From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

by Daniel C. Dennett

The merely Darwinian creature is “hard-wired,” the beneficiary of clever designs it has no need to understand. We can expose its cluelessness by confronting it with novel variations on the conditions it has been designed by evolution to handle: it learns nothing and flounders helplessly. The Skinnerian creature starts out with some “plasticity,” some optionality in a repertoire of behaviors that is incompletely designed at birth; it learns by trial-and-error forays in the world and is hard-wired to favor the forays that have “reinforcing” outcomes. It doesn’t have to understand why it now prefers these tried-and-true behaviors when it does; it is the beneficiary of this simple design-improvement ratchet, its own portable Darwinian selection process. The Popperian creature looks before it leaps, testing candidates for action