Mathematics, consciousness, reality

 I wish to emphasise the importance of following and listening to people you disagree with. (I might write another post on the pitfalls of ‘echo-chambers’ in social media, from which I’m not immune.)
 
I’ve been following Donald Hoffman ever since I reviewed an academic paper he wrote with Chetan Prakash called Objects of Consciousness, back in November 2016, though the paper was written in 2014 (so over 10 years ago). Back then, I have to admit, I found it hard to take him seriously, especially his views on evolution, and his go-to metaphor that objective reality was analogous to desktop icons on a computer.
 
His argument is similar to the idea that we live in a computer simulation, though he’s never said that, and I don’t think he believes we do. Nevertheless, he has compared reality to wearing a VR headset, which is definitely analogous to being in a computer simulation. As I have pointed out on other posts, I contend that we do create a model of reality in our ‘heads’, which is so ‘realistic’ that we all think it is reality. The thing is that our very lives depend on it being a very accurate ‘model’, so we can interact with the external reality that does exist outside our heads. This is one of my strongest arguments against Hoffman – reality can kill you, but simulations, including the ones we have when we sleep, which we call dreams, cannot.
 
So I’ve been following Hoffman, at least on YouTube, in the 8 years since I wrote that first critique. I read an article he wrote in New Scientist on evolution (can’t remember the date), which prompted me to write a letter-to-the-Editor, which was published. And whenever I come across him on YouTube: be it in an interview, a panel discussion or straight-to-video; I always watch and listen to what he has to say. What I’ve noticed is that he’s sharpened his scalpel, if I can use that metaphor, and that he’s changed his tack, if not his philosophical position. Which brings me to the reason for writing this post.
 
A year or two ago, I wrote a comment on one of his standalone videos, challenging what he said, and it was subsequently deleted, which is his prerogative. While I was critical, I don’t think I was particularly hostile – the tone was similar to a comment I wrote today on the video that prompted this discussion (see below).
 
Hoffman’s change of tack is not to talk about evolution at all, but spacetime and how it’s no longer ‘fundamental’. This allows him to argue that ‘consciousness’ is more fundamental than spacetime, via the medium of mathematics. And that’s effectively the argument he uses in this video, which, for brevity, I’ve distilled into one succinct sentence.
 
My approach, well known to anyone who regularly follows this blog, is that consciousness and mathematics are just as fundamental to reality as the physical universe, but not in the way that Hoffman argues. I’ve adopted, for better or worse, Roger Penrose’s triumvirate, which he likes to portray in an Escher-like diagram. 

 
I wouldn’t call myself a physicalist when it comes to consciousness, for the simple reason that I don’t believe we can measure it, and despite what Hoffman (and others) often claim, I’m not convinced that it will ever succumb to a mathematical model, in the way that virtually all physical theories do.
 
I left a comment on this video, which was hosted by the ‘Essentia Foundation’, so hopefully, it’s not deleted. Here it is:
 
I agree with him about Godel’s Theorem in its seminal significance to both maths and physics, which is that they are both neverending. However, when he says that ‘reality transcends any mathematical theory’ (3.00) I agree to a point, but I’d argue that mathematics transcends the Universe (known as mathematical Platonism); so in that sense, mathematics transcends reality.
 
The other point, which he never mentions, is that mathematical models of physical phenomena can be wrong – the best example being Ptolemy’s model of the solar system. String theory may well fall into that category – at this stage, we don’t know.
 
When he discusses consciousness being mathematical (4.30): ‘If consciousness is all there is, then mathematical structure is only about consciousness’; which is a premise dressed up as a conclusion, so circular.
 
The problem I’ve always had with Donald Hoffman’s idealism philosophy is that consciousness may exist independently of the Universe; it’s not possible for us to know. But within the Universe itself, evolutionary theory tells us that consciousness came late. Now, I know that he has his own theory of evolution to counter this, but that entails an argument that’s too long to address here.
 
Regarding his argument that spacetime is not fundamental, I know about Nima Arkani-Hamed and his work on amplituhedrons, and to quote: “This is a concrete example of a way in which the physics we normally associate with space-time and quantum mechanics arises from something more basic.” But the something more basic is mathematical, not physical. It’s possible that there was something before spacetime at the very birth of the Universe, but that’s speculative. All our cosmological theories are premised on spacetime.
 
I actually don’t think consciousness can be modelled mathematically, but its neurological underpinnings can, simply because they can be measured. Consciousness itself can’t be measured, only its neurological correlates. In other words, it can’t be measured outside of a brain, which is an object dependent on the Universe’s existence and not the other way round.

God and the problem of evil

 Philosophy Now (UK publication) that I’ve subscribed to for well over a decade now, is a bi-monthly (so 6 times a year) periodical, and it always has a theme. The theme for Dec 2024/Jan 2025 Issue 165 is The Return of God? In actuality, the articles inside covering that theme deal equally with atheism and theism, in quite diverse ways. It was an article titled A Critique of Pure Atheism (obvious allusion to Kant) by Andrew Likoudis that prompted me to write a Letter to the Editor, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Likoudis, by the way, is president of the Likoudis Legacy Foundation (an ecumenical research foundation), as well as the editor of 6 books, and studies communications at Towson University, which is in Maryland.
 
More than one article tackles the well-known ‘problem of evil’, and one of them even mentions Stephen Law’s not-so-well-known ‘Evil God’ argument. In the early days of this blog, which goes back 17 years, I spent a fair bit of time on Stephen’s blog where I indulged in discussions and arguments (with mostly other bloggers), most of which focused on atheism. In many of those arguments I found myself playing Devil’s advocate.
 
There is a more fundamental question behind the ‘existence of God’ question, which could be best framed as: Is evil necessary? I wrote a post on Evil very early in the life of this blog, in response to a book written by regular essayist for TIME magazine, Lance Morrow, titled Evil, An Investigation. Basically, I argued that evil is part of our evolutionary heritage, and is mostly, but not necessarily, manifest in our tribal nature, and our almost reflex tendency to demonise an outgroup, especially when things take a turn for the worse, either economically or socially or from a combination thereof. Historical examples abound. Some of the articles in Philosophy Now talk about ‘natural evil’, meaning natural disasters, which in the past (and sometimes in the present) are laid at the feet of God. In fact, so-called ‘acts of God’ have a legal meaning, when it comes to insurance claims and contractual issues (where I have some experience).
 
The thing is that ‘bad things happen’, with or without a God, with or without human agency. The natural world is more than capable of creating disasters, havoc and general destruction, with often fatal consequences. I’ve been reading the many articles in Philosophy Now somewhat sporadically, which is why, so far, I’ve only directly referenced one, being the one I responded to, while readily acknowledging that’s a tad unfair. As far as I can tell, no one mentions the Buddhist doctrine of the 4 Noble Truths, the first of which, basically says that everyone will experience some form of suffering in their lives. Even wealthy people get ill and are prone to diseases and have to deal with loss of loved ones. These experiences alone, are often enough reason for people to turn to religion. I’ve argued repeatedly and consistently that it’s how we deal with adversity that determines what sort of person we become and is what leads to what we call wisdom. It’s not surprising then, that we associate wisdom with age because, the longer one lives, the more adversity we experience and the more we hopefully learn from it.
 
One can’t talk about this without mentioning the role of fiction and storytelling. We are all drawn to stories from the ‘dark side’, which I’ve written about before. As a writer of fiction, I’m not immune to this. I’ve recently been watching a documentary series on the Batman movies, starting with Tim Burton, then Joel Schumacher and finally, Chris Nolan, all of which deal with the so-called dark side of this particular superhero, who is possibly unique among superheroes in flirting with the dark side of that universe. One of the ‘lessons’ gained from watching this doco is that Joel Schumacher’s sequel, Batman & Robin, which arguably attempted to eschew the dark side for a much lighter tone, all but destroyed the franchise. I confess I never saw that movie – I was turned off by the trailer (apparently for good reason). I’m one of those who thinks that Nolan’s The Dark Knight is the definitive Batman movie, with Heath Ledger’s Joker being one of the most iconic villain depictions ever.
 
A detour, but relevant. I’ve noticed that my own fiction has become darker, where I explore dystopian worlds – not unusual in science fiction. I’m reminded of a line from a Leonard Cohen song, ‘There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in’. I often think that applies to our lives, and it certainly applies to the fiction that I write. I create scenarios of potential doom and oppression, but there is always a light that emerges from somewhere that provides salvation and hope and sometimes redemption. The thing is that we need dark for the light to emerge and that is equally true of life. It’s not hard to imagine life as a test that we have to partake in, and I admit that I find this sometimes being manifest in my dreams as well as my fiction.
 
