Semantica
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: Consciousness is the gear that confuses itself for the whole machine. Thus are two thousand five hundred years of philosophical megalomania explained.
This started as a response to Abalieno…
So science gradually provides an entirely new vocabulary for self-understanding, one consilient with the mad therapeutic bounty of neuroscience and utterly at odds with intuitive self-understanding, let alone received cultural norms. Historically, whenever science begins substituting explanations, the preexisting explanations lose all credibility. Evolution is a great example of an entire explanatory system that ran afoul powerful, conflicting cultural norms. You can be damn sure that his new scientific vocabulary will not fly, that people will opt for a wild diversity of counter-arguments, each one of them convinced that the experience they felt, that was the foundation of existence, let alone life, had to be more than smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile more and more people will be cured and so on, cementing the cognitive legitimacy of neuroscience. The instruments employed by government and corporate interests become ever more effective. A profound crisis rocks jurisprudence. All human life is medicalized. We find ourselves living in this bizarrely bifurcated world, where people assert, with religious fervour, that their hearts speak true. But where they are administrated and ministered to as biological machines. A bifurcated inverted world.
What other outcome could their be? So long as the tools provided by neuroscience are effective, they will be patronized by those seeking competitive advantages – by power. All the masses who believe in some X will only have speculation and tradition to constrain their beliefs, so they will continue to speciate, more and more accounts as to why This Comes First.
Terrifying to think about: the very foundation of meaning as object of social manipulation. You could say the process began with the Enlightenment, with the organization of our societies around the technical exploitation of our labour and our environment. Another way to put this is that <em>technical exploitation </em>is the engine of our social system. And as it plays itself out, the meaning-friendly alternatives will come to seem more and more tenuous, ‘fringe’ or ‘commercial.’ You will see the a profound realignment of cultural identifications. Embracers. Mopers. Hopers. Deniers. All four will scramble to lead lives of hedonic excess. The Tweakers will run everything, especially the ten-thousand channel show called ‘meaningful existence.’
A few will even believe it.
Three Pound Brain 
“All human life is medicalized”
Scot, this is the precise point where you simply MUST read the novel Harmony by Project Itoh. I was writing a review of it for amazon the other day and towards the end I began comparing it to your own work (didn’t end up posting the review). It just didn’t occur to me to come here and recommend the book to you until I read this post.
He deals with the same central themes that obsess you, it’s uncanny how much what you just wrote reads like your own version of his novel.
Sounds fascinating. I’ll definitely pitch it to my book group.
Sometime in the near future, a cocktail party…
Neuroscientist: (looking very pleased with himself) …so, now we can actually use memetic engines targeted at core demographics to produce SPECIFICALLY tailored social effect. Does India need to reduce it’s population 35 years down the line? They call us, and we work with a sophisticated neural-net AI to produce TV shows that subtly change the entire psychodynamics of the populace!
Naive Philosopher: Uh-huh. But what about qualia experience?
Neuroscientist: Oh, we use that too.
Naive Philosopher: No, I mean how do you account for it?
Neuroscientist: *lauhing* Oh my god! You’re running algorithm #234!
Naive Philosopher: What?
Neuroscientist: La chiene est sur un bicicle!
Naive Philosopher: *starts clucking like a chicken*
Neuroscientist: This is so much fun! Hey guys come check this guy out!
Research Assistant: “Someone, quick! Take a picture of this retard’s activation patterns!”
I like how it needs to be naive philosopher. Needs that little bit of fantasy distance, because just plain philosopher triggers so many responces that break with delivering the joke.
I was thinking you follow that with
*behind a one way mirror*
“Test #823 is again positive *ticks clipboard, yawns*, okay, hit the reset button, only 177 to go!”
….
“Test #823 is again positive *ticks clipboard, yawns*, okay, hit the reset button, only 177 to go!”
Absolutely. See, if I just write “Philosopher”, I make the Big Mistake of insulting the intended audience’s intelligence (the most unforgivable of sins in the business of ‘gaming ambiguities’ aka ‘human communication’).
Anyhow, the really interesting part is that the “Naive Philosopher” in the above example is intended to represent myself since my qualia hangup is my recurring stumbling block on the way to Nirvana.
And yes, you could indeed follow the joke that way.
It’s turtles all the way down.
In the ‘spirit’ of scientific practice, in what physically/empirically measured way can this hypothesis be proven wrong?
I can see Abalieno point in being wary of attributing “science” a special, exclusive status, if science is mentioned, but then used in used only in name as a backing to classic style assertion of belief/attempt to impression.
A “I didn’t say all of this is definately true” doesn’t really cut it. As far as I can tell, the bible, as another text, could hold the same claim. As far as I can tell, with scienctific practice, the onus is not simply on others to disprove, but with the claim maker to carry the disproval method within himself to begin with.
So, cluck! (hey, I can feel me alienating myself with the above text – may as well have fun at the end! >:) )
“In the ‘spirit’ of scientific practice, in what physically/empirically measured way can this hypothesis be proven wrong?”
You can’t really apply the scientific method to verify the epistemic validity of the scientific method (circular logic). You just assume it a priori and continue to believe it because it makes cities explodes, airplanes fly, and cures smallpox.
Clucking optional.
thats right I was justing reading godel, no axiomatic system can ever be proved to be fully coherent and consistent from within its own rules and postulates, its kind of cool.
