Preamble

This is probably as close as I’ll get to an actual review of Tim Bollands “Life the Universe and Consciousness”.  I’ve made significant comments and references here three times already:

• • Problems, Problems — Life, the Universe and Consciousness
  • Life the Universe and Consciousness #2
  • Life, the Universe and Nothing New Under the Sun?

And in that time there have also been half a dozen Twitter threads, and as many personal message threads, attempting to unpick or clarify one aspect or another. Twitter is not the best medium for such dialogue. Brevity means a blurring between explicit questions and cryptic rhetorical statements and my own style (after Dennett / Rappaport) is to test (my own) understanding by making statements of what I think I’ve heard / read “in my own words” – only to elicit the amusing response “nowhere do I say that”. Oh well. This difficulty is compounded for me by my own prejudiced position to cut to the chase and compare what I’m reading with positions I’ve already taken on much the same source references. But we got there in the end and I’m sure it will prove to be worth it. So here goes:

Review

For such an all encompassing topic – the “Life the Universe and …” meme is a clue –  the book is comprehensive in scope and meticulous in structure and detail. Sure, for every source quoted to support some aspect of Bollands’ solution or argument, or illustrate some problem he’s describing, you might consider an omission you would have chosen as an alternative yourself, but this is one 400 page book where whole libraries have been written; whole civilisations have arisen and fallen.

The meticulous nature is embodied by Bollands’ methodology that runs through the entire first half of the book and which involves repeated use of the same 4 part syllogistic structure. He proceeds by progressively changing the premises and the wording of apparent conclusions as he works through the 12 problems he is seeking to solve with his Universal Life thesis in the last 3 chapters.

The strictures of the chosen structure cry out maybe for some matrix or graphical representation, a map of the territory we’re traversing. As it is, the near repetition demands concentration on what exactly is being said differently at each iteration. Another consequence is that so many of the statements developing the argument along the way, of what might be said from some philosophical or scientific position, are not assertions Bollands is positing. The mix of bold and italic emphasis helps but, in the first half and second chapter, even much of that represents extensions to the problem statements and not necessarily the assertions Bollands is in fact wishing to make. I had to double check a few of my readings of those, I can tell you.

At the risk of labouring this difficulty, the structure of the work is crucial to understanding what is being said. As Bollands has tweeted – publicly, not just in response to my clarifications – it really is necessary to follow the entire logic as laid-out in order. Fair to say it’s not a book for the casual reader, nor any faint-heart challenged by reading many statements they disagree with along the way.

Bollands is addressing “the big problem” with science in the 21st C – enumerated as twelve distinct problems across Life, the Universe and Consciousness. I reviewed these in the “Problems Problems” piece so won’t repeat here, even though they are obviously elaborated in a great deal more detail in the text. So here, what of his Universal Life solution?

The idea that objects in the world exhibit qualities of life and conscious awareness is not new. Intelligent-life-like. As “a way of talking” the intentional stance is applied routinely  to objects we wouldn’t conventionally think of as alive or intelligent in any biological or wilful, purposeful sense. Some (eg Dennett) would go beyond seeing this as simply a way of talking, and insist we suspend disbelief in the reality of conscious will as we evolve our understanding of what it really is. Bollands goes further and posits that life and consciousness, as we know them intuitively, really are much more universal in reality. That is, they’re not just a feature of more highly evolved complex structures, but extend right back to those things we might think of as (fundamental physical)  particles, (chemically elemental) atoms and (chemically compound) molecules. Components of the world more generally.

Two things are apparent about Bollands’ position very early on. Firstly, his intuitive conception of life, despite also addressing many different incomplete and overlapping – and hence never fully agreeable – scientific definitions of life, is fairly conventional, concerning maintenance of the individual and species in the face of environmental attrition. His Universal Life definition goes beyond this, but this core feature is non-contentious, if hard to pin down objectively.

Secondly, pretty much everything we can say about life, we need to say something about consciousness too. They go hand in hand. Problems with the one, in some sense, involve solutions with the other. In (my) summary:

• • The stuff we call life (and indeed consciousness) resides universally in many of those things we rational and scientifically-informed inhabitants of the 21st C would call physics and chemistry, not just biology.
  • The nearest thing we have to an objective science-friendly definition of that stuff we call life (and consciousness) – beyond conventional incomplete definitions about its reproduction and maintenance against environmental attrition – is the fundamental circular process idea that living things create themselves from other living things.
  • (Taken together, this doesn’t say every “thing” is alive, simply that every living thing is in some real sense self-assembled from other living things, for its living purposes. Other non-living objects are structured from the same components but only via the action of external forces and processes, for no purpose attributable to the thing.)