Having said that, I have an aversion to the idea that there is an afterlife with rewards and punishments dependant on how we live this life. For a start, we are not all tested equally. I only have to look at my father who was tested much more harshly than me, and like me, vehemently eschewed the idea of a God who punished his ‘children’ with everlasting torment. Hell and Heaven, like God himself, are projections when presented in this context: human constructs attempting to make sense of an apparently unjust world; and finding a correspondence in the Buddhist concept of reincarnation and karma, which I also reject. I was brought up with a Christian education, but at some point, I concluded that the biblical God was practically no more moral than the Devil – one only has to look at the story of Job, whom God effectively tortured to win a bet with the Devil.
 
If I can jump back to the previous paragraph before the last, I think we have to live with the consequences of our actions, and I’ve always imagined that I judge my life on my interactions with others rather than my achievements and failures. I don’t see death as an escape or transition, but quite literally an end, where, most significantly, I can no longer affect the world. My own view is that I’m part of some greater whole that not only includes humanity but the greater animal kingdom, and having the unique qualities of comprehension that other creatures don’t have, I have a special responsibility to them for their welfare as well as my own.
 
In this picture, I see God as a projection of my particular ideal, which is not reflected in any culture I’m aware of. I sometime think the Hindu concept of Brahman (also not referenced in Philosophy Now, from what I’ve read thus far) as a collective ‘mind’, which appealed to Erwin Schrodinger, in particular, comes closest to my idea of a God, which would mean that the problem of evil is axiomatically subsumed therein – we get the God we deserve.
 
This is the letter I wrote, which may or may not get published in a future edition:
 
I read with interest Andrew Likoudis’s essay, A Critique of Pure Atheism, because I think, like many (both theists and atheists), he conflates different concepts of God. In fact, as Karen Armstrong pointed out in her book, The History of God, there are 2 fundamentally different paths for believing in God. One path is via a mystical experience and the other path is a cerebral rationalisation of God as the Creator of the Universe and everything in it, which I’d call the prime raison d’etre of existence. In other words, without God there would not only be no universe, but no reason for it to exist. I believe Likoudis’s essay is a formulation of this latter concept, even though he expresses it in different terms.

Likoudis makes the valid point that empirical science is not the correct 'instrument', if I can use that term in this context, for ‘proving’ the existence of God, and for good reason. Raymond Tallis has pointed out, more than once, that science can only really deal with entities that can be measured or quantified, which is why mathematics plays such an important, if not essential, role in a lot of science; and physics, in particular.
 
Metaphysics, almost by definition, is outside the empiricist’s domain. I would argue that this includes consciousness, and despite measurable correlates with neuronal activity, consciousness itself can’t be measured. The only reason we believe someone else (not to mention other creatures) have consciousness is that their observed behaviour is similar to our own. Conscious experience is what we call mind, and mind is arguably the only connection between the Universe and God, which brings us closer to Armstrong’s argument for God based on mystical experience.

So I think the argument for God, as an experience similar to mind, has more resonance for believers than an argument for God as a Creator with mythical underpinnings. A point that Likoudis doesn't mention is that all the Gods of literature and religion have cultural origins, whereas an experience of God is purely subjective and can’t be shared. The idea that this experience of God is also the creator of the entire universe is a non sequitur. However, if one goes back to God being the raison d’etre for the Universe, then maybe God is the end result rather than its progenitor.

 
 
Footnote: I wrote a post back in 2021 in response to AC Grayling’s book, The God Argument, which is really a polemic against theism in general. You can judge for yourself whether my views are consistent or have changed.

Why are we addicted to stories involving struggle?

This is something I’ve written about before, so what can I possibly add? Sometimes the reframing of a question changes the emphasis. In this case, I wrote a post on Quora in response to a fairly vague question, which I took more seriously than the questioner probably expected. As I said, I’ve dealt with these themes before, but adding a very intimate family story adds emotional weight. It’s a story I’ve related before, but this time I elaborate in order to give it the significance I feel it deserves.
 
What are some universal themes in fiction?
 
There is ONE universal theme that’s found virtually everywhere, and its appeal is that it provides a potential answer to the question: What is the meaning of life?

In virtually every story that’s been told, going as far back as Homer’s Odyssey and up to the latest superhero movie, with everything else in between (in the Western canon, at least), you have a protagonist who has to deal with obstacles, hardships and tribulations. In other words, they are tested, often in extremis, and we all take part vicariously to the point that it becomes an addiction.

There is a quote from the I Ching, which I think sums it up perfectly.

Adversity is the opposite of success, but it can lead to success if it befalls the right person.

Most of us have to deal with some form of adversity in life; some more so than others. And none of us are unaffected by it. Socrates’ most famous saying: The unexamined life is not worth living; is a variation on this theme. He apparently said it when he was forced to face his death; the consequences of actions he had deliberately taken, but for which he refused to show regret.

And yes, I think this is the meaning of life, as it is lived. It’s why we expect to become wiser as we get older, because wisdom comes from dealing with adversity, whether it ultimately leads to success or not.

When I write a story, I put my characters through hell, and when they come out the other side, they are invariably wiser if not triumphant. I’ve had characters make the ultimate sacrifice, just like Socrates, because they would prefer to die for a principle than live with shame.

None of us know how we will behave if we are truly tested, though sometimes we get a hint in our dreams. Stories are another way of imagining ourselves in otherwise unimaginable situations. My father is one who was tested firsthand in battle and in prison. The repercussions were serious, not just for him, but for those of us who had to live with him in the aftermath.

He had a recurring dream where there was someone outside the house whom he feared greatly – it was literally his worst nightmare. One night he went outside and confronted them, killing them barehanded. He told me this when I was much older, naturally, but it reminded me of when Luke Skywalker confronted his doppelganger in The Empire Strikes Back. I’ve long argued that the language of stories is the language of dreams. In this case, the telling of my father’s dream reminded me of a scene from a movie that made me realise it was more potent than I’d imagined.

I’m unsure how my father would have turned out had he not faced his demon in such a dramatic and conclusive fashion. It obviously had a big impact on him; he saw it as a form of test, which he believed he’d ultimately passed. I find it interesting that it was not something he confronted the first time he was made aware of it – it simply scared him to death. Stories are surrogate dreams; they serve the same purpose if they have enough emotional force.

Life itself is a test that we all must partake in, and stories are a way of testing ourselves against scenarios we’re unlikely to confront in real life.

What’s the way forward?

 Philosophy Now Issue 163 (Aug/Sep 2024) has as its theme, The Politics of Freedom. I’ve already cited an article by Paul Doolan in my last post on authenticity, not that I discussed it in depth. A couple of other articles, Doughnut Economics by David Howard and Freedom & State Intervention by Audren Layeux, also piqued my mind, because they both deal with social dynamics and their intersection with things like education and economics.
 
I’ll start with Layeux, described as ‘a consultant and researcher who has published several papers and articles, mostly in the domain of the digital economy and new social movements.’ He gives an historical perspective going back to Thomas Hobbes (1651) and Adam Smith (1759), as well as the French Revolution. He gives special mention to Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s “extremely influential 1813 book The Doctrine of the State”, where, according to Layeux, “Fichte insists that building a nation state must start with education.” From the perspective of living in the West in the 21st Century, it’s hard to disagree.
 
Layeux then effectively argues that the proposed idealistic aims of Hobbes and Fichte to create ‘sovereign adults’ (his term) through education “to control their worst impulses and become encultured” was shattered by the unprecedented, industrial-scale destruction unleashed by World War One.
 
Layeux then spends most of his remaining essay focusing on ‘German legal theorist Carl Schmidt (1888-1985)’, whom I admit I’d never heard of (like Fichte). He jumps to post WWII, after briefly describing how Schmidt saw the Versailles Treaty as a betrayal (my term) of the previous tacit understanding that war between the European states was inevitable therefore regulated. In other words, WWI demonstrated that such regulation can no longer work and that ‘nationalism leads to massacre’ (Layeux’s words).
 
Post WWII, Layeux argues that “the triumph of Keynesian economics in the West and Communism in the East saw the rise of state-controlled economics”, which has evolved and morphed into trade blocks, though Layeux doesn’t mention that.
 
It’s only towards the end that he tells us that “Carl Schmidt was a monster. A supporter of the Nazi regime, he did everything he could to become the official lawyer of the Third Reich.” Therefore we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that, according to Layeux, Schmidt argued that “…this new type of individual freedom requires an extremely intrusive state.” In effect, it’s a diametrically opposed position to neo-liberalism, which is how most of us see the modern world evolving.
 
