Evolution of culture; a uniquely human adaption

I finally got around to reading Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, after someone lent me a copy. I’d already read and reviewed his follow-up book, Homo Deus, so I’m reading them in the reverse order. I have to say he makes bleak reading, yet you feel there’s a lot of truth in his words. Having said that, I still feel I can challenge him on some issues to provide a more optimistic outlook. He is both provocative and thought-provoking, which are not necessarily one and the same thing.

He makes the point, which I’ve long known, that what separates us from all other species is that we have undertaken a cultural evolution that has long overtaken our biological evolution. This was accelerated by the invention of script, which allowed memories to be recorded and maintained over generations, some of which have lasted millennia. Of course, we already had this advantage even before we invented script, but script allowed an accumulation of knowledge that eventually led to the scientific revolution, which we’ve all benefited from since the enlightenment and has accelerated in the last 2 centuries particularly.

One of Harari’s recurring themes is that much of our lives are dependent on fictions and myths, and these have changed as part of our cultural evolution in a way that we don’t appreciate. Jeremy Lent makes similar observations in his excellent book, The Patterning Instinct, though he has a subtly different emphasis to Harari. Harari gives the impression that we are trapped in our social norms and gives examples to make his case. He points out that past societies were very hierarchical and everyone literally knew their place and lived within that paradigm. In fact, the consequences of trying to live outside one’s social constraints could be dire, even fatal. The current paradigm, at least in Western societies, is one of ‘individualism’, which he also explored in his follow-up book, with the warning that it could be eroded, if not eliminated, by the rise of AI, but I won’t discuss that here.

He effectively argues that these ‘fictions’, that we live by, rule out the commonly held belief that we can change our circumstances or that there is an objective morality that we can live by. In other words, he claims our lives are ruled by myths that we accept without question, and the only thing that changes are the myths themselves.

I take his point, but throughout history - at least from around 500BC - there have been iconoclasts who have challenged the reigning paradigm of their time. I will mention four: Socrates, Jesus, Buddha and Confucius. The curious point is that none of these wrote anything down (we only have their ‘sayings’) yet they are still iconic figures more than 2,000 years after their time. What they have in common is that they all challenged the prevailing ‘myth’ (to use Harari’s term) that there was a ‘natural order’ whereby those who ruled were ordained by gods, compared to those who served.

They all suffered for their subversions: Jesus and Socrates were executed, Confucius was exiled into poverty and the Buddha was threatened but not killed. Jesus challenged the church of his day, and that was the logical cause of his execution, not the blasphemy that he claimed to be ‘the son of god’. A lot of words were put in Jesus’ mouth, especially in the Bible. Jesus stood up for the disenfranchised and was critical of the church and the way it exploited the poor. He wouldn’t have been the only rabble-rouser of his time in Roman occupied Palestine but he was one of the most charismatic.

Buddha challenged the caste system in India as unjust, which made him logically critical of the religious-based norms of his time. He challenged the ‘myth’ that Harari claims everyone would have accepted without question.

Confucius was critical of appointments based on birth rather than merit and argued that good rulers truly served their people, rather than the other way round. Not surprisingly, his views didn’t go down very well with the autocracy of his time. He allegedly proposed the dictum of reciprocity:  ‘Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself’. An aphorism also attributed to Jesus, which has more pertinence if one considers that it crosses class boundaries.

As for Socrates, I think he was the original existentialist in that he made a special plea to authenticity: ‘To live with honour in this world, actually be what you try to appear to be.’ Socrates got into trouble for supposedly poisoning the minds of the young, but what he really did was to make people challenge the pervading paradigm of his time, including the dominion of gods. He challenged people to think for themselves through argument, which is the essence of philosophy to this day.

To be fair to Harari, he gives specific attention to the feminist paradigm (my term, not his, as I don’t see it as a fiction or a myth). But I do agree that money, which determines so much in our societies, is based on a very convenient fiction and a great deal of trust. Actually, some level of trust is fundamental to a functioning society. In fact, I’ve argued elsewhere that, without trust: truth, justice and freedom all become forfeit.

The feminist paradigm is very recent, yet essential to our future. I recently saw an interview with Melinda Gates (currently in Australia) who made the salient point that it’s contraception that allows women to follow a destiny independent of men. Not surprisingly, it’s the ‘independent of men’ bit that has created, and continues to create, the greatest obstacle to their emancipation.

One of the more interesting discussions, I found, was Harari’s argument that political ideologies are really religions. I guess it depends on how you define religion. This is how Harari defines it, simultaneously giving a rationale to his thesis:

If religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, then Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam.

I’m not convinced that political ideologies are dependent on a belief in a ‘superhuman order’, but they are premised on abstract ideas of uncontested ‘truth’, and, in that sense, they are like religions.

Contrary to what many people think, political thinking of ‘right’ and ‘left’ are largely determined by one’s genes, although environment also plays a role. Basically, personality traits like conscientiousness and goal-oriented leadership over people-based leadership are what are considered right-leaning traits; and agreeableness and openness (to new ideas) are considered left-leaning traits. Neuroticism would probably also be considered a left-leaning trait. Notice that all the left-leaning traits are predominant in artistic or creative people and this is generally reflected in their politics.

Curiously, twin studies have shown that a belief in God is also, at least partly, a genetically inherited trait. But I don’t believe there is any correlation between these two belief systems: God and politics. I know of people on the political right who are atheists and I know people on the political left who are theists.

I know that in America there seems to be a correlation between the political right and Christian fundamentalism, but I think that’s an Americanism. In Australia, it has little impact. We’ve very recently elected a Pentecostal as PM (Prime Minister) but I don’t believe that had any bearing on his election. We’ve had two atheist PMs in my lifetime (one of whom was very popular indeed), which would be unthinkable in America. The truth is that in some cultures religion is bound irretrievably with politics, and it can be hard for anyone who’s lived their entire lives in that culture to imagine there are political regimes where religion is a non-issue.

And this brings me to Harari’s next contentious point:

Even though liberal humanism sanctifies humans, it does not deny the existence of God, and is, in fact, founded on monotheistic beliefs.

Again, I think this is a particular American perspective. I would argue that liberal humanism has arisen from an existentialist philosophy, even though most people, who advocate and follow it, have probably never studied existential philosophy. There was a cultural revolution in Western societies in the generation following World War 2, and I was a part of it. Basically, we rejected the Christian institutions we were raised in, and embraced the existentialist paradigm that the individual was responsible for their own morality and their own destiny. No where was this more evident than in the rise of feminism, aided ineluctably by on-demand contraception.

So contrary to Harari’s argument, I think the humanist individualism that defines our age (in the West) was inextricably linked to the rejection of the Church. None of us knew what existentialism was, but, when I encountered it academically later in life, I recognised it as the symptomatic paradigm of my generation. We had become existentialists without being ideologically indoctrinated.

I feel Harari is on firmer ground when he discusses the relationship between the scientific revolution and European colonial expansion. I’ve argued previously, when discussing Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct, that Western European philosophy begat the scientific revolution because, under Galileo, Kepler and Newton, they discovered the relationship between mathematics and the movements of stellar objects – the music of the spheres, to paraphrase the ancient Greeks. The Platonic world of mathematics held the key to understanding the heavens. Subsequent centuries progressed this mathematical paradigm even further with the discovery of electromagnetic waves, then quantum mechanics and general relativity, leading to current theories of elementary nuclear particles and QED (quantum electrodynamics).

But Harari makes the case that exploration of foreign lands and peoples went hand-in-hand with scientific exploration of flora, fauna and archaeological digs. He argues that only Europeans acknowledged that we were ignorant of the wider world, which led to a desire for knowledge, rather than an acceptance that what our myths didn’t tell us was not worth knowing or exploring. Science had the same philosophy: that our ignorance would lead us to always search for new theories and new explanations, rather than accept the religious dogma that knowledge outside the Bible was not worthy of consideration.

So I would agree there was a synergy here, that was both destructive and empowering, depending on whether you were the European conqueror or the people being subjugated and ruthlessly exploited for the expansion of empire.

Probably the best part of the book is Harari’s description of capitalism and how it has shaped history in the last 400 years. He explains how and why it works, and why it’s been so successful. He also points out its flaws and its dark side. The book is worth reading for this section alone. He also explains how the free market, if left to its own devices, would lead to slavery. Instead, we have the exploitation of labour in third world countries, which is the next best thing, or the next worse thing, depending on your point of view.

This logically leads to a discussion on the consumerism paradigm that drives almost everything we do in modern society. Economic growth is totally dependent on it, but, ecologically, it’s a catastrophe in progress.

One of his more thought-provoking insights is in regard to how communal care-taking in law enforcement, health, education, even family dynamics, has been taken over by state bureaucracies. If one reads the neo-Confucian text, the I Ching, one finds constant analogies between family relationships and relationships in the Court (which means government officialdom). It should be pointed out that the I Ching predates Confucius, but contemporary texts (Richard Willem’s translation) have a strong Confucian flavour.

