In a recent paper, Steven Horst argued that if traditional physicalist accounts of consciousness cannot explain why there are conscious phenomena in the world then teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to the notion of natural selection cannot do so either. I agree with Horst's conclusion but his reasoning fails to address a rebuttal to his argument made by the major proponent of such theories, namely, Fred Dretske. Dretske argues that artificial selection can create new features and that, in an analogous fashion, natural selection can too. I show that Dretske's rebuttal is inadequate because crucial features of the analogy fail. Teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to natural selection can only explain the prevalence of consciousness

Macpherson, F.

English

Abstract: In a recent paper, Steven Horst argued that if traditional physicalist accounts of consciousness cannot explain why there are conscious phenomena in the world then teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to the notion of natural selection cannot do so either. I agree with Horst’s conclusion but his rea-soning fails to address a rebuttal to his argument made by the major proponent of such theories, namely, Fred Dretske. Dretske argues that artificial selection can create new features and that, in an analogous fashion, natural selection can too. I show that Dretske’s rebuttal is inadequate because crucial features of the anal-ogy fail. Teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to natural selection can only explain the prevalence of consciousness. Some naturalistic theories of consciousness give an essential role to teleology.1 This teleology is said to arise due to natural selection. Thus it is claimed that only certain states, namely, those that have been selected for by evolutionary pro-cesses because they contribute to (or once contributed to) an organism’s fitness, are conscious states. These theories look as if they are assigning a creative role t

Fiona Macpherson

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The power of natural selection

Enlighten

Fiona MacphersonThe Power of Natural SelectionAbstract: In a recent paper, Steven Horst argued that if traditional physicalistaccounts of consciousness cannot explain why there are conscious phenomena inthe world then teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to the notion ofnatural selection cannot do so either. I agree with Horst’s conclusion but his rea-soning fails to address a rebuttal to his argument made by the major proponent ofsuch theories, namely, Fred Dretske. Dretske argues that artificial selection cancreate new features and that, in an analogous fashion, natural selection can too.I show that Dretske’s rebuttal is inadequate because crucial features of the anal-ogy fail. Teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to natural selectioncan only explain the prevalence of consciousness.Some naturalistic theories of consciousness give an essential role to teleology.1This teleology is said to arise due to natural selection. Thus it is claimed that onlycertain states, namely, those that have been selected for by evolutionary pro-cesses because they contribute to (or once contributed to) an organism’s fitness,are conscious states. These theories look as if they are assigning a creative role tonatural selection. If a state is conscious only if it has been selected for, then selec-tion appears to be able to create a new feature of states, namely, their consciousnature. Yet, intuitively, natural selection cannot create anything. Natural selec-tion chooses certain features that already exist and makes them more (or less)prevalent in a population, but it cannot bring features into existence itself. Natu-ral selection can select for conscious states, but it cannot create them. This con-clusion has recently been argued for by Steven Horst (1999). If it is right, thenteleological theories of conscious states should be rejected. A state cannotbecome a conscious experience in virtue of having been selected for by evolu-tionary process.I believe that this line of reasoning is correct and that any effort to show thatnatural selection can create something will not succeed. In this paper I examineJournal of Consciousness Studies, 9, No. 8, 2002, pp. 30–35Correspondence: Fiona Macpherson Dept of Logic and Metaphysics, University of St Andrews,St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AL, Scotland. Email: fem5@st-and.ac.ukCopyright © Imprint Academic 2002Reproduction permitted for single personal use onlyUnauthorised transmission, publication and web uploads prohibited[1] The major proponent is Dretske (1995), but many authors give a prominent role to natural selection inaspects of the mind such as representation, that are closely connected with consciousness. See, forexample, Millikan (1984), Papineau (1993) and Flanagan (1992).Dretske’s attempt to show that natural selection can be creative and I argue that itfails. Dretske’s argument rests on showing that artificial selection can be creativeand then claiming that natural selection is similar in certain crucial respects toartificial selection. I argue that the argument fails, not simply by appealing to theintuitiveness of the idea that natural selection cannot create anything, but byshowing that there is an important disanalogy between artificial selection andnatural selection. Horst’s (1999) paper does not address Dretske’s crucial