Number 85 : March 1997 |
Dear Theo,
Commensal No. 84 came as a pleasant surprise. I always preferred it to the Mensa magazine, which I take three weeks to unwrap these days. My continued membership is either a triumph of optimism or apathy.
Title and packaging of Commensal I consider irrelevant but for tradition's sake I would vote to keep the name. I hope you won't think it presumptuous of me if I suggest for the SIGs list that the twelve words after "expert" to before "but must desire" might be removable. With eighty members you'll probably get eighty different suggestions: serves you right for asking !
I enclose a piece for your consideration. I hope it's not too long. I add what I call related reading because I recall a criticism in an earlier Commensal on this point. I suppose many members are reluctant because we all feel that the other seventy-nine know more than we do, but I thought, "What the hell", and did it anyway.
Anthony : I think you’re probably right on the SIGs List entry - the extra 12 words hardly trip off the tongue. Still, I was determined to use my 50 words to the full (more eye-catching !). Also, much philosophy, along the lines of Whitehead’s "footnotes to Plato", does presuppose a knowledge of philosophers & their philosophies and hence may be impenetrable to all but the committed.
However, where we do know that problems have been addressed before, I think we should make reference to former thinkers - and your book-list approach is a good way of stimulating one another. A middle course needs to be navigated between sterile academia and forever starting from scratch.
23rd February 1997 : Anthony Owens
THE END OF THE RAINBOW
Enquiries into the nature of reality seem as old as thought itself. In the not-too-distant past scientific enquiry promised a possible route to this elusive goal. More recently a growing tendency to stress the model-making aspect of such enquiry may betray increasing doubt; and some current physical theories make those clinging to former hopes of a scientific solution look like treasure hunters digging dementedly at the end of a rainbow.
A world in which the observer is part of the process of observation and trees which are no longer being looked at disappear hardly lends itself to reliable experimentation in the pursuit of reality. It is a world in which one is bound to wonder whether the 'particles' being discovered with such enthusiasm actually existed before they were detected. Does a detector detect or manufacture ? This is a dangerous thought: our senses are detectors: do we make the world we live in ?
It is perhaps important to note here that this suggestion has nothing to do with our perception or other sensory experiences of the forms of matter which surround us. These experiences are at best a much edited version of our environment; at worst a mere rough guess made by our brain; and even may be learned. Rather the suggestion is that our senses are involved in a reaction one end of which is some, perhaps randomly evolving, existence while at the other end is our limited interpretation of that existence: extending to the idea that the entire Universe, whatever its real nature, is the cumulative effect of all detectors. However, anything that changes as a result of any reaction can be said to fill the role of detector so, in a real sense, does the Universe make itself ?
With some irony, this solution may not be unacceptable to those theorists insulted in the first paragraph but it is hardly the end of the matter. Our end of the reaction was described as an "interpretation" but this seems to place it outside the scope of a simple mutual detection process. 'Interpretation' involves consciousness and for this to have originated or evolved from such a process implies that the process exceeded its boundaries by producing a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. At first this may seem unremarkable because we are surrounded by other examples; all living things and all artefacts possess this quality; but a notable feature of such is a link with consciousness. They are either involved in that from which we assume consciousness arose; or they are a product of consciousness and dependent for their quality on an assessment by consciousness.
The problem of investigating consciousness is that only our own is directly accessible. General investigations of the assumed seat of consciousness, the brain, seem to succeed only by pushing it into some sort of parallel part-brain, which confounds rather than confronts the problem. Suppose we reverse our normal assumption of an evolved consciousness to one in which all things evolve from consciousness. Then, the problem of 'magic' wholes greater than their parts is resolved. Our assumption would survive what we might call 'Holme's Razor: "When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". The existence of seemingly non-physical experiences which are the sole preserve of consciousness, such as abstract qualities like love, can be given an existence no more difficult to place in our world than a brick wall; and meaningless words like 'metaphysics' and 'supernatural' become redundant. Not that this gives the green light to every spoon-bender on the block: the laws of physics remain unchanged. Of course, that pretentious clockwork between our ears, our P.C. you might say, would have to take on the role of a mere slave terminal.
Our world of appearances may exist unaltered but what might warrant change is our attitude to what we tend to dismiss as 'primitive superstition'. The experiences qualified by our brains may be limited and distorted but we have learned to manipulate them with spectacular success. However, consider for a moment whether the increasing numbers and influence of such distractions are likely to have strengthened or weakened our already disadvantaged brains’ understanding of reality. Could ancient brains, unencumbered with such baggage, have had a clearer view of reality than our smug present allows for ?
Ancient beliefs are often a matter of guesswork but perhaps the oldest for which there is reasonable evidence is that of life after death. It is difficult to interpret a burial with new or model everyday artefacts in any other way. Of course, simple observations which might explain such a belief could have been made at the time; and representations of the things involved do turn up: on objects; as part of rituals; and in traditional stories: snakes which are 're-born’ when they slough their skin; trees which 'die' every winter and come back to life every spring; herds of migrant animals which appear in the same place at the same time each year always centred round a large male which the hunters 'knew’ had been killed the previous year; and plants 're-born’ from seeds. Is it any wonder the ancients believed in life after death ?
Yes, it is ! In those times it was perhaps inevitable that some among their number whom they considered dead were still alive. Of these a small number might recover but evidence for life after death among their own must have been extremely rare. We might speculate that they reacted to this lack of success at their own resurrection by inventing a place to which their risen dead went; but would this be an assumption too far ? Ancient peoples may have been primitive but that doesn’t have to mean that they were stupid ! Within the limits of their technology they were incredibly innovative. Indeed, one might hazard the view that they needed to be a damn sight smarter to survive in those days than we do now. Personally, my super-intelligent-hero would be the unknown Aryan who invented the chariot.