I can’t help but wonder if this facilitated China’s adoption of Communism almost as a state religion. Family relationships and loyalties still hold considerable sway in Asian politics and businesses. Nepotism is much more prevalent in Asian countries than in the West, I would suggest.

One of my bones of contention with Harari in Homo Deus was his ideas on happiness and how it’s basically a consequence of biochemistry. As someone who has lived for more than half a century in the modern post-war world, I feel I’m in a position to challenge his simplistic view that people’s ‘happiness setting’ doesn’t change as a consequence of external factors. To quote from Sapiens:

Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can change it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.

Well, it works for me. Nothing has given me greater long term happiness than writing a novel and getting it into the public arena – the fact that it’s been a total financial failure is, quite frankly, irrelevant. I really can’t explain that, but it’s probably been the single most important, self-satisfying event of my life. I can die happy. Also I enjoy driving possibly more than any other activity, so owning a car means more to me than just having personal transport. I used to ride motorcycles, so maybe that explains it.

I grew up in a volatile household, which I’ve delineated elsewhere, and when I left home, the first 6 years were very depressing indeed. Over decades I turned all that around, so I think Harari’s ‘happiness setting’ is total bullshit.

But my biggest disagreement with Harari, which I alluded to before, is my advocacy for existentialist philosophy which he replaces with ‘the religion of liberal individualism’. Even though I can see similarities with Buddhism, I wouldn’t call existentialism a religion. Harari pre-empts this objection by claiming all ideologies, be they political or cultural, are no different to any religion. However, I have another objection of my own, which is that when Harari talks about religion, he is really talking about dogma.

In an issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 127, Aug/Sep 2018), Sandy Grant, who is a philosopher at University of Cambridge, defines dogma as an ‘appeal to authority without critical thinking’. I’ve previously defined philosophy as ‘argument augmented by analysis’, which is the antithesis of dogma. In fact, I would go so far as to say that philosophy has been historically an antidote to religion, going all the way back to Socrates.

Existentialism is a humanist philosophy (paraphrasing Sartre) but it requires self-examination and a fundamental honesty to oneself, which is the opposite of the narcissism implied in Harari’s religion of self-obsession, which he euphemistically calls ‘liberal individualism’.

Harari is cynical, if not dismissive, about the need for purpose in life, yet I would argue that it’s fundamental. I would recommend Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a holocaust survivor and psychologist, who argued that we find meaning in relationships, projects and adversity. In fact, I would contend that the whole meaning of life is about dealing with adversity, which is why it is the theme of every work of fiction ever recorded.

If I go back to the title of this post, which I think is what Harari’s book is all about, there is a hierarchy of ‘needs’ (not Maslow’s) that a society must provide to ensure what Harari calls ‘happiness’, which is not so much economical as psychological. Back in July 2015, I wrote one of my 400 word mini-essays in response to a Question of the Month in Philosophy Now. The only relevant part is my conclusion, which effectively says that a functioning society is based on trust.

You can’t have truth without trust; you can’t have justice without truth; you can’t have freedom without justice; and you can’t have happiness without freedom.

I think that succinctly answers Harari’s thesis on happiness. Biochemistry may play a role, but people won’t find happiness if all those prerequisites aren’t met, unless, of course, said people are part of a dictatorship’s oligarchy.

A utopian society would allow everyone to achieve their potential – that’s the ideal. The most important consequence of an existentialist approach is that you don’t forfeit your aspirations for the sake of family or nation or church or some other abstract ideal that Harari calls religion.

While on this subject, I will quote from another contributor to Philosophy Now (Issue 110, Oct/Nov 2015), Simon Clarke, who is talking about John Stuart Mill, but who expresses my point of view better than I can.

An objectively good life, on Mill’s (Aristotelian) view, is one where a person has reached her potential, realizing the powers and abilities she possesses. According to Mill, the chief essential requirement for personal well-being is the development of individuality. By this he meant the development of a person’s unique powers, abilities, and talents, to their fullest potential.

Some people might be offended by this

I read an article recently in The New Yorker (Issue Jan. 21, 2019) by Vinson Cunningham called The Bad Place; How the idea of Hell has shaped the way we think. I think it was meant to be a review of a book, called, aptly enough, The Penguin Book of Hell, edited by Scott G. Bruce, but Cunningham’s discussion meanders widely, including Dante’s Inferno and Homer’s Odyssey, as well as his own Christian upbringing in a Harlem church.

I was reminded of the cultural difference between America and Australia, when it comes to religion. A difference I was very aware of when I lived and worked in America over a combined period of 9 months, including New Jersey, Texas and California.

It’s hard to imagine any mainstream magazine or newspaper having this discussion in Australia, or, if they did, it would be more academic. I was in the US post 9/11 – in fact, I landed in New York the night before. I remember reading an editorial in a newspaper where people were arguing about whether the victims of the attack would go to heaven or not. I thought: how ridiculous. In the end, someone quoted from the Bible, as if that resolved all arguments  – even more ridiculous, from my perspective.

I remember reading in an altogether different context someone criticising a doctor for facilitating prayer meetings in a Jewish hospital because the people weren’t praying to Jesus, so their prayers would be ineffective. This was a cultural shock to me. No one discussed these issues or had these arguments in Australian media. At least, not in mainstream media, be it conservative or liberal.

Reading Cunningham’s article reminded me of all this because he talks about how real hell is for many people. To be fair, he also talks about how hell has been sidelined in secular societies. In Australia, people don’t discuss their religious views that much, so one can’t be sure what people really believe. But I was part of a generation that all but rejected institutionalised religion. I’ve met many people from succeeding generations who have no knowledge of biblical stories, whereas for me, it was simply part of one’s education.

One of the best ‘modern’ examples of hell or the underworld I found was in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novel series. It’s arguably the best graphic novel series written by anyone, though I’m sure aficionados of the medium may beg to differ. Gaiman borrowed freely from a range of mythologies, including Orpheus, the Bible (in particular the story of Cain and Abel) and even Shakespeare. His hero has to go to Hell and gets out by answering a riddle from its caretaker, the details of which I’ve long forgotten, but I remember thinking it to be one of those gems that writers of fiction (like me) envy. 

Gaiman also co-wrote a book with Terry Pratchett called Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter (1990) which is a great deal of fun. The premise, as described in Wikipedia: ‘The book is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan, the coming of the End Times.’ Both authors are English, which possibly allows them a sense of irreverence that many Americans would find hard to manage. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that Americans take their religion way more seriously than the rest of us English-speaking nations, and this is reflected in their media.

And this brings me back to Cunningham’s article because it’s written in a cultural context that I simply don’t share. And I feel that’s the crux of this issue. Religion and all its mental constructs are cultural, and hell is nothing if not a mental construct.

My own father, whom I’ve written about before, witnessed hell first hand. He was in the Field Ambulance Corp in WW2 so he retrieved bodies in various states of beyond-repair from both sides of the conflict. He also spent 2.5 years as a POW in Germany. I bring this up, because when I was a teenager he told me why he didn’t believe in the biblical hell. He said, in effect, he couldn’t believe in a ‘father’ who sent his children to everlasting torment. I immediately saw the sense in his argument and I rejected the biblical god from that day on. This is the same man, I should point out, who believed it was his duty that I should have a Christian education. I thank him for that, otherwise I’d know nothing about it. When I was young I believed everything I was taught, which perversely made it easier to reject when I started questioning things. I know many people who had the same experience. The more they believed, the stronger their rejection.

I recently watched an excellent 3 part series, available on YouTube, called Testing God, which is really a discussion about science and religion. It was made by the UK’s Channel 4 in 2001, and includes some celebrity names in science, like Roger Penrose, Paul Davies and Richard Dawkins, and theologians as well; in particular, theologians who had become, or been, scientists.

In the last episode they interviewed someone who suffered horrendously in the War – he was German, and a victim of the fire-storm bombing. Contrary to many who have had similar experiences he found God, whereas, before, he’d been an atheist. But his idea of God is of someone who is patiently waiting for us.

I’ve long argued that God is subjective not objective. If humans are the only connection between the Universe and God, then, without humans, there is no reason for God to exist. There is no doubt in my mind that God is a projection, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many variants. Xenophanes, who lived in the 5th century BC, famously said:

The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,

While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.

Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,

And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods

Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape

Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.

At the risk of offending people even further, the idea that the God one finds in oneself is the Creator of the Universe is a non sequitur. My point is that there are two concepts of God which are commonly conflated. God as a Creator and God as a mystic experience, and there is no reason to believe that they are one and the same. In fact, the God as experience is unique to the person who has it, whilst God as Creator is, by definition, outside of space and time. One does not logically follow from the other.

In another YouTube video altogether, I watched an interview with Freeman Dyson on science and religion. He argues that they are quite separate and there is only conflict when people try to adapt religion to science or science to religion. In fact, he is critical of Einstein because Dyson believes that Einstein made science a religion. Einstein was influenced by Spinoza and would have argued, I believe, that the laws of physics are God.