So what is the point of a review? Sell more books? Criticise the intellectual content?

Bollands is in good company in that there is many an important book where turning my critical annotations into coherent sentences would result in a critique longer than the book itself. To what end?

Bollands is in good company also in that I’d place him firmly in the “close but no cigar” camp. A category that includes: the modern panpsychists, Goff, Kastrup and Strawson; many an evolutionary philosopher Dennett, Hofstadter, James, Whitehead, Pirsig, McGilchrist and the EES crowd; some of the free-thinking scientists Smolin, Rovelli, Tegmark, Deutsch & Marletto, Verlinde, England and the IIT crowd. Am I saying that if Bollands, like all these other illustrious people, were to change their theses to accommodate words to suit me, then we would have the one true metaphysics, the one grand unified theory? Nope.

What I’m saying is I 99% agree with Bollands both in terms of the problems with 21st C science and in terms of the validity of his proposed solution. My important criticism is primarily linguistic. It’s about the audience that needs to hear the message in order to consider modifying their world-view as a result, and it’s about what they will hear in the choice of words. It’s not about being right, it’s about successful communication, understanding and outcomes. Bollands first objective is understanding.

In  the same way as I say to the panpsychists, I could agree with everything you say if you said it was proto-conscious-stuff that permeates the world (pan-proto-psychism) rather than “consciousness” itself, I say to Bollands why not say universal-proto-life rather than purposeful “life as we know it” that permeates the whole world? The fact I have my own pet-theory, built on the shoulders of giants who’ve said it all before, about what that proto-stuff really might be, is neither here nor there.

The language problem is how will 21st C century scientists respond when a philosopher tries to tell them life and consciousness are more fundamental than the objects of their science? Ridicule. (Even Dennett, a hero of mine on the right side of this topic has been known to respond with ridicule in the name of “pan-niftiness”. He nevertheless entertains pan-proto-psychic ideas. Strawson tries the opposite linguistic tack, suggesting all will be well if simply use the familiar word “physical” to describe conscious life, then the physical scientists will give the idea an easier ride. He’s nevertheless transparent that this is simply a tactical, linguistic convenience; your equally valid choice may differ.)

Life, like consciousness, is problematic in science in achieving a single agreed objective definition not because it is vague, but because it is many different things evolved on multi-variate spectra in many layers of increasing complexity (*). I happen to think it’s more honest to acknowledge this before projecting intuitive human scale experience of life and consciousness on prehistoric, primordial elements of the cosmos.
(* One difference of understanding and credibility here, despite the evolutionary model, Bollands appears to suggest the same “infinite complexity” at all levels.)

Like Bollands, and like Hofstadter and Dennett jointly and individually, I have no problem with “circular” definitions either. Knowledge and understanding of the world, like the world itself, evolves through “strange loops”. True definitions, like all species, arise only with hindsight.

Also, like Bollands, I see that life and consciousness, whatever they are in any definitive sense, they go hand in hand. Bollands explicitly posits there is no distinction between the behaviours of living and conscious things. They are inseparable. Although distinct from fundamental / metaphysical considerations of life and consciousness, imagined applications of AI and A-Life often turn up in thought experiments about what we really mean by them. Unsurprisingly Bollands also mentions some aspects of these. I have been of the firm opinion that we will never have anything deserving of the name Artificial Intelligence (beyond complex self-learning algorithmic behaviour) until we also have Artificial Life. And, when we do, we will have created or helped to evolve new instances of real life and real intelligence. But we digress.

Life the Universe and Consciousness is worth the read, and Bollands’ Universal Life is worth the effort it will take to understand. Even if ultimately you don’t agree with it and can’t see how empirical evidence could ever bring it into the body of objective scientific knowledge, I would hope some of the more open-minded scientists and scientific philosophers give it head-space. Like Dennett’s last epistle to the scientists, we need you to read this, and then read it again … we need it to change your world view.

Without that change of world-view it’s hard to imagine how any scientist could entertain a sentence like this from Bollands’ final summary of Universal Life being applied to things living at the level of physical science:

“When a living thing acts freely,
selectively and purposefully,
it is acting consciously,
motivated by its experiences,
values and beliefs.”

Even a sympathetic reader such as myself might baulk at beliefs, at a level below higher evolved intelligence. You can already hear the updated mocking response “What, you’re not only saying an electron is conscious (and alive) but now you’re saying it has beliefs? Pull the other one.” This linguistic issue remains my main – only – reservation. Pulling so many words from the level of existing human experience – with all their baggage – into this fundamental physical / metaphysical space seems to greatly diminish the chances of successful communication to its target audience. (I shall probably come back to this sentence in a future post, relating it to the similar work of others.)