Magic is what you assume a priori. Is this sufficiently advanced?
Anyway, I’m not verifying scientific method? I’m not questioning the nuclear explosion, I’m questioning where it will be applied on the chess board, if at all. Except it’s not being stated as a predicted move that if it were, the indicators of how that prediction could be false would be included. It’s being stated in the classic human sense of knowing. How does one break down the future problem for oneself in such a case? One doesn’t, one just listens to the knower as he knows and as he knows, thou doest follow. I appreciate the alarm, but the data given points only to exclusive knowledge on the matter. More to the point, exclusive conclusions – I can only witness conclusions, as is. I cannot make my own conclusion. Scripture? I can feel it sucking me in emotion wise, even now, given the stakes. Took about a day to get a work around in place.
Same way I assume my hand is real. My ass itches, then my ass no longer itches, therefore the hand is real.
I sometimes wish Hume and Nietzsche could have been lovers.
I have always thought of the human project as the ability to choose how you change.
And what has that ability?
I do, how I change i don’t know. The processes that make up who I am are elusive, and undefined. Often changing under my feet as I walk by them. But I do essentially believe that there is something that is ‘I’. That ‘I’ may be an illusion but it still seems to exist in the world.
On the one hand there is this Buddhist idea that there is no self. That I and the mountain are the same. There is merely a distinction for practical purposes, but still I cannot help but say practically there is this ‘I’ that does something, and how I do those things, or what I think as I am doing them, or for what reasons I do them, I am not positive. I don’t know, but I feel that I have the ability to see a goal and work towards that. Learning and figuring out what changes need to be made to make those changes possible.
The Buddhists want to have it both ways: say you are an illusion, but that intentionality is real.
Like Buddhism, science (more and more, anyway) is saying you are mistaken about yourself, perhaps profoundly so. So, for instance, there is evidence that you simply accompany the changes you’re talking about, then ‘take credit’ for them afterward. The sense you have of being a ‘centre of efficacy’ is simply a functionally effective ‘mistake.’
The mistake is exists in the world, but what you are mistaken about does not. Are you saying that you find solace in embracing the mistake?
I am having trouble with putting my finger on what exactly you are getting at, but I think you are saying that we in a sense move about the world, and then we say ‘oh that must be us’, and begin to put motivations into what you are doing, when all you are doing first is moving.
I find want to ask can we picture a change, in most likely broad strokes, and then make that change happen. (as an aside I have thought of everything from the cult/cultivation project we have been searching for ways to change purposefully.)
So whoever this is that acts, and perhaps its a mistake but a functional one, so even if this mistake sets out and follows a map towards an eventual outcome, that is the project.
Your brain is doing all the work: but since the thalamocortical system (what seems to be responsible for consciousness) only has access to a small fraction of its activity and is utterly blind to everything else, it assumes it’s the only inhabitant of your skull. At every turn it confuses its sketchy, low-resolution, fragmentary access for all there is. Your brain generates behavioural outputs, which you simply take credit for after the fact. This is the thing (and I think I finally found my aphorism for this post!): consciousness is the gear that confuses itself for the whole machine.
So is consciousness anything else, what is it exactly, this part of the brain, and what does it function?
Mmmm, not sure about the take credit thing. Think of when you learned to touch type – when you first did it, it really required you to direct your fingers. These days, I have to admit, I find it kind of creepy how my fingers leep to the keys really without me controlling them. Any link on that taking credit stuff?
It started as a reply to me but it’s not about my point.
Even in this case I read the post and I don’t have anything to argue about it. That picture may as well be correct and represent precisely where we’re going. It’s only that it may not be the whole picture. In these matters it’s all about contexts. So a specific vision could be very precise and still completely change if you put it in a different context. In the end it all amounts to huge uncertainty.
Huge uncertainty of modernity that replaces an ancient and organic vision of a world where things had some sense. I do not contest this, it is a precise representation of our times.
There are two visions and it would require one to be a fanatic to shut down one and put all his faith in the other. In the uncertainty you have no solid ground to make the choice. So, from my perspective, I have just doubts that can’t be answered.
But what about the way you see your daily life? The choices you make every day? Without solid ground, I still tend to work in accord with my nature. Or maybe I become contradictory.
Jumping back to an earlier point in the discussion, changing the context back to the inside: we can either have free will or not. Whatever the “correct” solution, those two paths are exclusive, either one or the other. And obligatory, as there’s not a third possibility. Either we admit there’s no “free will” and we are only a process that is blind to itself, but still works as it was programmed, or there is free will and so we have a choice. Including the choice of shaping the world the way we intend. *Deciding* on the rules instead of being just slaves to them.
The point is that this duality (on free will) is also a divergent way to construct the world. A specular image. Everything else becomes a simple consequence of the branch you want to track.
Maybe at a superficial glance one can brand one as “cynical”, the other as “consolatory”, but in the end it’s the consolatory one that is the only worth pursuing. In the worst case as a sense of mercy. What about the other? It’s merely a sense of inertia, as the only reason to pursue the other is that it’s “true”, not delusional. So not “chosen”, as it is outside of us and not pertinent to whatever choice we have. We only go more or less fast down that path.
