Mysterianism

[PyramidHead]

We know that different species of animals have different mental capacities. We know why that is: based on the specific pressures in the environments where their ancestors thrived, they tended to favor a mental 'toolbox' that was sufficient for evolutionary fitness. We know that it's ludicrous to expect an organism to understand or conceptualize something if it lacks the appropriate mental tools. No matter how hard we try, we will never be able to teach a field mouse to play chess. No matter how hard the mice works at it, it will never play chess.

We also know that we're animals, and that we developed according to the exact same process that gave rise to the limited brains of other animals. Yet, we never seriously entertain the idea that some (perhaps even most) of reality is beyond the perimeter of our particular mental toolbox. We have come a long way with the tools we have. But is there any reason to think we can keep going until we understand everything? Why, when every other organism has a model of the universe that is small and provincial enough to account for their immediate needs, should we alone have a brain with the capacity to comprehend all of reality? It seems much more likely, at least to me, that like everything else with a brain, we will eventually come to the limit of what we can render with our concepts, what we can render with concepts per se. Beyond that point will be as foreign to us as chess is to a mouse; to the mouse, getting better at something might mean doing it faster, or memorizing certain regular features of its environment, or finding the best way around an obstacle. The notion of anticipating the choices of another being in the context of a game with specific rules is of a different world altogether from what it can even imagine doing.

It wouldn't surprise me if subjective experience is one such problem. The school of thought that claims we are banging up against our mental limit as humans when we try to understand how the feeling of vertigo results from certain biochemical reactions has been called the 'new mysterianism.' Colin McGinn and Thomas Nagel are some of its more well-known proponents.

I wonder, however, where the burden of proof should be in a case like this: do the new mysterians have to demonstrate that we are incapable of solving the hard problem of consciousness, or do people who disagree have to demonstrate that it's solvable? On the one hand, we've solved a lot of problems as a species. Other animals more or less have to start from scratch every generation, but we can build on past successes. Having made it this far, why give up? But on the other hand, we are still animals, and it would be a truly remarkable stroke of luck if we just happen to have the brainpower to understand anything we put enough effort into, despite having evolved for mundane, fitness-enabling tasks like everything else. And it's not like our progress has stayed constant; physics has advanced very little since the late 20th century, and philosophy of mind has made no inroads to anything resembling a final answer to the hard problem. Maybe those are signs that we've hit our mental boundary.

 

[rousseau]

At risk of implying evolution has directionality, I think where we're at now biologically pretty much represents the peak of life's reasoning capacity. We're the intellectual pinnacle of mammalia, which is going to cause a huge reaction in the environment as we're too effective at extracting resources. I say we're the intellectual pinnacle because if you get much smarter than us then people stop seeing reason to have children. To produce a lot of kids you usually have to be at least a little deluded, and so not getting too intelligent is actually selective.

Anyway, toward your point I don't know if I agree. Objective reality is not that complicated, and as far as what's knowable goes we've done a pretty good job of understanding that reality. We understand to a fine degree a good brunt of physical phenomena in the universe, including life itself, we understand which sub-atomic particles make up the universe, we understand most phenomena as it pertains to earth's geology, astronomical phenomena, time, history.. and on and on.

As far as neuroscience goes we're in it's infancy. Scientific thought is quite mature now, but I'd expect in 100-200 years we'll have a very accurate model of how the brain works. Note I didn't say how it 'produces consciousness', because I think once we understand how the brain works we'll find that the term 'consciousness' is just a folk term that we've used to describe our sense of self from moment to moment. Eventually we'll find that the brain is just a mash of processes that are always on during our waking hours.

Anyway, if anyone reading doesn't think we know much, I'd recommend looking for what we do know, because never before in human history have we understand the universe to such a fine degree, and that knowledge is very easy to access if you look for it.

 

[untermensche]

I couldn't disagree more.

Individual human intellectual capacities are extremely limited and plagued with irrationality.

But language enables humans to preserve knowledge and build upon it.

The reason some think they are so smart is because they are standing on the shoulders of the few geniuses that explained things. Not because they have figured out anything themselves.

The ultimate questions, Why something as opposed to nothing?, are light years beyond our capabilities to explain and for some even beyond their abilities to wonder at.

 

[rousseau]

I couldn't disagree more.

Individual human intellectual capacities are extremely limited and plagued with irrationality.

But language enables humans to preserve knowledge and build upon it.

The reason some think they are so smart is because they are standing on the shoulders of the few geniuses that explained things. Not because they have figured out anything themselves.

The ultimate questions, Why something as opposed to nothing?, are light years beyond our capabilities to explain and for some even beyond their abilities to wonder at.

Individually we might be ignorant, but collectively we're most certainly not.

Most knowledge of the universe as it is relevant to people's lives is already knowable, what we still have left to understand is a move toward the very edges.

