I wonder if some of this trust in science is a reflection of how little we understand humans, ourselves not the least. Therefore a desire to reach for people who seem to follow rules and be more stable than us poor fleshy drop outs.
Aye, as my philosophical mentor Mary Midgley once remarked: the faith that used to be invested in priests to understand the world and protect from evil has now passed into the hands of doctors. We need to believe someone knows what's going on - the dizzying incompleteness of the true situation is much too disturbing for most folks to handle! 😂
Yes, and to the few truths we think we know, we must attach probabilities. This is true about our knowledge of stable and ordered (we think) physical reality. About social reality we know very few truths, and these we have to accept with high uncertainty. In this realm I believe that it is possible that, like the quantum realm, this is all that’s possible.
While I am sympathetic to the idea of attaching probabilities to claims, I find there is sometimes a trap in this approach - since by what means will we establish a meaningful number in this regard? We cannot. Perhaps the more general principle of acknowledging uncertainty (without quantifying it) is sufficient.
Above and beyond this, what is getting us into trouble again and again today is people's inability to distinguish between their metaphysical beliefs (which are untestable) and matters that yield to investigation. In this regard, the century-old campaign to dismiss metaphysics as meaningless has a great deal to answer for. Far from eliminating the metaphysical (which we all depend on to anchor our core beliefs), we have simply lost our collective ability to recognise it. In so much as there are clear truths about our social realities, this is one we might accept without uncertainty.
Many thanks for continuing our conversation, Frank! Greatly appreciated.
Chris, I just discovered you. I did so my googling “philosopher blog”, choosing to link to David Chalmers resources page and clicking on the first name in his “Nonphilosophers with Philosophy-Related Weblogs” sub list. I’ve been searching for some place on the web where there are truly on-going thoughtful discussions on fundamental matters. This site looks like it might be one such, so I have signed up for a minimal subscription. If this is truly a site for meaningful discussions, I hope I have a chance to switch to a more economical introductory subscription.
Comment:
Science [scientists] attempts to construct logically valid and complete models that “explain” the mind-chimera in the nervous systems of a group of humans. Generations of philosophers have noted that these mental constructions are just that, models, not reality itself.
Logically, there is always the possibility that signals from what’s-out-there will stimulate a human consciousness to construct a model that will be at least partially at odds with a prevailing scientific model. [1] Such an event appears to be highly unlikely for models that have been constructed and refined by many people over centuries, e.g., our current model or our solar system. But logically this possibility exists.
I strive to hold in my brain-mind models that are at least logically valid. To do so I must use the assertions other humans have placed in social reality. I use various information processing strategies to give higher or lower credence to every assertion I consider and accept only those that pass some vague, idiosyncratic threshold of veracity.
Plea
The extent and veracity of my model building is greatly enhanced by comments from others. Thank you for your comments.
Definitions:
objective reality – that which causes electrochemical signals to appear in my nervous system
physical reality -- that part of objective reality that exists irrespective of the activities of humans
social reality – that part of objective reality that humans have created, e.g., the US Declaration of Independence
mental model – A set of assertions (possibly encapsulated in image-chimera) about objective reality
Note
[1] The social process by which sensory data ultimately trumps human imagination is messy. The history of the development of our current model of our solar system is a good example. Simon Singh’s Big Bang – The Origin of the Universe gives an entertaining and illuminating synopsis.
I don't see anything especially problematic in the way you construct this understanding. I am most interested in your claim about 'over centuries', as this applies a standard of truth that is quite apart from the way this is usually dealt with! I find it intriguing to think that this could be applied as a criteria, to be honest, I'm not immediately convinced that the time a particular model persists is a measure of anything meaningful. Continents were presumed not to move for a very great length of time...
I would resist your way of carving up reality into objective, physical, and social reality, not because it's 'wrong' but because there's a trap in coming at existence in these terms, which are, in some respects, descended from Plato. As Alfred North Whitehead put it: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." 😉 The problem for me is that in the first place the attempt to cleave into 'objective' and 'subjective' reality (social reality in your model) is not as clean as a fossil breaking into cast and mould. In the second place - and more seriously - if our mental model is of 'objective reality' we risk getting confused about how our commitments are constructed.
To be clear: I find nothing inherently wrong in your understanding, and there are many worlds (as I will say on this blog) that comprehend our planet in this way. But our beliefs about objective reality within our mental model do not come apart from social reality as neatly as the 'clean lines' of your model imply. These kind of models foreground propositions (the very term 'model' tends to do this) and downplay the role of our lived practices to regulate our thinking and our worlds. This may cause us to misjudge some situations.
Finally, thanks for becoming a Stranger Traveller, and for leaving a comment! Regarding discounting, you should have had a chance to claim a 20% lifetime discount under the 'Stranger Twenty' offer. If that wasn't offered to you, let me know and I'll see what I can do. If this isn't a large enough discount for your current circumstances, please email me (you can reply to any of the newsletters as a Stranger Traveller) and we can negotiate a fair discount. I don't want price to exclude anyone who wants to join me on this journey, but I do desire the higher quality of debate a paid Substack seems to achieve.
Welcome to the journey!
Chris.
PS: Do let me know if 'Frank' is not an acceptable way to address you!
‘Frank’ is the name I use in all ordinary contexts. Thank you for asking. I’m on Facebook at ‘A Frank Ackerman’. My philosophical and social/political posts there are marked ‘public’.
Thanks much for your extensive and thought-provoking reply! Very exciting! I’ve poked around the web a bit. Lots of your writing. I assume your very busy. I’ll be reading your stuff and commenting as much as I can. For my own mental stimulation, I’m posting an extensive reply to your comment. Please comment further only if it serves you.
On longevity as criteria for accepting a scientific model: Agreed, not in itself. My assumption was that as time goes by many thinkers will mount stress tests. Also, that as time goes by there will be new on-going data that either corroborates or modifies an existing model. I should use a better phrase than ‘over centuries.’
On ‘reality:’ In the light of all currently available data and associated explanatory models in social reality, I personally find it impossible to reject the concept that the only reality I’m directly in touch with is the one in my mind. In my mind I ‘see’ an external world. Science says that this chimera is the result of electrochemical impulses initially generated by my sense organs in response to ‘something’ external. Thus, my sense organs, entities in physical reality, generate impulses that through a currently unfathomable process, give rise to entities in my consciousness.