I don’t see anything worthwhile in the other path, if not being “intellectually honest”. Which is why I’m not one who has made a choice and is certain of it. I have no idea, but I don’t understand what is worthwhile in this de-humanization of the human being, or even the possibility to find worthwhile (for us) answers outside that system.
I have this very classic image that is used even for the origin of the world in Tolkien’s mythology. The world as a perfect symphony that at some point gets disrupted by a discordant voice that opposes the natural flow (which I guess works on a similar premise of the “Harmony” novel cited above). It’s always good to have discordant voices, I accept them. But it’s another thing when you have to make a choice, right now, with no solid certainty.
But what if other people are under threat (whatever your definition of under threat is (and I assume you don’t think it’s impossible for people to be under threat)). What if the consolatary route just means that threat forfils it’s promise? Whereas if you had romanced the cynicism knife, some sort of solution or ablation of that threat could have been enacted?
I don’t mean to flatter Scott, but I suspect Scott has such a sense of moral responsibility he applies the cynicism knife quite extensively trying to forfil it. Atleast to me it seems extensive. So to do so to the extent he does does seem not a valid choice. But some amount of romancing the cynical blade might avoid something we care about, perhaps?
I was actually just having a discussion with a friend who said “Don’t make a problem of something when it isn’t” to me. Maybe I do, but I don’t think the cost of doing so is much. But maybe I’m wrong in that?
But some amount of romancing the cynical blade might avoid something we care about, perhaps?
Just to clarrify: But some amount of romancing the cynical blade might avoid something we care not to happen, perhaps?
The point was indirect.
You do agree that instruments of social management will become more and more refined as the science advances? What I’m saying is that pursuing the consolatory (which I think is a social and cultural inevitability) will have no bearing on this. It’ll be what it is now (and what you would expect it to be if was intuitively compelling and factually baseless): a jungle of interpretative regresses that will divide and complicate, scramble to keep up as the science reengineers the world into something more and more hostile to our consensual values.
So you’re telling me the jungle is better? That science does not reengineer the world in a manner incomparable to any other claim-making institution? That people (and governments and courts and doctors and…) shouldn’t look at its power, its consilience, its incrementality, its fertility, and so on as our best guess at the ‘truth,’ whatever that means?
Aren’t you really saying ignorance is bliss, using a pall of metaphysical claims to disguise it as pseudoknowledge?
I’m just lost in the ambiguity of the discussion.
a jungle of interpretative regresses that will divide and complicate, scramble to keep up as the science reengineers the world into something more and more hostile to our consensual values.
That would be from my point of view a good motivation to choose the other path. The human, symbolic one.
The way I see it from a very simple level is that lots of the present situation, like the way economy works at the moment, is the consequence of a certain inertia. But it’s not some kind of unmovable state. An idea I got strongly from Erikson’s stuff is that we perceive the world as something fixed and immutable. We think on the premise we exist forever. That tomorrow the world is exactly as you expect it to be. But that is only because we don’t have any larger perspective. We are just ants building a massive anthill that could be wiped any moment. That’s the arrogance of our perspective, we imply too much, give everything for granted.
I don’t believe much in this “singularity”, because I think it’s like a chimera. A kind of goal that appears very close but that always move forward. So that you think you are making progress, but you aren’t getting any closer. It’s becoming like alchemy and the formula to turn iron into gold.
The way science is transforming the world continues to be lopsided. It doesn’t touch everyone and is not absolute. At any moment a virus could pop up that wipes off most of the population, including whatever scientific progress. We are still vulnerable and, from my point of view, far, far, far away from the possibility of emancipating ourselves from the “hardware” or the whims of nature.
So even this can become a myth of omnipotence that could be quickly humbled.
What’s the goal even behind manipulation? What’s at the end of this path (assuming “science” can go on doing its stuff undisturbed)? Maybe at the end of the two paths (spiritual and scientific) there’s exactly the same thing. Or maybe they are large detours, or dead ends, or a sort of evolutionary step.
What I mean is that whichever path you pick, the way it goes is very, very uncertain. The other consideration is what’s the “goal” of whoever is in a position of power. “Social management” done by who and for what purpose? Self-interest of what kind? Don’t these future tyrants appear PATHETIC to you? That’s how I see this. Science on its own has no “intention”, so it will be used by whoever, that will give “science” his own intention.
Seems to me like another Kabbalistic idea that coincides with their idea of modernity. “Desire” that is the basic condition of life, and that develops through evolution. So forms of life that develop on a hierarchy of “desire”. Men are just a step further on this development scale, we share some animal desires like the need of food, shelter, desire to reproduce. And then we also develop more complex desire, like power, wealth and so on. This is a “picture” of reality that we can agree upon, not an ideology. What Kabbalists say is that AFTER you went through the whole scale, THEN you develop a need for something else: spirituality. Because “desire” obviously is never satisfied, if not in a temporary way. So whatever path you pick, it’s there that you end up. Plenty of different ways to life your life and try a multitude of experiences, that lead to the same conclusion.
This, brought back to the discussion, makes me wonder what’s the point of whatever path you depict. What is the ultimate point of social manipulation, or science? What is exactly that we should fight or favor?
Fighting the “human condition” may as well be detrimental. A waste of time. Without any “certainty” it doesn’t become on its own a worthy goal. Nor a convincing banner. It even risk of breaking people more, imposing a divide in a core that isn’t meant to be like that (what I said about the hardware being symbolic and not easily modified). Like a psychological trauma that won’t heal easily, and is not an “answer”.
