Month: May 2017

“Explain that to me again!” was the title of a talk I gave a couple of times recently, once to Teesside Sceptics in the Pub and once to Teesside Humanists, with an entirely new audience each time. The subject was Dan Dennett’s most comprehensive exploration of consciousness in his latest book “Bacteria to Bach and Back”. As with the previous occasion, when I gave a brief taster version which went as far as introducing Dennett on the topic of consciousness, both audiences gave me plenty of interaction with questions and ideas. Quite different audiences, with different starting points, each challenging in their own way. Thanks to Terry Waites for giving me the opportunities and to the audiences for their participation.

My main aim is to counteract the denial, by many scientists and more scientific philosophers, that Consciousness (and Self and Free Will) are somehow unreal or merely illusory epiphenomena. Dennett’s response to science’s (current) inability arrive at a well-formed watertight definition that explains this thing we call consciousness, let alone our subjective experience of it (the hard problem), is a plea to suspend disbelief and to go round his evolutionary arguments again, as many times as it takes.

Experience shows that new things, and entirely new types of thing, emerge from this strange-loopy thing we call evolution. They say “a good workman never blames his tools” but as Dan quotes “in the same way as you can’t achieve much carpentry with your bare hands, you can’t do much new thinking with your bare brain”. The inability of science to explain consciousness may be a failure of the tools of explanation, not a failure of scientists to use current scientific thinking tools. Consciousness and subjectivity are clearly – almost by objective definition – not the types of object current scientific thinking can get a handle on. By repeating the evolutionary synthesis – explain that to me again – science will not only continue to attempt new explanations with existing tools, but will find new thinking tools, new ways of scientific thinking, will also emerge. Only then can a definitive satisfactory scientific explanation of consciousness (and self and free-will) be found.

Thinking about thinking tools is the domain of philosophers, and Dennett’s Bet is that only if science suspends disbelief and engages with philosophers in the evolution of all our thinking, will new solutions be found. We will not find a solution to the hard problem of consciousness simply by assembling the objects we can currently define with the tools we already use.

[I gave a better updated version of this talk originally entitled “Explain That To Me Again” to the Newcastle Skeptics in November 2017. The original May 2017 deck is also here .]

[Post Note: See also Dennett’s Bet
and a Review of B2BnB I did for New Humanist.]

I have many times left hanging the idea that causation is seriously weird, if you get down to looking closely at what we really mean or try to explain how it works.

“… important assumptions about time and causality at base — seriously weird concepts when you research beyond common sense — a recurring issue of mine …” [Already “recurring” back in 2006]

In fact it came up again just yesterday as I was giving my talk on the reality of our conscious will to the Teesside Humanists. (More on that later, but my topic has been Dan Dennett’s latest evolutionary explanations of consciousness in “Bacteria to Bach and Back”.)

Like many philosophical conundrums, what you mean and the definitions you use, leave you with choices but precious few firm conclusions. Here Stoic Massimo Pigliucci shares his (technical) slides on causation at the “Cause and Process in Evolution” 2017 conference at KLI Vienna these past few days. Massimo is providing the philosophical help to scientists in the same way I see Dan doing, though I don’t see any Dennett in Massimo’s paper or anywhere in #CAPIE2017 ?

Firstly I have to say I agree with Pigliucci that Philosophy and Science must be seen as “overlapping magisteria” – the essence of my “good fences make good neighbours” message – we can draw definitional lines in the sand around our fields of interest, but the boundaries have to be porous and flexible enough for proper collaborative progress. Scientists dissing philosophy and building defensive walls helps no-one. Philosophy has useful thinking tools, to use Dennett’s language.

Also agree with Pigliucci, after Ernst Mayr, that

“Ultimate” causes are no more ultimate than “proximate” ones. Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (*) is an expansion [dare I say, evolution], but not a radical revision or rejection, of the (so-called) Modern Synthesis [and (so-called) Deductive Nomological views?].

