Epistemology, ontology and the mathematical connection between them

It’s been a philosophical obsession of mine to try and understand the deep connection between mathematics, sentience and the physical universe. A recent video, an online article and a New Scientist article have all contributed to my reappraisal of these apparently disparate yet seemingly interdependent phenomena. The last post I wrote also triggered a reassessment, where I brought up the inherent tension and interrelationship between ontology and epistemology. I contend (though I didn’t spell it out in that post) that there is a loop between epistemology and ontology, which hopefully will become clear during this discourse.

 

I’ll start with the New Scientist article, (7 March 2026, pp.31-40), which is really a collection of articles by different writers, and elaborates on different responses to recent data from DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopy Instrument). DESI suggests that the lambda constant (Λ), part of the ΛCDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter) model of the Universe, may not be constant after all. Λ represents the cosmological constant, originally formulated by Einstein, then dropped by Einstein, then reinstated posthumously when more accurate measurements of the Universe’s expansion, and indeed acceleration, required its insertion (as an adjunct to Einstein’s equation for General Relativity, GR). That’s a nutshell exposition, but the consequences are explained in the next paragraph.

 

If Λ does remain constant the Universe will accelerate to a point where virtually everything currently observable will disappear over the horizon (yes, there is a horizon for the entire universe). However, DESI suggests that may not happen if Λ decreases in value as the Universe ages. The jury is still out, as they say.

 

By ‘responses’ to DESI, I mean theories, which are in essence, mathematical models, and that’s what I want to focus on. This is a case where measurements, therefore empirical data, have led to existing theories being put under strain, and therefore new models or theories are being formulated. For those familiar with Thomas Khun’s seminal tome, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this is arguably an example of a ‘scientific revolution’ in progress. Kuhn argued that advances in science have occurred in ‘revolutions’, not in gradual increments as commonly believed. He coined the term, ’paradigm shift’, to describe this epistemological phenomenon. What’s more, he argues this ‘shift’ inexorably arises when new data no longer agrees with an existing theory.

 

However, others might argue that the paradigm shift precedes the data confirming it. But I think it’s a combination. To give some well know historical examples. We have the Copernicus revolution overturning the longstanding Ptolemy model of the Universe without a massive change in known data. In fact, Stephen Hawking argued in his book, The Grand Design, that both theories fitted the observations of the day.

 

Of course, Galileo famously followed up on Copernicus at great personal risk, and one of his arguments centred around the fact that he could observe moons around Jupiter using a new-fangled device called a telescope. Then Kepler used the extensive observational data collected by Tycho Brahe to mathematically demonstrate that planets orbit in ellipses, not circles. It’s hard for us to imagine in the 21^st Century just how big a revolutionary idea that was. It’s a case where mathematics provided a key role in formulating his thesis, and that has become increasingly pertinent ever since.

 

Then Newton went further, using his newly discovered (or invented) mathematical tool called calculus to determine that the orbits of the planets were determined by gravity, which also kept him bound to Earth. Who would have thought that the same phenomenon that keeps you on Earth also keeps the moon in orbit and the very planets in orbit around the sun? That’s a huge leap – a ‘paradigm shift’ of enormous consequence.

 

And the story continues with Einstein, building on Newton and Maxwell, where he formulated mathematical formulae to describe phenomena yet to be observed as well as explain phenomena that had been observed yet hitherto had remained inexplicable. Around the same time, Planck used empirical data to arrive at a constant (h), now called Planck’s constant, which Planck originally considered to be just a mathematical trick to get the right answer. It was Einstein who realised its true significance when he used it to explain the photo-electric effect. By the way, another constant, c (the speed of light) actually falls out of Maxwell’s equations, and it was Einstein’s genius to realise this was a ‘law’ of the Universe and not just a mathematical accident.

 

So scientific discoveries, in physics specifically, require a synergistic relationship between mathematics and empirical data that goes both ways.

 

Now I want to discuss the other side of my obsession, which is the relationship between mathematics and sentience – specifically, human sentience – as we have the ability to comprehend mathematics that goes well beyond any evolutionary requirement to merely survive. I recently wrote a post about human exceptionalism, where I mention that ‘our unique grasp of mathematics has been the most salient feature in propelling our advance in knowledge and comprehension of the natural world.’

 

And this leads me to a Curt Jaimungal video I recently watched, where he interviews David Blessis, who is French (going by his accent), and who is apparently a mathematician and possibly a philosopher of mathematics, given the nature of the discussion. He makes a statement, which I found quite profound, despite its lack of esoteric language, or possibly because of it, in answer to Curt’s question, how would he define mathematics?

 

‘My definition of mathematics is imagining things and pretending they really exist.’

 

As a succinct description of mathematical Platonism, it’s hard to go past it. Though I think he was having a dig at Platonism, rather than extolling it as a viable philosophical position.