Aren’t you really saying ignorance is bliss
My point is that I don’t know. It may even be, depends on what’s on the other side. Knowledge is useful when it leads to a kind of awareness that brings a change. But if you have no choice then ignorance is bliss, in the form of mercy.
I’m not one who has taken a side in this discussion. I honestly say that I have no idea. These branches of possibilities are all viable in a way or another. This means that, theoretically, I keep juggling all possibilities and perspectives. Delusional, cynical, hopeful, whatever. While practically I simply have no idea, because there are not enough elements to make a choice. I don’t know. It’s gambling.
That’s then why I can’t, say, “endorse” your way of thinking, since it’s a kind of fanatical, radical and extreme stance that is potentially dangerous in many ways. That could be detrimental.
In the end it’s too ambiguous.
It’s like figuring out that we live in this blind box. This IMMEDIATELY and obligatorily leads to the necessity of tearing holes into it. To come out, break the boundary. Fighting the self. This is legitimate, but is it “useful” or even what we would decide to do, retrospectively, if we knew already what’s outside? Isn’t that blind box meant to be that way for a reason, and fighting it only a pointless exercise in frustration, like drilling holes in the ship you’re sailing on?
I’m just continuing to say that it’s too ambiguous to make a choice. Even assuming that we have that choice. If we have it, then we can only gamble.
(besides, we’re totally ignoring that as science has a slew of practical, provable effects, also “spirituality” can have its positive (or negative), tangible effects on people. Even if you consider it simply as a self deceit, it can make people feel better, heal them, make them live an happier life etc…)
The jungle of interpretative regresses is your path. You call ‘symbolic.’ Others call it ‘phenomenological,’ or ‘post-structural,’ or ‘metaphysical,’ or ‘existential.’ That’s what I’ve been saying all along. The science doesn’t give a damn what you think about it. You can say it’s not ‘special,’ the same as everyone else in the jungle, but meanwhile it continues.
I’m not a nihilist remember. And I think science is going to cut our throat. I’m just trying to show people the very, very real dilemma we’re in. And I don’t pretend that my meaning realism is anything other than an unwarranted leap of faith. Whistling in the dark.
“Another way to put this is that technical exploitation is the engine of our social system. And as it plays itself out, the meaning-friendly alternatives will come to seem more and more tenuous”
I get that you think technology is a threat to all that is meaningful. I just don’t get what you count as meaningful. You speak of “meaning-friendly” alternatives. What are these alternatives?
Speculative philosophies like the one you’re offering.
“That would be from my point of view a good motivation to choose the other path. The human, symbolic one.”
Abaelino, I think you’re missing the point. The point that Scott has been driving home from the opening quote in The Darkness that Comes Before.
There is no choice!
And here I’m gaming ambiguities because that statement refers to two different things:
1. “Free will” (defined as the feeling of seemingly acausal primary volition) is an illusion
and
2. The path society is taking is predetermined: open markets will exploit advantages, which will lead to the proliferation of technologies that give those advantages. Science provides those technologies, and increasingly those technologies will be at the frontier of neuroscience. This will lead to the erosion of ‘semantics’ since human behavior will be fully reducible.
Human. Behavior. Fully. Reducible.
Sit down and really let that percolate, because it’s actually bone-chilling.
What’s the point I’m missing?
I’ve discussed both paths, including the one that implies there’s no free will. The moment we agree there’s no free will is the moment we should act completely on the basis of “faith”. Why? Because without free will it means we are guided. Which also leads to another two branches:
1- We are guided through a determinate path that has a purpose (driven by god, nature or whatever)
2- The path is “random” and unintentional. A wrinkle of cause-effect without any sense. (the way Scott sees science)
Without a choice you are MEANT to work in accord. To sit in the chorus as there’s no other choice, or place to be. So it’s like saying: “I have faith in wherever life will bring me”. I will simply follow the flow because I have no real way to go against the current. The current is my natural place to be.
It’s in that perspective that one should “deny” the real world outside and find a “comfort” within himself, so that there’s a shell that still protects him. A way to defy what’s outside.
You literally don’t see the dilemma?
I guess I don’t, beside the absurdity of deciding what to do after realizing there’s no free will.
What I understand is that you picture the kind of scene typical in movies or cartoons where you are on a conveyor belt (or whatever you call them) with a big furnace or grinder at the end. The conveyor belt is “science”, leading us that way.
Isn’t that your dilemma?
I think science is going to cut our throat.
So we are slowly, ineluctably moving down that path, while wasting time theorizing on this and that.
If the path is ineluctable then the only thing left is simply about the state of mind you want to go through. Coming to terms with this condition in whatever way is best for you.
The only part that doesn’t work in this model is the fact that science doesn’t move on its own, and is a collaborative effort. So the hand that holds the razor is ours.
Or maybe you think that cutting the throat is the new step on the evolutionary path that will help us of shedding the mortal spoils?
The dilemma is one of global absurdity. There’s the idea of the sum of human culture up to this moment becoming as quaint and childish and incomprehensible as cave paintings. There’s the idea that the entirety of thought and assumption revolving around responsibility and obligation and [enter ubiquitous normative term] is simply false. There’s the idea that all our social institutions are in some way derived from and dependent upon these concepts and will collapse with them. Need I go on?