John Barrow in one his books (Pi in the Sky) half-seriously suggests that the traditional God could be replaced by mathematics.

This brings me to a joke, which I’ve told elsewhere, but is appropriate, given the context.

What is the difference between a physicist and a mathematician?
A physicist studies the laws that God chose for the Universe to obey.
A mathematician studies the laws that God has to obey.

Einstein, in a letter to a friend, once asked the rhetorical question: Do you think God had a choice in creating the laws of the Universe?

I expect that’s unanswerable, but I would argue that if God created mathematics he had no choice. It’s not difficult to see that God can’t make a prime number non-prime, nor can he change the value of pi. To put it more succinctly, God can’t exist without mathematics, but mathematics can exist without God.

In light of this, I expect Freeman Dyson would accuse me of the same philosophical faux pas as Einstein.

As for hell, it’s a cultural artefact, a mental construct devised to manipulate people on a political scale. An anachronism at best and a perverse psychological contrivance at worst.

The search for ultimate truth is unattainable

Someone lent me a really good philosophy book called Ultimate Questions by Bryan Magee.  To quote directly from the back fly leaf cover: “Bryan Magee has had an unusually multifaceted career as a professor of philosophy, music and theatre critic, BBC broadcaster and member of [British] Parliament.” It so happens I have another of his books, The Story of Philosophy, which is really a series of interviews with philosophers about philosophers, and I expect it’s a transcription of radio podcasts. Magee was over 80 when he wrote Ultimate Questions, which must be prior to 2016 when the book was published.

This is a very thought-provoking book, which is what you'd expect from a philosopher. To a large extent, and to my surprise, Magee and I have come to similar positions on fundamental epistemological and ontological issues, albeit by different paths. However, there is also a difference, possibly a divide, which I’ll come to later.

Where to start? I’ll start at the end because it coincides with my beginning. It’s not a lengthy tome (120+ pages) and it’s comprised of 7 chapters or topics, which are really discussions. In the last chapter, Our Predicament Summarized, he emphasises his view of an inner and outer world, both of which elude full comprehension, that he’s spent the best part of the book elaborating on.

As I’ve discussed previously, the inner and outer world is effectively the starting point for my own world view. The major difference between Magee and myself are the paths we’ve taken. My path has been a scientific one, in particular the science of physics, encapsulating as it does, the extremes of the physical universe, from the cosmos to the infinitesimal.

Magee’s path has been the empirical philosophers from Locke to Hume to Kant to Schopenhauer and eventually arriving at Wittgenstein. His most salient and persistent point is that our belief that we can comprehend everything there is to comprehend about the ‘world’ is a delusion. He tells an anecdotal story of when he was a student of philosophy and he was told that the word ‘World’ comprised not only what we know but everything we can know. He makes the point, that many people fail to grasp, that there could be concepts that are beyond our grasp in the same way that there are concepts we do understand but are nevertheless beyond the comprehension of the most intelligent of chimpanzees or dolphins or any creature other than human. None of these creatures can appreciate the extent of the heavens the way we can or even the way our ancient forebears could. Astronomy has a long history. Even indigenous cultures, without the benefit of script, have learned to navigate long distances with the aid of the stars. We have a comprehension of the world that no other creature has (on this planet) so it’s quite reasonable to assume that there are aspects of our world that we can’t imagine either.

Because my path to philosophy has been through science, I have a subtly different appreciation of this very salient point. I wrote a post based on Noson Yanofsky’s The Outer Limits of Reason, which addresses this very issue: there are limits in logic, mathematics and science, and there always will be. But I’m under the impression that Magee takes this point further. He expounds, better than anyone else I’ve read, that there are actual limits to what our brains can, not only perceive, but conceptualise, which leads to the possibility, most of us ignore, that there are things beyond our kin completely and always.

As Magee himself states, this opens the door to religion, which he discusses at length, yet he gives this warning: “Anyone who sets off in honest and serious pursuit of truth needs to know that in doing that he is leaving religion behind.” It’s a bit unfair to provide this quote out of context, as it comes at the end of a lengthy discussion, nevertheless, it’s the word ‘truth’ that gives his statement cogency. My own view is that religion is not an epistemology, it’s an experience. What’s more it’s an experience (including the experience of God) that is unique to the person who has it and can’t be shared with anyone else. This puts individual religious experience at odds with institutionalised religions, and as someone pointed out (Yuval Harari, from memory) this means that the people who have religious experiences are all iconoclasts.

I’m getting off the point, but it’s relevant in as much that arguments involving science and religion have no common ground. I find them ridiculous because they usually involve pitting an ancient text (of so-called prophecy) against modern scientific knowledge and all the technology it has propagated, which we all rely upon for our day-to-day existence. If religion ever had an epistemological role it has long been usurped.

On the other hand, if religion is an experience, it is part of the unfathomable which lies outside our rational senses, and is not captured by words. Magee contends that the best one can say about an afterlife or the existence of a God, is that ‘we don’t know’. He calls himself an agnostic but not just in the narrow sense relating to a Deity, but in the much broader sense of acknowledging our ignorance. He discusses these issues in much more depth than my succinct paraphrasing implies. He gives the example of music as something we experience that can’t be expressed in words. Many people have used music as an analogy for religious experience, but, as Magee points out, music has a material basis in instruments and a score and sound waves, whereas religion does not.

Coincidentally, someone today showed me a text on Socrates, from a much larger volume on classical Greece. Socrates famously proclaimed his ignorance as the foundation of his wisdom. In regard to science, he said: “Each mystery, when solved, reveals a deeper mystery.” This statement is so prophetic; it captures the essence of science as we know it today, some 2500 years after Socrates. It’s also the reason I agree with Magee.

John Wheeler conceived a metaphor, that I envisaged independently of him. (Further evidence that I’ve never had an original idea.)

We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance.
As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

I contend that the island is science and the shoreline is philosophy, which implies that philosophy feeds science, but also that they are inseparable. By philosophy, in this context, I mean epistemology.

To give an example that confirms both Socrates and Wheeler, the discovery and extensive research into DNA provides both evidence and a mechanism for biological evolution from the earliest life forms to the most complex; yet the emergence of DNA as providing ‘instructions’ for the teleological development of an organism is no less a mystery looking for a solution than evolution itself.

The salient point of Wheeler's metaphor is that the sea of ignorance is infinite and so the island grows but is never complete. In his last chapter, Magee makes the point that truth (even in science) is something we progress towards without attaining. “So rationality requires us to renounce the pursuit of proof in favour of the pursuit of progress.” (My emphasis.) However, 'the pursuit of proof’ is something we’ve done successfully in mathematics ever since Euclid. It is on this point that I feel Magee and I part company.

Like many philosophers, when discussing epistemology, Magee hardly mentions mathematics. Only once, as far as I can tell, towards the very end (in the context of the quote I referenced above about ‘proof’) he includes it in the same sentence as science, logic and philosophy as inherited from Descartes, where he has this to say: “It is extraordinary to get people, including oneself, to give up this long-established pursuit of the unattainable.” He is right in as much as there will always be truths, including mathematical truths, that we can never know (refer my recent post on Godel, Turing and Chaitin). But there are also innumerable (mathematical) truths that we have discovered and will continue to discover into the future (part of the island of knowledge). As Freeman Dyson points out, 'Mathematics is forever', whilst discussing the legacy of Srinivasa Ramanujan's genius. In other words, mathematical truths don't become obsolete in the same way that science does.

I don’t know what Magee’s philosophical stance is on mathematics, but not giving it any special consideration tells me something already. I imagine, from his perspective, it serves no special epistemological role, except to give quantitative evidence for the validity of competing scientific theories.

In one of his earlier chapters, Magee talks about the ‘apparatus’ we have in the form of our senses and our brain that provide a limited means to perceive our external world. We have developed technological means to augment our senses; microscopes and telescopes being the most obvious. But we now have particle accelerators and radio telescopes that explore worlds we didn’t even know existed less than a century ago.

Mathematics, I would contend, is part of that extended apparatus. Riemann’s geometry allowed Einstein to perceive a universe that was ‘curved’ and Euler’s equation allowed Schrodinger to conceive a wave function. Both of these mathematically enhanced ‘discoveries’ revolutionised science at opposite ends of the epistemological spectrum: the cosmological and the subatomic.

Magee rightly points out our almost insignificance in both space and time as far as the Universe is concerned. We are figuratively like the blink of an eye on a grain of sand, yet reality has no meaning without our participation. In reference to the internal and external worlds that formulate this reality, Magee has this to say: “But then the most extraordinary thing is that the world of interaction between these two unintelligibles is rationally intelligible.” Einstein famously made a similar point: "The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible.”