 

He goes on to call it a ‘side-effect’, after invoking what he calls the ‘logic side of mathematics’, which is how we validate its truth (my expression, not his). To quote Blessis again:

 

‘And the logic side is the core technique to produce that side-effect.’

 

So, while I quote Blessis, I have a different perspective, which I’m sure he wouldn’t agree with. My own view is that mathematics already exists in a purely abstract realm, independently of us and the Universe, which we access using logic.

 

He goes on to introduce a term, ‘meaning-making’, which is what humans do with mathematics that is not evident in its logic.

 

‘There is something about mathematics that cannot be explained by formal logic.’

 

This goes to the heart of Godel’s famous Incompleteness Theorem, though Blessis never mentions it (at least not in this video), which intrinsically differentiates ‘proof’ from ‘truth’. It’s a point that Penrose raises again and again: that humans are able to divine a mathematical truth in a way that a machine never will. And I agree, because I don’t think AI will ever actually ‘understand’ things the way we do, despite increasingly giving the impression that they do. So it would seem that Blessis, Penrose and myself are on the same page, when he distinguishes ‘meaning’ from ‘logic’.

 

He goes on to provide an example when he discusses Andrew Wiles famous proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. In his initial publication of his proof, a fatal flaw was found, and Wiles went away to ‘fix his proof’, as Blessis puts it. Then Blessis asks: ‘What does it mean to fix a proof?’ The inference being that a proof is not enough. If you can ‘fix’ a proof, then is any proof valid? He doesn’t specifically ask this, but I got the impression that is what he meant.

 

There has to be ‘meaning’, according to Blessis, but again, I have a different perspective. To me, the fact that Wiles had to ‘fix’ his proof, is evidence that there is an objective ‘truth’, which exists before the proof is found. I’ve posited in a much earlier post that if you haven’t solved a puzzle, does that mean there's no solution until you have? This is consistent with my earlier point that mathematics exists independently of us; but, without logic, we can’t access it.

 

Blessis also talks about axioms, and many people would argue that because the mathematics we render is dependent on axioms, it is therefore dependent on us. He discusses set theory, which I won’t go into because I don’t know enough about it; only that it’s considered foundational to formal mathematics. And the thing is that formal mathematics is dependent on axioms and it is formal mathematics that lies at the heart of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. But here’s the thing: according to Godel, we discover new mathematical truths by expanding our axioms, and that is what has happened in practice. The best example is the discovery (I’ll use that term) of non-Euclidean geometry by adopting curvature. The introduction of new axioms or ‘operations’ that were once forbidden under an existing formalism allows one to find solutions to problems that were previously considered unsolvable. The square root of -1 being the best exemplar I can think of.

 

So the relationship between humans and mathematics is that we create a language in the form of numbers and systems of numbers (base arithmetic) along with operations like addition, multiplication and their inverse functions, among more complex ones like calculus and trigonometry, which then allow us to navigate an abstract landscape that keeps revealing new secrets. But alongside that, we have developed an epistemology called physics that appears to uncover a suite of mathematical rules or laws that underpin the Universe at all levels of our comprehension.

 

I haven’t mentioned the online article (from Quanta Magazine), which is an exposition on the work of Astrid Eichhorn, a physicist at Heidelberg University in Germany, who is exploring, in her own words, ‘a conservative theory of quantum gravity’, which she calls ‘asymptotic safety’. I won’t elaborate, but its relevance to this discussion, is that she’s using mathematics to explore new models of reality (my expression) that may solve existing conundrums or ones yet to be found. Specifically, she’s looking at a ‘fractal space-time’, which, as the author (Charlie Wood) says, ‘sounds pretty out there.’

 

I’m not advocating her theory or any of the ones I read about in New Scientist; I just want to point out that we implicitly believe that any theory or model of reality must be mathematical.

 

So mathematics provides us with the link between epistemology and ontology that I opened this discussion with. And implicit in this belief is another belief that it pre-exists the universe that it not only describes, but to some extent, rules.

 

As I said in my last post: A mathematical epistemology can only be verified with numbers. We need to take measurements, which is what DESI is doing, to give a current, ongoing example. But all our mathematical models of reality have limitations – there are no exceptions. I think this will always be true, and in the same way that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem ‘proved’ that our formal knowledge of mathematics can never be complete; likewise, I think our epistemology of the physical Universe will also remain incomplete. So in the same way that mathematics appears to have secrets that may never be revealed, so does the Universe we inhabit, at all scales.

Do probabilities actually exist?

 Only a philosopher would ask this question, let alone attempt to address it. But that’s what Raymond Tallis did in a 2-page article in Philosophy Now (Issue 172, Feb / Mar 2026).
 
This is the letter I wrote in response. It’s pretty self-explanatory.
 