I fear it is inevitable, but what’s there to do other than fight or embrace quietism (either in the form of fantasy or nihilism)?
The only way to mobilize people, however, is to convince them the threat is real. But the world is a circle with as many centres as there are people. Everyone has there own redeeming (or exculpating) story – be it New Age, religious, or intellectual – which for them is the baseline, the yardstick they use to make sense of, let alone measure, everything. One of my tactics to make a second order ‘diaphonic’ critique, to observe the diverse, mutually incompatible redemptive views, and to contrast them to the breathtaking theoretical solidarity you find in science.
My position actually isn’t consistent. I take meaning and morality on faith, plain and simple.
Abalieno,
If the path is ineluctable then the only thing left is simply about the state of mind you want to go through. Coming to terms with this condition in whatever way is best for you.
The only part that doesn’t work in this model is the fact that science doesn’t move on its own, and is a collaborative effort. So the hand that holds the razor is ours.
I basically agree with your notion of the conveyer – how is there a dilemma in that? None, really.
I also agree that science doesn’t move on it’s own. It’s not science that doesn’t give a damn. That’s plugging human into science.
But collaborative effort? Really? I’m seeing small, select communities taking control of this stuff. The guy down the road who is a cleaner? The clerk at the store? The people practicing science really need the collaborative effort of these guys to do research??
The hand that holds the razor is SOME of us. And it’s pretty enevitable that they will decide they are the ones who know best for the rest of us, since it’s easy for a three pounder to A: Divide populations into ‘them and us’ and B: Once X isn’t happening to ‘us’, to not worry about the effects of X really very much (cue rationalisations galore).
Sorry, I should say it’s pretty inevitable IF the dominoes keep falling as they have been falling so far. In my hypothesis.
Wow, for a moment there I fell into some sort of practice of depicting no choice as well. So easy to do, seemingly…
Returning to this point about the dilemma.
The dilemma is one of global absurdity. There’s the idea of the sum of human culture up to this moment becoming as quaint and childish and incomprehensible as cave paintings.
If I understand this correctly it’s about a form of split between perceived norm and common values, and actual truth (as “revealed” by science). But I was reading of a similar split in the book of Von Foerster, a split that happened already a while ago (and the new one could be just a repetition of it under a new form).
Here’s the quote:
The scientific conception of reality which emerged in the 17th century is, in large part, responsible for our love affair with causality. “Newton gave the world the first rigorous formulation of the doctrine of causality. Most simply, the doctrine asserts that the same causes generate the same effects.” […]
The doctrine of causality appeared to fulfill man’s perennial search for certainty and objectivity. […] as Robert J. Oppenheimer explains, “The giant machine (the Newtonian universe) was objective in the sense that no human act or intervention qualified its behavior.” […]
And here’s the opening of the dilemma:
Although relativity theory and quantum mechanics have radically altered the physicist’s view of reality, this shift has not touched the average person. Equally, if not more important, many scientists have also failed to revise their thinking about reality and the nature of scientific work. Thus, most people see the world like the 17th century scientists, assuming that it’s possible to have objectivity and to know reality.
Why it is so?
Our 17th century mentality manifests itself in daily life. If this last statement sounds outlandish, stop and consider: Have you recently repaired some mechanical device, gathered data about the stock market, settled a dispute, cheked your child’s homework, or sat in a jury? Or, perhaps you earn your living testing new drugs, designing computers, practicing law, or investigating insurance claims? These activities and countless others require gathering data or information – not just any data, but data that are correct or accurate, i.e., that are true.
It’s a practical need of daily life, and the developments of science that are most destabilizing are those that actually don’t have much impact on the everyday life.
It’s like the discussion about why believing in science. Because it works. But quantum theory or consciousness seen as a mere process “do not work”. Have no practical use in daily life. It doesn’t give you Jedi powers.
If there is no choice
I’m just trying to show people the very, very real dilemma we’re in.
then there is no dilemma. It wouldn’t matter what is said here or if not a thing was said, it’d all break down to the same thing.
I get that basically people have resources they depend upon and so this dependence narrows their choices down and if they haven’t considered a particular nasty end narrowing, then further dependencies narrow it more and more right down to that end. And by my three pound estimate the hypothesized end narrowing could occur to a large or horribly, absolute degree.
But just saying there is no choice seems to be myth weaving.
Every once in a while I wonder if the Second Apocalypse is simply retelling the story of Plato’s Cave, writ large.
The shadows turn around to see what the fire looks like and in doing so find there was never any light in the first place.
That or the shadows turn and they don’t realise this turning is actually the process of the fire going out. They overlook their overlooking, treating observance as no contributor in itself, and so treat the results of their turning and observing, as if it had always been.
Alternately, it’s like whether the light in the fridge is on when the door closes…but in reverse…it’s on when the door is closed…
Hm. An interesting analogy. I like it!
Actually, Abalieno, a while back Scott posted a very nice summary of his views on science (paraphrasing here): It’s the rope that’s gonna hang us, but it’s the only rope we’ve got.
Meaning: it’s either science or back to the Dark Ages… and no one wants that.
I think Scott’s pessimism is drawn from his own blockade to Nirvana- absolute morality. Just as I cannot ‘let go’ of qualia, he can’t ‘let go’ of the intuition that tells him some things are just Wrong. This causes him to paint the Semantic Apocalypse as a Very Bad Thing.