One can’t contemplate that statement, especially in the context of Einstein’s iconic achievements, without considering the specific and necessary role of mathematics. Raymond Tallis, who writes a regular column in Philosophy Now, and for whom I have great respect, nevertheless downplays the role of mathematics. He once made the comment that mathematical Platonists (like me) 'make the error of confusing the map for the terrain.’ I wrote a response, saying: ‘the use of that metaphor infers the map is human-made, but what if the map preceded the terrain.’ (The response wasn’t published.) The Universe obeys laws that are mathematically in situ, as first intimated by Galileo, given credence by Kepler, Newton, Maxwell; then Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and Bohr.

I’d like to finish by quoting Paul Davies:

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.

This, of course, is another way of formulating Roger Penrose’s 3 Worlds, and it’s the mathematical world that is, for me, the missing piece in Magee’s otherwise thought-provoking discourse.


Last word: I’ve long argued that mathematics determines the limits of our knowledge of the physical world. Science to date has demonstrated that Socrates was right: the resolution of one mystery invariably leads to another. And I agree with Magee that consciousness is a phenomenon that may elude us forever.

Addendum: I came across this discussion between Magee and Harvard philosopher, Hilary Putnam, from 1977 (so over 40 years ago), where Magee exhibits a more nuanced view on the philosophy of science and mathematics (the subject of their discussion) than I gave him credit for in my post. Both of these men take their philosophy of science from philosophers, like Kant, Descartes and Hume, whereas I take my philosophy of science from scientists: principally, Paul Davies, Roger Penrose and Richard Feynman, and to a lesser extent, John Wheeler and Freeman Dyson; I believe this is the main distinction between their views and mine. They even discuss this 'distinction' at one point, with the conclusion that scientists, and particularly physicists, are stuck in the past - they haven't caught up (my terminology, not theirs). They even talk about the scientific method as if it's obsolete or anachronistic, though again, they don't use those specific terms. But I'd point to the LHC (built decades after this discussion) as evidence that the scientific method is alive and well, and it works. (I intend to make this a subject of a separate post.)

My philosophy in 24 dot points

A friend (Erroll Treslan) posted on Facebook a link to a matrix that attempts to encapsulate the history of (Western) philosophy by listing the most influential people and linking their ideas, either conflicting or in agreement.

I decided to attempt the same for myself and have included those people, whom I believe influenced me, which is not to say they agree with me. In the case of some of my psychological points I haven’t cited anyone as I’ve forgotten where my beliefs came from (in those cases).

• There are 3 worlds: physical, mental and mathematical. (Penrose)
• Consciousness exists in a constant present; classical physics describes the past and quantum mechanics describes the future. (Schrodinger, Bragg, Dyson)
• Reality requires both consciousness and a physical universe. You can have a universe without consciousness, which was the case in the past, but it has no meaning and no purpose. (Barrow, Davies)
• Purpose has evolved but the Universe is not teleological in that it is not determinable. (Davies)
• There is a cosmic anthropic principle; without sentient beings there might as well be nothing. (Carter, Barrow, Davies)
• Mathematics exists independently from humans and the Universe. (Barrow, Penrose, Pythagoras, Plato)
• There will always be mathematical truths we don’t know. (Godel, Turing, Chaitin)
• Mathematics is not a language per se. It starts with the prime numbers, called the 'atoms of mathematics', yet extends to infinity and the transcendental. (Euclid, Euler, Riemann)
• The Universe created the means to understand itself, with mathematics the medium and humans the only known agents. (Einstein, Wigner)
•  The Universe obeys laws dependent on fine-tuned mathematical parameters. (Hoyle, Barrow, Davies)
• The Universe is not a computer; chaos rules and is not predictable. (Stewart, Gleik)
• The brain does not run on algorithms; there is no software. (Penrose, Searle)
• Human language is analogous to software because we ‘download’ it from generation to generation and it ‘mutates’; if I can mix my metaphors. (Dawkins, Hofstadter)
• We think and conceptualise in a language. Axiomatically, this limits what we can conceive and think about. (Wittgenstein)
• We only learn something new when we integrate it into what we already know. (Wittgenstein)
• Humans have the unique ability to nest concepts within concepts ad-infinitum, which mirror the physical world. (Hofstadter)
• Morality is largely subjective, dependent on cultural norms but malleable by milieu, conditioning and cognitive dissonance. (Mill, Zimbardo)
• It is inherently human to form groups with an ingroup-outgroup mentality.
• Evil requires the denial of humanity in others.
• Empathy is the key to social reciprocity at all levels of society. (Confucius, Jesus)
• Quality of life is dependent on our interaction with others from birth to death. (Aristotle, Buddha)
• Wisdom comes from adversity. The premise of every story ever told is about a protagonist dealing with adversity – it’s a universal theme (Frankl, I Ching).
• God is an experience that is internal, yet is perceived as external. (Feuerbach)
• Religion is the mind’s quest to find meaning for its own existence.

Addendum: I’ve changed it from 23 points to 24 by adding point 22. It’s actually a belief I’ve held for some time. They are all ‘beliefs’ except point 7, which arises from a theorem.

Do you know truth when you see it?

I saw an interesting 2 part documentary on the Judgement Day (21 May 2011) prediction by Harold Camping (since deceased as of 15 Dec 2013) on a programme called Compass, which is a long running programme on Australia’s ABC, covering a range of religious topics and some not so religious. It’s a very secular programme. Their highest rating episode for many years was Richard Dawkins’ The Root of all Evil (which at the time had never been shown in the US) but that was at least 10 years ago (pre The God Delusion).

Harold Camping hosted a radio programme on American Christian radio and he had a small but committed following. He had arrived at the date doing calculations based on biblical scripture that, apparently, only he could follow. He had made a prediction before but admitted that he had made a mistake. This time he was absolutely 100% positive that he’d got it right, as he’d rerun and double-checked his calculations a number of times.

What was interesting about this show was the psychology of belief and the severe cognitive dissonance people suffered when it didn’t come to pass. It’s very easy to be dismissive and say these people are gullible but at least some of the ones interviewed came across as intelligent and responsible, not crazies. I confess to being conned by smooth talkers who know how to read people and press the emotional buttons that can make you drop your guard. It’s only in hindsight that one thinks: how could I be so stupid? What I’m talking about is people whom you trust to deliver on something that is in fact a scam. Hopefully, you will learn and be more alert next time; you put it down to experience.

This situation is subtly different in that people accept as truth something that many of us would be sceptical of. It made me think about what criteria do we use to consider something true. Many people consider the Bible to contain truths in the form of prophecies and they will give you examples, challenging you to prove them wrong. They will cite the evidence (like the Dead Sea Scrolls predicting Christ’s crucifixion 350 years before it happened) and dare you to refute it. In other words, you’re the fool for not accepting something that is clearly described.

I give this example because I had this very discussion with someone recently who was an intelligent professional person. He went so far as to claim that the crucifixion as a form of execution hadn’t even been invented then. As soon as he told me that I knew it had to be wrong: someone doesn’t describe something in detail hundreds of years before anyone thought of it. But some research on Google showed that the Persians invented crucifixion around 400BC, so maybe it was described in the Dead Sea Scrolls – still not a prophecy. I told him that I simply don’t believe in prophecy because it implies that all of history is pre-ordained and I don’t accept that. Chaos theory alone dictates that determinism is pretty much an impossibility (and that’s without considering quantum mechanics).

That’s a short detour, but it illustrates the point that many well educated people believe that the Bible contains truths straight from God, which is the highest authority one can claim. It’s not such a great leap from that belief to God also providing the exact date for the end of the world, if one knows how to decipher His hidden code. I’m always wary of people who claim to know ‘the mind of God’ (unless they’re an atheist like Stephen Hawking).

In the current issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 127, Aug/Sep 2018), Sandy Grant (philosopher at the University of Cambridge) published an essay titled Dogmas, whereby she points out the pitfalls of accepting points of view on ‘authority’ without affording them critical analysis. I immediately thought of climate change, though she doesn’t discuss that specifically, and how many people believe that it is a dogma based on an authority that we can’t question, because said authorities live in academia; a place most of us never visit, and if we did we wouldn’t speak the language.

People, who view the Bible as a source of prophecy, have in common with people who are sceptical of climate change, an ingroup-outgroup mentality. It becomes tribal. In other words, we all listen to people whom we already agree with on a specific subject, and that becomes our main criterion for truth. This is the case with the followers of Harold Camping as well as people who claim that climate scientists are fraudulent so they can keep their jobs. You think I’m joking, but that’s what many people in Australia believe is the ‘truth’ about climate change.

Of course, one can argue the converse for climate change – that the people who believe in it (like me) are part of their own ingroup, but there are major differences. The people who are warning us about climate change actually know what they’re talking about, in the same way that a structural engineer discussing what caused the WTC towers to collapse would know what they’re talking about (as opposed to a conspiracy theorist).

I wrote a letter to Philosophy Now regarding Grant’s essay, specifically referencing climate change, which, as I’ve already mentioned, she didn’t address. This is an extract relevant to this discussion.