analogy.In Naturalising the Mind, Dretske (1995) argues that conscious experiencesare systemic, analogue representations which have the natural function of inter-acting with the cognitive system to produce beliefs and desires that controlbehaviour. A state is such a representation only if it has been selected for becauseit carried information about what it now represents and interacted with the cogni-tive system, in so doing increasing the fitness of creatures that have the state. If astate does not have such a natural function then, according to Dretske, it is not aconscious experience. Dretske is therefore committed to holding that naturalselection creates conscious experiences.Dretske discusses the objection that natural selection cannot be creative. Fromhis work, one can see that Dretske must think that the objection takes the follow-ing form:Premise 1: Natural selection only works by selecting a pre-existing thing.Premise 2: If natural selection explains the existence of conscious states,then natural selection must have selected for conscious states.Conclusion: If natural selection explains the existence of conscious states,then natural selection must have selected a pre-existing conscious state.Natural selection is not creative and merely increases or decreases theprevalence of a type of state.2Dretske’s way to disarm the objection is to agree with premise one but to denypremise two. Dretske claims that once the role which he gives to evolution isappreciated then we can see that while it is true that natural selection works byselecting already existing states or features of states, it is not true that it cannot becreative. He claims that on his account natural selection works by selecting foralready existing features, since it selects for states that carry information. ButDretske claims that in selecting for already existing things (information carryingstates), selection can thereby bring a new feature into existence, namely, thosestates’ conscious nature. Dretske says:The objection misidentifies the role that the Representational Thesis assigns to nat-ural selection. Natural selection is not supposed to select for consciousness. That isnot how the story goes. It selects for something else, something that, by beingselected, becomes conscious (Dretske, 1995, p. 163).THE POWER OF NATURAL SELECTION 31[2] This is also the form that Horst’s reasoning seems to take: ‘[W]hat evolutionary explanation reallyexplains is the proliferation of a phenotype, given the plausibility of its initial appearance. . . . [W]hatsuch a theory can give an account of is why consciousness would flourish — given that it has appearedin the first place’ (Horst, 1999, p. 44; original emphasis).I believe that this reply only alleviates part of the intuitive worry that liesbehind the above objection. The reply demonstrates that according to Dretske’stheory evolution is working by selecting already existing things (informationalstates, whose existence is not explained by selection), but it does not explain howselecting for a pre-existing feature can bring a new feature into existence, namelythose states’ conscious nature.This is the crucial point. Let us agree with Dretske that evolutionary processesdo not select conscious states, rather they select states that at some point are notconscious. What is selected for are mere information-carrying states. Now thequestion arises: why should the proliferation of such states lead to such statesbecoming conscious states? Intuitively, mere increase in prevalence cannotchange the nature of the states in question. Without an answer to this question, Ibelieve we are entitled to be sceptical of Dretske’s account. Indeed, if we werenot provided with such an answer it would be plausible to think one of two thingsmust be true. Either the states in question were conscious prior to selection andthus natural selection does not explain the nature of consciousness, or the statesin question were not conscious prior to natural selection and it was not selectionthat made such states conscious, if indeed, the states in question are consciousstates.Dretske, however, provides an analogy that is supposed to help us understandhow selective processes can bring a new feature into existence. This analogy car-ries a lot of weight because it has to persuade us, contrary to our intuitions, thatselection can bring into existence a new feature. Dretske claims that a variableresistor becomes a volume control by someone selecting and installing it in theiramplifier. The resistor was not a volume control before it was selected for thispurpose. In this way, Dretske says we can see how selection can bring a new fea-ture — a volume control — into existence. We are invited to think that naturalselection can bring new features into existence in a similar fashion. (Dretskecalls selection that occurs due to someone’s intentions or purposes ‘artificialselection’. This is to be distinguished from natural selection where selectionoccurs without the intentions and purposes of a conscious agent.)It seems to me that the important feature of the variable resistor/volume con-trol story is that artificial selection places some piece of hardware into a systemwhere it can perform certain tasks (adjusting volume) that it could not performbefore. The resistor comes to have a causal role that it previously lacked. This iswhat makes it plausible to think that the resistor becomes a volume control.Before selection the resistor had no way of altering