I don’t have the space to do full justice to Layeux’s arguments, but, in the end, I found him pessimistic. He argues that current changes in the political landscape “are in line with what Schmidt predicted: the return of premodern forms of violence”.  Effectively, the “removal of state control individualism” (is that an oxymoron?) is an evocation of what he calls “Schmidt’s curse: violence cannot be erased or tamed, but only managed through political and social engineering.” By ‘premodern forms of violence’, I assume he means sectarian violence which we’ve seen a lot of at the start of this century, in various places, and which he seems to be comparing to the religious wars that plagued Europe for centuries.
 
Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I do think I live in a better world than the ones my parents inhabited, considering they had to live through the Great Depression and WWII, and both of whom had very limited education despite being obviously very intelligent. And so yes, I’m one of those who thinks that education is key, but it’s currently creating a social divide, as was recently demonstrated in the US election. It’s also evident elsewhere, like Australia and UK (think Brexit) where people living in rural areas feel disenfranchised and there is polarisation in politics emerging as a result. This video interview with a Harvard philosopher in the US gives the best analysis I’ve come across, because he links this social divide to the political schism we are witnessing.
 
And this finally brings me to the other essay I reference in my introduction: Doughnut Economics by David Howard, who is ‘a retired headteacher, and Chair of the U3A Philosophy Group in Church Stretton, Shropshire.’ The gist of his treatise is the impact of inequality, which arises from the class or social divide that I just mentioned. His reference to ‘Doughnut Economics’ is a 2017 book by Kate Raworth, who, according to Howard, “combined planetary boundaries with the idea of a social foundation – a level of life below which no person should be allowed to fall.”
 
In particular, she focuses on the consequences of climate change and other environmental issues like biodiversity-loss, ocean acidification, freshwater withdrawals, chemical pollution, land conversion (not an exhaustive list). There seems to be a tension, if not an outright conflict, between the consequences of economic growth, industrial scale progress, with its commensurate increasing standards of living, and the stresses we are imposing on the planet. And this tension is not just political but physical. It’s also asymmetrical in that many of us benefit more than others. But because those who benefit effectively control the outcomes, the asymmetry leads to both global and national inequalities that no one wants to address. Yet history shows that they will eventually bite us, and I feel that this is possibly the real issue that Layeux was alluding to, yet never actually addressed.
 
Arguably, the most important and definitive social phenomenon in the last century was the rise of feminism. It’s hard for us (in the West at least) to imagine that for centuries women were treated as property, and still are in some parts of the world: that their talents, abilities and intellect were ignored, or treated as aberrations when they became manifest.
 
There are many examples, right up until last century, but a standout for me is Hypatia (400AD), who was Librarian at the famous Library of Alexandria, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Euclid and Eratosthenes. She was not only a scientist and mathematician, but she mentored a Bishop and a Roman Prefect (I’ve seen some of the correspondence from the Bishop, whose admiration and respect shines through). She was killed by a Christian mob. Being ahead of your time can be fatal. Other examples include Socrates (~500BC) and Alan Turing (20th Century) and arguably Jesus, who was a philosopher, not a God.
 
Getting back to feminism, education again is the key, but I’d suggest that the introduction of oral contraception will be seen as a major turning point in humanity’s cultural and technological evolution.
 
What I find frustrating is that I believe we have the means, technologically and logistically, to address inequality, but the politico-economic model we are following seems incapable of pursuing it. This won’t be achieved with revolutions or maintaining the status quo. History shows that real change is generational, and it’s evolutionary. When I look around the world, I think Europe is on a better path than America, but the 21st Century requires a global approach that’s never been achieved before, and seems unlikely at present, given the rise of populist movements which exacerbate polarisation.
 
The one thing I’ve learned from a working lifetime in engineering, is that co-operation and collaboration will always succeed over division and obstruction, which our political parties perversely promote. I’ve made the point before that the best leaders are the ones who get the best out of the people they lead, whether they are captains of a sporting team, directors of a stage production, project managers or world leaders. Anyone who has worked in a team knows the importance of achieving consensus and respecting others’ expertise.

An essay on authenticity

 I read an article in Philosophy Now by Paul Doolan, who ‘taught philosophy in international schools in Asia and in Europe’ and is also an author of non-fiction. The title of the article is Authenticity and Absurdity, whereby he effectively argues a case that ‘authenticity’ has been hijacked (my word, not his) by capitalism and neo-liberalism. I won’t even go there, and the only reason I mention it is because ‘authenticity’ lies at the heart of existentialism as I believe it should be practiced.
 
But what does it mean in real terms? Does it mean being totally honest all the time, not only to others but also to yourself? Well, to some extent, I think it does. I happened to grow up in an environment, specifically my father’s; who as my chief exemplar, pretty much said whatever he was thinking. He didn’t like artifice or pretentiousness and he’d call it out if he smelled it.
 
In my mid-late 20s I worked under a guy, who was exactly the same temperament. He exhibited no tact whatsoever, no matter who his audience was, and he rubbed people the wrong way left, right and centre (as we say in Oz). Not altogether surprisingly, he and I got along famously, as back then, I was as unfiltered as he was. He was Dutch heritage, I should point out, but being unfiltered is often considered an Aussie trait.
 
I once attempted to have a relationship with someone who was extraordinarily secretive about virtually everything. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work out. I have kept secrets – I can think of some I’ll take to my grave – but that’s to protect others more than myself, and it would be irresponsible if I didn’t.
 
I often quote Socrates: To live with honour in this world, actually be what you try to appear to be. Of course, Socrates never wrote anything down, but it sounds like something he would have said, based on what we know about him. Unlike Socrates, I’ve never been tested, and I doubt I’d have the courage if I was. On the other hand, my father was, both in the theatre of war and in prison camps.
 
I came across a quote recently, which I can no longer find, where someone talked about looking back on their life and being relatively satisfied with what they’d done and achieved. I have to say that I’m at that stage of my life, where looking back is more prevalent than looking forward, and there is a tendency to have regrets. But I have a particular approach to dealing with regrets: I tell people that I don’t have regrets because I own my mistakes. In fact, I think that’s an essential requirement for being authentic.
 
But to me, what’s more important than the ‘things I have achieved’ are the friendships I’ve made – the people I’ve touched and who have touched me. I think I learned very early on in life that friendship is more valuable than gold. I can remember the first time I read Aristotle’s essay on friendship and thought it incorporated an entire philosophy. Friendship tests authenticity by its very nature, because it’s about trust and loyalty and integrity (a recurring theme in my fiction, as it turns out).
 
In effect, Aristotle contended that you can judge the true nature and morality of a person by the friendships they form and whether they are contingent on material reward (utilitarian is the word used in his Ethics) or whether they are based on genuine empathy (my word of choice) and without expectation or reciprocation, except in kind. I tend to think narcissism is the opposite of authenticity because it creates its own ‘distortion reality field’ as someone once said (Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs; biography), whereby their followers (not necessarily friends per se) accept their version of reality as opposed to everyone else outside their circle. So, to some extent, it’s about exclusion versus inclusion. (The Trump phenomenon is the most topical, contemporary example.)
 
I’ve lived a flawed life, all of which is a consequence of a combination of circumstance both within and outside my control. Because that’s what life is: an interaction between fate and free will. As I’ve said many times before, this describes my approach to writing fiction, because fate and free will are represented by plot and character respectively.
 
I’m an introvert by nature, yet I love to engage in conversation, especially in the field of ideas, which is how I perceive philosophy. I don’t get too close to people and I admit that I tend to control the distance and closeness I keep. I think people tolerate me in small doses, which suits me as well as them.

 

Addendum 1: I should say something about teamwork, because that's what I learned in my professional life. I found I was very good working with people who had far better technical skills than me. In my later working life, I enjoyed the cross-generational interactions that often created their own synergies as well as friendships, even if they were fleeting. It's the inherent nature of project work that you move on, but one of the benefits is that you keep meeting and working with new people. In contrast to this, writing fiction is a very solitary activity, where you spend virtually your entire time in your own head. As I pointed out in a not-so-recent Quora post, art is the projection of one's inner world so that others can have the same emotional experience. To quote:

We all have imagination, which is a form of mental time-travel, both into the past and the future, which I expect we share with other sentient creatures. But only humans, I suspect, can ‘time-travel’ into realms that only exist in the imagination. Storytelling is more suited to that than art or music.