Can’t help thinking that controversy around group selection effects could also be resolved by such enlightened thinking. His list of (example) areas of debate where philosophy and science really need each other is also spot on:

• Species concepts in biology
• Definitions and uses of “gene” [and “meme” I’d say]
• Discussions of the concept of race [and cultural / religious “tribes” I’d say]
• Nature of evolutionary theory
• Epistemic limits of evolutionary psychology, medical research, neuroscience, social science
• Neuroscience of consciousness
• (Metaphysical) interpretations of quantum mechanics
• Desirability of “post-empirical” science (see string wars) etc., etc., etc. ..

[That “post empirical science” already in there. It’s my agenda. And – Backward / Top down causality also in there. This has to help with strange-loopy explanations of subjective consciousness level objects (ie subjects) supervenient / arising on the stack of materialist physical science. Dennett again. And – Functional (what for) explanation of why?!? Dennett again. And lots more good stuff in Massimo’s paper. As he says many accounts of causation are themselves confused. I need to understand “Conserved Quantities Theory” of causation. Later (below).]

Question – there must be some good reason why Massimo Pigliucci doesn’t see Dan Dennett as part of this story?

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[Post Note – Riffing on Pigliucci’s words on causation as exchange of conserved quantities.]

OK I think I get it. At the smallest reductive (irreducible) levels of physics, this is the model in use. Gluons and gravitons etc as the transferrers of force between the massive particles, and the same force as the transfer of momentum between larger Newtonian billiard-ball objects. Reductive science would have ALL causes – chemical, biological, mental – built on top of physics as aggregations of forces between particles. But these force and particle models are themselves simply analogies to predict and explain observed behaviour.

Some of us (eg Rovelli) would contend that information – any significant difference in potential – is the fundamental particle underlying the standard model anyway, whether you’re into strings or quantum-loop-gravity or whatever. Causation as transfer of conserved quantities > Collier’s transfer of information, same thing. Information is simply a difference in some property.

The example of the plant dying “because” I didn’t water it? It DOES fit the same model. Obviously there’s a complex string / stack / network of irreducible causes between me, the water and the plant and its life, where the mass of water is a conserved property being transferred through the chemical and biological processes. It’s clearly short-hand to reduce to a single causal statement, but it’s not of a fundamentally different kind, simply a higher aggregation of the same kind. Proximate or Ultimate (or First even?) is a matter of reductive choice of metaphor. Of course this throws up that at all levels, above some irreducible one – even Newtonian billiard balls above the standard & quantum models – it’s a metaphorical aggregation.

What this throws into question is more the issue of whether there is really ANY (real) irreducible level – other than information, the epistemic one – and that we are in practice always using an aggregated metaphor at ANY level. In causation, we have something that would remain the same unless some “event” exchanges a quantity. Feels almost tautological, or circular, in that we simply shifted the problem of causation to what causes the exchange event. [End riff.]

(*) EES (Extended Evolutionary Synthesis) would appear to be Templeton funded. The religious connection always causes some people a problem, but it’s just another good-neighbour / good-fences case to me.

[Post Note: And here are Massimo’s summary notes of all the CAPIE2017 (Cause and Process in Evolution) conference presentations.]

Part of my agenda is being honest about the limits to science. Some parts of the Science-PR machine will defend to their death, that no such limits exist, but in fact such dogmatic defence in itself shows up these limits, is one of the limitations.

I haven’t fully unpicked these recent stories yet, but wanted to capture them as part of the bigger story.

Pop Goes the Universe – A Feb 2017 SciAm article on alternative interpretations of CMB observations.

A Cosmic Controversy – Response to the above signed by 30-odd scientists, defending the empirical scientific nature of existing accepted theories.

33 Physicists Sign Angry Letter – 11th May Gizmodo article about the controversy (hat tip to Sabine Hossenfelder).

What If Cosmic Inflation Is Wrong? – 11th May Forbes piece by Ethan Siegel, also shared and discussed in this FB Thread.

Is Inflationary Cosmology Science? – Sean Carroll’s blog on 10th May asks the question I’m asking; the implied question that drew the defensive response to the original piece.