volume, after selection itdoes. The question we have to ask is whether natural selection can perform thiskind of selective process.In some places, Dretske’s account of the natural selection of experiencesexactly replicates the account of the resistor. He says:What natural selection does with this raw material [an organism’s needs and itsinformation carrying states] is to develop and harness information-carryingsystems to the effector mechanisms capable of using information to satisfy needs byappropriately directed and timed behavior (Dretske, 1995, p. 164).32 F. MACPHERSONThis makes it sound as if, like artificial selection, natural selection places someinformation carrying states into a system where they can then interact withbeliefs and desires to produce appropriate behaviour (and thus these statesbecome conscious experiences). The type of selection is such that by changingthe surroundings of a state, and what the state is connected to, the state comes tohave a new causal impact upon the world. But this account is at odds with whatDretske stresses is an important feature of natural selection:Natural selection is quite different. Unlike artificial selection, an item cannot be natu-rally selected to do X unless it actually does X. It has to do X because the way it getsselected is by having its performance of X contribute in some way to the survival andreproductive success of the animals in which it occurs (Dretske, 1995, p. 165).For an information-delivery system to acquire the natural function of deliveringinformation, for it to produce natural representations, then, the information it deliv-ers must actually do something. It must make a positive contribution to fitness. Itmust be useful to and actually used by (or have been used by) the organisms towhich it is delivered (Dretske, 1995, p. 166).It is therefore a very misleading description of what natural selection does to sayit develops and harnesses states that carry information to states that controlappropriate behaviour. Natural selection can only select for existing features, andselect them in virtue of the existing causal roles that such features have. It cannotdevelop new connections or harness one state to another. It can merely select forstates which are already connected or harnessed in the appropriate way. It cannotmake a state come to do something that it did not do before. The information car-rying states must already contribute to the behaviour and fitness of a creature inorder to be selected for.Thus, the analogy between creating a volume control by artificially selecting avariable resistor, and creating conscious states by naturally selecting information-carrying states, breaks down. This is because prior to becoming experiences, theinformation-carrying states must already be in place and be causally interactingwith the cognitive system to control behaviour in order to be selected for in virtueof the causal relationships that they have. When one creates a volume control,however, one places the resistor in a situation where it comes to have differentcausal effects. It can now change the volume of your music. When one creates avolume control, one makes the resistor have a different causal impact on theworld, which it did not have previously when it was sitting on the shelf. But whennatural selection selects for states that are hooked up to the cognitive system, itdoes not make those states have any different causal impact than they did previ-ously. It is therefore hard to see how a new feature of those states, such as con-sciousness, could be created by selection when the intrinsic properties of theselected states remain the same and the causal impact of these states remains thesame. While one can be persuaded by Dretske that artificial selection can bring anew feature into existence, one should not be persuaded that natural selection cando likewise.One might object to my line of thought on the grounds that my explanation ofwhat was relevant in the case of artificially selecting a resistor to be a volumeTHE POWER OF NATURAL SELECTION 33control was slightly inaccurate. I said that what was relevant was that the variableresistor was actually placed in a system so that it could alter volume. Dretskeconstantly stresses, however, that someone can artificially select an object to besomething or to do something, in the absence of that object performing effec-tively. He says:I can, for example, choose (or design) something to be a volume control (thus givingit that function) even when it is utterly incapable of controlling volume. Throughignorance or carelessness, I can select a variable capacitor to be my volume control,wire it to my amplifier, and wonder why it won’t do the job I gave it (Dretske, 1995,p. 165).Thus, one might think that if something can become a volume control in virtue ofthis kind of careless selection, then something new can be created when none ofits intrinsic properties are altered and when it does not come to have any newcausal impact on the world. Thus, my above objection aimed at showing that nat-ural selection cannot create a new feature appears flawed.Clearly, there is a sense in which someone can create a new thing — a volumecontrol — by selecting a variable resistor with the intention of making it controlvolume, while not changing the actual causal impact of that thing, by installingthe resistor incorrectly. Noting this example, however, we can say that for some-one to create a new thing — a volume control — they