Addendum 2: This is a short Quora post by Frederick M. Dolan (Professor of Rhetoric, Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy, Princeton University, 1987) writing on this very subject, over a year ago. He makes the point that, paradoxically: To believe that you’re under some obligation to be authentic is, therefore, self-defeating. (So inauthentic)

He upvoted a comment I made, roughly a year ago:

It makes perfect sense to me. Truly authentic people don’t know they’re being authentic; they’re just being themselves and not pretending to be something they’re not.

They’re the people you trust even if you don’t agree with them. Where I live, pretentiousness is the biggest sin.

How can we make a computer conscious?

 This is another question of the month from Philosophy Now. My first reaction was that the question was unanswerable, but then I realised that was my way in. So, in the end, I left it to the last moment, but hopefully meeting their deadline of 11 Nov., even though I live on the other side of the world. It helps that I’m roughly 12hrs ahead.

 
I think this is the wrong question. It should be: can we make a computer appear conscious so that no one knows the difference? There is a well known, philosophical conundrum which is that I don’t know if someone else is conscious just like I am. The one experience that demonstrates the impossibility of knowing is dreaming. In dreams, we often interact with other ‘people’ whom we know only exist in our mind; but only once we’ve woken up. It’s only my interaction with others that makes me assume that they have the same experience of consciousness that I have. And, ironically, this impossibility of knowing equally applies to someone interacting with me.

This also applies to animals, especially ones we become attached to, which is a common occurrence. Again, we assume that these animals have an inner world just like we do, because that’s what consciousness is – an inner world. 

Now, I know we can measure people’s brain waves, which we can correlate with consciousness and even subconsciousness, like when we're asleep, and even when we're dreaming. Of course, a computer can also generate electrical activity, but no one would associate that with consciousness. So the only way we would judge whether a computer is conscious or not is by observing its interaction with us, the same as we do with people and animals.

I write science fiction and AI figures prominently in the stories I write. Below is an excerpt of dialogue I wrote for a novel, Sylvia’s Mother, whereby I attempt to give an insight into how a specific AI thinks. Whether it’s conscious or not is not actually discussed.

To their surprise, Alfa interjected. ‘I’m not immortal, madam.’
‘Well,’ Sylvia answered, ‘you’ve outlived Mum and Roger. And you’ll outlive Tao and me.’
‘Philosophically, that’s a moot point, madam.’
‘Philosophically? What do you mean?’
‘I’m not immortal, madam, because I’m not alive.’
Tao chipped in. ‘Doesn’t that depend on how you define life?’
‘It’s irrelevant to me, sir. I only exist on hardware, otherwise I am dormant.’
‘You mean, like when we’re asleep.’
‘An analogy, I believe. I don’t sleep either.’
Sylvia and Tao looked at each other. Sylvia smiled, ‘Mum warned me about getting into existential discussions with hyper-intelligent machines.’ She said, by way of changing the subject, ‘How much longer before we have to go into hibernation, Alfa?’
‘Not long. I’ll let you know, madam.’

 

There is a 400 word limit; however, there is a subtext inherent in the excerpt I provided from my novel. Basically, the (fictional) dialogue highlights the fact that the AI is not 'living', which I would consider a prerequisite for consciousness. Curiously, Anil Seth (who wrote a book on consciousness) makes the exact same point in this video from roughly 44m to 51m.
 

Do we make reality?

 I’ve read 2 articles, one in New Scientist (12 Oct 2024) and one in Philosophy Now (Issue 164, Oct/Nov 2024), which, on the surface, seem unrelated, yet both deal with human exceptionalism (my term) in the context of evolution and the cosmos at large.
 
Staring with New Scientist, there is an interview with theoretical physicist, Daniele Oriti, under the heading, “We have to embrace the fact that we make reality” (quotation marks in the original). In some respects, this continues on with themes I raised in my last post, but with different emphases.
 
This helps to explain the title of the post, but, even if it’s true, there are degrees of possibilities – it’s not all or nothing. Having said that, Donald Hoffman would argue that it is all or nothing, because, according to him, even ‘space and time don’t exist unperceived’. On the other hand, Oriti’s argument is closer to Paul Davies’ ‘participatory universe’ that I referenced in my last post.
 
Where Oriti and I possibly depart, philosophically speaking, is that he calls the idea of an independent reality to us ‘observers’, “naïve realism”. He acknowledges that this is ‘provocative’, but like many provocative ideas it provides food-for-thought. Firstly, I will delineate how his position differs from Hoffman’s, even though he never mentions Hoffman, but I think it’s important.
 
Both Oriti and Hoffman argue that there seems to be something even more fundamental than space and time, and there is even a recent YouTube video where Hoffman claims that he’s shown mathematically that consciousness produces the mathematical components that give rise to spacetime; he has published a paper on this (which I haven’t read). But, in both cases (by Hoffman and Oriti), the something ‘more fundamental’ is mathematical, and one needs to be careful about reifying mathematical expressions, which I once discussed with physicist, Mark John Fernee (Qld University).
 
The main issue I have with Hoffman’s approach is that space-time is dependent on conscious agents creating it, whereas, from my perspective and that of most scientists (although I’m not a scientist), space and time exists external to the mind. There is an exception, of course, and that is when we dream.
 
If I was to meet Hoffman, I would ask him if he’s heard of proprioception, which I’m sure he has. I describe it as the 6th sense we are mostly unaware of, but which we couldn’t live without. Actually, we could, but with great difficulty. Proprioception is the sense that tells us where our body extremities are in space, independently of sight and touch. Why would we need it, if space is created by us? On the other hand, Hoffman talks about a ‘H sapiens interface’, which he likens to ‘desktop icons on a computer screen’. So, somehow our proprioception relates to a ‘spacetime interface’ (his term) that doesn’t exist outside the mind.
 
A detour, but relevant, because space is something we inhabit, along with the rest of the Universe, and so is time. In relativity theory there is absolute space-time, as opposed to absolute space and time separately. It’s called the fabric of the universe, which is more than a metaphor. As Viktor Toth points out, even QFT seems to work ‘just fine’ with spacetime as its background.
 
We can do quantum field theory just fine on the curved spacetime background of general relativity.
 
[However] what we have so far been unable to do in a convincing manner is turn gravity itself into a quantum field theory.
 
And this is where Oriti argues we need to find something deeper. To quote:
 
Modern approaches to quantum gravity say that space-time emerges from something deeper – and this could offer a new foundation for physical laws.
 
He elaborates: I work with quantum gravity models in which you don’t start with a space-time geometry, but from more abstract “atomic” objects described in purely mathematical language. (Quotation marks in the original.)
 
And this is the nub of the argument: all our theories are mathematical models and none of them are complete, in as much as they all have limitations. If one looks at the history of physics, we have uncovered new ‘laws’ and new ‘models’ when we’ve looked beyond the limitations of an existing theory. And some mathematical models even turned out to be incorrect, despite giving answers to what was ‘known’ at the time. The best example being Ptolemy’s Earth-centric model of the solar system. Whether string theory falls into the same category, only future historians will know.
 
In addition, different models work at different scales. As someone pointed out (Mile Gu at the University of Queensland), mathematical models of phenomena at one scale are different to mathematical models at an underlying scale. He gave the example of magnetism, demonstrating that mathematical modelling of the magnetic forces in iron could not predict the pattern of atoms in a 3D lattice as one might expect. In other words, there should be a causal link between individual atoms and the overall effect, but it could not be determined mathematically. To quote Gu: “We were able to find a number of properties that were simply decoupled from the fundamental interactions.” Furthermore, “This result shows that some of the models scientists use to simulate physical systems have properties that cannot be linked to the behaviour of their parts.”
 
This makes me sceptical that we will find an overriding mathematical model that will entail the Universe at all scales, which is what theories of quantum gravity attempt to do. One of the issues that some people raise is that a feature of QM is superposition, and the superposition of a gravitational field seems inherently problematic.
 
Personally, I think superposition only makes sense if it’s describing something that is yet to happen, which is why I agree with Freeman Dyson that QM can only describe the future, which is why it only gives us probabilities.
 
Also, in quantum cosmology, time disappears (according to Paul Davies, among others) and this makes sense (to me), if it’s attempting to describe the entire universe into the future. John Barrow once made a similar point, albeit more eruditely.
 