 

[untermensche]

I couldn't disagree more.

Individual human intellectual capacities are extremely limited and plagued with irrationality.

But language enables humans to preserve knowledge and build upon it.

The reason some think they are so smart is because they are standing on the shoulders of the few geniuses that explained things. Not because they have figured out anything themselves.

The ultimate questions, Why something as opposed to nothing?, are light years beyond our capabilities to explain and for some even beyond their abilities to wonder at.

Individually we might be ignorant, but collectively we're most certainly not.

Most knowledge of the universe as it is relevant to people's lives is already knowable, what we still have left to understand is a move toward the very edges.

What is the best economic system possible to bring forth the greatest in the human potential?

Have we stumbled upon it?

Or is improvement possible?

Is this the "edges"?

 

[Elixir]

Individually we might be ignorant, but collectively we're most certainly not.

Most knowledge of the universe as it is relevant to people's lives is already knowable, what we still have left to understand is a move toward the very edges.

What is the best economic system possible to bring forth the greatest in the human potential?

Alchemy. It fixes everything, everyone can be billionaires. Just as the anarchist utopian vision requires!

 

[untermensche]

What is the best economic system possible to bring forth the greatest in the human potential?

Alchemy. It fixes everything, everyone can be billionaires. Just as the anarchist utopian vision requires!

Anarchism begins by making moral judgements and proceeds on moral grounds with moral arguments.

In terms of the morality of human power structures Anarchists say that if some claim it is moral to be dictator they must demonstrate it, not just claim it.

No power systems are just accepted, all must justify themselves on moral grounds.

 

[PyramidHead]

I couldn't disagree more.

Individual human intellectual capacities are extremely limited and plagued with irrationality.

But language enables humans to preserve knowledge and build upon it.

The reason some think they are so smart is because they are standing on the shoulders of the few geniuses that explained things. Not because they have figured out anything themselves.

The ultimate questions, Why something as opposed to nothing?, are light years beyond our capabilities to explain and for some even beyond their abilities to wonder at.

Individually we might be ignorant, but collectively we're most certainly not.

Most knowledge of the universe as it is relevant to people's lives is already knowable, what we still have left to understand is a move toward the very edges.

The gist of the new mysterian hypothesis, as I understand it, is that we aren't really justified in assuming that the knowledge we lack is just around the very edges. It could be that we have an extraordinarily accurate model of reality that is, to use your term, relevant to people's lives, but there may be an entire other set of phenomena whose behavior we will never be able to characterize, no matter how much we build upon past knowledge, due to a basic structural limitation of our neurobiology. And the hard problem of conciousness is squarely out of bounds, to the point where we don't even have the vocabulary to communicate subjective sensations, much less explain them.

 

[rousseau]

Individually we might be ignorant, but collectively we're most certainly not.

Most knowledge of the universe as it is relevant to people's lives is already knowable, what we still have left to understand is a move toward the very edges.

What is the best economic system possible to bring forth the greatest in the human potential?

Have we stumbled upon it?

Or is improvement possible?

Is this the "edges"?

The answer to this question depends on a huge number of variables, to the extent that I couldn't really give you a clear answer.

Needless to say, I'd say we're at a point where we can define very precisely why a 'utopian ideal' doesn't just appear out of thin air.

 

[rousseau]

Individually we might be ignorant, but collectively we're most certainly not.

Most knowledge of the universe as it is relevant to people's lives is already knowable, what we still have left to understand is a move toward the very edges.

The gist of the new mysterian hypothesis, as I understand it, is that we aren't really justified in assuming that the knowledge we lack is just around the very edges. It could be that we have an extraordinarily accurate model of reality that is, to use your term, relevant to people's lives, but there may be an entire other set of phenomena whose behavior we will never be able to characterize, no matter how much we build upon past knowledge, due to a basic structural limitation of our neurobiology. And the hard problem of conciousness is squarely out of bounds, to the point where we don't even have the vocabulary to communicate subjective sensations, much less explain them.

Is there any evidence of their claim, or is it just philosophical hand-wringing?

I understand the point, which is probably worth testing, but I don't see any evidence of it being accurate. In my view life is an exact mirror image of the universe, which has evolved to sense the properties of the material world for it's own survival. I'd think it's very unlikely that there is anything in the universe that we can't perceive, besides being due to technological limitations.

 

[untermensche]

What is the best economic system possible to bring forth the greatest in the human potential?

Have we stumbled upon it?

Or is improvement possible?

Is this the "edges"?

The answer to this question depends on a huge number of variables, to the extent that I couldn't really give you a clear answer.

Needless to say, I'd say we're at a point where we can define very precisely why a 'utopian ideal' doesn't just appear out of thin air.

So first you say we know all that is useful, and now you say we don't but what is useful won't just appear out of thin air.

You've changed your tune to the point of uselessness.