must either change theactual causal impact which the resistor has, or intend to do so. It seems reason-able to think that one does not create a volume control out of a resistor if one doesnot change the actual causal impact of the resistor (by installing it correctly sothat it can alter volume) or if one does not intend to change its causal impact inthis way. Now we can see that Dretske’s analogy still fails to work. When naturalselection selected for information-carrying states it did not make the states have anew causal impact upon the cognitive system. It selected them because of thecausal impact they already had on the cognitive system — the one which yieldedappropriate behaviour and hence helped the organism to survive. Nor did naturalselection have the intention of changing the causal impact of those states. Naturalselection does not have intentions, unlike a person who can artificially selectsomething.Therefore I believe that Dretske’s resistor/volume control analogy, which isintended to show how it possible for natural selection to create a new feature bycomparing it with artificial selection, breaks down. In artificial selection, of thekind we have seen Dretske espouse, an object of one kind becomes an object ofanother kind by either a change in the causal connections between that object andother things, or by someone intending such a change. Since natural selection can-not effect such a change and cannot intend to do so, then one should conclude oneof the two following things:(i) The states in question (systemic, analogue information-carrying states) thatwere naturally selected for were not conscious before selection and did notbecome conscious in virtue of natural selection. (Perhaps they became34 F. MACPHERSONconscious due to something else that happened to them or perhaps theynever became conscious states.)(ii) The states in question that were naturally selected for were conscious beforeselection and therefore selection has no role in explaining why they areconscious.The question of whether all and only appropriate information-carrying statesconnected in the right way to the cognitive system are conscious states or not,and whether their being states of this kind explains why they are conscious, liesbeyond the scope of this paper.3In conclusion, it remains mysterious how a non-conscious state could come tobe a conscious state simply in virtue of being selected for by evolutionary pro-cesses. The moral is that the power of natural selective processes is limited toaltering the prevalence of certain things. It does not include creative power.ReferencesDretske, F. I. (1995), Naturalising the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Flanagan, O. (1992), Consciousness Reconsidered (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Horst, S. (1999), ‘Evolutionary explanation and the hard problem of consciousness’, Journal ofConsciousness Studies, 6 (1), pp. 39–48.Macpherson, F. (forthcoming), ‘Novel colours and the content of experience’, Pacific Philosophi-cal Quarterly.Millikan, R. (1984), Language Thought and Other Biological Categories (Cambridge, MA: MITPress).Papineau, D. (1993), Philosophical Naturalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Paper received August 2001THE POWER OF NATURAL SELECTION 35[3] In my ‘Novel colours and the content of experience’ (forthcoming), I argue that naturalistic, represen-tational theories of phenomenal character face a serious objection.

Enlighten: Publications

Fiona Macpherson
The Power of Natural Selection
Abstract: In a recent paper, Steven Horst argued that if traditional physicalist
accounts of consciousness cannot explain why there are conscious phenomena in
the world then teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to the notion of
natural selection cannot do so either. I agree with Horst’s conclusion but his rea-
soning fails to address a rebuttal to his argument made by the major proponent of
such theories, namely, Fred Dretske. Dretske argues that artificial selection can
create new features and that, in an analogous fashion, natural selection can too.
I show that Dretske’s rebuttal is inadequate because crucial features of the anal-
ogy fail. Teleological accounts of consciousness that appeal to natural selection
can only explain the prevalence of consciousness.
Some naturalistic theories of consciousness give an essential role to teleology.1
This teleology is said to arise due to natural selection. Thus it is claimed that only
certain states, namely, those that have been selected for by evolutionary pro-
cesses because they contribute to (or once contributed to) an organism’s fitness,
are conscious states. These theories look as if they are assigning a creative role to
natural selection. If a state is conscious only if it has been selected for, then selec-
tion appears to be able to create a new feature of states, namely, their conscious
nature. Yet, intuitively, natural selection cannot create anything. Natural selec-
tion chooses certain features that already exist and makes them more (or less)
prevalent in a population, but it cannot bring features into existence itself. Natu-
ral selection can select for conscious states, but it cannot create them. This con-
clusion has recently been argued for by Steven Horst (1999). If it is right, then
teleological theories of conscious states should be rejected. A state cannot
become a conscious experience in virtue of having been selected for by evolu-
tionary process.