I label this external something ‘objective reality,’ and the reality in my mind, ‘subjective reality.’ Furthermore, it seems to me that it’s useful to place all the entities in objective reality into two disparate categories, physical and social. Physical entities are things like galaxies, planets, atoms, and living cells. Social entities are things that have been created by humans, like the Mona Lisa, Hamlet, or this post. [1] It seems to me that there are fundamental differences in how we come to understand the entities in physical reality and those in social reality. Conceptually this distinction seems clear to me. Operationally there can be some confusion. For example, the word ‘planet’, labels an entity in social reality, but also a physical entity.
Neuroscience tell us that our brains are very noisy places. All of our thoughts are the result of competing collections of complex electro-chemical processes. So, yes, the models that we humans come up with embody not only data from physical reality, but all the other stuff in our minds, including our personal models of social reality, and also our emotions. We invented logic and mathematics to get a better grip on stuff, but in the end, we still have to deal with the inherent ambiguity of natural language.
Chris, I’m afraid I don’t really understand some of your comments. I don’t see how there can be any intrinsic fuzziness between the non-physical stuff in my brain and what’s-out-there. Similarly, I don’t understand what is fuzzy about my separation of what’s-out-there into physical entities create by the cosmos, and the entities humans have created. What we think a Mycenaean clay tablet says is, in my mind, quite distinct from the physical tablet itself.
If I am to understand you, I’ll need more explanation about: “if our mental model is of ‘objective reality we risk getting confused about how our commitments are constructed.” Our mental models are constructions that attempt to capture some properties of objective reality entities in a way that enable us to make predictions. For me, your use of ‘commitment’ takes us into the realm of morals.
“I pledge allegiance to the United States of America” [2] Whatever “pledge allegiance” means, it is being applied mainly to the social reality entity ‘The United States of America’ rather than 50 disparate pieces of land.
For me, a commitment is a mental position I take to think and act in a certain way.
We are all operating from different subjective realities. In the end what matters is the actions we take that affect objective reality. When we hunted mammoths to extinction, we had to find something else to eat. We’ve overloaded our planet’s atmosphere with CO2, so we have to live with the resulting weather and climate changes. The models in our heads are important because they determine our actions.
I’m a hopeless chauvinist. I want human culture to continue to develop in all its glorious ways. I’m part of a small set of thinkers that think that humankind is presently on a path that puts the continual existence of the First Worldwide Civilization in jeopardy. Further, humankind can be deflected from such a disastrous future [3] only if some number of us recognize the danger we’re in and take appropriate action.
I can understand our current situation only from the perspective of the models I have in my mind. I have only two sources of mental construction material. What I can get from ‘public’ sources, and what other people share with me. My egotistical hope is that by ‘publishing’ my thoughts, and some of my personal experiences, others will come to think and act in ways that have the potential to deflect the possibly impending disaster.
Aside
Plato was one of the first to notice that the images in our minds are only that, not the real thing. But he imagined that there were pure forms that existed outside of the mind. My opinion is that pure forms exist only in subjective and social realities. That is, they are perforce imaginary.
Notes
[1] Only things in physical reality can cause electro-chemical impulses in a human nervous system, so all social reality entities must be associated with physical entities. But clearly, the US Constitution is distinct from whatever physical entities are used for its apprehension by a human nervous system.
[2] Verbatim from the US pledge of allegiance.
[3] I submit that at least in the near term the collapse of the First Worldwide Civilization would be a disaster. At the very least, hundreds of thousands people would die by violence, disease, exposure, and hunger.
Thank you so much for extending our conversation, Frank. I would not enter Facebook even if I was paid to do so, but I am glad to have you here! I also appreciate the invitation not to reply, but alas(!), I cannot resist a few further comments...
Firstly:
"Chris, I’m afraid I don’t really understand some of your comments."
For which I can only apologise! I am never purposefully trying to be elusive, but sometimes the way I have come to think about certain topics is difficult to translate into the various habits of mind that we depend upon. I hope and trust that over the course of Stranger Worlds that any fellow travellers such as yourself will get a better sense of what I mean on some of these topics, and that I will likewise appreciate both where I am hard to understand, as well as getting to share in the diverse worlds of others, which I always treasure.
"We are all operating from different subjective realities."
Here, I will say while writing at Stranger Worlds that we are living in different worlds. But I might also venture that there are not as many different worlds as there are people (and there are worlds not associated with people). Your intuition is that everyone has their own reality. I no longer believe this, but this is probably not a disagreement between us so much as a different way of using the term 'reality'. I expect this point may return in future conversations.
"I personally find it impossible to reject the concept that the only reality I’m directly in touch with is the one in my mind."
Indeed, and this concept will serve you well, too, certainly much better than any path that entails disbelieving in mind entirely. I do not seek to persuade you of another conception so much as I want to make you aware that there are limitations to this way of understanding that have consequences that are not readily apparent (and that I shall not try to expound in comments).
I have great respect for this understanding, which is parallel to that of the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who I admire. But I find subtle problems in it... perhaps future reflections here at Stranger Worlds will explore this further.
"For me, your use of ‘commitment’ takes us into the realm of morals."
Forgive my wording, I am speaking of metaphysical commitments or, equivalently, habits of thinking that structure how we can think. There is no thought without prior commitments - for instance, your prior commitment that your only access to 'physical reality' is via your 'mind'. Again, I expect this to be ground we might wander through somewhen on our journey.
"I’m part of a small set of thinkers that think that humankind is presently on a path that puts the continual existence of the First Worldwide Civilization in jeopardy."
Not so small, I fear, Frank, although fractured into factions who disagree as to which jeopardy we should be worrying about. I shall enjoy discovering which one(s) it is that concern you!
“human beings are fundamentally distinguished by the ruling passions of their souls — a passion for fun or pleasure, a passion for honor and recognition, a passion for learning or knowledge or wisdom. Most people are primarily lovers of pleasures. Some people are primarily lovers of victory and honor. A few people are lovers of understanding.”
