Milinda’s Questions

I’ve mentioned Meaning of Life TV before. Sponsored by the Templeton Foundation and appearing in Slate, it might be thought of as Robert Wright’s bid to become the Bill Moyers of the Internet by interviewing prominent scientists and “spiritual leaders” on various heady matters. In one respect the Slate interface can be slightly misleading: the link on the main page takes you to a page with a video screen in the middle, above which is a heading announcing the interviewee and the topic: e.g., “Robert Wright interviews Joe Fonebone on the price of cheese.” To the left of the screen appears a list headed “Joe Fonebone on other topics.” This might give one the impression that Wright has interviewed each of these folks multiple times, when in fact he’s only sat down with each one of them once (in most cases, at least.) The AV track of each interview has been divided up into short segments, each corresponding to one of the topics listed to the left of the screen. The written transcript linked to on each page runs straight through from the beginning of the interview to the end, though, and it can be a bit difficult to locate the portion of the text that corresponds to a particular AV segment. (Each transcript has periodic timestamps, which provide convenient reference points within the text.)

For example, the feature last Saturday was “John Maynard Smith on Consciousness.” The portion of the conversation that appears on the video begins in the transcript at 0:45:57:000, and concludes just before 0:50:54:000. As for what gets said, it seems to me the gist of the conversation can be summed up in this highly edited abridgement:

Wright: I think I’m much more inclined than you to to look for signs that there’s something more out there than the material world. I think I would like, more than you, to think there is some kind of higher purpose out there. But certainly when I’m in that mode, looking for signs of that, this mystery of consciousness, at least to me, is a big kind of question mark. It suggests there’s something more there and the metaphysical laws of the universe or something… there’s definitely something we haven’t figured out, something fundamental.

John Maynard Smith: Yes I’m inclined to agree with you. I’m quite clear in my mind that I do not understand consciousness, that I have nothing sensible or intelligent to say about it, that I don’t even have any good ideas or experiments or investigations that would shed light on it. What I don’t know is whether it’s possible to have intelligent ideas of how we might investigate it.

And a couple of minutes later:

Wright: I just find it interesting and suggestive that the thing that infuses life with meaning is the thing that seems at this point at least entirely inexplicable and mysterious. At least to you and me.

John Maynard Smith: Yes. Sure. I agree with all of that…

Wright: And it hasn’t lead you to hypothesize the existence of a God or anything?

John Maynard Smith: Well I don’t see how he’d help. I mean it’s a rather useless hypothesis.

I’m on Smith’s side here. It seems to me quite possible, even likely, that the nature of consciousness, and our difficulties it explaining it, are evidence that there’s something about the fundamental principles of the universe we haven’t figured out. But God? Don’t see how he’d help.