Which it could be, I don’t know. Neuropath came close to convincing me.
Meaning: it’s either science or back to the Dark Ages… and no one wants that.
I do.
Well, more to the point my hypothesis is that we have more than enough technology right now to forfil the wildest dreams of our distant ancestors. For all humans (assuming some condom use and not just taking more resources as a prompt to breed even faster), not just the first world.
What stops us is that for some people, they like to play lord and king of a new age, building empires, now through corporate dominance (heralding back from kings forcing people off lands where they could be self sufficient). Precisely because consuming and protecting and nuturing genetic information is just not fucking enough for them! There has to be something bigger – they have to be bigger, cause they are fucking bigger, they just know it! And never mind the purely clinical sociopaths who start conflict out of nihilistic boredom.
So, what is morality when it so demands something bigger it borders on the practice of the sociopath?
You think we can just *stop* now? Are you crazy? Humans are knowledge machines. We’ll learn and build and create and temper and tinker JUST BECAUSE, nevermind the bonuses like wiping out disease, famine and making warfare too dangerous to conduct overtly.
I’m talking about people who apply fiscal pressures for profit and kingdom making/invent new nail situations. Not people who invent new hammers. The new hammers will keep coming.
C’mon, there’s a difference, surely? At the very least, human lazyness means new scientific discoveries don’t just walk out of the lab on their own. It takes the financial whip, cracked by those out to forfil their sense of bigger, to deploy these things. How many new toys come out during a war, for example, as opposed to peace?
Are you saying that as soon as something is invented that automatically with it, it becomes deployed, just by itself. Like Neuropaths smile detectors – it wouldn’t be rich men deploying that, actually as soon as they were invented the people in the shop instantly bought some with their own money and installed them? It’s the rich men who set up the nails.
There are at the very least vulnerabilities, if not just plain no native connection, between development of hammers and application of them.
Alternatively; Stop hammer time!
Meaning: it’s either science or back to the Dark Ages… and no one wants that.
I don’t get this kind of stance. This attempt to describe the situation “hands-off” doesn’t make much sense. When you imagine the future you are required to judge it. So we project a future and then decide if it’s desirable or if we should strive for something other (as long we think we have a choice).
I think Scott’s point is that you can’t let science develop and at the same time put it under control, because it has, on its own, a tendency to “reform” our beliefs. But considering this point it may well be that we are naturally resistant, and that “split” between science and out delusional symbolic world may be a way to keep both in check.
It may well be that science will kill us. So what? In this case we are once again in the cycle of nature, confirming those religious people who believe that meddling with the core of life is a “tabu” and that god will punish us. If science leads to our destruction then their beliefs are somewhat confirmed, if in a incidental way.
I’d suggest reading this article by Erikson because while it doesn’t touch the specific argument, it still deals with the wider picture:
http://www.stevenerikson.com/index.php/commentary-endgame-vol-1-and-2-by-derrick-jensen/
‘Kill us’ is such an easy term when used in the subjunctive. Let’s make it more pointed: Kill your children.
Are you really saying ‘So what?’ to this?
Profound existential uncertainty is bad, is it not? This is our present circumstant no matter what eventually happens down the production line.
NP simply concretizes one possibility in narrative, the image of the post-semantic, post-normative human.
“It may well be that science will kill us. So what?”
It’s not about killing. Killing is too simple.
I’ll read your link, you go read Neuropath.
I’m way out of my depth here, but whatever.
The idea of the Semantic Apocalypse does not scare me, because I believe science IS meaning. What does humanity crave more than mastery of the world (and that includes itself)? How else can it grasp this than through scientific progression? From what I’ve observed, the humble goal of human existence is to become God (whether we realise this or not), eventually. Seriously, what other ideal is there than knowledge? It encompasses everything. To know is to be God, in a sense, and that’s all we want.
Why does it matter if it is government or the media that manipulates scientific knowledge to control us if we’re already biological machines? Other, natural, factors have just been pushing us along the entire way anyway. The only difference now is that we know what’s happening, we know what makes us tick. And if we know this, wouldn’t we be able to resist it anyway?
I’m going on a tangent here, but it always irks me when people obsess about change and progression. Humans want these things, but as a species, what are we progressing towards? What is the ultimate goal of humanity? Where does it end? Does it ever end? WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING!
How do you define ‘meaning’?
The God stuff, I don’t understand. I appreciate that humans generally tend to maximize their power, and that godhead is a way of describing the endpoint of this general tendency. But by God we generally mean something structured like us, only with infinite power at its disposal. ‘We,’ whatever you intuitively take this to be, vanish in this scenario, simply because we are not what we intuitively think we are. ‘We’ are simply an evolutionary heuristic, a useful but thoroughly deceptive stopgap solution to particular environmental problems. We are a useful mistake.
Nothing ‘matters.’ And this is the matter. There’s no crime, no suffering, no love, no anything. Just cobwebs of neural tissue possessing a certain information integration value, processing models selected for functional efficacy rather than epistemic accuracy. Dupes. We love while our brains pair bond, reproduce, and rear offspring.