I’m finding this to be true. I also find it interesting how various human desires and capacities that play key roles in advancing our civilization are so sparsely distributed in the population. I’ve been trying to find people that wanted to really discuss fundamental concepts with me for some time. You are the first one I’ve found. Given the WWW and Google search, one might naively think that finding others with a similar desire would not be difficult, but that does not seem to be the case. There are course good reasons why this is so.
I starting posting thoughts and comments on Facebook after looking at the websites and Facebook posting of Daniel Schmachtenberger. I have found that people will make at least short comments on Facebook rather than on pieces on my wordpress blog (FrankAndfriends.home.blog).
Since each of us must perforce speak from the confines of our own inner worlds, discourse is essential for understanding each other’s positions. Since everything is constantly changing, this work is never done. So, onward. I’m eager to see what I can learn from your perspective. I’m reading a bit more of your writings; quite exciting for me. Our worldviews overlap in many ways. With empathetic discourse our differences can be whetstones for better understanding of what was, what is, and what might be.
Re “reality”:
This word is thrown about as if it had a clear meaning. It seems to me that what’s real for me is only what I’m conscious of. How can it be anything else? It seems to me that I I’m conscious of various sorts of entities. One sort is the direct results of signals from my sense organs, like this piece of paper I’m holding. I hypothesize that these signals come from some place on the other side of my sense organ boundaries, that minute organs in these boundaries respond to external signals by creating internal ones. So, I start by assuming that there is something ‘out there’. It could be the supercomputer in The Matrix, but in the light of all the evidence and models in social reality this seems to me to be patently outlandish.
My claim that everyone’s subjective reality is different is grounded in what we think we know about brains. Namely, that all of our mental activity takes place in 100 billion neurons that are connected in 10 trillion ways. Furthermore, these connection change about every 100 to 300 milliseconds. So, at this level the probability that any of the 8 billion brains on this planet are identical even for a second is highly unlikely. Further, if you drill down on what any two people say or do, you will find differences, maybe subtle ones, but differences none-the-less.
Of course, this is not to claim that it is not useful to lump groups of similar thought and actions together and logically treat them as a single entity.
Yes! Every mode of thought has limitations. It takes comments from another mind to view these limitations from the outside.
“There is no thought without prior commitments.”
Is this another way of saying that every train of thought has to begin someplace? I’m looking forward to learning about your commitments. I’ll be reading as many of your pieces as I can find time for, but it won’t be quick. After I do what I think I need to do every day, there’s not much time left.
I find Kant difficult to really understand, but want to dig deeper. A good friend and colleague from Montana Tech is a died-in-the-wool Kantian. Currently I am intrigued by these quotes from Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy:
“He was born in Konigsberg, Prussia, in 1724. Except for a short period of tutoring in a nearby village, this quite little professor, who loved so much to lecture on the geography and ethnology of distant lands, never left his native city.”
“During these quiet years [? his fifteen years (1755-1770] as a lowly lecturer, his interests were rather physical than metaphysical. He wrote on planets, earthquakes, fire, wind, ether, volcanoes, geography, ethnology, and a hundred other things of that sort”
Often, I run across a piece expressing existential concerns, but following the Kass quote above these views are rare. Of the actual thinkers about the probable causes of current conditions, there a some who bemoan the current picture and think it can be significantly altered and still quality as civilization. Yes, of course, but I would argue from fundamentals that if the predominate form of government on our planet becomes autocracy, that civilization as we know it would eventually perish.
“which jeopardy should we be worrying about”
My view is that it is the confluence of jeopardies that is troubling. And the fact that our civilization is worldwide. In the past, if a civilization screwed up, from a global perspective it was no big deal. [1] This is no longer true. I’m deeply concerned, but not ultimately pessimistic. The root cause of most of our jeopardies lies in how our brains work. While there are definitely limits to how we can sidestep our cognitive inheritance, there is evidence that we can none-the-less-create enduring socially binding conventions.
Note
[1] I am familiar only with Western civilization. Its core collapsed around 400 CE, and it took neigh on a millennium to recoup, but the ecological effect of Roman’s collapse were minimal. This will not be the case if the First Worldwide Civilization collapses in the next century.
Many thanks for continuing our discussions, Frank. The kids are off school this week, so I have markedly less time, but I would like to make a few quick responses that, as usual, will probably not be so quick in practice...
"Given the WWW and Google search, one might naively think that finding others with a similar desire would not be difficult, but that does not seem to be the case. There are course good reasons why this is so."
If certain current arrangements were not set up with the express aim of neutralising any intelligent thought that might challenge the status quo, then it is a remarkable coincidence that this was a mere side effect of some other purpose. 🙂
"I have found that people will make at least short comments on Facebook rather than on pieces on my wordpress blog"
Ah, so very true. One of the reasons I have moved my philosophical basecamp to Substack is that whereas in the 2000s my blogs at Typepad supported a lively discussion, after Twitter appeared the most I could hope for was setting off angry responses on Twitter. Social media lowers the effort to reply, but in so doing it also lowers the expected quality of discussion. That's a significant problem in itself.
"It seems to me that what’s real for me is only what I’m conscious of. How can it be anything else?"
A quick thought experiment that may-or-may not reflect my own perspective. Let's say a person has a brain tumour. They are not conscious of it. But it is pressing down on one of their hippocampi and causing strange intersections between their memories and thought. Surely you would not deny the reality of the brain tumour just because they are not conscious of it? Furthermore, we have choices as to what we call those intersections between memories and thought - these the person in question are indeed conscious of... but whether we call them 'real' or not involves an interpretive choice. Both explanations are available...
All in all, I try (not always successfully) to shy way from 'real' because it is wont to cause confusions, and try to couch my discussions in terms of other point of reference. Which brings us to Kant.
"I find Kant difficult to really understand, but want to dig deeper."
Kant's writing is abysmal. I once remarked that perhaps he was easier to read in German. A German speaker replied "no, he is just as bad in the original language!" 🙂 I gained a lot from Kant, but he is very hard to read, and requires a commitment that goes beyond just 'reading a book'... this is true of a great many philosophers, although by no means all.