I believe that this line of reasoning is correct and that any effort to show that
natural selection can create something will not succeed. In this paper I examine
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9, No. 8, 2002, pp. 30–35
Correspondence: Fiona Macpherson Dept of Logic and Metaphysics, University of St Andrews,
St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AL, Scotland. Email: fem5@st-and.ac.uk
Copyright © Imprint Academic 2002
Reproduction permitted for single personal use only
Unauthorised transmission, publication and web uploads prohibited
[1] The major proponent is Dretske (1995), but many authors give a prominent role to natural selection in
aspects of the mind such as representation, that are closely connected with consciousness. See, for
example, Millikan (1984), Papineau (1993) and Flanagan (1992).
Dretske’s attempt to show that natural selection can be creative and I argue that it
fails. Dretske’s argument rests on showing that artificial selection can be creative
and then claiming that natural selection is similar in certain crucial respects to
artificial selection. I argue that the argument fails, not simply by appealing to the
intuitiveness of the idea that natural selection cannot create anything, but by
showing that there is an important disanalogy between artificial selection and
natural selection. Horst’s (1999) paper does not address Dretske’s crucial analogy.
In Naturalising the Mind, Dretske (1995) argues that conscious experiences
are systemic, analogue representations which have the natural function of inter-
acting with the cognitive system to produce beliefs and desires that control
behaviour. A state is such a representation only if it has been selected for because
it carried information about what it now represents and interacted with the cogni-
tive system, in so doing increasing the fitness of creatures that have the state. If a
state does not have such a natural function then, according to Dretske, it is not a
conscious experience. Dretske is therefore committed to holding that natural
selection creates conscious experiences.
Dretske discusses the objection that natural selection cannot be creative. From
his work, one can see that Dretske must think that the objection takes the follow-
ing form:
Premise 1: Natural selection only works by selecting a pre-existing thing.
Premise 2: If natural selection explains the existence of conscious states,
then natural selection must have selected for conscious states.
Conclusion: If natural selection explains the existence of conscious states,
then natural selection must have selected a pre-existing conscious state.
Natural selection is not creative and merely increases or decreases the
prevalence of a type of state.2
Dretske’s way to disarm the objection is to agree with premise one but to deny
premise two. Dretske claims that once the role which he gives to evolution is
appreciated then we can see that while it is true that natural selection works by
selecting already existing states or features of states, it is not true that it cannot be
creative. He claims that on his account natural selection works by selecting for
already existing features, since it selects for states that carry information. But
Dretske claims that in selecting for already existing things (information carrying
states), selection can thereby bring a new feature into existence, namely, those
states’ conscious nature. Dretske says:
The objection misidentifies the role that the Representational Thesis assigns to nat-
ural selection. Natural selection is not supposed to select for consciousness. That is
not how the story goes. It selects for something else, something that, by being
selected, becomes conscious (Dretske, 1995, p. 163).
THE POWER OF NATURAL SELECTION 31
[2] This is also the form that Horst’s reasoning seems to take: ‘[W]hat evolutionary explanation really
explains is the proliferation of a phenotype, given the plausibility of its initial appearance. . . . [W]hat
such a theory can give an account of is why consciousness would flourish — given that it has appeared
in the first place’ (Horst, 1999, p. 44; original emphasis).
I believe that this reply only alleviates part of the intuitive worry that lies
behind the above objection. The reply demonstrates that according to Dretske’s
theory evolution is working by selecting already existing things (informational
states, whose existence is not explained by selection), but it does not explain how
selecting for a pre-existing feature can bring a new feature into existence, namely
those states’ conscious nature.