Opponents of climate change would call it dogma… This is a case where we are dependent on expertise that most of us don't have. But this is not the exception; it is, in fact, the norm with virtually all scientific knowledge.

We trust science because it's given us all the infrastructure and tools that we totally depend on to live a normal life in all Western societies around the globe. However, political ideology can suddenly transform this trust into dogma, and dogma, almost by definition, shouldn't be trusted if you're a thinking person, as Grant advises.

Sometimes, what people call dogma isn't dogma, but a lengthy process of investigation and research that has been hijacked and stigmatised by those who oppose its findings.

In both the case of climate change and Harold Camping’s prediction, it’s ultimately evidence that provides ‘truth’. 21 May 2011 came and went without the end of the world, and evidence of climate change is already apparent with glaciers retreating, ice shelfs melting, migratory species adapting, and it will become more apparent as time passes with sea rise being the most obvious. What’s harder to predict is the time frame and its ultimate impact, not its manifestation.

One of the reasons I’ve become more interested in mathematics as I’ve got older is that it’s a source of objective universal truth that seems to transcend the Universe. This point of view is itself contentious, but I can provide arguments. The most salient being that there will always be mathematical truths that we will never know, yet we know that they exist in some abstract space that can only be accessed by some intelligent being (or possibly a machine).

In science, I know that Einstein’s theories of relativity are true (both of them), not least because the satnav in my car wouldn’t work without them. I also know that quantum mechanics (QM) is true because every electronic device (including the PC I’m using to write this) depends on it. Yet both these theories defy our common sense knowledge of the world.

Truth is elusive and for some people can’t be distinguished from delusion. In both the case of Harold Camping’s prediction and climate change, one’s belief in the ‘truth’ is taken from purported authorities. But ultimately the truth only becomes manifest in hindsight, provided by evidence even ordinary people can’t ignore.

Some notes on religion and God

I’ve written quite a lot about religion on this blog, so I’m not sure I have anything new to say. My main reason for writing is that there is a dichotomy which is rarely explored or even acknowledged. I’m currently reading The Paradox of God And the Science of Omniscience by Clifford A Pickover. He’s written a number of books, but the handful I’ve read relate to mathematics and physics. He’s very good at collecting vignettes on a subject that covers its entire breadth, then putting them into an accessible volume with high quality allusive graphics. This book is completely different, both in content and presentation.

I mention him because his latest book has many references, including biblical quotes I never heard in Sunday School; partly because they don’t show God in a good light, and partly because they’re not fit for children’s ears. For example, in Exodus (4:24-26) God was going to kill Moses, but his wife, Zipporah, quickly circumcised her son and put the blood on Moses’ feet, then said: “Surely, you are a bridegroom of blood to me”; which satisfied God, for reasons that perhaps only God and Zipporah know. Pickover provides 4 different versions to demonstrate that the gist of the story is consistent across translations.

That’s a digression. Pickover also references Karen Armstrong’s A History of God in a completely different context: how God has evolved over the centuries. Armstrong, I note, has effectively disappeared from the parapet after being attacked from both sides of the religious divide. It’s obvious from my reading of her that she was trying to bridge the divide and had the opposite effect. A History of God covers the 3 monotheistic religions chronologically, so it does read like a history, plus she makes references to Hinduism and Buddhism where she thinks it’s apposite, without giving them the same attention and overall coverage. Personally, I think it’s one of the best books I’ve read on the subject, written well before she became a pariah to atheists and fundamentalists alike.

One of the themes, for want of a better word, that ran through Armstrong’s account was that there was almost always a conflict in philosophy, which alludes to the dichotomy I mentioned in my introduction. Basically, there were scholars who argued that God should be explained and revealed by intellectual reasoning, whilst others argued that God could only be understood through a personal mystical revelation. I think this dichotomised approach still applies today. It also highlights a fundamental difference between institutionalised religion and personal religious experience.

I spent a large part of my childhood exposed to institutionalised religion so I have that perspective from which to draw. Reading Pickover’s discussion of Genesis, where he talks about the ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’, he points out an obvious paradox that Eve couldn’t have known it was evil when she was seduced by the snake as she had no knowledge of good and evil prior to eating the fruit (others have also pointed out this apparent contradiction). I remember as a young teenager asking how could eating fruit give one knowledge of evil (I was very literal), and I was told that it was a metaphor and I was given to understand that it was really about knowledge of sex. So sex was evil, and I was neurotic enough to believe that.

I digress again. Many years ago I had friends who were Jehovah Witnesses and I enjoyed arguing with them, and I think they enjoyed arguing with me. Now I do it with my Baptist neighbours. Basically, when it comes to arguing intellectually for the existence of God I find I’m an atheist. I was in my teens and still going to Sunday School when it first occurred to me that God could simply be a state of mind and not an existential entity that existed externally. I’ve long argued that God is subjective and, like Don Cupitt, believe that the only religion that matters is the one you’ve worked out for yourself.

Paul Davies is a well known physicist, author, philosopher and astro-biologist, as well as a self-confessed Deist (even Dawkins treats him with respect). Agnosticism and theism, I’ve noticed, is more common among physicists than biologists. I expect there’s 2 reasons for that: biologists have felt under siege by the Church for over a century; and physicists marvel at the mathematical concordance and unexplained serendipity of Nature’s laws. I wrote a post on Davies’ The Mind of God a couple of years ago, which is more about physics than God, but I concluded that the idea of God, as something that evolves, was the only one that made sense to me. If humanity is the only link between the Universe and God, then we are the only reason for God to exist. I’ve made this point before. I think God is a projection, because it is part of our cognitive capacity to imagine a future in a way that no other animal can. This means that we can imagine a future beyond death, which is the real genesis of religion and religious belief. If God is a consequence of us, rather than the other way round, then the problem of evil is automatically resolved - we get the God we deserve.

Jordan Peterson: clinical psychologist, provocateur, Jungian philosopher and biblical scholar

I wrote something earlier, based on YouTube videos, but never posted it. Instead I read his book, 12 Rules for Life, and decided to use that as my starting point. I want to say up front that, even if you disagree with him, he makes you think, and for that reason alone he’s worth listening to. Logically, I haven’t attempted to cover the entire book, but mostly the theme of religion and its closely related allies, mythology and psychology.

His discussions of the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular, are refreshing in as much as he gives them a cultural context that one can relate to, especially if it was part of your education, which it was for me. In other words, he interprets the mythology of the Bible in a way that, not only makes historical sense, but also cultural sense, given that it’s influenced Western European thought for 2 millennia. I’ve talked before about the religion science divide, which has arguably become more unbridgeable, to extend a badly thought out metaphor.

Peterson blends a mixture of Jungian and Christian philosophies that are purely psychological, yet he includes evolutionary influences where he considers it relevant. In fact, in certain parts of his book (Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping) he talks about the Book of Genesis as if it’s part of our genetic heritage rather than our cultural heritage. I know he knows the difference, but his language and description of the narrative gives the impression that the humans we are today are direct consequences of the events that happened in the Garden of Eden.

Take, for example, this extract from a section titled, The Naked Ape.

Naked means unprotected and unarmed in the jungle of nature and man. This is why Adam and Eve became ashamed, immediately after their eyes were opened… Unlike other mammals, whose delicate abdomens are protected by the amour-like expanse of their backs, they were upright creatures, with the most vulnerable parts of their body presented to the world. And worse was to come. Adam and Eve made themselves loin cloths… Then they promptly skittered off and hid. In their vulnerability, now fully realized, they felt unworthy to stand before God.

You can see how he’s interwoven biological facts with mythology as if our genetic disposition (to be hairless and upright) is an integral part of our relationship with God, but was somehow irrelevant prior to ‘Adam and Eve having their eyes opened’. I’m not opposed to the idea of interpreting creation myths in a psychological context, but, whether intentional or not, he seems to conflate religious narrative heritage with genetic heritage.

In Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today (which is good advice, by the way); Peterson invokes the Old Testament God as a ‘being’ who ensures discipline and obedience through ‘very tough love’ (my term, not his). He’s saying, in effect, that the Old Testament God reflects reality because life is harsh and full of suffering, and requires a certain self-discipline to navigate and even survive. But my interpretation is less generous. I think the Old Testament God reflects the idea of a ruler who is uncompromising and needs to use severe disciplinary measures to get people to do what he considers is best for them. In the modern world, the idea of worshipping a narcissistic tyrant or respecting someone who rules by fear is anachronistic at best and totalitarian at worst. Some people, and I’ve met them, argue that they agree with me when it comes to a mortal leader but the rules are different for God. Well, God, be it Old Testament or otherwise, is a product of the human psyche, so ‘He’ reflects what people believed in their time to be their ideal ruler.

Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient); continues this theme in a lengthy discourse entitled Christianity and its Problems, where, to be fair, he gives a balanced view in a historical context, which, for the sake of brevity, I’ll leave alone. But when he discusses Nietzsche, which he has studied in much more depth than me, he talks about the consequences of the ‘death of God’ which effectively coincided with the turn of the 20th Century and the birth of modern physics (which he doesn’t mention, but I do because it’s relevant). Basically, modern physics has given us all the technological marvels we take for granted and allowed us a lifestyle unheard of in antiquity, so an appeal to God no longer has the psychological power it once had because we now (mostly) believe that cause and effect is not dependent on supernatural or divine forces.

Peterson doesn’t discuss the effects of science, or the products of science, on our collective consciousness at all, but it’s why we are generally much more pragmatic about the reason things go wrong, as opposed to a time (not that long ago) when we were much less dependent on technology for our day to day survival. In fact, we are so dependent that we are unaware of our dependence.

Getting back to Peterson’s discussion, I disagree that nihilism replaced God or that totalitarianism, in the forms of communism and fascism, were the logical consequence of the ‘death’ of the Christian God. I contend that these forms of government arose to replace feudalism, not Christianity, and the loss of feudalism was a consequence of the industrial revolution, which no one foresaw.

To be fair, I agree that the story of Genesis is really about how evil came into the world. It’s a mythological explanation of why every single one of us is susceptible to evil. On that point Peterson and I agree. He gives an account of evil which I hadn’t considered before, where he compares it to the story of Cain and Abel, and I admit that it makes sense. He’s talking about people who become so bitter and inwardly hateful that they seek vengeance against the entire world. One can see how this applies to teenage boys who become mass shooters; a far too frequent occurrence in the US. It reminds me of a commentary in the I Ching that ‘after evil destroys everything else it destroys itself’. And self-destruction is the idea that immediately comes to mind. I went through a period of self-hatred but maybe I was just lucky that it never manifested itself in violence. In fact, I’ve never resorted to violence in any situation. Peterson himself, in one of his videos, talks about his own ‘dark times’.

I wrote a post about evil about 10 years ago, where I looked at the atrocities that people do against others, and conjectured that anyone could be a perpetrator given the right circumstances; that we delude ourselves when we claim we are too morally pure. Again, I think it’s a point where Peterson and I would agree. If you look at historical events where entire groups of people have turned against another group, the person who refuses is the extreme exception; not the norm at all. It takes enormous, unbelievable courage to stand against a violent mob of people who claim to be your brethren. Paradoxically, religion sometimes plays a role.

I rejected the biblical God, so does that make me like Cain? It was Cain’s rejection of God that was his ultimate downfall (according to Peterson). Obviously, I don’t think that at all. I think my rejection of the Old Testament God is simply my rejection of an ideal based on fear and punishment and an afterlife that’s dependent on me pleasing a jealous God. My earliest memories are ones of fear, which I believe I got from my father through some process of osmosis, as he was a psychological wreck as a consequence of his experiences in WW2 and a fearsome presence in anyone’s life. So a fearsome God was someone I could identify with in person and it didn’t endear me to a lifelong belief. I’m not judgemental of my father but I’m definitely judgemental of God.

God is something that exists inside your psyche, not out there. If the God inside you is fearsome, vengeful, jealous, absolutely judgemental; then what sort of person are you going to become? (I notice that I sometimes parrot the author I'm discussing, subconsciously.)

Peterson emphasises the importance of having values, and argues by inference that if you reject God you have to replace it with something else, which may be an ideology. I think we all search for meaning, which I’ve written about elsewhere, but he discusses his own path so to speak:

Suffering is real, and the artful infliction of suffering on another, for its own sake, is wrong. That became the cornerstone of my belief.

The cornerstone of my own belief came to me at the age of 16 when I read Albert Camus’ La Peste (The Plague). I realised that the only God I could believe in was a God who didn’t want me to believe in Them. More recently, I referred to this as a God with no ego, which is such a contradiction, but very Buddhist.

I need to say that everyone has to find their own path, their own belief system, and I’m not saying that mine is superior to Peterson’s.

Peterson makes a point that is almost trivial, yet possibly the most important in the book. He mentions, almost in passing, 3 traits: to be honest, generous and reliable. This struck a chord with me, because, despite all my faults, which Peterson would be quick to point out, these 3 personality attributes are what I’ve spent a lifetime trying to perfect and become known for.

It’s a credit to Peterson that he can make you examine your own psyche simply by discussing his own discoveries taken from his own life and his interaction with others, including his practice.

In his Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding; Peterson is at his most contentious. I have to say that I mostly agree with him when he takes on gender issues; I don’t think an anti-male culture is any more helpful that an anti-female culture, and I’ve always argued that. Gender imbalances can go both ways. He laments the fact that his 14 year old son (at the time) believed that it was a known fact that girls do better than boys at school, which is the reverse of the accepted wisdom when I was at school. I’ve heard Peterson say in an interview that there is virtually no statistical difference between girls and boys in intelligence.

On the other hand, we disagree on the issue of humanity’s impact on the planet, where I side with David Attenborough’s publicly expressed concerns regarding population growth. Peterson loves facts and data, and, by all accounts, we are seeing the highest extinction rate in the history of the planet, which is a direct consequence of humanity’s unprecedented success as a species (I’m not saying it’s a global extinction event; it’s the rate of extinction that is unprecedented). I think it’s disingenuous to compare those who are willing to face and voice this ‘truth’ with the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre, because they are both ‘anti-human’ (his coinage).

It is in this chapter that he rails against post-modern Marxists, which I won’t go into, because I studied Marxism at university and I concluded that it’s flawed in theory as well as practice. In theory (from my reading of Marx and Engel’s Manifesto) it’s an evolutionary stage that follows on from capitalism by way of a ‘revolution’ (as contradictory as that sounds) by the workers. In other words, capitalism is a stepping stone to communism. In practice, all the capitalist enterprises are taken over by the State, and that’s been a catastrophic failure in every country that experimented with it because it becomes totalitarian by default.

I actually agree pretty much with his arguments against social engineering, even though it exists in some form in all democracies. Take, for example, the social attitudinal changes towards tobacco which have happened in my lifetime. But Peterson is specifically talking about social engineering gender equality, and (according to him) it’s premised on a belief that gender is purely a social construct. As he points out, the fact that some individuals crave a sex-change clearly shows that it’s not. A boy trapped in a girl’s body, or vice versa, does not equate with gender being socially determined (his example).

One of his many ‘scenarios’, based on personal experience, depicts a bloke working on a railway gang who doesn’t fit in and is eventually tormented deliberately. Many people would call this bullying but Peterson tells the story so that we axiomatically conclude it was the bloke’s own fault. Now, I know from my own experience that I’m the one person on the gang who would probably try and help the guy fit in rather than ostracise him. So what does that make me? Too ‘agreeable’ according to Peterson.

Agreeableness, along with ‘neuroticism’ are negative ‘left’ leaning traits. ‘Openness’ is the only positive left leaning trait, according to Peterson (more on that below). ‘Conscientiousness’ is the most positive ‘right’ leaning trait, which I admit I lack. I have all the negative traits in spades. I make up for my lack of conscientiousness with a strong sense of responsibility and the aforementioned self-ascribed reliability. I hate to let people down, which sometimes makes me stressful. Peterson claims that ‘agreeable’ people don’t make good leaders. Well, neither do narcissist psychopaths, yet they seem to be over-represented.

One of his videos that had particular resonance for me was about creativity. He makes the valid claim that our personality traits are genetically determined and they influence us in ways we are not aware of, including our political leanings. The trait of ‘openness’, which is explicitly about openness to new ideas is heavily correlated with creativity. I believe creativity is often misconstrued, because there’s a school of thought that any person can become anything they want to be. I’ve always believed that to be untrue – I only have to look at my own family, because one side was distinctly artistic and the other side was good at sports.

He makes the statement (in another video) that “People, who are high in openness, if they’re not doing something creative, are like dead sticks.” This is something I can certainly identify with - I became depressed when I couldn’t express my creative urges.

In the middle of his book, he compares Socrates to Christ in the way that he faced death. (I bring this up for reasons that will become apparent.) He relates information from a friend of Socrates, Hermogenes, whom I had never heard of. From this, Peterson conjectures that Socrates went to his death willingly, having summed up the alternatives and deciding to be honest and combative with his adversaries, knowing full well the consequences. This certainly fits with what I’ve already learned about Socrates, but it’s also remarkably close to how I portrayed a character whom I’d created in fiction, with no awareness of Socrates’ assumed approach nor Peterson’s interpretation of it.

His Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street; is a self-portrait of his unconditional love for his daughter, though he wouldn’t call it that.

There is a particular passage in Peterson’s book, which is worthy of special mention, because, it’s not only true, it’s inspiring (p.62):

You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself.

Who and what do you think you are?

I think it’s pretty normal when you start reading a book (talking non-fiction), you tend to take a stance, very early on, of general agreement or opposition. It’s not unlike the well known but often unconscious effect when you appraise someone in the first 10-30 seconds of meeting them.