No one knows what the fuck is going on – that’s for damn sure.
we are not what we intuitively think we are. ‘We’ are simply an evolutionary heuristic, a useful but thoroughly deceptive stopgap solution to particular environmental problems. We are a useful mistake.
This is Darwinism, isn’t it? All evolution is essentially a “mistake” that is selected through survival, so it all comes out of a compromise.
But that leads again to let nature go on its course as we are like a cog, operating like a cog. If we step too far, nature will balance out.
You mean ‘accident.’ Evolution has nothing to do with mistakes (because evolution is not normative).
Sounds like an intent based distinction.
Terry thinks his belief in subjectivity is knowledge. I think mine is stubbornness and wishful thinking.
This particular branch (from man to god) is all about putting the human being in the center, and from my limited knowledge the Kabbalah is the “framework” that deals better and more profoundly with it.
The discussion is actually about negating that point (that humanity is exclusive, that we are special and creation centers on us), otherwise the Kabbalah gives the most complete answers.
“What is the ultimate goal of humanity?”
Science: there is no ultimate goal. You are generally programmed to maximize your short-term fitness. So, survive and reproduce as best as possible.
“Where does it end?”
Science: It is currently impossible to predict where the last human will die.
“Does it ever end?”
Science: Yes, please see 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Do you see how those answers actually DRAIN meaning rather than create it? It paints a picture of a cold, uncaring universe. Humanity is incidental.
“Do you see how those answers actually DRAIN meaning rather than create it? It paints a picture of a cold, uncaring universe. Humanity is incidental.”
And this bothers you because… .?
“Do you see how those answers actually DRAIN meaning rather than create it? It paints a picture of a cold, uncaring universe. Humanity is incidental.”
And this bothers your because… ?
I think Terry believes that subjective meaning is self-evidently ‘real.’ So dead universes don’t mean much to him, apparently when we’re just as dead as everything else. He doesn’t seem to think that subjectivity can be an issue, that it can be a mistake. That it’s absolute or something.
“He doesn’t seem to think that subjectivity can be an issue, that it can be a mistake. That it’s absolute or something.”
There is nothing absolute about subjectivity as I see it. Subjectivity is inherently relative.
In terms of whether it is ‘real’ this takes us back to Descartes and the idea that the only thing we can know for sure is the fact of having (or being) an experience. The nature of the experience is dependent on subjectivity which is inherent in being human due to the brain’s ability to store experiences (learning) and attach value to them (subjectivity) in the process so that they (the stored experiences) might serve our survival in the future.
contradicts
does it not?
But this simply speaks to my point: it’s more and more looking like Descartes was empirically wrong (in philosophical circles his cogito has been discredited for quite some time).
The subjectivity that you take as an absolute given (something that cannot be doubted) is in fact becoming more and more dubitable. Subjectivity is shaping up to be a neurological sleight of hand. There never has been an ‘I’ that thinks, only a brain that congenitally confuses itself for one. ‘You’ are this confusion, as am ‘I.’ The confusion is ‘real’ (in some neurological sense), but the object of the confusion – self, ego, I, mind, soul, etc. – is not. It no more ‘exists’ than does Middle-earth.
Remember that I say this as someone committed to subjectivity! But like I say, this commitment has no rational warrant – it’s a leap of abject faith.
Quite different than what you’re saying.
I’m inclined to think that if the heart in this chest were to stop beating, your heart would not suddenly stop as well. There’s some emperical in ‘I’, as much as the sun is not the earth. Middle or otherwise.
“There never has been an ‘I’ that thinks, only a brain that congenitally confuses itself for one. ‘You’ are this confusion, as am ‘I.’ The confusion is ‘real’ (in some neurological sense), but the object of the confusion – self, ego, I, mind, soul, etc. – is not. It no more ‘exists’ than does Middle-earth.”
I agree with this. I do not see any self that has or ‘owns’ subjectivity. This is why I prefer to use the term ‘individuality’. I see individuality as the learning that the brain has gained from experience (experiential programming) and has stored in memory, plus one’s individual genetic makeup (genetic programming). Thus individuality = experiential programming + genetic programming. It resides in purely material form. It is this individuality that contributes what can be called subjectivity (individual experience and genetics) to a neurocomputational response to a particular set of circumstances.
Subjectivity in this sense is not absolute but it is inevitable given the inescapability of learning (experiential programming) and the influence of genes (genetic programming).
The confusion is ‘real’ (in some neurological sense), but the object of the confusion – self, ego, I, mind, soul, etc. – is not. It no more ‘exists’ than does Middle-earth.
It would be interesting to examine this literally but from the opposite perspective. That Middle-earth exists as much as the rest of our perception of reality. “As real as it gets” (but without any reality)
Remember that I say this as someone committed to subjectivity! But like I say, this commitment has no rational warrant – it’s a leap of abject faith.
I don’t know if I understand this, but it’s an aspect of Metzinger’s ideas that are a bit baffling and I’d like better explained on a pragmatic level. The part where he states that there may be no death or birth, as if the “process” is continue. Which may be some form of collective unconscious or somesuch.
I’m really curious how Metzinger goes from his practical experiments and then up to metaphysics. Theoretically it’s like all these ideas are missing huge chunks in order to form a complete model and “make sense”. On the other side this goal (of making sense) is the very delusion that these ideas are trying to disprove.
It’s a bit schizophrenic.