Nevertheless, if they were so clever, how do we explain their apparently fantastic beliefs ? Do we make sufficient allowance for the inevitably primitive forms of transmission of their beliefs ? Do snakes, trees, bulls, and dismembered sacrifices abound in mythology around the world: not because they were naively interpreted omens, or convoluted tips on agriculture; but because they were the best, most immediately understandable, phenomena to use as examples to illustrate a belief, even a knowledge, far less accessible to us as we wallow in the distractions of our progress ?
Did the ancients’ consciousness have a better grip on reality than we have ? As the unchanging, inexhaustible, ground for everything - is consciousness the only reality ? How can a world of continuous change qualify as real ? Will the scientific diggers come to realise that rainbows have no end ?
RELATED READING:
Accounts of quantum theory abound but the pair of limericks concerning the tree in the quad can be found in: Alastair Rae; QUANTUM PHYSICS: ILLUSION OR REALITY; Cambridge, 1986. Also try: John Gribbin; IN SEARCH OF SCHRODINGER'S CAT; Corgi, 1985, reprint 1987.
An interesting theory: Julian Jaynes; THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND; Penguin, 1993. Also try: Hofstadter & Dennett; THE MIND'S I; Penguin 1982, reprint 1986.
For anthropology and a bit of philosophising try: Richard Leakey & Roger Levin; ORIGINS RECONSIDERED; Little, Brown, 1992.
For mythology try: Michael Jordan; GODS OF THE EARTH; Bantam, 1992. And, if you have the stamina: Joseph Campbell; THE MASKS OF GOD, (4 volumes); Penguin, 1968, reprint 1976.
Of some interest: Guy Murchie; THE SEVEN MYSTERIES OF LIFE; Hutchinson, 1979.
Anthony Owens
Anthony : While I enjoyed the above article, I suspect it of rampant post-modernism! I’m a straight-forward realist, myself. As with Jonathan’s contribution, we have to explain the consistency of experimentation - why are consistent results to "n decimal places" possible if we are individually creating our reality. We might well share delusions, but why are they so consistent and mathematically modelable? I see no particular problem with the Universe "making itself", by the way. After all, if "God" (however defined) didn’t (or doesn’t) make it then what else are we left with ?
While it’s always a good wheeze to try to invert a problem in the way you’ve done, in taking consciousness as the key to the material world, rather than as a rather enigmatic epiphenomenon, one has to be careful that this formal transformation doesn’t just make other problems pop up in place of the ones that have been transformed away. You suggest the problem is "resolved" if all things evolve from consciousness. What, exactly, is meant by this turn of phrase ? We normally explain the obscure in terms of the understood; but while we have direct experience of (our own) consciousness we can hardly claim to understand it. As for our brain being a slave terminal, do you view it as a device onto which little programs are downloaded (like Java applets ?) from our consciousness ? What I don’t understand on this model is why brain activity is required for thoughts ? One could imagine some translation being required to convert a "move this limb" instruction emanating from a conscious "soul" into mechanical instruction for the muscles, but why for non-action-producing thoughts ? Maybe to get our viscera engaged - ie. emotional involvement, along the lines of Antonio Damasio’s ideas (in Descartes’ Error - Emotion, Reason & the Human Brain) ?
Why do you view our brains as disadvantaged ? What are brains for except to enable us to manipulate our environment more successfully ? You seem to admit that they’ve done us proud here. Why not glory in our brains’ ability to get a grip on reality ? The problem of having a limited view of reality might not so much be a problem with thought as with our sense organs. Our view of the universe may be distorted by our inability to sense 99% of it - ie. the "dark matter" that are brains are quite able to deduce must be there but which we can’t directly detect. What we can detect corrects our thought processes and vice versa. I view this as a virtuous circle protecting us from illusions and delusions. Our minds are capable of inventing prostheses not only to remedy deficiencies in our senses (eg. radio telescopes), but also of our minds themselves (ie. computers).
I can’t go along far with your ideas on ancient peoples. I don’t think there’s much evidence either way as to who was smarter - ancients or moderns. While we’d find it a tall order to be hunter-gatherers if turned out onto the scrub tomorrow, presumably we’d cope OK if we’d been brought up to it. Similarly "primitives" would probably cope OK with our modern society if brought up in it (rather than suddenly dumped into a lecture on general relativity). Who’s to say whether the technological skill required to invent and build a chariot, in its day, was greater or less than that required to build a Saturn 5, in its day ? Or, how the conceptual leap required to invent the wheel, or the zero, equates to that to discover the uncertainty principle ? Newton’s alleged comment that he saw further than other men because he stood on the shoulders of giants has to be borne in mind. Knowledge is cumulative, and what is beyond a genius in one generation becomes a triviality for a dullard in another. Aristotle might well have been one of the greatest minds that ever lived, but his physics was a load of twaddle. Hence, I don’t think we can deduce anything about the ancients having been closer to how things are than we are, or brighter than we are, and therefore able to direct us on central issues.
To your book list, I’d add a whole bundle of works by Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained), David Chalmers (The Conscious Mind), Francis Crick (The Astonishing Hypothesis), Roger Penrose (The Emperor’s New Mind and Shadows of the Mind), David Hodgson (The Mind Matters - Consciousness and Choice in a Quantum World), John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind), Paul Churchland (Matter and Consciousness), etc. etc. that debate whether or not AI is or will be sufficient to explain consciousness. And, of course, The Journal of Consciousness Studies, which I’ve recommended before !
Theo