From Birds To Brains

Jonathan Moens considers whether emergence can explain minds from brains.

- Jonathan Moen

One September in Rome, as I waited for the 700 bus, I looked up and noticed a black tide of birds hanging over Il Vittoriano monument. Tens of thousands of starlings had gathered here to dance their graceful, synchronous dance. They raced and morphed, splintered off and coalesced: they formed an endless stream of imaginary shapes in the tangerine sky, I was mesmerized by the scene above me.

I had recently learnt about ‘emergentism’: the view that complex systems, including certain substances, cells, bodies, brains, and ecosystems, can exhibit behaviours that are greater than the sum of their parts. The wetness of water, for example, can’t be explained by individual water molecules alone, which are not themselves wet. The wetness emerges when we have trillions of water molecules acting together. Similarly, the destructive power of a tornado can’t be explained by the individual water droplets, dust particles, and debris that feeds it – none of which individually are themselves violent. Even consciousness – that inner, subjective realm comprised of the fleeting sensations, feelings, and thoughts that shape our everyday lives – can’t be found in the activities of individual brain cells. And now here I am, observing the starlings’ collective murmuration.