And this is the case with Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, in which I found myself constantly arguing with him in the first 70+ pages of its 450+ page length. For a start, I disagree with his thesis (for want of a better term) that our universal pursuit of ‘happiness’ is purely a sensory-based experience, independent of the cause. From what I’ve observed, and experienced personally, the pursuit of sensory pleasure for its own sake leads to disillusionment at best and self-destruction at worst. A recent bio-pic I saw of Eric Clapton (Life in 12 Bars) illustrates this point rather dramatically. I won’t discuss his particular circumstances – just go and see the film; it’s a warts and all confessional.

If one goes as far back as Aristotle, he wrote an entire book on the subject of ‘eudaimonia’ – living a ‘good life’, effectively – under the title, Ethics. Eudaimonia is generally translated as ‘happiness’ but ‘fulfilment’ or ‘contentment’ may be a better translation, though even they can be contentious, if one reads various scholarly appraisals. I’ve argued in the past that the most frustrating endeavours can be the most rewarding – just ask anyone who has raised children. Generally, I find that the more effort one exerts during a process of endeavour, the better the emotional reward in the end. Reward without sacrifice is not much of a reward. Ask anyone who’s won a sporting grand final, or, for that matter, written a novel.

This is a book that will challenge most people’s beliefs somewhere within its pages, and for that reason alone, it’s worth reading. In fact, many people will find it depressing, because a recurring theme or subtext of the book is that in the future humans will become virtually redundant. Redundant may be too strong a word, but leaving aside the obvious possibility that future jobs currently performed by humans may be taken over by AI, Harari claims that our very notion of ‘free will’ and our almost ‘religious’ belief in the sanctity of individualism will become obsolete ideals. He addresses this towards the end of  the book, so I’ll do the same. It’s a thick tome with a lot of ideas well presented, so I will concentrate on those that I feel most compelled to address or challenge.

Like my recent review of Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct, there is a lot that I agree upon in Homo Deus, and I’m the first to admit that many of Harari’s arguments unnerved me because they challenge some of my deeply held beliefs. Given the self-ascribed aphorism that heads my blog, this makes his book a worthy opus for discussion.

Fundamentally, Harari argues that we are really nothing more than biochemical algorithms and he provides very compelling arguments to justify this. Plus he devotes an entire chapter deconstructing the widely held and cherished notion that we have free will. I’ve written more than a few posts on the subject of free will in the past, and this is probably the pick of them. Leaving that aside for the moment, I don’t believe one can divorce free will from consciousness. Harari also provides a lengthy discussion on consciousness, where I found myself largely agreeing with him because he predominantly uses arguments that I’ve used myself. Basically, he argues that consciousness is an experience so subjective that we cannot objectively determine if someone else is conscious or not – it’s a condition we take on trust. He also argues that AI does not have to become conscious to become more intelligent than humans; a point that many people seem to overlook or just misconstrue. Despite what many people like to believe or think, science really can’t explain consciousness. At best it provides correlations between neuron activity in our brains and certain behaviours and ‘thoughts’.

Harari argues very cogently that science has all but proved the non-existence of free will and gives various examples like the famous experiments demonstrating that scientists can determine someone’s unconscious decision before the subject consciously decides. Or split brain experiments demonstrating that people who have had their corpus callosum surgically severed (the neural connection between the left and right hemispheres) behave as if they have 2 brains and 2 ‘selves’. But possibly the most disturbing are those experiments where scientists have turned rats literally into robots by implanting electrodes in their brains and then running a maze by remotely controlling them as if they were, in fact, robots and not animals.

Harari also makes the relevant point, overlooked by many, that true randomness, which lies at the heart of quantum mechanics, and seems to underpin all of reality, does not axiomatically provide free will. He argues that neuron activity in our brains, which gives us thoughts and intentions (which we call decisions), is a combination of reactions to emotions and drives (all driven by biochemical algorithms) and pure randomness. According to Harari, science has shown, at all levels, that free will is an illusion. If it is an illusion then it’s a very important one. Studies have shown that people who have been disavowed of their free will suffer psychologically. We know this from the mental health issues that people suffer when hope is severely curtailed in circumstances beyond their control. The fact is I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t want to believe that they are responsible for their own destiny within the limitations of their abilities and the rules of the society in which they live.

Harari makes the point himself, in a completely different section of the book, that given all behaviours, emotions and desires are algorithmically determined by bio-chemicals, then consciousness appears redundant. I’ve made the point before that there are organic entities that do respond biochemically to their environment without consciousness and we call them plants or vegetation. I’ve argued consistently that free will is an attribute of consciousness. Given the overall theme of Harari’s book, I would contend that AI will never have consciousness and therefore will never have free will.

In a not-so-recent post, I argued how beliefs drive science. Many have made the point that most people basically determine a belief heuristically or intuitively and then do their best to rationalise it. Even genius mathematicians (like John Nash) start with a hunch and then employ their copious abilities in logic and deduction to prove themselves right.

My belief in free will is fundamental to my existentialist philosophy and is grounded more on my experience than on arguments based in science or philosophy. I like to believe that the person I am today is a creation of my own making. I base this claim on the fact that I am a different person to the one who grew up in a troubled childhood. I am far from perfect yet I am a better person and, most importantly, someone who is far more comfortable in their own skin than I was with my younger self. The notion that I did this without ‘free will’ is one I find hard to construe.

Having said that, I’ve also made the point in previous posts that memory is essential to consciousness and a sense of self. I’ve suffered from temporary memory loss (TGA or transient global amnesia) so I know what it’s like to effectively lose one’s mind. It’s disorientating, even scary, and it demonstrates how tenuous our grip on reality can be. So I’m aware, better than most, that memory is the key to continuity.

Harari’s book is far more than a discussion on consciousness and free will. Like Lent’s The Patterning Instinct (reviewed here), he discusses the historical evolvement of culture and its relevance to how we see ourselves. But his emphasis is different to Lent’s and he talks about 20th Century politics in secular societies as effectively replacing religion. In fact, he defines religion (using examples) as what gives us meaning. He differentiates between spirituality and religion, arguing that there is a huge ‘gap’ between them. According to Harari, spirituality is about ‘the journey’, which reminds me of my approach to writing fiction, but what he means is that people who undertake ‘spiritual’ journeys are iconoclasts. I actually agree that religion is all about giving meaning to our lives, and I think that in secular societies, humanist liberalism has replaced religion in that role for many people, which is what Harari effectively argues over many pages.

Politically, he argues that in the 20th Century we had a number of experiments, including the 2 extremes of communism and fascism, both of which led to totalitarian dictatorships; as well as socialist and free market capitalism, which are effectively the left and right of democracies in Western countries. He explains how capitalism and debt go hand in hand to provide all the infrastructure and technological marvels we take for granted and why economic growth is the mantra of all politicians. He argues that knowledge growth is replacing population growth as the engine of economic growth whilst acknowledging that the planet won’t cope. Unlike Jeremy Lent, he doesn’t discuss the unlearned lessons of civilization collapse in the past - most famously, the Roman Empire.

I think that is most likely a topic for another post, so I will return to the thesis that religion gives us meaning. I believe I’ve spent my entire life searching for meaning and that I’ve found at least part of the answer in mathematics. I say ‘part’ because mathematics provides meaning for the Universe but not for me. In another post (discussing Eugene Wigner’s famous essay) I talked about the 2 miracles: that the Universe is comprehensible and that same Universe gave rise to an intelligence that could access that comprehensibility. The medium that allows both these miracles to occur is, of course, mathematics.

So, in some respects, virtually irrelevant to Harari’s tome, mathematics is my religion. As for meaning for myself, I think we all look for purpose, and purpose can be found in relationships, in projects and in just living. Curiously, Harari, towards the very end of his book, argues that ‘dataism’ will be the new religion, because data drives algorithms and encompasses everything from biological life forms to art forms like music. All digital data can be distilled into zeros and ones, but the mathematics of the Universe is not algorithmic, though others might disagree. In other words, I don’t believe we live inside a universe-size computer simulation.

The subtitle of Harari’s book is A Brief History of Tomorrow, and basically he argues that our lives will be run by AI algorithms that will be more clever than our biochemical algorithms. He contends that, contrary to expectations, the more specialist a job is the more likely it will be taken over by an algorithm. This does not only include obvious candidates like medical prognoses and stockmarket decisions (already happening) but corporate takeover decisions, in-the-field military decisions, board appointments and project planning decisions. Harari argues that there will be a huge class of people he calls the ‘useless class’, which would be most of us.

