests the conservation of the individual within the Omega
point, doesn't in itself be a proof that this hypothesis should be more plausible than the
Global Brain hypothesis. Other arguments are to be advanced, and they essentially
consist of the indication that the Global Mind hypothesis is more compatible with the
universal laws of evolution than the Global Brain vision.
1. A superficial comparison between layer 8 (the metazoa) and layer 9 (the socialization
culminating into the noosphere) seems to suggest that, like individual cells lose their
individuality to form a unity at a higher level, i.e. man (and, of course, plant and animal),
individual brain (and its biological seat: man) will lose its individuality to form a higher
unity, i.e. global brain, in fact a novel evolutionary organism. In this "intregration"
intelligent computers could take part at the same level as biological brains. One could
even think of artificial biological computers, and/or a kind of biological neural networks,
added to this global brain network. This trend could be continued: suppose that each
inhabited planet builds up such a planetary brain, one could envisage one day a
superbrain of planetary brains, let's call it a Cosmic Brain, or should there be Galactic
Brains as superstructure between Planetary Brains and the Cosmic Brain? Each such
brain develops its own consciousness and elaborates global knowledge and visions
which the "lower" individual constituents --men-- are unable to comprehend.
Many thinkers have noticed the similarity between the roles played by different
organizations in society and the functions of organs, systems and circuits in the body.
For example, industrial plants extract energy and building blocks from raw materials, just
like the digestive system. Roads, railways and waterways transport these products from
one part of the system to another one, just like the arteries and veins. Garbage dumps
and sewage systems collect waste products, just like the colon and the bladder. The
army and police protect the society against invaders and rogue elements, just like the
immune system. (Heylighen)
This approach culminated in the Gaia Hypothesis (Lovelock and Margulis) which
describes the whole living nature on earth, and even the whole earth, as one biological
or at least cybernetical organism, a Cybiont (de Rosnay).
To become a metasystem, thinking in the super-brain must not be just quantitatively, but
qualitatively, different from human thinking. The continuous reorganization and
improvement of the super-brain's knowledge by analysing and synthesising knowledge
from individuals, and eliciting more knowledge from those individuals in order to fill gaps
or inconsistencies, is a metalevel process: it not only uses existing, individual knowledge
but actively creates new knowledge, which is more fit for tackling different problems.
(Heylighen)
c. Arguments for a Global Mind rather than a Brain
1. Man himself doesn't want to be surpassed by a machine, how ever intelligent that
could be. The profound aspiration to be and remain autonomous and equal to his fellow-
humans seem to emerge ineluctably each time certain temporarily stronger social
subgroups try to install a control upon other social groups. Social hierarchy, that
progressively seemed to be the destination of human kind, already installed well
circumscribed social "layers": slaves, priests, nobility, kings and princes. As occurred
with the Indian castes, the appartenance to such a subgroup tended to become
inheritable, making a physical or genetical split between those groups even more likely
in the long run. Aldous Huxley, in his A Brave New World divided future people into 4
physical categories, from alpha to delta, showing that in his perception and time such a
segregation seemed an essential characteristic of future society. The ants nest
hierarchy seemed to be an appropriate model for modern society.
Man always opposed to this apparently "natural" organization of society. The Great
Dictator and Big Brother model rather seem to belong to the past than to the future. His
opposition to the revolt of the Supercomputer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space
Odyssey, is more than a fight of the astronauts to preserve their personal safety. If man
is opposed to the supremacy of some fellow-men, his reluctance to accept the
supremacy of a machine, even an intelligent and a "sensible" one, probably will be even
stronger.
His ability, and hence his desire to keep a total vision and consciousness of reality and
universe, and to play an active role in any kind of decision making concerning himself,
appears to be one of his strongest drives, perhaps his most fundamental aspiration and,
in a way, the sense of existence. To be reduced to just an element of a higher
mechanism should be even more frustrating and humiliating than to be a slave.
But starting with man, the biological evolution stops, and is replaced by extra-corporeal
technology (tools from hammers to computers) and psychological evolution (education,
personality development, culture). Physical adaptations are no longer required to
implement evolution. Material and physical evolution transited to a software evolution,
freeing man, in all senses of the word.
3. An argument that perhaps could be just temporary, is the fact that, up to now, all
computers function along a deductive mode of thinking, combined with a high exactness
and unchangeability (and undeletability --unless on purpose or by accident) of their
memories. Contrary to this, human brains brains function essentially along an
associative mode, enabling in the first place inductive thinking. Moreover, most of man's
knowledge is irrational, in the sence that it can't be completely rationally formulated.
Therefore, his creativity is mostly subconscious, making it very difficult to communicate.
It is even better to call his knowledge experience or even intuition. This mode of thinking
seems also to be rather inexact,and his memory is quickly fading out. This inexactness
could prove more linked to the essence of his creativity and abstracting potential than
we like.
A thinking device is by its very nature less accessible to experience, inexact intuitions
and extinguishing memories, which could prove the conditions for inductive, creative and
integrative thinking.
Of course, one could extend a computer with experiential and intuitive facilities;
moreover, one day the induction paradigm, searched now for several centuries, could be
discovered. One could even put a computer into a humanoid case, so that biological
humans should not be aware of the difference, as long they don't stab a knife into its
chest. But that kind of humanoid is perhaps not what is aimed by the protagonists of the
Global Brain hypothesis.
4. As was the case with earlier stages of social and political structures, the fact that
humans have access to all kinds of knowledge and experience enhances dramatically
their inspiration, creativity and motivation. Reducing their intellectual territory to some
pre-circumscribed and delimited application fields will at the same time probably reduce
their intellectual productivity.
Conclusions
1. One could state that this hypothesis is at the same time an integration between the
eastern and the western soul hypotheses: the collective aspect and the progressive
evolution, stressed in the reincarnation hypothesis, is preserved, as well as the
personalised aspects of the soul in western monotheistic religions. In the light of the
Global Mind hypothesis, both primitive soul hypotheses appear to be much less naive as
they were at first glance.
3. Integrative science doesn't search the right answer between several proposals. It's
only aim is to integrate apparently conflictuous hypotheses, proceeding from the
conviction that each approach probably hides some important contributrion for the final
insight. As long as these theories can't be completely integrated, it's essential to remain
aware of their implications.
A more creative approach, and a greater concern about inductive thought processes
could perhaps bridge the gap between both hypotheses. The approach of Heylighen
with the intelligent agents looks very promising.