Unlike quite a few of the books I’ve put in that “close but no cigar” category, Life the Universe and Consciousness is not “a book I feel I could have written”. If nothing else, I wouldn’t have had the patience to construct it so carefully and follow it through. Indeed, I almost ran out of the patience to properly read it.

It’s not as much fun to read as Douglas Adams, but I’m glad Bollands wrote it. I hope enough will take it seriously enough to follow the logic. It’s a valuable extension to the current panpsychist movement.

Although I’ve not being doing much original writing recently – very busy at work, home & garden, and learning some semantic-web programming(!) – I’m still following the panpsychism traffic via twitter and via hits on the blog. I still owe Tim Bollands a considered review – he’s in good company with my “close but no cigar” verdict. He’s really looking for understanding rather than agreement so he deserves at least that. (Update, review done.) However, some old blog links getting hits the last two days, that joined-up some dots in my evolving evolutionary information thesis. Spooky, as I used to say.

A piece that intrigued me way back in 2002 – like the “e to the i pi =-1” (Euler’s Identity) linking 3 irrational “numbers” – a thought that linked quanta, information and life. (Not to forget that same identity is very close to the integration of singularities in turbulent flow – Navier-Stokes – at all scales.) Anyway, Apoorva Patel’s first piece linked above was Quantum Algorithms and the Genetic Code. On a re-read today, as well as that initial “Wow!” at the linking of quantum mechanics, DNA and information processing, it is fascinating in its own right on evolution as an information processing algorithm. Something that has since become central to all of my thinking.

Despite all the consciousness “hard problem” and “zombie” distractions with David Chalmers work, or other people’s interactions with it, recalling in 2005 that his important book on the topic “The Conscious Mind — In Search of a Fundamental Theory” actually made a big impression on me in terms of the fundamental nature of information. A name-check to David Deutsch in the same piece. All roads lead to IIT, EES and Universal Constructionism (UC). I suspect Bolland’s Universal Life (UL) may in fact be close to UC, despite quite different philosophical gestation, since ultimately his definition of life is about living things “making themselves” (not just reproduction and sustenance but assembling from increasingly “atomic” but equally living components. The distraction for me in all these things is choosing baggage-laden words like living and conscious, to describe the “lower” levels).

David Lavery’s (2004) “Evil Genius” time-travel narrative idea to explore different philosophical metaphysical views of consciousness, especially the Cartesian turn where it went off the rails into scientism and objective dualism. A story which strangely links to this other book idea of my own which started here as “Ishmael’s Daughter”. (I have quite well-developed off-line versions of this project as a bio-travel chautauqua in the manner of a Pirsigian but watery US “buddy-movie / road trip” – Lila meets Zen and the Art?Oh, wait, Pirsig already did that.)

I previously devoted a whole post and made several other references to a new book by A T Bollands “Life the Universe and Consciousness“.

Although addressing many of the same issues, problems with physical science, which are driving other current philosophers in the direction of panpsychism, Bollands is a “Universal Lifer”. In his book we find out for the first time what that means.

As a self-published project Bollands has made good use of Twitter to market his thinking into many of the discussions clustered around Goff and Kastrup. As well as the on-line extracts we have been treated to his Twelve Intractable Problems as a thread of tweets. (The topic of my previous post.)

I’d not completed my read yet, so as usual the start of this “review” post honestly lays bare my own prejudices and pet-hates on initial acquaintance. My main reason for reading, as ever, is to find convergence with my own cybernetics agenda, how systems regulate their own existence in their environment, and my own pan-proto-psychist thinking towards that. That self-regulation is very close to definitions of life, and the response to the environment is very close to definitions of consciousness, from good-old thermostats upwards. So the fit is clear.

As well as the Twelve Intractable Problems which take up half the page count and a chapter each, the short introductory chapter is a selective potted history of world-views from Aristotle to Copenhagen and Kuhn. His point is to set out a blueprint for how problems with existing knowledge get resolved and solved. This he bases on the enhancement of the Copernican revolution by the likes of Descartes, Kepler and Newton questioning and fixing the beliefs on which earlier models were based. Seems straightforward enough, so we await how these are applied to each of the 12 problems and his eventual Universal Life conclusions.

The Douglas Adams allusion which originally caught my attention in the title is continued in chapter epigraphs so far, Dirk Gently as well as H2G2. I also like his “bag of beans” allegorical tale as individual beans become aware of their fellow beans and their bag.