This is the crucial point. Let us agree with Dretske that evolutionary processes
do not select conscious states, rather they select states that at some point are not
conscious. What is selected for are mere information-carrying states. Now the
question arises: why should the proliferation of such states lead to such states
becoming conscious states? Intuitively, mere increase in prevalence cannot
change the nature of the states in question. Without an answer to this question, I
believe we are entitled to be sceptical of Dretske’s account. Indeed, if we were
not provided with such an answer it would be plausible to think one of two things
must be true. Either the states in question were conscious prior to selection and
thus natural selection does not explain the nature of consciousness, or the states
in question were not conscious prior to natural selection and it was not selection
that made such states conscious, if indeed, the states in question are conscious
states.
Dretske, however, provides an analogy that is supposed to help us understand
how selective processes can bring a new feature into existence. This analogy car-
ries a lot of weight because it has to persuade us, contrary to our intuitions, that
selection can bring into existence a new feature. Dretske claims that a variable
resistor becomes a volume control by someone selecting and installing it in their
amplifier. The resistor was not a volume control before it was selected for this
purpose. In this way, Dretske says we can see how selection can bring a new fea-
ture — a volume control — into existence. We are invited to think that natural
selection can bring new features into existence in a similar fashion. (Dretske
calls selection that occurs due to someone’s intentions or purposes ‘artificial
selection’. This is to be distinguished from natural selection where selection
occurs without the intentions and purposes of a conscious agent.)
It seems to me that the important feature of the variable resistor/volume con-
trol story is that artificial selection places some piece of hardware into a system
where it can perform certain tasks (adjusting volume) that it could not perform
before. The resistor comes to have a causal role that it previously lacked. This is
what makes it plausible to think that the resistor becomes a volume control.
Before selection the resistor had no way of altering volume, after selection it
does. The question we have to ask is whether natural selection can perform this
kind of selective process.
In some places, Dretske’s account of the natural selection of experiences
exactly replicates the account of the resistor. He says:
What natural selection does with this raw material [an organism’s needs and its
information carrying states] is to develop and harness information-carrying
systems to the effector mechanisms capable of using information to satisfy needs by
appropriately directed and timed behavior (Dretske, 1995, p. 164).
32 F. MACPHERSON
This makes it sound as if, like artificial selection, natural selection places some
information carrying states into a system where they can then interact with
beliefs and desires to produce appropriate behaviour (and thus these states
become conscious experiences). The type of selection is such that by changing
the surroundings of a state, and what the state is connected to, the state comes to
have a new causal impact upon the world. But this account is at odds with what
Dretske stresses is an important feature of natural selection:
Natural selection is quite different. Unlike artificial selection, an item cannot be natu-
rally selected to do X unless it actually does X. It has to do X because the way it gets
selected is by having its performance of X contribute in some way to the survival and
reproductive success of the animals in which it occurs (Dretske, 1995, p. 165).
For an information-delivery system to acquire the natural function of delivering
information, for it to produce natural representations, then, the information it deliv-
ers must actually do something. It must make a positive contribution to fitness. It
must be useful to and actually used by (or have been used by) the organisms to
which it is delivered (Dretske, 1995, p. 166).
It is therefore a very misleading description of what natural selection does to say
it develops and harnesses states that carry information to states that control
appropriate behaviour. Natural selection can only select for existing features, and
select them in virtue of the existing causal roles that such features have. It cannot
develop new connections or harness one state to another. It can merely select for
states which are already connected or harnessed in the appropriate way. It cannot
make a state come to do something that it did not do before. The information car-
rying states must already contribute to the behaviour and fitness of a creature in
order to be selected for.
Thus, the analogy between creating a volume control by artificially selecting a
variable resistor, and creating conscious states by naturally selecting information-
carrying states, breaks down. This is because prior to becoming experiences, the
information-carrying states must already be in place and be causally interacting
with the cognitive system to control behaviour in order to be selected for in virtue
of the causal relationships that they have. When one creates a volume control,
however, one places the resistor in a situation where it comes to have different
causal effects. It can now change the volume of your music. When one creates a
volume control, one makes the resistor have a different causal impact on the
world, which it did not have previously when it was sitting on the shelf. But when
natural selection selects for states that are hooked up to the cognitive system, it
does not make those states have any different causal impact than they did previ-
ously. It is therefore hard to see how a new feature of those states, such as con-
sciousness, could be created by selection when the intrinsic properties of the
selected states remain the same and the causal impact of these states remains the
same. While one can be persuaded by Dretske that artificial selection can bring a
new feature into existence, one should not be persuaded that natural selection can
do likewise.