Apropos of the point about 'real', Kant talks of noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (the experiential face of those things), and this is part of the origin of the divide into 'objective' and 'subjective' today. Unfortunately, our use of these terms today is no longer grounded in Kantian philosophy, and so a great many mistakes are made about what is 'objective', and we have lost Kant's key point which is that we have no direct access to noumena. I think this is a point you would support. For me, while I see the wisdom in this, I have also become too acutely aware of the limitations of this. I try to remember that this understanding is still extremely valuable even though it has limits, which is true of all forms of understanding.
Speaking of which...
“There is no thought without prior commitments.”
Is this another way of saying that every train of thought has to begin someplace?
An excellent metaphor! I may extend it: our prior commitments lay down the tracks upon which our train of thought must move.
“which jeopardy should we be worrying about”
My view is that it is the confluence of jeopardies that is troubling.
I think you have come to the right place.
---
Lastly, as a result of our exchanges, I have begun writing some Stranger Worlds that touch upon issues we have danced around, and which will hopefully take these conversations further. However, since I am a 'why put off until tomorrow what I could have completed months ago' kind of person (at least when it comes to fun things like philosophy!) the posts are already stocked through to May, so there will be a wait before we get to these.
Nonetheless, around May-June, there will be a number of pieces exploring the relationship between mind and reality, between words and worlds, and other such topics inspired by the exchanges we have already had. Thank you for opening up some paths I had let become overgrown and giving me a chance to walk upon them again.
In one of your replies you let me off the hook on replying in a timely manner. I’ll take you up on that. I’ll make responses not necessarily in the order you make them, but in the order set down by your original posts unless the issue at hand is better discussed in comments to a later post. Whenever you feel that this is not appropriate, I trust that you’ll direct me otherwise.
The following comes up again in “Thoughtpolice.com” but I’ll address this comment:
“If certain current arrangements were not set up with the express aim of neutralizing any intelligent thought that might challenge the status quo, then it is a remarkable coincidence that this was a mere side effect of some other purpose.”
The problem I have is with
“If certain current arrangements were not set up with the express aim of neutralizing ANY (my emphasis) intelligent thought that might challenge the status quo”.
I agree that sometimes arrangements are made to neutralize intelligent thought, but how often are these aimed at ALL intelligent thought.
Re your comments on what happened on Typepad replies when Twitter appeared: Most interesting. ChatGPT tells me that tweets are limited to 280 characters. So maybe people replied using Twitter out of laziness? And since that reply length iss limited they would naturally express an emotion rather than a thought. I suspect something else is going on. I wonder what.
Most of my friends are PhDs. I naively thought they would be interested, if not in philosophy, then at least in casually discussing fundamentals. Not so. I’ve concluded that this is just the way their inner worlds work, but maybe there’s something else here. Who attended Aristotle’s academy? Only young me that didn’t have family or jobs?
Re your brain tumor experiment –
I think I’m getting at the “what’s real” problem by postulating that for each person the only things that are real is what is in their consciousness.[1] So, in my personal reality the tumor does not exist. (I’m supposing my brain is not getting any neuronic signals due to the presence of this tumor. A brain cannot sense itself.
On the other hand, I have five senses. The neuronic impulses I receive from them must come from someplace. I call this place “objective reality.” Since the only way I can receive any data about entities in objective reality is via my sense organs, then obviously I can never know things-in-themselves. The fact that I can receive information about what’s-out-there from other people allows me to ‘see’ much, much more than I can with my senses, but does not change anything. So, the moment I get some information about my brain tumor it will come into existence in my subjective reality. Of course, I may be being lied to, and in objective reality there is no tumor. Subjectively this won’t make any difference. I’ll have to interact with objective reality to sort this out.
Only two things matter to me. One is my inner satisfaction, the other is that when I interact with objective reality, I get the result I intend. That isn’t likely to happen unless my subjective view is in line with what really is, at least in respect to my action.
All mathematical geometries are imaginary. They are mental constructs that are built in the mind by accepting a small set of assertions as true. Rules of logic are then applied to deduce other assertions. In terms of navigating in objective reality some geometries will be more suitable than others. An attempt to navigate from London to Rio de Janeiro using plane geometry is likely to end in disaster, since the space to be traversed is not a plane, but the surface if a sphere.
OK. I’m probably missing something. Or perhaps there are other, better way of modeling both inner and outer existence. But I live in Flatland. It is difficult to comprehend three dimensions.
I hope your comments on Kant encourage me to put some effort in on becoming familiar with the Critique of Judgement. At least I’ve bookmarked this publication (it’s available at gutenberg.org) and there is an SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) exposition of it.
Does Kant define “understanding”? I asked ChatGPt this and it pointed me to “Critique of Pure Reason.” I guess I’ll hold on this since I’m working on “Critique of Judgement.”
You say: “we have lost Kant’s key point which is that we have no direct access to noumena. … For me, while I see the wisdom in this, I have also become acutely aware of the limitations of this.”
Well, yeah. Isn’t that just the way the cookie crumbles? In our imagination [my meaning] is there any difference between noumena and phenomena? Or does Kant see this differently?
Sorry, but I’m confused here. The quotes:
“There is no thought without prior commitments”
and
“which jeopardy we should be worry about”
are from your reply to my first comment. I’m OK with further comments, but the question?
I’m impressed that your Strange Worlds “posts are already stocked through to May”. I don’t think I’ve ever prepared that far ahead except when I was repeating a course I’d already delivered. Actually, at the rate I’m going, I’ll study each Strange Worlds post as it appears, but will probably fall steadily behind on comments. I struggle every day with all the clerical, communication, reading, research, writing, and construction tasks I want to do, and always come up short. This doesn’t really bother me, but sometimes I wish the follow that keeps inserting all these task ideas in my consciousness would just throttle back and content himself with reminding me of stuff and feeding me ideas on tasks already underway. His behavior is to be expected, I suppose. I kept him on a pretty tight chain for 61 years.
Notes
[1] How can this be disputed? Does it depend on what’s meant by ‘real.’ But if I have no conscience awareness of something, how can I communicate about it?
I wonder if some of this trust in science is a reflection of how little we understand humans, ourselves not the least. Therefore a desire to reach for people who seem to follow rules and be more stable than us poor fleshy drop outs.