I always like to read Raymond Tallis because he forces you to practice philosophy, especially if you disagree with him. Such was the case when I read his thesis on The Possibility Bearing Animal, where he concludes that “probabilities are no more objective in the physical world than are possibilities, which of course exist only insofar as they are envisaged” (italics in the original). Implicit in this statement is the belief that probabilities are a function of the mind only, and without a mind to perceive them, they would have no physical manifestation. I’m confident that he would not disagree with my rewording of his core idea.
 
If you read Erwin Schrodinger’s remarkable book, What is Life? he starts by emphasising the role of statistics in physics with the statement, “…the laws of physics and chemistry are statistical throughout.” This is true even without considering quantum mechanics, for which Schrodinger is most famously known, and for which he coined the term ‘statistico-deterministic’ to describe it.
 
Schrodinger was disappointed and frustrated that his eponymous equation required Max Born’s technique of converting the wave function into probabilities to make it relevant to the physical world. But here’s the thing: that conversion to probabilities has made his equation one of the most successful and enduring in the history of physics. Yes, it has limitations, but so does all mathematical physics. (It’s the reason that physics is a neverending endeavour, no matter the field.) This, of course, goes to the heart of Tallis’s thesis.
 
What Tallis is talking about is the distinction between epistemology and ontology, though he doesn’t specifically frame his discussion in those terms. Freeman Dyson, who was a key contributor and collaborator to Richard Feynman’s QED (yet missed out on a Nobel Prize), once warned about the reification of the wave function – making an abstract concept real. Dyson pointed out in a lecture (later turned into a paper) how quantum mechanics cannot describe the past, but only the future, which is why it can only deal in probabilities.
 
Probabilities were originally devised to explain events that people previously believed could only be determined by God. But this is common in the history of physics, including the movements of the planets in the solar system. So I agree with Tallis that probabilities are an epistemology, but they give us knowledge about future events that actually occur, therefore are inherently ontological.
 
The best example is radioactive decay, which we know is manifest as a half-life, and is very accurate within a specific range (the range varies for different isotopes). But here’s the thing: it’s impossible to predict the decay of an individual isotope (relevant to Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment), yet it’s extraordinarily, even preternaturally accurate, holistically. My point is that the half-life happens objectively and independently of any human mind, yet it’s determined by a probabilistic phenomenon.
 

 Afterword:

I limited my response to under 500 words, whereas Tallis’s treatise is much longer. There is more to this than I felt could be addressed in a Letter to the Editor.

Note how I tied my last statement to my rewording of his conclusion. I knew all along that I would use radioactive half-lives as my example to demonstrate what I saw as the error in his argument. But I snuck up on it, so-to-speak. I don’t define what I mean by ‘a probabilistic phenomenon’ yet the world is full of them, and it’s the key to my response, because I obviously believe they actually exist. Whereas Tallis effectively argues they only exist in someone’s mind.
 
The thing is that probability, as a formal device (not a colloquial expression), is always a number between 0 and 1, therefore it’s inherently mathematical. That aspect of it is somewhat ignored by Tallis, yet I don’t address it in my letter either. It’s something I would introduce later if we were engaged in a philosophical debate, because, from my perspective, it underlies what this is all about.
 
Mathematical physics is an epistemology, meaning it’s all about knowledge, and since the 20th Century, it often describes an ontology we can’t directly see or experience, yet we know it’s true within specific boundaries. Probabilities are part of that epistemology, but Tallis can discount them because they deal with the future, therefore with events yet to be actualised (by definition) - a point he makes himself. But here’s the thing: they make predictions that are highly accurate – quantum mechanics being a case-in-point.
 
The point I’d make is that while there is a distinction between epistemology and ontology, there is also a connection. Without an underlying ontology that it addresses, an epistemology is meaningless. This is a point I was attempting to make in my letter without saying it out loud. So how do we know an epistemology is true (as per my assertion in the previous paragraph)? Because we can make measurements. A mathematical epistemology can only be verified with numbers. In the case of probabilities, we do this by counting.

Homer, Socrates, Gandalf and Bilbo

 A strange combination, but it all makes sense if you read the post. This is a letter that was published in Philosophy Now (Issue 172, Feb / Mar 2026) in response to an article in the previous issue (171). I’m proud to say it was published with only a couple of minor edits in the first paragraph, which I’ve adopted. Otherwise, it’s unchanged, even down to paragraphs, commas and colons.

 
I was interested in Eric Comerford’s imagined conversation between Bilbo and Gandalf on happiness and wellbeing (Philosophy Now, Issue 171). To misquote Socrates, life without challenges is not worth living. There are a couple of issues here, one of them being the role of fiction in humanity’s evolution. Fiction is not unlike dreaming in that we confront scenarios that we might not encounter in real life, yet we can learn from them. In fact, I contend that the language of stories is the language of dreams, and that, if we didn’t dream, stories wouldn’t work.
 