Big Bang as in something from nothing, and Big Bang in the sense of its particular inflationary explanations are separate questions but are connected by ignored limits to science and self-imposed limits to scientistic thinking. Both these are metaphysical issues, or theological ones if you prefer. Matters of politics rather than science or rationality.

Something from “literally” nothing is not a scientific question and by definition can never be amenable to testable and falsifiable science. Some scientists get angry at that suggestion. The Science-PR machine (eg Dawkins) sticks its head in the sand even though Krauss (author of “Something from Nothing”) is honest enough to back off from the literal, absolute view.

Particular explanations of the progress of universal evolution involve adding fudges (like particular values for the cosmological constant, or the existence of dark matter and energy) to make the equations fit the observations. That’s not wrong in itself. It’s how science often proceeds, with explanations that are ultimately proven wrong, but which allow understanding to evolve as observation and revised theories are developed and justified. It’s a holding pattern.

But part of the holding pattern is to circle the wagons in defence of all suggestions otherwise.

The reason these two issues are connected by a common problem is the fear of a “god of the gaps” being conveniently invoked to explain not only the primary gap (something vs nothing) but some of the other inconvenient gaps in fundamental and near-bleeding-edge science – the “standard” models of both particles and cosmology – where even such everyday things as mass, gravity and rules of causation remain seriously weird, for want of a better word. Nothing important then? Something worth defending?

But dogmatic defence can hide genuine non-scientific issues with the processes of science. The politics of defence is not itself scientific.

I’m an atheist. Science moves in mysterious ways, there is no god of the gaps, in fact no god of supernatural causation and purpose. The natural world is driven entirely by natural processes amenable to natural explanation. But science is not only the sum total of our scientific knowledge of the world it is also the meta-science of how science proceeds as a human endeavour. Science can only ever be the sum of this human product, however carefully we eliminate extraneous subjective influence and use the empirical tests of falsifiability of objective observation.

The thing is we can never entirely remove the human perspective from the whole stack of knowledge and processes. It’s an anthropic effect, not the anthropic principle, simple a perspective. Our observations from our evolved position in our universe, and theories built on them, are anthropocentric. The ultimate subjectivity of science. Our natural rationality is more than the strictly objective, causally reductive science that science would will it to be.

As well as glossing over the necessarily fundamental gap in cosmic knowledge, this anthropic ignorance has also air-brushed out of the picture, in the name of politically defensive warfare, perfectly valid alternative theories for the evolution of the cosmos and its properties. It’s highly probable the 33 scientists rejecting the alternatives suggest by “Pop Goes the Cosmos” misunderstood the suggestions actually being made against the status-quo of science. We’re only human after all, but can we ever learn to compensate for our anthropic perspective?

[Refs to be added. Brandon Carter / Rick Ryals.]

Skin in the Game (SITG) is the 5th Volume of @NNTaleb’s Incerto (work in progress), Incerto being the umbrella name for the @NNTaleb books, another “trilogy in five parts” it seems:

Incerto:
Fooled by Randomness
– The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2004)
The Black Swan
– The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)
The Bed of Procrustes
– Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010?)
Antifragile
– Things that Gain from Disorder (2012)
Skin in the Game
– (Work in progress) (Some chapters available.)

Taleb makes you work for his value – skin in the game – so, whilst he makes it clear it’s not necessary to read them in order, they do each have subtitles, and I found it useful to unpick which was which in what order. There, done.

This is what prompted me to check:

Just wrote the central comment of Skin in the Game:
Systems learn by removing parts. pic.twitter.com/YalzjWcJut

— NassimNicholasTaleb (@nntaleb) May 2, 2017

Yes indeed. And very apt in the week many of us are remembering the lessons we learned from #Pirsig.

A blog I linked a couple of posts ago for the two-part post on Robert Pirsig and Post-Modernism has the only blog archive I’ve ever seen that stretches back further than my own!

Back to 1994 (2001 in my case). Not even Jorn Barger / Robot Wisdom “the original blogger” has a such a continuous archive.