Framing “On Alien Philosophy”…
by rsbakker
Peter Hankins of Conscious Entities fame has a piece considering “On Alien Philosophy.” The debate is just getting started, but I thought it worthwhile explaining why I think this particular paper of mine amounts to more than yet just another interpretation to heap onto the intractable problem of ourselves.
Consider the four following claims:
1) We have biologically constrained (in terms of information access and processing resources) metacognitive capacities ancestrally tuned to the solution of various practical problem ecologies, and capable of exaptation to various other problems.
2) ‘Philosophical reflection’ constitutes such an exaptation.
3) All heuristic exaptations inherit, to some extent, the problem-solving limitations of the heuristic exapted.
4) ‘Philosophical reflection’ inherits the problem-solving limitations of deliberative metacognition.
Now I don’t think there’s much anything controversial about any of these claims (though, to be certain, there’s a great many devils lurking in the details adduced). So note what happens when we add the following:
5) We should expect human philosophical practice will express, in a variety of ways, the problem-solving limitations of deliberative metacognition.
Which seems equally safe. But note how the terrain of the philosophical debate regarding the nature of the soul has changed. Any claim purporting the exceptional nature of this or that intentional phenomena now needs to run the gauntlet of (5). Why assume we cognize something ontologically exceptional when we know we are bound to be duped somehow? All things being equal, mediocre explanations will always trump exceptional ones, after all.
The challenge of (5) has been around for quite some time, but if you read (precritical) eliminativists like Churchland, Stich, or Rosenberg, this is where the battle grinds to a standstill. Why? Because they have no general account of how the inevitable problem-solving limitations of deliberative metacognition would be expressed in human philosophical practice, let alone how they would generate the appearance of intentional phenomena. Since all they have are promissory notes and suggestive gestures, ontologically exceptional accounts remain the only game in town. So, despite the power of (5), the only way to speak of intentional phenomena remains the traditional, philosophical one. Science is blind without theory, so absent any eliminativist account of intentional phenomena, it has no clear way to proceed with their investigation. So it hews to exceptional posits, trusting in their local efficacy, and assuming they will be demystified by discoveries to come.
Thus the challenge posed by Alien Philosophy. By giving real, abductive teeth to (5), my account overturns the argumentative terrain between eliminativism and intentionalism by transforming the explanatory stakes. It shows us how stupidity, understood ecologically, provides everything we need to understand our otherwise baffling intuitions regarding intentional phenomena. “On Alien Philosophy” challenges the Intentionalist to explain more with less (the very thing, of course, he or she cannot do).
Now I think I’ve solved the problem, that I have a way to genuinely naturalize meaning and cognition. The science will sort my pretensions in due course, but in the meantime, the heuristic neglect account of intentionality, given its combination of mediocrity and explanatory power, has to be regarded as a serious contender.
I’d kind of thought the teeth of the argument was that the aliens are an outgroup – and so we can assign them things we wouldn’t casually assign ourselves (tentacles, for one!) – and yet the aliens are within an evolutionary frame, they don’t just work any old way. But Peter brings them home by saying we are talking about human beings all along. Being too nice!
I thought I was pretty clear from the beginning that they’re a way to think of our own cognitive biology.
Why bring in the alien element, then?
Thanks for this, Dirk–invaluable stuff!
From the article
Groups that cooperate together win against groups that do not.
…
If you don’t cooperate with group members there’s a good chance that both you and your group will go out of business.
…
Two results follow – we instinctively cooperate, especially with those we identify as being in our group (conversely we are chippy xenophobes against outgroup people). And second, there’s a clear incentive to form larger groups
That’d explain how outgroupy the outgroup is, if the group is actually a behavior derived from on war (I mean, I’d assumed before it was more derived from fending off other species, where it’s fair to call the other species an outgroup. Atleast in the short term). Which means the ‘group’ has pretty screwed up origins to begin with. So many who are vehemently decrying an outgroup, are really only with their own group for martial force reasons (that’s what group means) – not really any togetherness with them.
It’s a Miracle
Some bedtime reading…
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+6&version=KJV
It’s like one long random encounter table
It’s Art
You want it darker ….
Not necessarily related to this piece, but one way the machines are getting smarter:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331144-500-ai-learns-to-write-its-own-code-by-stealing-from-other-programs/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&campaign_id=RSS|NSNS-
As a poor retail monkey making less the the Ontarian minimum wage with little hope of being able to afford starting a human family I’m considering acending into an AI intelligence… It all makes perfect sense….
*than
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/why-i-love-ai/
thanks will look soon to see what they mean by “smarter”
that’s bad news for folks who basically make their livings debugging code or just know a bunch of if-then sorts of ways of patching data but true novelty seems pretty far away, good stuff to keep an eye on, on the more fringe/entertainment side:
Ad for Brad
http://hardcorezen.info/zen-and-obsessions/5209
I miss my nan.
http://imgur.com/vW2iCx7
https://genius.com/Phantogram-funeral-pyre-lyrics
Lazarus is dead.
https://www.awakeninthedream.com/articles/the-greatest-spiritual-event-of-our-time-according-to-rudolf-steiner
R. Scott Bakker (and guests)—An Algorithmic Eärwa (TSpec4)
Not sure if you were aware (haha, pun not really intended) but this piece is on YouTube. I sent you some PayPal dollars on the hope that maybe you’d send me a transcript, but I just hope you actually got the money than anything else.