There are inevitably pet-hates too. More of the Galileo mythology. And despite references to Chalmers, Smolin and (later) Dennett, they are limited so far as I can see to their earlier works. Chalmers (Hard Problem, 1995 and 2002), Smolin (Trouble with Physics, 2006) and Dennett (Consciousness Explained, 1991). The latter two in particular have been part of my own co-evolving thinking right up to the last couple of years, along with Rovelli, Verlinde and the IIT crew.

To be continued …

It seems Goff and Kastrup have fallen out. With a great swell of interest in pan-psychism and idealism stoked by these two in the last couple of years it was no surprise they came together to compare notes recently.

They’re not new to each other. Goff was actually an academic referee to Katsrup’s PhD I believe. I’ve had them both in the “close but no cigar” camp for a while. Much common ground with each other and with my own position in terms of the issues they are resolving in “science-informed” orthodoxy of current philosophical views of the world, both ontological and epistemological. Each making their own needlessly but importantly different choices in framing their metaphysics. Pity. But from my perspective much scope for narrowing those differences to the insignificant. Close but no cigar, as I say.

I’ve not really diagnosed their falling out, other than noting the Twitter traffic arising.

My own position I’d call “pan-proto-psychist” in these terms, but I’d call the metaphysical proto-stuff “information”. Significant difference between things, the stuff that gives things identity, is information (in the von Neumann sense), knowledge in the participatory awareness sense of one adjacent thing with the other. Very much Whitehead’s creative process reality, as I discovered in the last year or so.

What I didn’t expect to find was people making reference to Galen Strawson as a positive source of views on pan-psychism. I had him in the analytic, logical-positivist camp, wrongly it seems.

Reading Strawson’s “Mind and Being—the Primacy of Panpsychism” I further didn’t expect to find him translating “Sein und Sosein” as “being and quality“. I’ve a lot more reading to do, but this sparked another great synthesis for me.

The radical empiricism of Wm James was dubbed “Quality” by Pirsig – the pre-conceptual (in-the-moment) sensing of one thing by another. It’s this inter-objective sensing that gives rise to possible thoughts of psychism. Adjacent things being “aware” of each other even if neither is “conscious” in the orthodox everyday sense. It’s that process, an event of one detecting a coming together – a nexus – with the other that is the most fundamental “atom” of anything else physical or psychical. Hence pan-proto-psychism for me. Pirsig built his whole Metaphysics of Quality on this. I’ve simply arrived at the same view calling this property of the Whiteheadian nexus “information”.

[Hold: Need to come back and link references. Needed to capture the thought for now. Adding detail below:]

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After that reading …

Mind and Being – The Primacy of Panpsychism ( Strawson 2016)

[First 19 pages – need to extract notes – admits to significant recent change of position from Strawson since (say) 2003 – explains my confusion.

Very like Whitehead approach to “doing metaphysics” – setting-up a few axioms then arguing why these provide “best” explanatory solution to known situation and known issues.

Being is as being does – and all science is about observation of what things do (external), never about any intrinsic (internal) nature – a la Goff – so readily denied by scientists.

A very important new read.]

P20
You don’t have to call it ‘materialism’ (‘physicalism’) if you don’t want to.
(He does, because as he says, even “physics” is just an abstract set of rules – structural relationships – with no such thing as intrinsic physical nature behind it. I don’t because “physics” comes with all that baggage of misplaced concreteness. As he says several times, these are just terminological differences – what we choose to call things. Closely related to the  things I say about the reality of memes relative to the (much more intangible) reality of (say) genes and species readily accepted by most.)

P20
[22] In the case of experience, the having is the knowing.
(James / Pirsig “radical empiricism”. Foucault “savoir”. Knowing in the “biblical” sense. Directly acquainted … he says … any non-experiential concrete reality is, by contrast, wholly ungrounded … radically and irredeemably verification-transcendent belief. A “posit” (* See figure here). We know the experiential is real and we also  know—about as well as we know anything in science—that it’s literally located in the brain)

P21
[23] human experience is neural activity.
This is by now far beyond reasonable doubt.
(Mostly neural. Mostly brain. Neural/brain plus other endocrine / biochemical interactions with the physical.)

P21
(a given that… ) pure panpsychism is the most parsimonious hypothesis about the nature of concrete reality?

P22
We think in terms of things comprising stuff in spatio-temporal pictures, even though our physical models tell us everything (even our brain) is 99.999% vacuum (plenum).