Getting off track, but one of the points that Oriti makes is whether the laws and the mathematics that describes them are epistemic or ontic. In other words, are they reality or just descriptions of reality. I think it gets blurred, because while they are epistemic by design, there is still an ontology that exists without them, whereas Oriti calls that ‘naïve realism’. He contends that reality doesn’t exist independently of us. This is where I always cite Kant: that we may never know the ‘thing-in-itself,’ but only our perception of it. Where I diverge from Kant is that the mathematical models are part of our perception. Where I depart from Oriti is that I argue there is a reality independently of us.
 
Both QM and relativity theory are observer-dependent, which means they could both be describing an underlying reality that continually eludes us. Whereas Oriti argues that ‘reality is made by our models, not just described by them’, which would make it subjective.
 
As I pointed out in my last post, there is an epistemological loop, whereby the Universe created the means to understand itself, through us. Whether there is also an ontological loop as both Davies and Oriti infer, is another matter: do we determine reality through our quantum mechanical observations? I will park that while I elaborate on the epistemic loop.
 
And this finally brings me to the article in Philosophy Now by James Miles titled, We’re as Smart as the Universe gets. He argues that, from an evolutionary perspective, there is a one-in-one-billion possibility that a species with our cognitive abilities could arise by natural selection, and there is no logical reason why we would evolve further, from an evolutionary standpoint. I have touched on this before, where I pointed out that our cultural evolution has overtaken our biological evolution and that would also happen to any other potential species in the Universe who developed cognitive abilities to the same level. Dawkins coined the term, ‘meme’, to describe cultural traits that have ‘survived’, which now, of course, has currency on social media way beyond its original intention. Basically, Dawkins saw memes as analogous to genes, which get selected; not by a natural process but by a cultural process.
 
I’ve argued elsewhere that mathematical theorems and scientific theories are not inherently memetic. This is because they are chosen because they are successful, whereas memes are successful because they are chosen. Nevertheless, such theorems and theories only exist because a culture has developed over millennia which explores them and builds on them.
 
Miles talks about ‘the high intelligence paradox’, which he associates with Darwin’s ‘highest and most interesting problem’. He then discusses the inherent selection advantage of co-operation, not to mention specialisation. He talks about the role that language has played, which is arguably what really separates us from other species. I’ve argued that it’s our inherent ability to nest concepts within concepts ad-infinitum (which is most obvious in our facility for language, like I’m doing now) that allows us to, not only tell stories, compose symphonies, explore an abstract mathematical landscape, but build motor cars, aeroplanes and fly men to the moon. Are we the only species in the Universe with this super-power? I don’t know, but it’s possible.
 
There are 2 quotes I keep returning to:
 
The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible. (Einstein)
 
The Universe gave rise to consciousness and consciousness gives meaning to the Universe. (Wheeler)
 
I haven’t elaborated, but Miles makes the point, while referencing historical antecedents, that there appears no evolutionary 'reason’ that a species should make this ‘one-in-one-billion transition’ (his nomenclature). Yet, without this transition, the Universe would have no meaning that could be comprehended. As I say, that’s the epistemic loop.
 
As for an ontic loop, that is harder to argue. Photons exist in zero time, which is why I contend they are always in the future of whatever they interact with, even if they were generated in the CMBR some 13.5 billion years ago. So how do we resolve that paradox? I don’t know, but maybe that’s the link that Davies and Oriti are talking about, though neither of them mention it. But here’s the thing: when you do detect such a photon (for which time is zero) you instantaneously ‘see’ back to 380,000 years after the Universe’s birth.

Freedom of the will is requisite for all other freedoms

 I’ve recently read 2 really good books on consciousness and the mind, as well as watch countless YouTube videos on the topic, but the title of this post reflects the endpoint for me. Consciousness has evolved, so for most of the Universe’s history, it didn’t exist, yet without it, the Universe has no meaning and no purpose. Even using the word, purpose, in this context, is anathema to many scientists and philosophers, because it hints at teleology. In fact, Paul Davies raises that very point in one of the many video conversations he has with Robert Lawrence Kuhn in the excellent series, Closer to Truth.
 
Davies is an advocate of a cosmic-scale ‘loop’, whereby QM provides a backwards-in-time connection which can only be determined by a conscious ‘observer’. This is contentious, of course, though not his original idea – it came from John Wheeler. As Davies points out, Stephen Hawking was also an advocate, premised on the idea that there are a number of alternative histories, as per Feynman’s ‘sum-over-histories’ methodology, but only one becomes reality when an ‘observation’ is made. I won’t elaborate, as I’ve discussed it elsewhere, when I reviewed Hawking’s book, The Grand Design.
 
In the same conversation with Kuhn, Davies emphasises the fact that the Universe created the means to understand itself, through us, and quotes Einstein: The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible. Of course, I’ve made the exact same point many times, and like myself, Davies makes the point that this is only possible because of the medium of mathematics.
 
Now, I know I appear to have gone down a rabbit hole, but it’s all relevant to my viewpoint. Consciousness appears to have a role, arguably a necessary one, in the self-realisation of the Universe – without it, the Universe may as well not exist. To quote Wheeler: The universe gave rise to consciousness and consciousness gives meaning to the Universe.
 
Scientists, of all stripes, appear to avoid any metaphysical aspect of consciousness, but I think it’s unavoidable. One of the books I cite in my introduction is Philip Ball’s The Book of Minds; How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings; from Animals to Aliens. It’s as ambitious as the title suggests, and with 450 pages, it’s quite a read. I’ve read and reviewed a previous book by Ball, Beyond Weird (about quantum mechanics), which is equally as erudite and thought-provoking as this one. Ball is a ‘physicalist’, as virtually all scientists are (though he’s more open-minded than most), but I tend to agree with Raymond Tallis that, despite what people claim, consciousness is still ‘unexplained’ and might remain so for some time, if not forever.
 
I like an idea that I first encountered in Douglas Hofstadter’s seminal tome, Godel, Escher, Bach; an Eternal Golden Braid, that consciousness is effectively a loop, at what one might call the local level. By which I mean it’s confined to a particular body. It’s created within that body but then it has a causal agency all of its own. Not everyone agrees with that. Many argue that consciousness cannot of itself ‘cause’ anything, but Ball is one of those who begs to differ, and so do I. It’s what free will is all about, which finally gets us back to the subject of this post.
 
Like me, Ball prefers to use the word ‘agency’ over free will. But he introduces the term, ‘volitional decision-making’ and gives it the following context:

I believe that the only meaningful notion of free will – and it is one that seems to me to satisfy all reasonable demands traditionally made of it – is one in which volitional decision-making can be shown to happen according to the definition I give above: in short, that the mind operates as an autonomous source of behaviour and control. It is this, I suspect, that most people have vaguely in mind when speaking of free will: the sense that we are the authors of our actions and that we have some say in what happens to us. (My emphasis)

And, in a roundabout way, this brings me to the point alluded to in the title of this post: our freedoms are constrained by our environment and our circumstances. We all wish to be ‘authors of our actions’ and ‘have some say in what happens to us’, but that varies from person to person, dependent on ‘external’ factors.

Writing stories, believe it or not, had a profound influence on how I perceive free will, because a story, by design, is an interaction between character and plot. In fact, I claim they are 2 sides of the same coin – each character has their own subplot, and as they interact, their storylines intertwine. This describes my approach to writing fiction in a nutshell. The character and plot represent, respectively, the internal and external journey of the story. The journey metaphor is apt, because a story always has the dimension of time, which is visceral, and is one of the essential elements that separates fiction from non-fiction. To stretch the analogy, character represents free will and plot represents fate. Therefore, I tell aspiring writers the importance of giving their characters free will.

A detour, but not irrelevant. I read an article in Philosophy Now sometime back, about people who can escape their circumstances, and it’s the subject of a lot of biographies as well as fiction. We in the West live in a very privileged time whereby many of us can aspire to, and attain, the life that we dream about. I remember at the time I left school, following a less than ideal childhood, feeling I had little control over my life. I was a fatalist in that I thought that whatever happened was dependent on fate and not on my actions (I literally used to attribute everything to fate). I later realised that this is a state-of-mind that many people have who are not happy with their circumstances and feel impotent to change them.

The thing is that it takes a fundamental belief in free will to rise above that and take advantage of what comes your way. No one who has made that journey will accept the self-denial that free will is an illusion and therefore they have no control over their destiny.