Aye, as my philosophical mentor Mary Midgley once remarked: the faith that used to be invested in priests to understand the world and protect from evil has now passed into the hands of doctors. We need to believe someone knows what's going on - the dizzying incompleteness of the true situation is much too disturbing for most folks to handle! 😂
Yes, and to the few truths we think we know, we must attach probabilities. This is true about our knowledge of stable and ordered (we think) physical reality. About social reality we know very few truths, and these we have to accept with high uncertainty. In this realm I believe that it is possible that, like the quantum realm, this is all that’s possible.
While I am sympathetic to the idea of attaching probabilities to claims, I find there is sometimes a trap in this approach - since by what means will we establish a meaningful number in this regard? We cannot. Perhaps the more general principle of acknowledging uncertainty (without quantifying it) is sufficient.
Above and beyond this, what is getting us into trouble again and again today is people's inability to distinguish between their metaphysical beliefs (which are untestable) and matters that yield to investigation. In this regard, the century-old campaign to dismiss metaphysics as meaningless has a great deal to answer for. Far from eliminating the metaphysical (which we all depend on to anchor our core beliefs), we have simply lost our collective ability to recognise it. In so much as there are clear truths about our social realities, this is one we might accept without uncertainty.
Many thanks for continuing our conversation, Frank! Greatly appreciated.
Personal:
Chris, I just discovered you. I did so my googling “philosopher blog”, choosing to link to David Chalmers resources page and clicking on the first name in his “Nonphilosophers with Philosophy-Related Weblogs” sub list. I’ve been searching for some place on the web where there are truly on-going thoughtful discussions on fundamental matters. This site looks like it might be one such, so I have signed up for a minimal subscription. If this is truly a site for meaningful discussions, I hope I have a chance to switch to a more economical introductory subscription.
Comment:
Science [scientists] attempts to construct logically valid and complete models that “explain” the mind-chimera in the nervous systems of a group of humans. Generations of philosophers have noted that these mental constructions are just that, models, not reality itself.
Logically, there is always the possibility that signals from what’s-out-there will stimulate a human consciousness to construct a model that will be at least partially at odds with a prevailing scientific model. [1] Such an event appears to be highly unlikely for models that have been constructed and refined by many people over centuries, e.g., our current model or our solar system. But logically this possibility exists.
I strive to hold in my brain-mind models that are at least logically valid. To do so I must use the assertions other humans have placed in social reality. I use various information processing strategies to give higher or lower credence to every assertion I consider and accept only those that pass some vague, idiosyncratic threshold of veracity.
Plea
The extent and veracity of my model building is greatly enhanced by comments from others. Thank you for your comments.
Definitions:
objective reality – that which causes electrochemical signals to appear in my nervous system
physical reality -- that part of objective reality that exists irrespective of the activities of humans
social reality – that part of objective reality that humans have created, e.g., the US Declaration of Independence
mental model – A set of assertions (possibly encapsulated in image-chimera) about objective reality
Note
[1] The social process by which sensory data ultimately trumps human imagination is messy. The history of the development of our current model of our solar system is a good example. Simon Singh’s Big Bang – The Origin of the Universe gives an entertaining and illuminating synopsis.
Hey Frank,
I don't see anything especially problematic in the way you construct this understanding. I am most interested in your claim about 'over centuries', as this applies a standard of truth that is quite apart from the way this is usually dealt with! I find it intriguing to think that this could be applied as a criteria, to be honest, I'm not immediately convinced that the time a particular model persists is a measure of anything meaningful. Continents were presumed not to move for a very great length of time...
I would resist your way of carving up reality into objective, physical, and social reality, not because it's 'wrong' but because there's a trap in coming at existence in these terms, which are, in some respects, descended from Plato. As Alfred North Whitehead put it: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." 😉 The problem for me is that in the first place the attempt to cleave into 'objective' and 'subjective' reality (social reality in your model) is not as clean as a fossil breaking into cast and mould. In the second place - and more seriously - if our mental model is of 'objective reality' we risk getting confused about how our commitments are constructed.
To be clear: I find nothing inherently wrong in your understanding, and there are many worlds (as I will say on this blog) that comprehend our planet in this way. But our beliefs about objective reality within our mental model do not come apart from social reality as neatly as the 'clean lines' of your model imply. These kind of models foreground propositions (the very term 'model' tends to do this) and downplay the role of our lived practices to regulate our thinking and our worlds. This may cause us to misjudge some situations.
Finally, thanks for becoming a Stranger Traveller, and for leaving a comment! Regarding discounting, you should have had a chance to claim a 20% lifetime discount under the 'Stranger Twenty' offer. If that wasn't offered to you, let me know and I'll see what I can do. If this isn't a large enough discount for your current circumstances, please email me (you can reply to any of the newsletters as a Stranger Traveller) and we can negotiate a fair discount. I don't want price to exclude anyone who wants to join me on this journey, but I do desire the higher quality of debate a paid Substack seems to achieve.
Welcome to the journey!
Chris.
PS: Do let me know if 'Frank' is not an acceptable way to address you!
‘Frank’ is the name I use in all ordinary contexts. Thank you for asking. I’m on Facebook at ‘A Frank Ackerman’. My philosophical and social/political posts there are marked ‘public’.
Thanks much for your extensive and thought-provoking reply! Very exciting! I’ve poked around the web a bit. Lots of your writing. I assume your very busy. I’ll be reading your stuff and commenting as much as I can. For my own mental stimulation, I’m posting an extensive reply to your comment. Please comment further only if it serves you.
On longevity as criteria for accepting a scientific model: Agreed, not in itself. My assumption was that as time goes by many thinkers will mount stress tests. Also, that as time goes by there will be new on-going data that either corroborates or modifies an existing model. I should use a better phrase than ‘over centuries.’
On ‘reality:’ In the light of all currently available data and associated explanatory models in social reality, I personally find it impossible to reject the concept that the only reality I’m directly in touch with is the one in my mind. In my mind I ‘see’ an external world. Science says that this chimera is the result of electrochemical impulses initially generated by my sense organs in response to ‘something’ external. Thus, my sense organs, entities in physical reality, generate impulses that through a currently unfathomable process, give rise to entities in my consciousness.
