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Creationism
Any philosophy that claims to be worthy of
rational consideration needs to be compatible with evolution.
Both Christianity
and Islam
have major problems with evolution, and are consequently in headlong retreat into anti-science
and irrationalism.
Fortunately, Buddhism has no problem with
this aspect of biological science, and indeed rejects the idea of inherently existing
species as a form of essentialism.
To Buddhists, species are just separate
populations of interbreeding plants and animals. Their defining characteristics have
evolved over time and are therefor impermanent.
The species do not have any essential nature, nor are they copies of some static Platonic
ideal form or divine
‘blueprint in the sky’, as drawn up by God during the week of creation.
But although Buddhism is completely
compatible with a scientific versus theological view of the origin of the species, it does
need to explain 'The
Hard Problem' of how non-physical minds have become associated with physical bodies
over the course of evolution. Otherwise Buddhism is in danger of losing its spiritual
aspects and becoming just another bleak
materialistic philosophy.
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| Automata |
Automata versus Sentient Beings
One way of approaching the Hard
Problem of Consciousness is by asking why humans (and presumably other animals) are
sentient, with inner experiences such as pleasure and pain? Why could
they not be ‘philosophical
zombies’ - mere automata lacking conscious
experience, qualia, or sentience?
In contrast to a ‘philosophical
zombie’, Buddhism defines a ‘sentient being’ as one that possesses a
mind that can experience qualitative feelings, in particular suffering,
unsatisfactoriness or dukkha.
The body of the sentient being may indeed be a physical automaton, but the mind
is non-physical. A sentient being experiences its
inputs (perceptions) and outputs (actions), in contrast to an automaton where no
subjective states occur, and all
meanings have to be assigned to inputs and outputs from 'outside the system'.
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| The Origin of Suffering according to Christians |
Symbiotic Mind – an Evolutionary
Perspective
It seems likely that animals above a
certain level of development require more than automatic reflexes in order to survive.
Advanced organisms need motivation and intention in order to function in complex
environments. Motivation and intention are chiefly driven by dukkha - the need to avoid
suffering or unsatisfactoriness, and the restless but futile search for lasting
happiness. Dukkha and suffering, unpleasant though they may be for the individual,
have survival and evolutionary advantages for the species.
To quote Richard
Dawkins:
"The total
amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation.
During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are
being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others
are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are
dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of
plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the
natural state of starvation and misery is restored."
Mental states such as suffering, unsatisfactoriness and pleasure are qualia.
These subjective experiences, which carry strong immediate meanings, do not exist in
automata - mechanistic systems such as relay networks or computers.
It is for this reason that complex animals have evolved neural structures which attract
and capture minds. Fundamentally, it is the suffering and grasping of their minds - the
need to avoid pain and seek pleasure - that provides the driving force for survival and
reproduction of complex animals. The physical body enters into a symbiotic relationship with a
non-physical mind.
In Buddhist philosophy, the mind of a
sentient being is not a product of biological processes, but something primordial which
has existed since beginningless time, and which will be drawn into another body once the
present one has died.
Survival advantages of sentience
In evolutionary terms, any adaptation or
feature must have some selective benefit for the organism that possesses it. Obviously, a
physical body equipped with sentience will have an improved chance of surviving to
propagate its genes over any mindless competitor which is not deterred by pain or
motivated by pleasure.
But what does the mind gain from this
symbiotic association? Usually little or nothing.
When the life of the biological partner
comes to an end, it has to endure suffering and then leave its home, being able to take
nothing with it. It must then enter the unstable state of the bardo and soon after find a
new body. In Buddhist terminology these minds are wanderers or migrators in samsara (the
realm of perpetual death and rebirth). The mind is non-evolved and non-evolving (at least
not by the normal processes of natural selection).
Parasitic body, parasitized mind?
Perhaps the relationship between mind and
body is more one of parasitism than symbiosis. The biological body gets a better chance to
propagate itself. But the mind has to endure dukkha - the ever-changing
experiences of craving, suffering and attachment that the body imposes upon it in order to
force it to do what is necessary for survival, competition and reproduction.
The only way that the mind can escape being
endlessly captured and used by biological systems is to permanently escape from the
recurrent process of death, attraction to a body, and rebirth. It is this cycle of 'samsara' that Buddhism
claims to be able to break.
Participatory Anthropic Principle
Finally, according to one version of
quantum theory, the eventual association of physical bodies with non-physical minds was
inevitable in order to collapse
the superposition of the entire universe.