I forgot to add that for me what is real is what makes a difference so subjectivity is real in this sense because it is what makes a difference that on the subject in possession of it can make. I actually prefer the word ‘individuality’ to subjectivity when I refer the that information stored in our brains and our genes that is unique to each one of us.
How are you describing experience? For example, imagine a circle and a line coming from the outside, entering the circle, bending and then coming out again at another angle.
I know it’s a simplistic model, but in terms of the line being a causal one, starting with physical matter or photonic and then effects on other matter until the effect exits again as more matter affected. But when you say experience your refering to that sort of thing (with the word ‘experience’ being a simple word to cover a very complicated process)?
Sorry Callan, I didn’t really understand your circle and line model. But I agree that experience is a loaded term. We usually think of experience as something we have such as an experience of joy or sadness. But I think it is more accurate to say that experience is what we are, in the sense that it is a process involving the evolving state of a nervous system in intra-action with the system in which it exists.
Well, if experience is a loaded term, and we are experience…heh.
In my imagined diagram the circle is a brain – the line, lets say its photons of light hitting things in an eye that fire electricity when hit by light, the electrical impulse hitting other cells which fire electrical impulses into other cells, repeat alot as the line bends, then the line exits the brain circle, an electrical impulse firing down other cells, which eventually fire electricity into musculature, which physically impacts an object.
I guess I’m just asking whether you’d recognise that as experience, or some other thingie?
Terry said:
“And this bothers your because… ?”
Every time science examines one of our cherished notions (geocentricity, creation myths, acausal volition, etc) it destroys it.
One of my most cherished notions is that my conscious experience is real in some sense… that “my” pain “matters”. My moral sense largely depends on my (unfounded, but deeply held) belief that in some sense, any pain I cause YOU also “matters”.
Where do we end up if neuroscience destroys that cherished belief?
I don’t actually have an answer to that question. Scott doesn’t seem to like it, but I’m simply curious.
Also… aging has been slowed down in genetically engineered mice to a dramatic degree:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15552964
“One of my most cherished notions is that my conscious experience is real in some sense… that “my” pain “matters”. My moral sense largely depends on my (unfounded, but deeply held) belief that in some sense, any pain I cause YOU also “matters”.
Where do we end up if neuroscience destroys that cherished belief?”
Neuroscience does not destroy any belief. It just makes ALL beliefs subjective rather than absolute. I you feel pain the pain results in an action then it makes a difference and is therefore real (has actual ‘real’ influences and consequences). Likewise if you feel empathy this also makes a difference in what you do and is, therefore, also real. Just because your interpretations of experience are ultimately non-absolute does not destroy their meaning (significance).
As I read that “The treatment had no effect on lifespan, but that may be due to the type of genetically engineered mouse used.”. Not saying they wont find a way to reset the dividing capacity of cells without triggering cancerous cells one day. But this is about dying of old age looking like a 20 year old.
Treatment had no effect on lifespan because most mice die of cancer. p16 prevents cancer, which would make these mice even more cancer-prone than normal.
“Neuroscience does not destroy any belief. It just makes ALL beliefs subjective rather than absolute.”
Yeah, OK, we’re not even talking the same language here.
[…] chunk of the ongoing debate over at Scott Bakker’s blog for my own perusal. I need to plant landmarks on a sprawling discussion, or I get lost too easily […]
Partially unrelated but looking around I found a guy that seems to be the counter to Metzinger, using neuroscience to do the exact opposite (or so the claim seems). So it should be at least interesting to hear this other point of view.
There’s a video here:
An experiment starts at 6:10 that easily fooled me.
Now that I watched most of it: he calls it going against “neuroscientific reductionism”.
I hope Noe gives credit in his book to Heidegger. This lecture (the second half especially) might as well be talking about Dasein.
“When Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not somehow first get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally encapsulated, but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always ‘outside’ alongside entities which it encounters and which belong to a world already discovered.” (Being and Time, Macquarrie and Robinson Trans., p. 89)
He’s the same guy that introduced Metzinger in the video you linked to about a week ago when we were discussing the book review.
My memory, it’s a curse I tell ya!
Simple question: What is meaning? How do you define “meaning”?
There’s a bag of philosophical worms. What do I mean by meaning. *sigh*
In short
“about-ness”
Like, when I say the word “chair” I’m ostensibly speaking about a set or network of cognitive objects that share properties of “chair-ness”. So, the word ‘chair’ has meaning, although how coherently anchored to reality that meaning is up to debate. In Scott’s novels, sorcerers are obsessed with meaning. On Earwa, direct knowledge (Gnosis) of absolutely anchored meanings produces stronger results than analogous knowledge.
In the real world, scientifically-based philosophy has undermined this notion of meaning, since (as I understand it) it relies on the Intentional Stance (again, ‘aboutness’), which is not an accurate description of how things work at the molecular and cellular level. Molecules and cells don’t care ‘about’ anything, they simply DO what causality requires.
Indeed, biologists are trained to avoid the use of teleological language and instead generally opt for the more accurate (?) teleonomy. From wikipedia:
Teleological language:
“The Wood Thrush migrates in the fall in order to escape the inclemency of the weather and the food shortages of the northern climates.”
Teleonomic statement:
“The Wood Thrush migrates in the fall and thereby escapes the inclemency of the weather and the food shortages of the northern climates.”
Science abhors aboutness.