I label this external something ‘objective reality,’ and the reality in my mind, ‘subjective reality.’ Furthermore, it seems to me that it’s useful to place all the entities in objective reality into two disparate categories, physical and social. Physical entities are things like galaxies, planets, atoms, and living cells. Social entities are things that have been created by humans, like the Mona Lisa, Hamlet, or this post. [1] It seems to me that there are fundamental differences in how we come to understand the entities in physical reality and those in social reality. Conceptually this distinction seems clear to me. Operationally there can be some confusion. For example, the word ‘planet’, labels an entity in social reality, but also a physical entity.
Neuroscience tell us that our brains are very noisy places. All of our thoughts are the result of competing collections of complex electro-chemical processes. So, yes, the models that we humans come up with embody not only data from physical reality, but all the other stuff in our minds, including our personal models of social reality, and also our emotions. We invented logic and mathematics to get a better grip on stuff, but in the end, we still have to deal with the inherent ambiguity of natural language.
Chris, I’m afraid I don’t really understand some of your comments. I don’t see how there can be any intrinsic fuzziness between the non-physical stuff in my brain and what’s-out-there. Similarly, I don’t understand what is fuzzy about my separation of what’s-out-there into physical entities create by the cosmos, and the entities humans have created. What we think a Mycenaean clay tablet says is, in my mind, quite distinct from the physical tablet itself.
If I am to understand you, I’ll need more explanation about: “if our mental model is of ‘objective reality we risk getting confused about how our commitments are constructed.” Our mental models are constructions that attempt to capture some properties of objective reality entities in a way that enable us to make predictions. For me, your use of ‘commitment’ takes us into the realm of morals.
“I pledge allegiance to the United States of America” [2] Whatever “pledge allegiance” means, it is being applied mainly to the social reality entity ‘The United States of America’ rather than 50 disparate pieces of land.
For me, a commitment is a mental position I take to think and act in a certain way.
We are all operating from different subjective realities. In the end what matters is the actions we take that affect objective reality. When we hunted mammoths to extinction, we had to find something else to eat. We’ve overloaded our planet’s atmosphere with CO2, so we have to live with the resulting weather and climate changes. The models in our heads are important because they determine our actions.
I’m a hopeless chauvinist. I want human culture to continue to develop in all its glorious ways. I’m part of a small set of thinkers that think that humankind is presently on a path that puts the continual existence of the First Worldwide Civilization in jeopardy. Further, humankind can be deflected from such a disastrous future [3] only if some number of us recognize the danger we’re in and take appropriate action.
I can understand our current situation only from the perspective of the models I have in my mind. I have only two sources of mental construction material. What I can get from ‘public’ sources, and what other people share with me. My egotistical hope is that by ‘publishing’ my thoughts, and some of my personal experiences, others will come to think and act in ways that have the potential to deflect the possibly impending disaster.
Aside
Plato was one of the first to notice that the images in our minds are only that, not the real thing. But he imagined that there were pure forms that existed outside of the mind. My opinion is that pure forms exist only in subjective and social realities. That is, they are perforce imaginary.
Notes
[1] Only things in physical reality can cause electro-chemical impulses in a human nervous system, so all social reality entities must be associated with physical entities. But clearly, the US Constitution is distinct from whatever physical entities are used for its apprehension by a human nervous system.
[2] Verbatim from the US pledge of allegiance.
[3] I submit that at least in the near term the collapse of the First Worldwide Civilization would be a disaster. At the very least, hundreds of thousands people would die by violence, disease, exposure, and hunger.
Thank you so much for extending our conversation, Frank. I would not enter Facebook even if I was paid to do so, but I am glad to have you here! I also appreciate the invitation not to reply, but alas(!), I cannot resist a few further comments...
Firstly:
"Chris, I’m afraid I don’t really understand some of your comments."
For which I can only apologise! I am never purposefully trying to be elusive, but sometimes the way I have come to think about certain topics is difficult to translate into the various habits of mind that we depend upon. I hope and trust that over the course of Stranger Worlds that any fellow travellers such as yourself will get a better sense of what I mean on some of these topics, and that I will likewise appreciate both where I am hard to understand, as well as getting to share in the diverse worlds of others, which I always treasure.
"We are all operating from different subjective realities."
Here, I will say while writing at Stranger Worlds that we are living in different worlds. But I might also venture that there are not as many different worlds as there are people (and there are worlds not associated with people). Your intuition is that everyone has their own reality. I no longer believe this, but this is probably not a disagreement between us so much as a different way of using the term 'reality'. I expect this point may return in future conversations.
"I personally find it impossible to reject the concept that the only reality I’m directly in touch with is the one in my mind."
Indeed, and this concept will serve you well, too, certainly much better than any path that entails disbelieving in mind entirely. I do not seek to persuade you of another conception so much as I want to make you aware that there are limitations to this way of understanding that have consequences that are not readily apparent (and that I shall not try to expound in comments).
I have great respect for this understanding, which is parallel to that of the great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who I admire. But I find subtle problems in it... perhaps future reflections here at Stranger Worlds will explore this further.
"For me, your use of ‘commitment’ takes us into the realm of morals."
Forgive my wording, I am speaking of metaphysical commitments or, equivalently, habits of thinking that structure how we can think. There is no thought without prior commitments - for instance, your prior commitment that your only access to 'physical reality' is via your 'mind'. Again, I expect this to be ground we might wander through somewhen on our journey.
"I’m part of a small set of thinkers that think that humankind is presently on a path that puts the continual existence of the First Worldwide Civilization in jeopardy."
Not so small, I fear, Frank, although fractured into factions who disagree as to which jeopardy we should be worrying about. I shall enjoy discovering which one(s) it is that concern you!
Many thanks for continuing our conversation!
Chris.
In “Timeless Wisdom for Leading a Life of Love, Friendship and Learning” (www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-leon-kass.html?showTranscript=1 ) Leon Kass, a UofChicago philosophy professor (retired?) claims:
“human beings are fundamentally distinguished by the ruling passions of their souls — a passion for fun or pleasure, a passion for honor and recognition, a passion for learning or knowledge or wisdom. Most people are primarily lovers of pleasures. Some people are primarily lovers of victory and honor. A few people are lovers of understanding.”