The overcoming of adversity is a universal theme in fiction, going back to Homer’s Odyssey, if not earlier. And of course, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings exemplifies this in multiple storylines with multiple characters.
 
All of us, when we reach a certain age, can look back at all the events in our life that ultimately formed our current selves as if we are a piece of clay moulded by life’s experiences. And the thing is that the negative events in our life are just as significant in this process as the positive ones, if not more so. It’s very important to find a purpose, but it invariably involves challenges and also failures. So to revisit Socrates: arguably, a life without failure is not worth living.

Arguments for and against human exceptionalism

 This was triggered by an article I read in Philosophy Now (Issue 171, Dec 2025 / Jan 2026) by Adam Neiblum who authored Rise of the Nones: The Importance of Freedom from Religion (Hypatia Press, 2023). I don’t normally mention the publisher, but I find it interesting that they are named after the famous female Librarian of Alexandria, Hypatia (pronounced hi-pay-shia) who was infamously killed by a Christian mob in AD 414. I’ve written about her elsewhere.
 
The article was titled, Evolution or Progress, and asks “what the difference is and why it matters”. Not really a question, though one is implied. Basically, he’s arguing that evolution is not teleological (though he doesn’t use that term). Instead, he discusses the erroneous belief that most people associate evolution with progress, which is a symptom, not just of anthropocentrism, but our religious heritage. I think these are actually 2 different things, while admitting, for many people, they are connected.
 
I want to start by challenging his premise that the association of evolution with progress is not as erroneous as it appears, depending on how one defines or describes progress. My dictionary has 2 definitions:
 
1: forward or onward movement towards a destination
 
2: development towards an improved or more advanced condition
 
By the first definition, I think he’s right, but not by the second definition. If one looks at the historical evidence, going back not just millions but billions of years: the increase in complexity and sheer diversity from the most simple cells to animals with brains, I’d argue surely applies to definition 2.
 
To emphasise my point, I’ll quote from Neiblum’s essay, who provides his own definition of progress:
 
A)    An ideal or goal – literacy, or justice, for example.
B)    A gap between this ideal and the real-world state of affairs.
C)    A process of movement – individually, collectively, or even species-wide – towards that goal or ideal.
 
We can see these are not the same ideas. Evolution is neither purposeful nor intentional, it has no ideal, aim, or end-point.
 
One can see how this aligns with my dictionary definition 1, but not definition 2.
 
To be fair to Neiblum, he does address my criticism, in as much as he acknowledges evolution results in increased complexity. But he also points out that so-called primitive lifeforms (my words, not his) like insects, crocodiles, sharks (and other so-called living fossils) still thrive. But the reason they thrive, is that they have become part of an eco-system (the same with gut bacteria, for example). Evolution never applies to a species in isolation; just look at the fact that we all can’t exist without plants processing the carbon dioxide we expire as part of the extraordinary process called photo-synthesis.
 
Neiblum then goes on to discuss the role of religion, and specifically the Christian religion, in distorting or exaggerating (again, my terms) our anthropocentrism. But I’ll return to that specific point later.
 
I would like to point out that humans are not the only examples of exceptionalism in the animal kingdom. To give just 2 examples: the peregrine falcon can literally fly through the air at 200mph (in a dive); and the sperm whale can dive down to 2-3km and stay underwater for up to 45 mins.
 
But human exceptionalism is unusual and unique in the sense that, to quote Paul Davies: ‘We can unravel the plot’. I admit I tend to get annoyed when people tend to dismiss our unique ability to comprehend the universe to the degree and extent that we’ve managed to achieve. I recently watched an excellent series titled HUMAN, presented by paleo-anthropologist, Ella Al-Shamahi, which is very extensive and comprehensive for a lay-audience, and one of the things that stood out was how ‘break-throughs’ (for want of a better term) in cognitive abilities, seem to happen virtually simultaneously in different parts of the globe; the use of written script being a good example.
 
So, our cultural evolution, has tended to happen in jumps. And, in this sense, it is synonymous with progress to which Neiblum would undoubtedly agree. In his next-to-last sentence, he states that evolution has endowed us with the unique capacity to progress (emphasis in the original) using “evidence, reason and science”.
 
Personally, I think it is our unique grasp of mathematics that has been the most salient feature in propelling our advance in knowledge and comprehension of the natural world. To quote Eugene Wigner:
 
It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here… or the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.
 
This was from his famous essay, The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. And this is arguably the only reason, as Davies asserts, ‘we can unravel the plot’.
 