In any case, the piece is really interesting, at least, what I can suss out with my poor listening capabilities. And curse you for invoking Finnegans Wake, easily the rabbit hole to end all rabbit holes!
PS. I’m unsure how to embed a video here, so sorry if the link doesn’t work quite right.
This isn’t Bakker’s piece.
I figured he wrote it, even though he wasn’t there. Do you know who did write it, if it wasn’t Scott?
So whoever did the title is wrong?
The title is RS Bakker – An Algorithm ….
Presumably the people who wrote are Dan and Nandita Mellamphy the people reading it.
For bonus points, could they be unaware there was a guy under the desk during the whole thing? It was just some dude who felt like a lie down.
actually, to be honest, i dont know. there were some stylistic things in there reminscent of other things i’ve read by dan mellamphy, but there also seemed to be some autobiographical reflection which seems like it was written by scott. i couldnt follow most of it because of how out of phase they started getting when they were reading at the same time.
The first line of the presentation is, “why do I call the world I weave Earwa?” That certainly lead me to think Scott had written it, but the theme of Tuning Speculation 4 (from which this comes) is “We therefore seek contributions from scholars, artists, writers, activists and comedians who take seriously the fictionality of use(lessness) and (un)intelligibility. Moreover, as an added nod to the powers of the false, we’re asking that each paper include at least one untruth, misattribution, feint, plagiarism (choose your own mode of mendacity), exo- or esoterically embedded.”
As such, I presumed the lie was that Bakker would be presenting it, but I concede that perhaps the lie was that Bakker didn’t even write it at all. It would seem odd to have so much autobiographical information in it if he didn’t write it, but again, that could be the point.
The lie is there was ever a video at all!
“But…it’s right there…just click the play button…”
Lies! You must learn to see through them!
I watched this on my bus ride to work this morning and I was fascinated by it. Also, for some reason, the opening, where both speakers were talking at once, made me think of Philip Glass’ opera Einstein on the Beach. The whole thing was like a theater piece lecture hybrid that I was captivated by even when I didn’t quite understand the subject matter.
I can’t remember the exact phrase but something that stood out to me was: fictions which then become factual factions.
To me the whole ‘fictions that become factions’ sort of idea is basically a broader mechanism where Darwinistic nature places its bets on various squares on the roulette board, basically in a blind fashion, to see which truths are truths that lead to survival by raw trial and error. That’s the outside view – the inside view is that oneself is onto the utter truth…and will stake ones life on it…and other peoples lives on it as well, for good measure.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/when-darwin-reached-america
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds?currentPage=all
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/the-revolution-will-be-weird-and-eerie
https://2017.transmediale.de/content/middle-session-the-alien-middle
Oranges
While right and wrong might be up for question, copyright isn’t – the video contains content from SME and is blocked in my country on copyright grounds, I’m informed.
I’ve been hitting blocked content in my country today too. Sounds like the work of the Nerdist Vogon bureaucracy…
https://meaningness.com/metablog/virtue-court
Bitter anyone?
http://imgur.com/ulEVoa2
For the love of shrooms…
http://www.salon.com/2017/03/04/susan-sarandon-was-right-she-warned-us-hillary-was-doomed-liberals-didnt-want-to-listen/
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/03/01/famine-warning-issued-in-four-countries-following-worst-african-droughts-in-decades/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/22/facebook_ai_fail/?mt=1488129871079
A dangerous question…
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/automating-the-professions-utopian-pipe-dream-or-dystopian-nightmare/
The Great Secret
Molly+Meo+Afterglow=Mahamaya
Holy Mother of Buddhas, we did it, we did it!
Somewhere in-between
Breathing out and breathing in
https://mobile.twitter.com/brainpicker/status/839491606512291840/photo/1
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/physically-abused-kids-struggle-learn-about-rewards
I wonder if the researchers here are actually just world fallacy carriers and the unfortunate children actually have clarity on the matter. The test has an entirely arbitrary point benefit association with a particular image – you’d think scientists would be against forming associations based on no evidence. And yet here, where the abused child doesn’t form the non evidence based association, they see an issue with the child?
taxation without representation?
Also check out the PON table top game William R posted on the SA boards!!
Hi Scott, while checking it Splintered Minds today, I noticed a post that was a call for papers on introspection. This made think of a post you did here on introspection and made me wonder if you have/would consider responding to the call.
http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2017/02/call-for-papers-introspection-sucks.html?m=1
Yeah, I saw that, but it’s in Europe somewhere, if I remember aright. No burseries for the likes of me, I fear! Thanks for the tip, though dharm.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2017/mar/08/is-it-time-for-an-update-to-evolutionary-theory-science-weekly-podcast
Get into teaching?
Happy year of the Phoenix