I’m finding this to be true. I also find it interesting how various human desires and capacities that play key roles in advancing our civilization are so sparsely distributed in the population. I’ve been trying to find people that wanted to really discuss fundamental concepts with me for some time. You are the first one I’ve found. Given the WWW and Google search, one might naively think that finding others with a similar desire would not be difficult, but that does not seem to be the case. There are course good reasons why this is so.
I starting posting thoughts and comments on Facebook after looking at the websites and Facebook posting of Daniel Schmachtenberger. I have found that people will make at least short comments on Facebook rather than on pieces on my wordpress blog (FrankAndfriends.home.blog).
Since each of us must perforce speak from the confines of our own inner worlds, discourse is essential for understanding each other’s positions. Since everything is constantly changing, this work is never done. So, onward. I’m eager to see what I can learn from your perspective. I’m reading a bit more of your writings; quite exciting for me. Our worldviews overlap in many ways. With empathetic discourse our differences can be whetstones for better understanding of what was, what is, and what might be.
Re “reality”:
This word is thrown about as if it had a clear meaning. It seems to me that what’s real for me is only what I’m conscious of. How can it be anything else? It seems to me that I I’m conscious of various sorts of entities. One sort is the direct results of signals from my sense organs, like this piece of paper I’m holding. I hypothesize that these signals come from some place on the other side of my sense organ boundaries, that minute organs in these boundaries respond to external signals by creating internal ones. So, I start by assuming that there is something ‘out there’. It could be the supercomputer in The Matrix, but in the light of all the evidence and models in social reality this seems to me to be patently outlandish.
My claim that everyone’s subjective reality is different is grounded in what we think we know about brains. Namely, that all of our mental activity takes place in 100 billion neurons that are connected in 10 trillion ways. Furthermore, these connection change about every 100 to 300 milliseconds. So, at this level the probability that any of the 8 billion brains on this planet are identical even for a second is highly unlikely. Further, if you drill down on what any two people say or do, you will find differences, maybe subtle ones, but differences none-the-less.
Of course, this is not to claim that it is not useful to lump groups of similar thought and actions together and logically treat them as a single entity.
Yes! Every mode of thought has limitations. It takes comments from another mind to view these limitations from the outside.
“There is no thought without prior commitments.”
Is this another way of saying that every train of thought has to begin someplace? I’m looking forward to learning about your commitments. I’ll be reading as many of your pieces as I can find time for, but it won’t be quick. After I do what I think I need to do every day, there’s not much time left.
I find Kant difficult to really understand, but want to dig deeper. A good friend and colleague from Montana Tech is a died-in-the-wool Kantian. Currently I am intrigued by these quotes from Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy:
“He was born in Konigsberg, Prussia, in 1724. Except for a short period of tutoring in a nearby village, this quite little professor, who loved so much to lecture on the geography and ethnology of distant lands, never left his native city.”
“During these quiet years [? his fifteen years (1755-1770] as a lowly lecturer, his interests were rather physical than metaphysical. He wrote on planets, earthquakes, fire, wind, ether, volcanoes, geography, ethnology, and a hundred other things of that sort”
Often, I run across a piece expressing existential concerns, but following the Kass quote above these views are rare. Of the actual thinkers about the probable causes of current conditions, there a some who bemoan the current picture and think it can be significantly altered and still quality as civilization. Yes, of course, but I would argue from fundamentals that if the predominate form of government on our planet becomes autocracy, that civilization as we know it would eventually perish.
“which jeopardy should we be worrying about”
My view is that it is the confluence of jeopardies that is troubling. And the fact that our civilization is worldwide. In the past, if a civilization screwed up, from a global perspective it was no big deal. [1] This is no longer true. I’m deeply concerned, but not ultimately pessimistic. The root cause of most of our jeopardies lies in how our brains work. While there are definitely limits to how we can sidestep our cognitive inheritance, there is evidence that we can none-the-less-create enduring socially binding conventions.
Note
[1] I am familiar only with Western civilization. Its core collapsed around 400 CE, and it took neigh on a millennium to recoup, but the ecological effect of Roman’s collapse were minimal. This will not be the case if the First Worldwide Civilization collapses in the next century.
Many thanks for continuing our discussions, Frank. The kids are off school this week, so I have markedly less time, but I would like to make a few quick responses that, as usual, will probably not be so quick in practice...
"Given the WWW and Google search, one might naively think that finding others with a similar desire would not be difficult, but that does not seem to be the case. There are course good reasons why this is so."
If certain current arrangements were not set up with the express aim of neutralising any intelligent thought that might challenge the status quo, then it is a remarkable coincidence that this was a mere side effect of some other purpose. 🙂
"I have found that people will make at least short comments on Facebook rather than on pieces on my wordpress blog"
Ah, so very true. One of the reasons I have moved my philosophical basecamp to Substack is that whereas in the 2000s my blogs at Typepad supported a lively discussion, after Twitter appeared the most I could hope for was setting off angry responses on Twitter. Social media lowers the effort to reply, but in so doing it also lowers the expected quality of discussion. That's a significant problem in itself.
"It seems to me that what’s real for me is only what I’m conscious of. How can it be anything else?"
A quick thought experiment that may-or-may not reflect my own perspective. Let's say a person has a brain tumour. They are not conscious of it. But it is pressing down on one of their hippocampi and causing strange intersections between their memories and thought. Surely you would not deny the reality of the brain tumour just because they are not conscious of it? Furthermore, we have choices as to what we call those intersections between memories and thought - these the person in question are indeed conscious of... but whether we call them 'real' or not involves an interpretive choice. Both explanations are available...
All in all, I try (not always successfully) to shy way from 'real' because it is wont to cause confusions, and try to couch my discussions in terms of other point of reference. Which brings us to Kant.
"I find Kant difficult to really understand, but want to dig deeper."
Kant's writing is abysmal. I once remarked that perhaps he was easier to read in German. A German speaker replied "no, he is just as bad in the original language!" 🙂 I gained a lot from Kant, but he is very hard to read, and requires a commitment that goes beyond just 'reading a book'... this is true of a great many philosophers, although by no means all.