Of course it won't just appear. But things appear AFTER the intellectual groundwork exists.

And the intellectual groundwork for many different systems exists already.

With our super human capacities, which is clearly the best choice?

 

[fromderinside]

Vegg type here for those who don't have nervous systems. Its clear we're here. That's about it. Oh, By-the-by ever notice how much you nervous system types depend on chemicals? How's that working out for you rational gees?

I understand you've kinda worked it out that single cell types are way more than half the biomass. In fact decomposers make up about half alone. Wanna talk success?

So how about 'splaining why there's so much bio cleaning up going on?

Oh and while we're about it say hello to hydrogen.

If one must explain things maybe one should look at what hydrogen does under a variety of conditions much broader than any narrow band of energy life forms such as life. Got a physical problem? Hydrogen seems to have a solution.

Now i'm getting down into the grits. I'm astonished that such as humans believe their 'consciousness' might be part of natural law? WHA? Try again when you've learned how to exist without electrons, have to exchange protons, release and capture photons, etc.

 

[untermensche]

You sound like Gould.

He made the exact same point when asked about the directionalality of evolution.

Forget hydrogen. Let's look at carbon. That is the game changer.

 

[rousseau]

The answer to this question depends on a huge number of variables, to the extent that I couldn't really give you a clear answer.

Needless to say, I'd say we're at a point where we can define very precisely why a 'utopian ideal' doesn't just appear out of thin air.

So first you say we know all that is useful, and now you say we don't but what is useful won't just appear out of thin air.

You've changed your tune to the point of uselessness.

Of course it won't just appear. But things appear AFTER the intellectual groundwork exists.

And the intellectual groundwork for many different systems exists already.

With our super human capacities, which is clearly the best choice?

You're assuming that a workable intellectual framework for utopianism exists.

Many unworkable frameworks do exist but what actually occurs politically is our reality. Just because there isn't a firm way to manipulate our reality how we like, doesn't mean we don't understand our reality, it just means that it's very hard to actually do.

In other words, you're missing the fact that the sources of our social reality are much bigger than political will. Technology, energy resources, biology, biological imperative, all things that are far beyond our control which shape who we are and how we live.

 

[untermensche]

So first you say we know all that is useful, and now you say we don't but what is useful won't just appear out of thin air.

You've changed your tune to the point of uselessness.

Of course it won't just appear. But things appear AFTER the intellectual groundwork exists.

And the intellectual groundwork for many different systems exists already.

With our super human capacities, which is clearly the best choice?

You're assuming that a workable intellectual framework for utopianism exists.

Many unworkable frameworks do exist but what actually occurs politically is our reality. Just because there isn't a firm way to manipulate our reality how we like, doesn't mean we don't understand our reality, it just means that it's very hard to actually do.

In other words, you're missing the fact that the sources of our social reality are much bigger than political will. Technology, energy resources, biology, biological imperative, all things that are far beyond our control which shape who we are and how we live.

I don't see how making things better could in any way be seen as utopian.

That is history. Humans making things better. And many times making things worse.

Are you claiming we have reached some state of perfection?

 

[rousseau]

You're assuming that a workable intellectual framework for utopianism exists.

Many unworkable frameworks do exist but what actually occurs politically is our reality. Just because there isn't a firm way to manipulate our reality how we like, doesn't mean we don't understand our reality, it just means that it's very hard to actually do.

In other words, you're missing the fact that the sources of our social reality are much bigger than political will. Technology, energy resources, biology, biological imperative, all things that are far beyond our control which shape who we are and how we live.

I don't see how making things better could in any way be seen as utopian.

That is history. Humans making things better. And many times making things worse.

Are you claiming we have reached some state of perfection?

No. You introduced 'utopianism' with the phrase 'best economic system', I'm just expounding on that introduction.

And history isn't 'humans making things better' or 'making things worse'. History involves the change of living populations and their environment over time.

If you want to talk progress, just read this line a couple times: 'energy input'

 

[PyramidHead]

The gist of the new mysterian hypothesis, as I understand it, is that we aren't really justified in assuming that the knowledge we lack is just around the very edges. It could be that we have an extraordinarily accurate model of reality that is, to use your term, relevant to people's lives, but there may be an entire other set of phenomena whose behavior we will never be able to characterize, no matter how much we build upon past knowledge, due to a basic structural limitation of our neurobiology. And the hard problem of conciousness is squarely out of bounds, to the point where we don't even have the vocabulary to communicate subjective sensations, much less explain them.

Is there any evidence of their claim, or is it just philosophical hand-wringing?

I understand the point, which is probably worth testing, but I don't see any evidence of it being accurate. In my view life is an exact mirror image of the universe, which has evolved to sense the properties of the material world for it's own survival. I'd think it's very unlikely that there is anything in the universe that we can't perceive, besides being due to technological limitations.