In my last post, I briefly talked about language, as well as imagination. Now, I actually believe that imagination is not unique to humans, in the sense that it allows us to mentally time-travel, and I suspect other creatures can do that as well, which we see in their ability to co-operate and act towards a goal. Implicit in that ability is the capacity to imagine that goal before it’s actualised. To the extent that other creatures can do this, I contend they have free will.
 
But humans take imagination to another level, because we can mentally time-travel to worlds that don’t even exist, which we do every time we read or watch a story. And this entails that other superpower we have, which is language. To quote from my last post:

…we all think in a language, which we learn from our milieu at an extremely early age, suggesting we are ‘hardwired’ genetically to do this. Without language, our ability to grasp and manipulate abstract concepts, which is arguably a unique human capability, would not be possible. Basically, I’m arguing that language for humans goes well beyond just an ability to communicate desires and wants, though that was likely its origin.
 
And this is the thing: these abstract concepts include mathematical equations, scientific theories and engineering designs (including, by the way, the theory of evolution, which is central to this discussion). But more than this, we ‘download’ this language from generation to generation at an age when these concepts are well beyond our cognitive abilities. And it’s this unique facility that has allowed us to create entire civilisations and build the scientific enterprise that we all depend upon and take for granted (if you’re reading this).
 
I’ve spent a lot of time belabouring a point, because my arguments thus far have nothing to do with religious beliefs.
 
Religion implies that there is a purpose and we are central to that purpose. I think purpose has evolved, and I’m unsure if Neiblum would agree. I’ve argued before that the Universe appears to be pseudo-teleological or quasi-teleological in that there is no end goal, yet the very mathematical laws that we have the cognitive capacity to ‘unravel’ seem to allow for a goal, even if it’s open-ended. Possibly, I’m subconsciously influenced by my ability and passion as a storyteller, because I prefer to write a story without knowing what the ending is. I’m not the only writer who does this, though there are others who won’t start a story without knowing the ending in advance.
 
I’ve always struggled with the concept of a ‘creator’ God, which is not dissimilar to the more recent belief that we live in a simulation. In a recent episode of an Australian satirical programme called The Weekly by Charlie Pickering, one of his guests, Rhys Nicholson, did a skit on this, even citing Nick Bolstrom, who is an academic proponent, but also comparing it to the widely held belief that there is a God pulling the strings behind the scenes (metaphorically speaking). Paul Davies in his book, The Goldilocks Enigma (highly recommended) also argues that the ‘simulation hypothesis’ is just a variation on ID (Intelligent Design).
 
I also like to cite Jordan Ellenberg from his excellent book, How Not to Be Wrong; The Power of Mathematical Thinking, where, among many other contentious topics, he discusses the ‘Bayesian inference of the existence of God’, whereby he shows that the Universe being a computer simulation has at least the same probability as it has being a divine intervention.
 
The thing that has struck me about all the Gods in our combined histories is that they all have cultural origins, including the Abrahamic God, and they are all anthropomorphic. I’ve long agreed with 19th Century philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, that ‘God is the outward projection of man’s inner nature’. God is something internal not external, though, of course, that doesn’t rule out an external source.
 
Personally, I’m attracted to the Hindu concept of Brahman (as was Schrodinger) as a collective mind that could be the end result of consciousness rather than its progenitor. I’m not proposing this as a definitive resolution, but it would provide a goal that Neiblum considers anathema to science.
 
All that aside, I think there is another aspect to seeing ourselves as ‘exceptional’ in the animal kingdom here on Earth, because it gives us a special responsibility. We are effectively the guardians of spaceship Earth by default. However, it’s a two-edged sword: we have the unique capability to destroy it or to safeguard it. Which one we do is dependent on all of us.

John Searle (31 July, 1932 – 17 September, 2025)

 My grand-niece, giving an obituary at my mother’s funeral (a few years back), read out a rather clever poem she’d written, called ‘What’s in a dash?’ In the case of John Searle, it includes an academic career as a philosopher, who created a thought experiment that found its way outside of academia into popular discourse. It also included ignominy when he was stripped of his title as Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley, following accusations of sexual harassment in June 2019 (refer Wikipedia for details).
 
Just on that, we live in a time of cancel culture, but also changing social norms, which I think are largely for the better. Personally, I don’t necessarily condemn someone for sleeping with a student, depending on circumstances, though I know many find it shocking. But if they’re both legally adults and it’s consensual, I wouldn’t rush to judgement. Erwin Schrodinger, well known for his libertine views and habits, got at least one student pregnant when he was living in exile in Ireland during the war. I only know this because I read about her grandson living and working as a physicist in Australia. Apparently, he only learned of his esteemed ancestry relatively late in his life. As I said, social norms have changed.
 