One might object to my line of thought on the grounds that my explanation of
what was relevant in the case of artificially selecting a resistor to be a volume
THE POWER OF NATURAL SELECTION 33
control was slightly inaccurate. I said that what was relevant was that the variable
resistor was actually placed in a system so that it could alter volume. Dretske
constantly stresses, however, that someone can artificially select an object to be
something or to do something, in the absence of that object performing effec-
tively. He says:
I can, for example, choose (or design) something to be a volume control (thus giving
it that function) even when it is utterly incapable of controlling volume. Through
ignorance or carelessness, I can select a variable capacitor to be my volume control,
wire it to my amplifier, and wonder why it won’t do the job I gave it (Dretske, 1995,
p. 165).
Thus, one might think that if something can become a volume control in virtue of
this kind of careless selection, then something new can be created when none of
its intrinsic properties are altered and when it does not come to have any new
causal impact on the world. Thus, my above objection aimed at showing that nat-
ural selection cannot create a new feature appears flawed.
Clearly, there is a sense in which someone can create a new thing — a volume
control — by selecting a variable resistor with the intention of making it control
volume, while not changing the actual causal impact of that thing, by installing
the resistor incorrectly. Noting this example, however, we can say that for some-
one to create a new thing — a volume control — they must either change the
actual causal impact which the resistor has, or intend to do so. It seems reason-
able to think that one does not create a volume control out of a resistor if one does
not change the actual causal impact of the resistor (by installing it correctly so
that it can alter volume) or if one does not intend to change its causal impact in
this way. Now we can see that Dretske’s analogy still fails to work. When natural
selection selected for information-carrying states it did not make the states have a
new causal impact upon the cognitive system. It selected them because of the
causal impact they already had on the cognitive system — the one which yielded
appropriate behaviour and hence helped the organism to survive. Nor did natural
selection have the intention of changing the causal impact of those states. Natural
selection does not have intentions, unlike a person who can artificially select
something.
Therefore I believe that Dretske’s resistor/volume control analogy, which is
intended to show how it possible for natural selection to create a new feature by
comparing it with artificial selection, breaks down. In artificial selection, of the
kind we have seen Dretske espouse, an object of one kind becomes an object of
another kind by either a change in the causal connections between that object and
other things, or by someone intending such a change. Since natural selection can-
not effect such a change and cannot intend to do so, then one should conclude one
of the two following things:
(i) The states in question (systemic, analogue information-carrying states) that
were naturally selected for were not conscious before selection and did not
become conscious in virtue of natural selection. (Perhaps they became
34 F. MACPHERSON
conscious due to something else that happened to them or perhaps they
never became conscious states.)
(ii) The states in question that were naturally selected for were conscious before
selection and therefore selection has no role in explaining why they are
conscious.
The question of whether all and only appropriate information-carrying states
connected in the right way to the cognitive system are conscious states or not,
and whether their being states of this kind explains why they are conscious, lies
beyond the scope of this paper.3
In conclusion, it remains mysterious how a non-conscious state could come to
be a conscious state simply in virtue of being selected for by evolutionary pro-
cesses. The moral is that the power of natural selective processes is limited to
altering the prevalence of certain things. It does not include creative power.
References
Dretske, F. I. (1995), Naturalising the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Flanagan, O. (1992), Consciousness Reconsidered (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Horst, S. (1999), ‘Evolutionary explanation and the hard problem of consciousness’, Journal of
Consciousness Studies, 6 (1), pp. 39–48.
Macpherson, F. (forthcoming), ‘Novel colours and the content of experience’, Pacific Philosophi-
cal Quarterly.
Millikan, R. (1984), Language Thought and Other Biological Categories (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press).
Papineau, D. (1993), Philosophical Naturalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Paper received August 2001
THE POWER OF NATURAL SELECTION 35
[3] In my ‘Novel colours and the content of experience’ (forthcoming), I argue that naturalistic, represen-
tational theories of phenomenal character face a serious objection.


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The power of natural selection

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