And this is where he argues that our liberal individualistic freedom ideals will become obsolete, because algorithms will understand us better than we do. This is premised on the idea that our biochemical algorithms, that unbeknownst to us, already control everything we do, will be overrun by AI algorithms in ways that we won’t be conscious of.  He gives the example of Angelina Jolie opting to have a double mastectomy based, not on any symptoms she had, but on the 87% probability she would get breast cancer calculated by an algorithm that looked at her genetic data. Harari extrapolates this further by predicting that in the future we will all have biomedical monitoring to a Google-like database that will recommend all our medical decisions. What’s more the inequality gap will widen because wealthy people will be genetically enhanced ‘techno-humans’ and, whilst it will trickle down, the egalitarian liberalist ideal will vanish.

Most of us find this a scary scenario, yet Harari argues that it’s virtually inescapable based on the direction we are heading, whereby algorithms are already attempting to influence our decisions in voting, purchasing and lifestyle choices. He points out that Facebook has already demonstrated that it has enough information on its users to profile them better than their friends, and sometimes even their families and spouses. So this is Orwellian, only without the police state.

All in all, this is a brave new world, but I don’t think it’s inevitable. Reading his book, it’s all about agency. He argues that we will give up our autonomous agency to algorithms, only it will be a process by stealth, starting with the ‘smart’ agents we already have on our devices that are like personal assistants. I’ve actually explored this in my own fiction, whereby there is a symbiosis between humans and AI (refer below).

Life experiences are what inform us and, through a process of cumulative ordeals and achievements, create the persona we present to the world and ourselves. Future life experiences of future generations will no doubt include interactions with AI. As a Sci-Fi writer, I’ve attempted to imagine that at some level: portraying a super-intelligent-machine interface with a heroine space pioneer. In the same story I juxtaposed my heroine with an imaginary indigenous culture that was still very conscious of their place in the greater animal kingdom. My contention is that we are losing that perspective at our own peril. Harari alludes to this throughout his opus, but doesn’t really address it. I think our belief in our individualism with our own dreams and sense of purpose is essential to our psychological health, which is why I’m always horrified when I see oppression, whether it be political or marital or our treatment of refugees. I read Harari’s book as a warning, which aligns with his admission that it’s not prophecy.


Addendum:  I haven't really expressed my own views on consciousness explicitly, because I've done that elsewhere, when I reviewed Douglas Hofstadter's iconoclastic and award-winning book, Godel Escher Bach.

Socrates – the first philosopher

I’m aware that this is a moot point, as many claim that Thales was the first (Western) philosopher, and some (myself included) have argued that Pythagoras deserves special mention. In fact, both Socrates and Pythagoras were influential to Plato, and Plato has arguably been the most influential philosopher for the rest of us, though many would cite Aristotle, Plato’s most famous pupil.

The point is (as I’ve discussed elsewhere) the long and historically resilient discipline of Western Philosophy started in ancient Greece, and along the way, spawned science, mathematics, logic (think algorithms), epistemology, ethics and ontological ruminations.

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting (not to mention unusually structured) book called Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day by Philip Matyszak. I bought it in a book store in Bowral called The Good Reader (365 Bong Bong St.) – happy to give them a plug. Bowral is best known as the place where Don Bradman grew up (American readers will have no idea what I’m talking about, but all cricket-loving readers will). I also grew up not far from there, though my current home is a good 8hr drive further south (via a dual-carriage freeway).

The subtitle effectively gives the premise for this tome: Where to eat, drink and meet a philosopher – your guide to the cradle of Western culture. In other words, it’s a tour guide of Athens set a ‘generation’ after the Persian war against the Spartans (the famous 300) when Socrates was still alive and Plato was yet to be born. In fact, at one point the author gives a specific historical reference by referring to the ‘urban deme of Kollytos… where in two years’ time, a muscular little baby called Plato will be born.’ In an ‘Author’s Note’ (before the Index) Matyszak explains that he chose a time ‘just before the [Peloponnesian] war began… as it marks both the peak of Athenian splendour and the point just before a certain innocence was lost.’

Not so long ago I reviewed Homer’s Odyssey, and Matyszak cites Homer more than a few times, including specific references, even a quotation, from The Odyssey. Both The Odyssey and Matyszak’s ‘guide’ give a lot of attention to the Gods, and Athena in particular. The point is that the Athenians give a lot of attention to their Gods, with Athena, not surprisingly, having special significance. As Matyszak points out, she is the only Greek Goddess to have a city named after her, which stands to this day. A particular point I conjectured about in that post is confirmed by Matyszak, when he explains that the Athenians take their Gods very seriously, treating them as real entities that can and do interfere in the affairs of mankind. In other words, their beliefs were no less important to them than many people’s religious beliefs are today.

This is not a book I’d necessarily recommend to women readers, as it’s clear that ancient Athens was male chauvinistic in the extreme, which is arguably something else we have inherited from their culture.

Matyszak is very erudite as one would expect from someone who has a doctorate in Roman History from St. John’s College, Oxford, and has also written Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day (obviously a literary trend here). The book is littered with references to words taken from the ancient Greek without our awareness. For example, ‘sycophant’ means ‘fig tell-tale’ and refers to a time when the export of dried figs from Greece was illegal. Another example is ‘symposium’, which could be a philosophical or political discussion attended by someone like Socrates or an orgy of drunken debauchery, or both.

Socrates is referenced no less than 15 times, 3 times more than Plato, but not as often as Athena, who is cited 27 times (not quite double). The point is that I learnt quite a bit about Socrates that I didn’t know beforehand, and Matyszak presents him as someone to be admired: intellectually, morally and courageously.

For a start I didn’t know that Socrates had been a warrior, and even acquitted himself well in battle, fighting a rearguard action ‘like an offended cat’ whilst retreating and, on another occasion, ‘saved the life of the young Alkibiades in a heated battle.’ He was famously henpecked by his wife, Xanthippe, whose attacks extended to the physical, including throwing a chamber pot over his head and ripping off his cloak in the market. According to Matyszak, ‘When asked why he did not return her blows, Socrates replied that Xanthippe was a wife, not a boxing partner.’ One page contains a list of reputed sayings from Socrates, some of which are worth sharing.

An unexamined life is not worth living.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that thing is that I know nothing.

If women were equal to men, they would be superior.

Every man should marry. A good wife will make him happy, a bad wife will make him a philosopher.

I was too honest to be a politician and live.

If everyone’s problems were put in one big pile for everyone to take equal shares, most people would be happy to take their own and run.

But, personally, I think the best saying is the one that seems to epitomise his own credo:

To live with honour in this world, actually be what you try to seem to be.

The Oracle at Delphi (who gets a section to herself) purportedly told a young Socrates to ‘know yourself’ and ‘nothing in excess’, both of which are just as relevant today. She also supposedly said that Socrates was the ‘wisest’ (though not to Socrates) – a claim I’ve heard before.

Socrates, by all accounts, was not charismatic or good-looking and was not materialistic. Yet he was wealthy enough to buy his own armour, which was expected in his day if one was conscripted; and all males between 17 and 59 were apparently. Those that couldn’t afford armour still served.

Matyszak gives a good account of Athen’s democracy, which has resonances with democratic governments of today, even though it’s not as democratic as some people think. Certainly, it would have been a revolutionary concept in its day – roughly 500BC. But the resonances with today is that it was divided between the masses and the aristocrats who mutually distrusted and disliked each other. In today’s world one could replace the aristocrats with corporate leaders and the masses with all the employees that the corporations depend upon.

Back in ancient Athens the masses comprised, not only everyone who produced everything, but also the army, upon which the aristocracy depended. The aristocracy would have overturned the democratic process if they could because they believed that they were meant to rule and the masses were like parasites. This is a point of view that I believe is still held by many people in positions of power today.

To be fair to Matyszak, he describes the process in some detail, so my summary loses some nuance in its brevity. One of the points worth noting is that the assembly was not very tolerant of someone providing expert advice in an area that was not their expertise, even if they were aristocratic. For example, they would expect someone talking about ship-building to be a shipwright.

It’s well known that Socrates fell foul of the assembly. Aristophanes, a celebrated playwright, ‘in a satirical play, The Clouds, [depicted] Socrates (and philosophers in general) as mocking the Gods and teaching dishonest arguments.’ Specifically, ‘Aristophanes has a young man learning how to use sophistic arguments to avoid paying his debts, and is taught by Socrates to disrespect his parents.’

I don’t think anyone knows the full political context of Socrates’ demise, but we can assume that he did not back down from a fight, physically or intellectually. He was, one suspects, someone who was willing to die for his principles.

Does he deserve the epithet, the first philosopher? It needs to be pointed out that the famous Socratic dialogue style was given to us by Plato, though many believe that he learnt this from Socrates himself. Nevertheless, the Socratic dialogues of Plato (the only ones recorded) undoubtedly reflect Plato’s views and not Socrates’, who may or may not have agreed with his student on specific arguments where he is represented.

I’ve always felt that the core feature of philosophy, as we’ve inherited it in the West, is argument, and it seems to me that this particular method of philosophy started with Socrates. Philosophy without argument is prescriptive like the Ten Commandments or the sayings of Confucius. Argument, augmented by analysis, is how I would describe philosophy as it’s practiced today.