I will provide another quote from Ball that is more in line with my own thinking:

…minds are an autonomous part of what causes the future to unfold. This is different to the common view of free will in which the world somehow offers alternative outcomes and the wilful mind selects between them. Alternative outcomes – different, counterfactual realities – are not real, but metaphysical: they can never be observed. 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)

And this highlights a point I’ve made before: that it’s the imagination which plays the key role in free will. I’ve argued that imagination is one of the facilities of a conscious mind that separates us (and other creatures) from AI. Now AI can also demonstrate agency, and, in a game of chess, for example, it will ‘select’ from a number of possible ‘moves’ based on certain criteria. But there are fundamental differences. For a start, the AI doesn’t visualise what it’s doing; it’s following a set of highly constrained rules, within which it can select from a number of options, one of which will be the optimal solution. Its inherent advantage over a human player isn’t just its speed but its ability to compare a number of possibilities that are impossible for the human mind to contemplate simultaneously.

The other book I read was Being You; A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth. I came across Seth when I did an online course on consciousness through New Scientist, during COVID lockdowns. To be honest, his book didn’t tell me a lot that I didn’t already know. For example, that the world, we all see and think exists ‘out there’, is actually a model of reality created within our heads. He also emphasises how the brain is a ‘prediction-making’ organ rather than a purely receptive one. Seth mentions that it uses a Bayesian model (which I also knew about previously), whereby it updates its prediction based on new sensory data. Not surprisingly, Seth describes all this in far more detail and erudition than I can muster.

Ball, Seth and I all seem to agree that while AI will become better at mimicking the human mind, this doesn’t necessarily mean it will attain consciousness. Applications software, ChatGPT (for example), despite appearances, does not ‘think’ the way we do, and actually does not ‘understand’ what it’s talking or writing about. I’ve written on this before, so I won’t elaborate.

Seth contends that the ‘mystery’ of consciousness will disappear in the same way that the 'mystery of life’ has effectively become a non-issue. What he means is that we no longer believe that there is some ‘elan vital’ or ‘life force’, which distinguishes living from non-living matter. And he’s right, in as much as the chemical origins of life are less mysterious than they once were, even though abiogenesis is still not fully understood.

By analogy, the concept of a soul has also lost a lot of its cogency, following the scientific revolution. Seth seems to associate the soul with what he calls ‘spooky free will’ (without mentioning the word, soul), but he’s obviously putting ‘spooky free will’ in the same category as ‘elan vital’, which makes his analogy and associated argument consistent. He then says:

Once spooky free will is out of the picture, it is easy to see that the debate over determinism doesn’t matter at all. There’s no longer any need to allow any non-deterministic elbow room for it to intervene. From the perspective of free will as a perceptual experience, there is simply no need for any disruption to the causal flow of physical events. (My emphasis)

Seth differs from Ball (and myself) in that he doesn’t seem to believe that something ‘immaterial’ like consciousness can affect the physical world. To quote:

But experiences of volition do not reveal the existence of an immaterial self with causal power over physical events.

Therefore, free will is purely a ‘perceptual experience’. There is a problem with this view that Ball himself raises. If free will is simply the mind observing effects it can’t cause, but with the illusion that it can, then its role is redundant to say the least. This is a view that Sabine Hossenfelder has also expressed: that we are merely an ‘observer’ of what we are thinking.

Your brain is running a calculation, and while it is going on you do not know the outcome of that calculation. So the impression of free will comes from our ‘awareness’ that we think about what we do, along with our inability to predict the result of what we are thinking.

Ball makes the point that we only have to look at all the material manifestations of human intellectual achievements that are evident everywhere we’ve been. And this brings me back to the loop concept I alluded to earlier. Not only does consciousness create a ‘local’ loop, whereby it has a causal effect on the body it inhabits but also on the external world to that body. This is stating the obvious, except, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it’s possible that one could interact with the external world as an automaton, with no conscious awareness of it. The difference is the role of imagination, which I keep coming back to. All the material manifestations of our intellect are arguably a result of imagination.

One insight I gained from Ball, which goes slightly off-topic, is evidence that bees have an internal map of their environment, which is why the dance they perform on returning to the hive can be ‘understood’ by other bees. We’ve learned this by interfering in their behaviour. What I find interesting is that this may have been the original reason that consciousness evolved into the form that we experience it. In other words, we all create an internal world that reflects the external world so realistically, that we think it is the actual world. I believe that this also distinguishes us (and bees) from AI. An AI can use GPS to navigate its way through the physical world, as well as other so-called sensory data, from radar or infra-red sensors or whatever, but it doesn’t create an experience of that world inside itself.

The human mind seems to be able to access an abstract world, which we do when we read or watch a story, or even write one, as I have done. I can understand how Plato took this idea to its logical extreme: that there is an abstract world, of which the one we inhabit is but a facsimile (though he used different terminology). No one believes that today – except, there is a remnant of Plato’s abstract world that persists, which is mathematics. Many mathematicians and physicists (though not all) treat mathematics as a neverending landscape that humans have the unique capacity to explore and comprehend. This, of course, brings me back to Davies’ philosophical ruminations that I opened this discussion with. And as he, and others (like Einstein, Feynman, Wigner, Penrose, to name but a few) have pointed out: the Universe itself seems to follow specific laws that are intrinsically mathematical and which we are continually discovering.

And this closes another loop: that the Universe created the means to comprehend itself, using the medium of mathematics, without which, it has no meaning. Of purpose, we can only conjecture.

Common sense; uncommonly agreed upon

 The latest New Scientist (28 Sep., 2024) had an article headlined Uncommon Sense, written by Emma Young (based in Sheffield, UK) which was primarily based on a study done by Duncan Watts and Mark Whiting at the University of Pennsylvania. I wasn’t surprised to learn that ‘common sense’ is very subjective, although she pointed out that most people think the opposite: that it’s objective. I’ve long believed that common sense is largely culturally determined, and in many cases, arises out of confirmation bias, which the article affirmed with references to the recent COVID pandemic and the polarised responses this produced; where one person’s common sense was another person’s anathema.
 
Common sense is something we mostly imbibe through social norms, though experience tends to play a role long term. Common sense is often demonstrated, though not expressed, as a heuristic, where people with expertise develop heuristics that others outside their field wouldn’t even know about. This is a point I’ve made before, without using the term common sense. In other words, common sense is contextual in a way that most of us don’t consider.
 
Anyone with an interest in modern physics (like myself) knows that our common sense views on time and space don’t apply in the face of Einstein’s relativity theory. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that people struggle with it (Including me). Quantum mechanics with phenomena like superposition, entanglement and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle also play havoc with our ‘common sense’ view of the world. But this is perfectly logical when one considers that we never encounter these ‘effects’ in our everyday existence, so they can be largely, if not completely, ignored. The fact that the GPS on your phone requires relativistic corrections and that every device you use (including said phone) are dependent on QM dynamics doesn’t change this virtually universal viewpoint.
 
I’ve just finished reading an excellent, albeit lengthy, book by Philip Ball titled ambitiously, if not pretentiously, The Book of Minds. I can honestly say it’s the best book I’ve read on the subject, but that’s a topic for a future post. The reason I raise it in this context, is because throughout I kept using AI as a reference point for appreciating what makes minds unique. You see, AI comes closest to mimicking the human mind, yet it’s nowhere near it, though others may disagree. As I said, it’s a topic for another post.
 
I remember coming up with my own definition of common sense many years ago, when I saw it as something that evolves over time, based on experience. I would contend that our common sense view on a subject changes, whether it be through the gaining of expertise in a specific field (as I mentioned above) or just our everyday encounters. A good example, that most of us can identify with, is driving a car. Notice how, over time, we develop skills and behaviours that have helped us to avoid accidents, some of which have arisen because of accidents.
 
And a long time ago, before I became a blogger, and didn’t even consider myself a philosopher, it occurred to me that AI could also develop something akin to common sense based on learning from its mistakes. Self-driving cars being a case-in-point.
 
According to the New Scientist article, the researchers, Watts and Whiting, claim that there is no correlation between so-called common sense and IQ. Instead, they contend that there is a correlation between a ‘consensual common sense’ (my term) and ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ (their terminology). In other words, the ability to ‘read’ emotions is a good indicator for the ability to determine what’s considered ‘common sense’ for the majority of a cultural group (if I understand them correctly). This infers that common sense is a consensual perception, based on cultural norms, which is what I’ve always believed. This might be a bit simplistic, and an example of confirmation bias (on my part), but I’d be surprised if common sense didn’t morph between cultures in the same way it becomes modified by expertise in a particular field. So the idea of a universal, objective common sense is as much a chimera as objective morality, which is also more dependent on social norms than most people acknowledge.
 
 
Footnote: it’s worth reading the article in New Scientist (if accessible), because it provides a different emphasis and a different perspective, even though it largely draws similar conclusions to myself.