Well, two things. First, it's not so much a matter of perception, because to go back to my example, a mouse could theoretically perceive everything in the universe as well, if not for technical limitations. It's more about conceptual barriers or gaps that can't be filled due to how we're wired. Secondly, there's a strong argument to be made that what you suggest about evolution must be false; useful (but strictly speaking, inaccurate) models of reality will always prevail over more accurate models that are less useful in terms of fitness.

Suppose in reality there’s a resource, like water, and you can quantify how much of it there is in an objective order — very little water, medium amount of water, a lot of water. Now suppose your fitness function is linear, so a little water gives you a little fitness, medium water gives you medium fitness, and lots of water gives you lots of fitness — in that case, the organism that sees the truth about the water in the world can win, but only because the fitness function happens to align with the true structure in reality. Generically, in the real world, that will never be the case. Something much more natural is a bell curve — say, too little water you die of thirst, but too much water you drown, and only somewhere in between is good for survival. Now the fitness function doesn’t match the structure in the real world. And that’s enough to send truth to extinction. For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It won’t see any distinction between small and large — it only sees red — even though such a distinction exists in reality.

But how can seeing a false reality be beneficial to an organism’s survival?

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop — it has color, position and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

 

[rousseau]

Is there any evidence of their claim, or is it just philosophical hand-wringing?

I understand the point, which is probably worth testing, but I don't see any evidence of it being accurate. In my view life is an exact mirror image of the universe, which has evolved to sense the properties of the material world for it's own survival. I'd think it's very unlikely that there is anything in the universe that we can't perceive, besides being due to technological limitations.

Well, two things. First, it's not so much a matter of perception, because to go back to my example, a mouse could theoretically perceive everything in the universe as well, if not for technical limitations. It's more about conceptual barriers or gaps that can't be filled due to how we're wired. Secondly, there's a strong argument to be made that what you suggest about evolution must be false; useful (but strictly speaking, inaccurate) models of reality will always prevail over more accurate models that are less useful in terms of fitness.

Suppose in reality there’s a resource, like water, and you can quantify how much of it there is in an objective order — very little water, medium amount of water, a lot of water. Now suppose your fitness function is linear, so a little water gives you a little fitness, medium water gives you medium fitness, and lots of water gives you lots of fitness — in that case, the organism that sees the truth about the water in the world can win, but only because the fitness function happens to align with the true structure in reality. Generically, in the real world, that will never be the case. Something much more natural is a bell curve — say, too little water you die of thirst, but too much water you drown, and only somewhere in between is good for survival. Now the fitness function doesn’t match the structure in the real world. And that’s enough to send truth to extinction. For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It won’t see any distinction between small and large — it only sees red — even though such a distinction exists in reality.

But how can seeing a false reality be beneficial to an organism’s survival?

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop — it has color, position and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

True, although it's a bit of a red herring. We're attuned to modelling the world in terms of our fitness, yes, but the pursuit of knowledge isn't always about fitness. A lot of what we know about the universe we know because we want to know it, not because it has any survival value.

In other words, as individuals we're most certainly tuned to see things in terms of survival value, but collectively we're also often tuned to understand the universe objectively.

The question then, is whether or not we've actually done that. I'd argue we have and see no evidence to the contrary.

 

[untermensche]

I don't see how making things better could in any way be seen as utopian.

That is history. Humans making things better. And many times making things worse.

Are you claiming we have reached some state of perfection?

No. You introduced 'utopianism' with the phrase 'best economic system', I'm just expounding on that introduction.

And history isn't 'humans making things better' or 'making things worse'. History involves the change of living populations and their environment over time.

If you want to talk progress, just read this line a couple times: 'energy input'

Best economic system is not some utopian dream that anybody thinks can be achieved.

It is just the logical goal.

And human history is directed by intelligent "beings". It is somewhat random, due to the irrationalities like war and religion, but it has advances and declines.

Modern medicine is not just change over time. It is directed change. Planned change. Not perfect but not change that just happens somehow.

 

[rousseau]

No. You introduced 'utopianism' with the phrase 'best economic system', I'm just expounding on that introduction.

And history isn't 'humans making things better' or 'making things worse'. History involves the change of living populations and their environment over time.

If you want to talk progress, just read this line a couple times: 'energy input'

Best economic system is not some utopian dream that anybody thinks can be achieved.

It is just the logical goal.

And human history is directed by intelligent "beings". It is somewhat random, due to the irrationalities like war and religion, but it has advances and declines.

Modern medicine is not just change over time. It is directed change. Planned change. Not perfect but not change that just happens somehow.

Whether we call it the 'best economic system' or 'utopianism' we're still assuming such a thing exists, and my points are still the same.

I'd argue that human history is over-archingly directed by necessity, humans are just a vehicle to fulfill that necessity.