Apropos of the point about 'real', Kant talks of noumena (things-in-themselves) and phenomena (the experiential face of those things), and this is part of the origin of the divide into 'objective' and 'subjective' today. Unfortunately, our use of these terms today is no longer grounded in Kantian philosophy, and so a great many mistakes are made about what is 'objective', and we have lost Kant's key point which is that we have no direct access to noumena. I think this is a point you would support. For me, while I see the wisdom in this, I have also become too acutely aware of the limitations of this. I try to remember that this understanding is still extremely valuable even though it has limits, which is true of all forms of understanding.
Speaking of which...
“There is no thought without prior commitments.”
Is this another way of saying that every train of thought has to begin someplace?
An excellent metaphor! I may extend it: our prior commitments lay down the tracks upon which our train of thought must move.
“which jeopardy should we be worrying about”
My view is that it is the confluence of jeopardies that is troubling.
I think you have come to the right place.
---
Lastly, as a result of our exchanges, I have begun writing some Stranger Worlds that touch upon issues we have danced around, and which will hopefully take these conversations further. However, since I am a 'why put off until tomorrow what I could have completed months ago' kind of person (at least when it comes to fun things like philosophy!) the posts are already stocked through to May, so there will be a wait before we get to these.
Nonetheless, around May-June, there will be a number of pieces exploring the relationship between mind and reality, between words and worlds, and other such topics inspired by the exchanges we have already had. Thank you for opening up some paths I had let become overgrown and giving me a chance to walk upon them again.
With unlimited love and respect,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
In one of your replies you let me off the hook on replying in a timely manner. I’ll take you up on that. I’ll make responses not necessarily in the order you make them, but in the order set down by your original posts unless the issue at hand is better discussed in comments to a later post. Whenever you feel that this is not appropriate, I trust that you’ll direct me otherwise.
The following comes up again in “Thoughtpolice.com” but I’ll address this comment:
“If certain current arrangements were not set up with the express aim of neutralizing any intelligent thought that might challenge the status quo, then it is a remarkable coincidence that this was a mere side effect of some other purpose.”
The problem I have is with
“If certain current arrangements were not set up with the express aim of neutralizing ANY (my emphasis) intelligent thought that might challenge the status quo”.
I agree that sometimes arrangements are made to neutralize intelligent thought, but how often are these aimed at ALL intelligent thought.
Re your comments on what happened on Typepad replies when Twitter appeared: Most interesting. ChatGPT tells me that tweets are limited to 280 characters. So maybe people replied using Twitter out of laziness? And since that reply length iss limited they would naturally express an emotion rather than a thought. I suspect something else is going on. I wonder what.
Most of my friends are PhDs. I naively thought they would be interested, if not in philosophy, then at least in casually discussing fundamentals. Not so. I’ve concluded that this is just the way their inner worlds work, but maybe there’s something else here. Who attended Aristotle’s academy? Only young me that didn’t have family or jobs?
Re your brain tumor experiment –
I think I’m getting at the “what’s real” problem by postulating that for each person the only things that are real is what is in their consciousness.[1] So, in my personal reality the tumor does not exist. (I’m supposing my brain is not getting any neuronic signals due to the presence of this tumor. A brain cannot sense itself.
On the other hand, I have five senses. The neuronic impulses I receive from them must come from someplace. I call this place “objective reality.” Since the only way I can receive any data about entities in objective reality is via my sense organs, then obviously I can never know things-in-themselves. The fact that I can receive information about what’s-out-there from other people allows me to ‘see’ much, much more than I can with my senses, but does not change anything. So, the moment I get some information about my brain tumor it will come into existence in my subjective reality. Of course, I may be being lied to, and in objective reality there is no tumor. Subjectively this won’t make any difference. I’ll have to interact with objective reality to sort this out.
Only two things matter to me. One is my inner satisfaction, the other is that when I interact with objective reality, I get the result I intend. That isn’t likely to happen unless my subjective view is in line with what really is, at least in respect to my action.
All mathematical geometries are imaginary. They are mental constructs that are built in the mind by accepting a small set of assertions as true. Rules of logic are then applied to deduce other assertions. In terms of navigating in objective reality some geometries will be more suitable than others. An attempt to navigate from London to Rio de Janeiro using plane geometry is likely to end in disaster, since the space to be traversed is not a plane, but the surface if a sphere.
OK. I’m probably missing something. Or perhaps there are other, better way of modeling both inner and outer existence. But I live in Flatland. It is difficult to comprehend three dimensions.
I hope your comments on Kant encourage me to put some effort in on becoming familiar with the Critique of Judgement. At least I’ve bookmarked this publication (it’s available at gutenberg.org) and there is an SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) exposition of it.
Does Kant define “understanding”? I asked ChatGPt this and it pointed me to “Critique of Pure Reason.” I guess I’ll hold on this since I’m working on “Critique of Judgement.”
You say: “we have lost Kant’s key point which is that we have no direct access to noumena. … For me, while I see the wisdom in this, I have also become acutely aware of the limitations of this.”
Well, yeah. Isn’t that just the way the cookie crumbles? In our imagination [my meaning] is there any difference between noumena and phenomena? Or does Kant see this differently?
Sorry, but I’m confused here. The quotes:
“There is no thought without prior commitments”
and
“which jeopardy we should be worry about”
are from your reply to my first comment. I’m OK with further comments, but the question?
I’m impressed that your Strange Worlds “posts are already stocked through to May”. I don’t think I’ve ever prepared that far ahead except when I was repeating a course I’d already delivered. Actually, at the rate I’m going, I’ll study each Strange Worlds post as it appears, but will probably fall steadily behind on comments. I struggle every day with all the clerical, communication, reading, research, writing, and construction tasks I want to do, and always come up short. This doesn’t really bother me, but sometimes I wish the follow that keeps inserting all these task ideas in my consciousness would just throttle back and content himself with reminding me of stuff and feeding me ideas on tasks already underway. His behavior is to be expected, I suppose. I kept him on a pretty tight chain for 61 years.
Notes
[1] How can this be disputed? Does it depend on what’s meant by ‘real.’ But if I have no conscience awareness of something, how can I communicate about it?