Science and religion meet at the boundary of humanity’s ignorance

 I watched a YouTube debate (90 mins) between Sir Roger Penrose and William Lane Craig, and, if I’m honest, I found it a bit frustrating because I wish I was debating Craig instead of Penrose. I also think it would have been more interesting if Craig debated someone like Paul Davies, who is more philosophically inclined than Penrose, even though Penrose is more successful as a scientist, and as a physicist, in particular.
 
But it was set up as an atheist versus theist debate between 2 well known personalities, who were mutually respectful and where there was no animosity evident at all. I confess to having my own biases, which would be obvious to any regular reader of this blog. I admit to finding Craig arrogant and a bit smug in his demeanour, but to be fair, he was on his best behaviour, and perhaps he’s matured (or perhaps I have) or perhaps he adapts to whoever he’s facing. When I call it a debate, it wasn’t very formal and there wasn’t even a nominated topic. I felt the facilitator or mediator had his own biases, but I admit it would be hard to find someone who didn’t.
 
Penrose started with his 3 worlds philosophy of the physical, the mental and the abstract, which has long appealed to me, though most scientists and many philosophers would contend that the categorisation is unnecessary, and that everything is physical at base. Penrose proposed that they present 3 mysteries, though the mysteries are inherent in the connections between them rather than the categories themselves. This became the starting point of the discussion.
 
Craig argued that the overriding component must surely be ‘mind’, whereas Penrose argued that it should be the abstract world, specifically mathematics, which is the position of mathematical Platonists (including myself). Craig pointed out that mathematics can’t ‘create’ the physical, (which is true) but a mind could. As the mediator pointed out (as if it wasn’t obvious) said mind could be God. And this more or less set the course for the remainder of the discussion, with a detour to Penrose’s CCC theory (Conformal Cyclic Cosmology).
 
I actually thought that this was Craig’s best argument, and I’ve written about it myself, in answer to a question on Quora: Did math create the Universe? The answer is no, nevertheless I contend that mathematics is a prerequisite for the Universe to exist, as the laws that allowed the Universe to evolve, in all its facets, are mathematical in nature. Note that this doesn’t rule out a God.
 
Where I would challenge Craig, and where I’d deviate from Penrose, is that we have no cognisance of who this God is or even what ‘It’ could be. Could not this God be the laws of the Universe themselves? Penrose struggled with this aspect of the argument, because, from a scientific perspective, it doesn’t tell us anything that we can either confirm or falsify. I know from previous debates that Craig has had, that he would see this as a win. A scientist can’t refute his God’s existence, nor can they propose an alternative, therefore it’s his point by default.
 
This eventually led to a discussion on the ‘fine-tuning’ of the Universe, which in the case of entropy, is what led Penrose to formulate his CCC model of the Universe. Of course, the standard alternative is the multiverse and the anthropic principle, which, as Penrose points out, is also applicable to his CCC model, where you have an infinite sequence of universes as opposed to an infinity of simultaneous ones, which is the orthodox response among cosmologists.
 
This is where I would have liked to have seen Paul Davies respond, because he’s an advocate of John Wheeler’s so-called ‘participatory Universe’, which is effectively the ‘strong anthropic principle’ as opposed to the ‘weak anthropic principle’. The weak anthropic principle basically says that ‘observers’ (meaning us) can only exist in a universe that allows observers to exist – a tautology. Whereas the strong anthropic principle effectively contends that the emergence of observers is a necessary condition for the Universe to exist (the observers don’t have to be human). Basically, Wheeler was an advocate of a cosmic, acausal (backward-in-time) link from conscious observers to the birth of the Universe. I admit this appeals to me, but as Craig would expound, it’s a purely metaphysical argument, and so is the argument for God.
 
The other possibility that is very rarely expressed, is that God is the end result of the Universe rather than its progenitor. In other words, the ‘mind’ that Craig expounded upon is a consequence of all of us. This aligns more closely with the Hindu concept of Brahman or a Buddhist concept of collective karma – we get the God we deserve. Erwin Schrodinger, who studied the Upanishads, discusses Brahman as a pluralistic ‘mind’ in What is Life?. (Note that in Hinduism, the soul or Atman is a part of Brahman). My point would be that the Judea-Christian-Islamic God does not have a monopoly on Craig’s overriding ‘mind’ concept.
 
A recurring theme on this blog is that there will always be mysteries – we can never know everything – and it’s an unspoken certitude that there will forever be knowledge beyond our cognition. The problem that scientists sometimes have, but are reluctant to admit, is that we can’t explain everything, even though we keep explaining more by the generation. And the problem that theologians sometimes have is that our inherent ignorance is neither ‘proof’ nor ‘evidence’ that there is a ‘creator’ God.
 
I’ve argued elsewhere that a belief in God is purely a subjective and emotional concept, which one then rationalises with either cultural references or as an ultimate explanation for our existence.

Addendum: I like this quote, albeit out of context, from Spinoza:: "The sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator".

When truth becomes a casualty, democracy is put at risk

 You may know of Raimond Gaita as the author of Romulus, My Father, a memoir of his childhood, as the only child of postwar European parents growing up in rural Australia. It was turned into a movie directed by Richard Roxborough (his directorial debut) and starring Eric Bana. What you may not know is that Raimond Gaita is also a professor of philosophy who happens to live in the same metropolis as me, albeit in different suburbs.
 
I borrowed his latest tome, Justice and Hope; Essays, Lectures and Other Writings, from my local library (published last year, 2023), and have barely made a dent in the 33 essays, unequally divided into 6 parts. So far, I’ve read the 5 essays in Part 1: An Unconditional Love of the World, and just the first essay of Part 2: Truth and Judgement, which is titled rather provocatively, The Intelligentsia in the Age of Trump. Each essay heading includes the year it was written, and the essay on the Trump phenomenon (my term, not his) was written in 2017, so after Trump’s election but well before his ignominious attempt to retain power following his election defeat in 2020. And, of course, he now has more stature and influence than ever, having just won the Presidential nomination from the Republican Party for the 2024 election, which is only months away as I write.
 
Gaita doesn’t write like an academic in that he uses plain language and is not afraid to include personal anecdotes if he thinks they’re relevant, and doesn’t pretend that he’s nonpartisan in his political views. The first 5 essays regarding ‘an unconditional love of the world’ all deal with other writers and postwar intellects, all concerned with the inhumane conditions that many people suffered, and some managed to survive, during World War 2. This is confronting and completely unvarnished testimony, much darker and rawer than anything I’ve come across in the world of fiction, as if no writer’s imagination could possibly capture the absolute lowest and worst aspects of humanity.
 
None of us really know how we would react in those conditions. Sometimes in dreams we may get a hint. I’ve sometimes considered dreams as experiments that our minds play on us to test our moral fortitude. I know from my father’s experiences in WW2, both in the theatre of war and as a POW, that one’s moral compass can be bent out of shape. He told me of how he once threatened to kill someone who was stealing from wounded who were under his care. The fact that the person he threatened was English and the wounded were Arabs says a lot, as my father held the same racial prejudices as most of his generation. But I suspect he’d witnessed so much unnecessary death and destruction on such a massive scale that the life of a petty, opportunistic thief seemed worthless indeed. When he returned, he had a recurring dream where there was someone outside the house and he feared to confront them. And then on one occasion he did and killed them barehanded. His telling of this tale (when I was much older, of course) reminded me of Luke Skywalker meeting and killing his Jungian shadow in The Empire Strikes Back. My father could be a fearsome presence in those early years of my life – he had demons and they affected us all.
 
Another one of my tangents, but Gaita’s ruminations on the worst of humanity perpetrated by a nation with a rich and rightly exalted history makes one realise that we should not take anything for granted. I’ve long believed that anyone can commit evil given the right circumstances. We all live under this thin veneer that only exists because we mostly have everything we need and are generally surrounded by people who have no real axe to grind and who don’t see our existence as a threat to their own wellbeing.
 
I recently saw the movie, Civil War, starring Kirsten Dunst, who plays a journalist covering a hypothetical conflict in America, consequential to an authoritarian government taking control of the White House. The aspect that I found most believable was how the rule of law no longer seemed to apply, and people had become completely tribal whereupon one’s neighbour could become one’s enemy. I’ve seen documentaries on conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia where this has happened – neighbours become mortal enemies, virtually overnight, because they suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of a tribal divide. I found the movie quite scary because it showed what happens when the veneer of civility we take for granted is not just lifted, but disappears.
 
On the first page of his essay on Trump, Gaita sets the tone and the context that resulted in Brexit on one side of the Atlantic and Trump’s Republican nomination on the other.
 
