COMMENSAL ISSUE 90

Dear Theo et al,

I'm glad to hear that you are a fellow reader of Prospect Magazine and you have read the Socratic dialogues.

I take your point about some people inventing scripts and trend-setters being the first to act them out. These pioneers were possibly more conscious in the sense that they had to rely more on their rational mind than on their autopilots (the autopilot is sometimes referred to as the Preconscious mind). One could argue that the pioneers were Really Living whereas those on autopilot were Living Second-Hand. I wonder what it would be like to Really Live more (a Campaign for Real Living, perhaps?) although I've already pointed out that Living Second-Hand does create much order in our lives. About the sensitivity of non-linear systems to boundary conditions, the system depends on good communication (to relay effects to other units in the system) and on the reaction of those units which may be dampened or amplified in a non-predictable (non-generalisable) way.

I have observed that there is a difference between the physical reality of things and the extra meaning which we attach to them. This is a very important observation because it is so pervasive and essential to understanding the human experience. I suspect the philosophical notion of 'qualia' is akin to this extra meaning.

Lets take some examples :-

1. A cloud is merely a mass of water droplets dancing in a local area of the atmosphere. However as humans we attach extra meaning to a cloud rather than thinking of it as a really is.
2. A flower in reality is a plant's mechanism for attracting bees to aid cross-pollination in the hope of producing strong genetic mixes in reproduction. However as humans we have attached added extra meaning to a flower - we think of it as a beautiful creation of nature which brightens up the living room when put in a vase or which makes one’s girlfriend happy when presented as a gift. This added extra meaning is totally detached from what a flower really is.
3. The sun is really a large thermonuclear fusion process occurring constantly 93 million miles away in space. But for humans the sun means something that comes out during the day, gives warmth and promotes good weather and sometimes gives a sun tan.
4. A man is a collection of a certain number of elements in a certain proportion (mostly carbon, hydrogen and oxygen). Yet we think of a man in terms of what he does or has done or is capable of doing and we sometimes say a man has a (non-physical) soul.

I was intrigued by your matter-of-fact reference to dianetics, which is presumably highly controversial ! I’m not sure what your interest in it is, or if you care anything for scientology, but for the convenience of those who may be interested, here’s a clip from my Encyclopaedia Britannica CD. No doubt, Vijai, you will distance yourself from any such association, correct misrepresentations or do something completely surprising in your next submission :-

Scientology : official name CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY, religio-scientific movement developed in the United States in the 1950s by the author L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86). Its forerunner was Dianetics, a form of psychotherapy originated by Hubbard and later incorporated into Scientology. Hubbard introduced Dianetics in 1950 with his best-selling book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. According to Dianetics, every experience is recorded in the mind as a mental image. Painful experiences, called engrams, are not completely available to the "analytical," or conscious, mind. When stimulated by later experiences, engrams, which are part of the "reactive," or subconscious, mind, cause irrational behaviour. Therapy requires working with an "auditor" to confront engrams in order to "clear," or free, the mind of them. Dianetics is thus a set of techniques for getting rid of engrams and thereby presumably achieving better mental health. Scientology includes a highly structured system of beliefs, including the role of the thetan (soul, life energy) in the physical universe.

By way of payment in lieu for the possible copyright infringement, here’s an ad ! Encyclopaedia Britannica CD is worth acquiring, I’d say, at £400-ish : the CD is cheaper than the books, makes looking things up easier & saves loads of shelf space; downside : you don’t get all the diagrams and it’s not so easy to impress the neighbours !

The above aside, you seem to a reductionist of the cruder sort, Vijai ! You raise very interesting questions, though, and it’s good to get out of the ethical morass into metaphysics. Personally, I think your examples split into distinct categories. Items ( 1 ) the cloud and ( 3 ) the sun are pretty well described physically as you say, though I think the sun’s influence on the weather is still objective. The Earth would still be warmed by the Sun, even if we weren’t around to observe or care (contra Bishop George Berkeley !). Your approach to items ( 2 ) flowers and ( 4 ) man appears inconsistent. Flowers are also mainly carbon, hydrogen & oxygen, but are not thereby "really" the same as men. You have to allow for the whole being more than the sum of its parts, otherwise you’re ignoring information, order & thermodynamic considerations as part of what is "real".

Also, you need to take into account emergent properties, though this is a source of some debate. You are right, though, to distinguish between properties that are intrinsic to objects and those that we give to them by the use we put them to in our cultures. Saying what something "really is", though, is a rather ill-defined idea. I prefer to view the reductionist programme as being one of explanation - ie. how higher order things function or are constituted in terms of simpler, lower order things. Saying, though (not that you do - this is an example !), as Francis Crick does in The Astonishing Hypothesis, that "you are just a pack of neurons" seems to be unhelpful. Consciousness may well arise from the brain without requiring any "soul stuff" to explain it, but it is still a different sort of thing to the neurons that give rise to it.

Apologies to the TTR camp in all this, by the way - I know we’re not using ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ in the way you’d like !

Theo