And relationships in workplaces are common, including myself, though the workplace was a kitchen and not an office. Having said all that, I think being in a position of authority and coercing someone who rejected sexual advances is a sackable offence, irrespective of the environment. And according to the Wikipedia article, that was the case with Searle. Nevertheless, in the NYT obituary, they added the following:
 
After Professor Searle’s death, Jennifer Hudin, the former director of the Searle Center, stated publicly that she had faced related accusations, but that both she and Professor Searle were innocent of all charges.
 
It is worth reading her email to Colin McGinn where she disputes the outcome and how she claims that Searle was actually exonerated by the investigation, but it was subsequently overturned. Having served on a jury (for a sex-related charge, as it turns out), you literally have to work out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth; in this case, neither I nor you can do that.
 
Although it was over 3 months ago, I only learned about his death when I came across a one-page obituary in the latest issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 171, Dec 2025 / Jan 2026).
 
I won’t relate a history of his career, because others do that more comprehensively than I can, in links I’ve already provided. I read his book, MiND, a brief introduction, many years ago, probably when it was published (2004). I can still remember coming across it unexpectedly in a book shop (I hadn’t visited before or since) while I was getting work done on my car. I found it a very stimulating read. Of course, I’d heard about his famous ‘Chinese room’ thought experiment, and to quote The New York Times again:
 
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an internet reference source, the Searle thought experiment “has probably been the most widely discussed philosophical argument in cognitive science to appear since the Turing Test,” the mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing’s 1950 procedure for determining machine intelligence.
 
While looking for obituaries online, I came across an interview he did for Philosophy Now in the Winter 1999/2000 Issue 25, so a millennium issue effectively. It gives a good overview of his philosophy that includes his ideas on language, where he coined the term, ‘speech-acts’ plus his ideas on The Construction of Social Reality (the title of a book I haven’t read). He effectively argues that these 2 fields, combined with his ideas on mind (therefore, 3 fields) are all related.
 
It was in Searle’s book, Mind, that I first came across the term, ‘intentionality’, which has a specific meaning in a philosophical context, and is related to the conscious mind’s ability to represent something externally, internally. That’s my clumsy way of explaining it, because it directly relates to my personal philosophy that we all have an internal and external world, which affects everything we do, because they are interdependent.
 
I saw an extended interview, not-so-recently, of Raymond Tallis by Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer to Truth, where he had a different take on it, which some might consider radical, yet is actually a good working definition: ‘Nothing is made explicit except by a creature who is conscious of it. And aware of it.’
 
In other words, there is this relationship between consciousness and reality, whereby something has no specificity (for want of a better term) until a conscious entity perceives it. I’ve made a similar point, when I’ve argued that when it comes to the question: why is there something rather than nothing? There might as well be nothing without consciousness. The Universe seems to have the inbuilt goal or destiny to be self-realisable. Paul Davies has made a similar point.
 
This is arguably related to Searle’s ideas on intentionality, because I think it’s what philosophical intentionality is all about – the mind’s ability to conjure up its own internal reality, which may or may not relate to the external reality we all inhabit. In fact, I’ve argued that evolution by natural selection is directly dependent on our ability to do this, simply because the external reality can kill us, in infinitely diverse ways.
 
Regarding Searle’s pre-occupation with intentionality, I would like to quote from another post, where I reference Searle’s book.
 
It’s not for nothing that Searle claims ‘the problem of intentionality is as great as the problem of consciousness’ – I would contend they are manifestations of the same underlying phenomena – as though one is passive and the other active. Searle wrote his book, Mind, in part, to offer explanations for these phenomena (although he added the caveat that he had only scratched the surface).
 
I argued in the same post that intentionality is really imagination, which allows us to mentally time-travel, without which, we wouldn’t be able to reconstruct the past or anticipate a future, both of which are essential for day-to-day interactions, not to mention, survival.
 
Searle would argue that intentionality is something that separates us from AI, and I would argue the same for imagination, which allows me to segue into his Chinese room thought experiment.
 
Many would argue that it’s past its use-by-date, and I even came across someone recently, calling it the ‘Chinese room fallacy’. On the other hand, with the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT, I’d say it’s prescient. Basically, Searle believed very strongly – some might say to the point of arrogance – that ‘the brain is not a computer and the mind is not software’, meaning it doesn’t run on algorithms, and I would agree. It doesn’t help that we use the word ‘language’ when talking about both computers and humans.
 
More specifically, the whole point of his Chinese room argument is that a person could answer questions addressed in Chinese and respond in Chinese (basically, inputs and outputs) without ever understanding the Chinese language, simply by blindly following a set of rules (algorithms) and manipulating symbols accordingly. Searle argued that this is basically what all computers do. The point is that it would give the impression that the person in the room understood Chinese, similarly to the way some people believe that a computer understands something the same way a human does. And this is what we’ve found with ChatGPT.
 