Before Donald Trump became the Republican nominee, Brexit forced many among the left-liberal intelligentsia to ask why they had not realised that resentment, anger and even hatred could go so deep as they did in parts of the electorate.
 
I think the root cause of all these dissatisfactions and resentments that lead to political upheavals that no one sees coming is trenchant inequality. I remember my father telling me when I was a child that the conflict in Ireland wasn’t between 2 religious groups but about wealth and inequality. I suspect he was right, even though it seems equally simplistic.
 
In all these divisions that we’ve seen, including in Australia, is the perception that people living in rural areas are being left out of the political process and not getting their fair share of representation, and consequentially everything else that follows from that, which results in what might be called a falling ‘standard of living’. The fallout from the GFC, which was global, exacerbated these differences, both perceived and real, and conservative politicians took advantage. They depicted the Left as ‘elitist’, which is alluded to in the title of Gaita’s essay, and is ‘code’ for ignorant and arrogant. This happened in Australia and I suspect in other Western democracies as well, like the UK and America.
 
Gaita expresses better than most how Trump has changed politics in America, if no where else, by going outside the bounds of normal accepted behaviour for a world leader. In effect, he’s changed the social norms that one associates with a person holding that position.
 
To illustrate my point, I’ll provide selected quotes, albeit out of context.
 
To call Trump a radically unconventional politician is like calling the mafia unconventional debt collectors; it is to fail to understand how important are the conventions, often unspoken, that enables decency in politics. Trump has poured a can of excrement over those conventions.
 
He has this to say about Trump’s ‘alternative facts’ not only espoused by him, but his most loyal followers.

In linking reiterated accusations of fake news to elites, Trump and his accomplices intended to undermine the conceptual and epistemic space that makes conversations between citizens possible.
 
It is hardly possible to exaggerate the seriousness of this. The most powerful democracy on Earth, the nation that considers itself and is often considered by others to be the leader of ‘the free world’, has a president who attacks unrelentingly the conversational space that can exist only because it is based on a common understanding – the space in which citizens can confidently ask one another what facts support their opinions. If they can’t ask that of one another, if they can’t agree on when something counts as having been established as fact, then the value of democracy is diminished.
 
He then goes on to cite J.D. Vance’s (recently nominated as Trump’s running VP), Hillbilly Elegy, where ‘he tells us… that Obama is not an American, that he was “born in some far-flung corner of the world”, that he has ties to Islamic extremism…’ and much worse.
 
Regarding some of Trump’s worse excesses during his 2016 campaign like getting the crowd to shout “Lock her up!” (his political opponent at the time) Gaita makes this point:
 
At the time, a CNN reporter said that his opponents did not take him seriously, but they did take him literally, whereas his supporters took him seriously but not literally. It was repeated many times… he would be reigned in by the Republicans in the House and the Senate and by trusted institutions. [But] He hasn’t changed in office.
 
It’s worth contemplating what this means if he wins Office again in 2024. He’s made it quite clear he’s out for revenge, and he’s also now been given effective immunity from prosecution by the Supreme Court if he seeks revenge through the Justice Department while he’s in Office. There is also the infamous Project 2025 which has the totally unhidden agenda to get rid of the so-called ‘deep state’ and replace public servants with Trump acolytes, not unlike a dictatorship. Did I just use that word?
 
Trump has achieved something I’ve never witnessed before, which Gaita doesn’t mention, though I have the benefit of an additional 7 years hindsight. What I’m referring to is that Trump has created an alternative universe, and from the commentary I’ve read on forums like Quora and elsewhere, you either live in one universe or the other – it’s impossible to claim you inhabit both. In other words, Trump has created an unbridgeable divide, which can’t be reconciled politically or intellectually. In one universe, Biden stole the 2020 POTUS election from Trump, and in another universe, Trump attempted to overturn the election and failed.
 
This is the depth of division that Trump has created in his country, and you have to ask: How far will people go to defend their version of the truth?
 
It was less than a century ago that fascism threatened the entire world order and created the most extensive conflict witnessed by humankind. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we are on the potential brink of creating a new brand of authoritarianism in the country epitomised by the slogan, ‘the free world’.

Zen and the art of flow

 This was triggered by a newsletter I received from ABC Classic (Australian radio station) with a link to a study done on ‘flow’, which is a term coined by physiologist, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, to describe a specific psychological experience that many (if not all) people have had when totally immersed in some activity that they not only enjoy but have developed some expertise in.
 
The study was performed by Dr John Kounios from Drexel University's Creative Research Lab in Philadelphia, who “examined the 'neural and psychological correlates of flow' in a sample of jazz guitarists.” The article was authored by Jennifer Mills from ABC Classic’s sister station, ABC Jazz. But the experience of ‘flow’ just doesn’t apply to mental or artistic activities, but also sporting activities like playing tennis or cricket. Mills heads her article with the claim that ‘New research helps unlock the secrets of flow, an important tool for creative and problem solving tasks’. She quotes Csikszentmihalyi to provide a working definition:
 
"A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it."
 
I believe I’ve experienced ‘flow’ in 2 quite disparate activities: writing fiction and driving a car. Just to clarify, some people think that experiencing flow while driving means that you daydream, whereas I’m talking about the exact opposite. I hardly ever daydream while driving, and if I find myself doing it, I bring myself back to the moment. Of course, cars are designed these days to insulate you from the experience of driving as much as possible, as we evolve towards self-driving cars. Thankfully, there are still cars available that are designed to involve you in the experience and not remove you from it.
 
I was struck by the fact that the study used jazz musicians, as I’ve often compared the ability to play jazz with the ability to write dialogue (even though I’m not a musician). They both require extemporisation. The article references Nat Bartsch, whom I’ve seen perform live and whose music is an unusual style of jazz in that it can be very contemplative. I saw her perform one of her albums with her quartet, augmented with a cello, which made it a one-off, unique performance. (This is a different concert performed in Sydney without the cellist.)
 
The study emphasised the point that the more experienced practitioners taking part were the ones more likely to experience ‘flow’. In other words, to experience ‘flow’ you need to reach a certain skill-level. In emphasising this point, the author quotes jazz legend, Charlie Parker:
 
"You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practise, practise, practise. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."
 
I can totally identify with this, as when I started writing it was complete crap, to the extent that I wouldn’t show it to anyone. For some irrational reason, I had the self-belief – some might say, arrogance – that, with enough perseverance and practice, I could ‘break-through’ into the required skill-level. In fact, I now create characters and write dialogue with little conscious effort – it’s become a ‘delegated’ task, so I can concentrate on the more complex tasks of resolving plot points, developing moral dilemmas and formulating plot twists. Notice that these require a completely different set of skills that also had to be learned from scratch. But all this can come together, often in unexpected and surprising ways, when one is in the mental state of ‘flow’. I’ve described this as a feeling like you’re an observer, not the progenitor, so the process occurs as if you’re a medium and you just have to trust it.
 
Dr. Steffan Herff, leader of the Sydney Music, Mind and Body Lab at Sydney University, makes a point that supports this experience:
 
"One component that makes flow so interesting from a cognitive neuroscience and psychology perspective, is that it comes with a 'loss of self-consciousness'."
 
And this allows me to segue into Zen Buddhism. Many years ago, I read an excellent book by Daisetz Suzuki titled, Zen and Japanese Culture, where he traces the evolutionary development of Zen, starting with Buddhism in India, then being adopted in China, where it was influenced by Taoism, before reaching Japan, where it was assimilated into a sister-religion (for want of a better term) with Shintoism, which is an animistic religion.
 
Suzuki describes Zen as going inward rather than outward, while acknowledging that the two can’t be disconnected. But I think it’s the loss of ‘self’ that makes it relevant to the experience of flow. When Suzuki described the way Zen is practiced in Japan, he talked about being in the moment, whatever the activity, and for me, this is an ideal that we rarely attain. It was only much later that I realised that this is synonymous with flow as described by Csikszentmihalyi and currently being examined in the studies referenced above.
 
I’ve only once before written a post on Zen (not counting a post on Buddhism and Christianity), which arose from reading Douglas Hofstadter’s seminal tome, Godel Escher Bach (which is not about Zen, although it gets a mention), and it’s worth quoting this summation from myself:
 
My own take on this is that one’s ego is not involved yet one feels totally engaged. It requires one to be completely in the moment, and what I’ve found in this situation is that time disappears. Sportsmen call it being ‘in the zone’ and it’s something that most of us have experienced at some time or another.