I’ve recently been watching a podcast series by Lex Fridman where he interviews some very clever people, including a series with mathematician, logician and philosopher, Joel David Hamkins (John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Logic at the University of Notre Dame). I mention him, because in one of the podcasts he remarks how he finds AI not at all helpful in exploring mathematics; specifically, ChatGPT. Now, I’m not at all surprised, but maybe there are other AI tools that are specifically designed to help mathematicians. For example, mathematicians now use computers to run myriad scenarios to formulate proofs that couldn’t be achieved otherwise. But it still doesn’t mean that the computer understands what it’s doing.
 
In the Philosophy Now interview, Searle talks about language and ‘social reality’, which I’ve barely touched on, yet they are obviously related. To quote from the interview, out of context:
 
On the account that I give, social reality is a matter of what people think, and what they think is a matter of how they talk to each other, and relate to each other. So you can’t have a social reality without a language, not a human social reality without a language.
 
What he doesn’t say, at least not in this interview, is that we all think in a language, which we learn from our milieu at an extremely early age, suggesting we are ‘hardwired’ genetically to do this. Without language, our ability to grasp and manipulate abstract concepts, which is arguably a unique human capability, would not be possible. Basically, I’m arguing that language for humans goes well beyond just an ability to communicate desires and wants, though that was likely its origin.
 
In the same passage of the interview, he explains how we follow specific social protocols (though he doesn’t use that word), giving the interview itself as an example. They both know what social rules they need to follow in that particular environment. The thing is that I came across this idea when I studied social psychology and they are called ‘scripts’, which in turn, are based on ‘schema’, and these are culturally dependent. In other words, our actions and our responses, be they verbal, written or behavioural, are largely governed by social norms that we have delegated to our subconscious.
 
That maybe an oversimplification, and not doing him justice, so I recommend you read the interview for yourself.
 
Humans are not the only social animal, but we have created a cultural evolution that has overtaken our biological evolution, giving rise to the term, ‘meme’, coined by Richard Dawkins and elaborated on by others; most notably, Susan Blackmore, which I’ve discussed elsewhere. But integral to that cultural evolution is language, because, even without written script, it allows us to accumulate memories across generations in a way that no other species can, which is why we have civilisations.
 
Searle argued that he wasn’t a physicalist (or materialist), which made him clash with David Dennett, but also not a (Cartesian) dualist, which some might argue is the only alternative. Searle acknowledges that consciousness has a causal relationship with the neurons in our brain. To quote:
 
The brain is made up of all these neurons and the individual neurons…  But what happens is that neurons, through causal interactions – causal interactions, not just formal, symbolic interactions but actual causal relationships with actual neurons firing and synapses operating – cause a higher level feature of the system, namely, consciousness and intentionality.
 
I find this similar to Douglas Hoffstadter’s idea of a ‘strange loop’, which is that the causal loop goes both ways, and this relates to free will, or what someone called ‘causal consciousness’, which I claim, is related to imagination. I quote Philip Ball from his tome, The Book of Minds:
 
When we make a choice, we aren’t selecting between various possible futures, but between various imagined futures, as represented in the mind’s internal model of the world… (emphasis in the original)
 
Searle spends an entire chapter on free will in his book, Mind. I leave you with his conclusion, which might be a good place to wrap this up:
 
Even after we have resolved the most fundamental questions addressed in this book, questions such as, What is the nature of the mind? How does it relate to the rest of the physical world? How can there be such a thing as mental causation? And how can our minds have intentionality? There is still the question of whether or not we really do have freedom.

The inherent tension between free speech, hate speech and censorship; where to draw the line

 The last Question of the Month in Philosophy Now was What are the Proper Limits of Free Speech? and answers were published in Issue 171, December 2025/January 2026. I submitted one, which wasn’t published. I don’t mind as they had excellent answers.
 
Limits on free speech is a contentious issue, because it axiomatically requires an arbitrator as well as criteria for arbitration, and, in many cases, it can have political ramifications. In my response, I argued that it is a consequence of our tribalism, which results in the subjectivity of perceived truth and the role of censorship (refer below).
 
Just on the subject of arbitration, I saw a recent documentary on our electoral system in Australia, and the head of our Electoral Commission, said there was no censorship of campaign advertising because they could not be seen as an arbiter of ‘truth’ without being accused of political bias (from whichever side). The only legal requirement is that the advertisement needs to be authorised by the political party that is being promoted. This doesn’t stop other organisations from putting in their 10c worth; but I’m talking about organisations whose views are well known, as are most media outlets, so it’s seen as political commentary rather than campaigning, though the distinction may be blurred.
 
Slightly off-track, but still relevant. Even more recently I watched a documentary on the history of Twitter, from its inception up until its sale to Elon Musk. They interviewed all-but-one of the cofounders, and my immediate impression was how naïve they were, when the ‘dark side’ of Twitter emerged, and how they failed to foresee it, let alone control it.
 
And this goes to the nub of the issue concerning the limits of free speech. In particular, how it was weaponised by organisations like ISIS, not to mention by Trump during his 2020 election campaign, when his hate speech was unfiltered. He was banned as a consequence, then allowed back on, in time to stoke the fires of the Jan 6 storming of the Capital, before being banned a second time, despite being POTUS. This didn’t stop some of his followers tweeting “Hang Pence”, among other inflammatory tweets. This confirms my own criterion for the ‘proper limits of free speech’, after I had written my analysis (see below).
 
I couldn’t help but compare Twitter with Wikipedia, especially since I watched a recent interview with its founder, Jimmy Wales. I know it’s a completely different platform, but Wikipedia could have easily created a warren of rabbit holes similar to YouTube and other social media outlets where the need to grow a consumer-base at all costs means that truth and accountability are jettisoned.


Wikipedia is a completely different model where the credibility of the ‘source’ is paramount. As someone who has prepared evidence for courts of law, I believe the same principles can apply in the court of public opinion, and I believe Wikipedia demonstrates this possibility. In a court of law or mediation process (I’ve been involved in both), the evidence and its credibility is the only criteria that matters. So when something is fact-checked and rejected, I don’t call that censorship – I call it being morally responsible.
 
I think one of the problems with my submission to Philosophy Now, was that 400 words is too limiting to discuss the nuances of attempting to deal with misinformation that can have life-or-death consequences, which includes current misinformation about vaccines. I think that both the far-right and far-left can be guilty of being anti-science and this has consequences for all of us. I think we need to acknowledge our dependency on people who have expertise that the rest of us don’t have, which was an everyday occurrence for me in my professional life in engineering. I have little patience for politicians who eschew scientific advice, no matter the field of inquiry.
 
Wikipedia, as revealed in the interview, is also accused of political bias, but I think that’s inevitable if you refuse to cater to conspiracy theories, which is something else I attempted to address in my original submission. At the end of the day, it comes down to trust, as Jimmy Wales keeps emphasising. People tend to trust their ‘tribe’, which is why, and how, social media has created echo-chambers fed by algorithms. And yes, I’m susceptible to that as well. 

I’ve written previously on how one can find truth in a post-truth world, and I rely on the lessons I learned from preparing arguments in disputes. I found that if they are based on documented evidence that can’t be disputed, then you're in a good position. This is more difficult in the alternate universes created on the Internet, but sticking to the science is a good starting point. I tend to agree with Prof Brian Cox, that ignorance is the greatest danger facing humanity in the 21st Century. So ideas need to be contested, but I don’t think it helps to give conspiracy theories the same footing as evidence-based science.
 
This is my original 400 word submission to Philosophy Now.
 
This is a multi-faceted issue, so I’m going to start with context. We are a tribal species – one only has to look at other primates. And it’s an example of where a biological evolutionary trait has been amplified by cultural evolution, which in humans, has uniquely overtaken biological evolution. This is central to understanding how free speech has become problematic.
 
There is a relationship between free speech, perceived truth and censorship. I say, ‘perceived truth’, because it varies between standpoints, or tribes, and creates clashes in various forums from newsrooms to social media platforms to political outlets and even university campuses. Yet, arguably, it’s arguments over ‘truth’ that is the real problem when dealing with free speech, because one person’s education is another person’s propaganda. This has led to virtual alternative universes, which are not just different but opposites. Well known examples include climate change, where in one universe it’s a hoax or conspiracy, and in another universe it’s a scientific fact, and the not-so-recent COVID pandemic where, in one universe, vaccines saved lives and in an alternative universe, they were a ‘bio-weapon’. And of course, this extends into American politics, where in one universe, the candidate stole an election and in an alternative universe, the other candidate attempted to overthrow it.
 
Misinformation and disinformation are now rampant in the age of social media where regulations are not as stringent as they are in traditional media and the platforms are not legally responsible for what people post on them. Yet free speech, by its implicit intention, allows all views on a topic to have equal validity. This has led to arguments about ‘balance’ being imposed on public broadcasters by politicians and other parties, where scientific, evidence-based statements are expected to stand alongside conspiracy theories as if they have equal footing. It’s similar to arguments for ‘Intelligent Design’ to be taught alongside biological evolution.
 
To curtail these arguments brings the response of censorship. But there are some forms of censorship that virtually all tribes condone, which usually involves the protection of children. It’s only censorship of ‘free speech’ between groups or tribes that is contentious.
 
But the most pernicious aspect of tribalism arises from a tendency to form an ingroup-outgroup mindset, resulting in intransigence. And when the outgroup is demonised, the consequences can be dangerous, even fatal, and ‘free speech’ can be weaponised into ‘hate speech’. This delineates the ‘proper limit’.