P22
From one intuitively natural perspective matter is quite astoundingly insubstantial, an intricately shimmering almost-nothing … When we go on to consider a brain we find many further layers of staggeringly
intricate organization—in an almost entirely empty space. Such is matter. Such is the material brain. It helps to maintain this picture when we’re wondering how experience can be physical. It helps to resist the picture of a mammalian brain as … a piece of meat that can be diced and fried with garlic; although it’s also that. Terry Bisson’s thinking meat anyone?

P23
Those who (like [Strawson’s] former self) can’t shake their commitment to the idea that we know what space (spacetime & matter) is in some truly fundamental respect may simply be unable to engage fully with the ‘mind-body problem’
(Hallelujah! There’s an element of letting go existing certainties – allowing a crack, a crack in everything, it’s how the light gets in. The anthemic theme.)

P24
17 No Mystery – Many say that experience (consciousness) is a mystery (it sells a lot of books) . But what is mysterious? We know what experience is. We know exactly what certain types of experiences are simply in having them.

P28
That – [E] a plurality of subjects can’t possibly combine to form or generate a single subject – is merely conjecture.
I can’t feel any deep difficulty in the subject combination problem
(Me neither. This is about a proper appreciation of evolutionary emergence of species – it’s not magic. Many experiencing subjects combining to form an experiencing whole. Why is this any more of a problem than a zillion quarks combining to form a box of meat, or 100,000 rivets – or starlings – flying in close formation? Simply show me how.)

P29
I also believe (with William James et al) that there’s a metaphysically primordial way of thinking about what a subject of experience is given which there is, in the case of any particular episode of experiencing, no
real distinction between the subject of experience or experiencer and the experience or experiencing. (Yay!) This may contribute to my failure to feel worried by the combination problem. I don’t, however, think that this particular belief is indispensable to the lack of worry—except insofar as it’s linked to the Sein ist Sosein (Being is Quality) claim.
(You and me both.)

P29
A Keith Turausky reference on this page too!
40 I’m mindful, also, of Turausky’s suggestion that particular experiences may be formed by subtraction—reduction—sculpting—of a base of experiential ‘white noise’ (cf. Turausky unpublished).
(It’s Free Wont, rather than Free Will. Consciousness – creativity – is about structuring not construction. Turausky, previously on Psybertron.)

P30 (Final page, before references)
[30] We should favour panpsychism(*) over all other substantive theories of the fundamental nature of reality.
(* ie everything is experiential — that the intrinsic (non-structural) nature of the energy that is widely agreed to wholly constitute physical reality is experientiality. Works for me using “experiential” rather than “conscious” – which is why I prefer pan-proto-psychism to panspychism. The crude suggestion of everything being conscious confuses many otherwise intelligent thinkers.)

I’ve been documenting my own takes on the Self-ID Trans-activism story for 6 or 7 years now – last summarised here with many footnotes added.

Like prof Alice Dreger, doctor Sarah Rutherford has been a professionally engaged researcher for much longer. She’s done the research and recently published a historical deep dive into how the current (2020) reform to the (2004) Gender Recognition Act got to be the mess it is.

Exemplary piece on this twisted topic. “how interconnected academic theory, trans activism, law and policy really are… the ideology that gender identity has priority over biological sex”. https://t.co/kCmneG3UAh

— What, Why & How do we know? (@psybertron) July 17, 2020

George Floyd Meets Wittgenstein

Otherness is neither absolute nor meaningless, so it’s important we understand what it is if we are to be more constructive than simply engaging in binary battles between ideological extremes.

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I need to write two posts, but they’re closely related, and this probably isn’t either of them. It’s my usual preamble, so that the posts themselves can be free of that distraction.

Prompted to write at this moment following a Twitter dialogue with Mark Hammonds on Wittgenstein (Witt or W to his friends and/or enemies), following some words of Frank Ramsey (Witt’s precocious translator) being quoted because of Anthony Gottlieb’s New Yorker review of Cheryl Misak’s new  biography of Ramsey.

Excellent review by Anthony Gotlieb of Cheryl Misak biography of Frank Ramsay in The New Yorker. https://t.co/BtM5NTGPou

— I was a teenage logical positivist. (@psybertron) June 5, 2020

(Oops tw sp “Ramsey” and “Gottlieb”)

I have a very particular take – aired here many times before (*1) – on how we should use “W” stories in our futures. It’s a passion of mine because like so many topics taking sides in “camps”, it sets up potentially destructive binary debate on what are in reality much more subtly nuanced ontologies across many dimensions of reality. The identities of meaningful “things” that exist in ontologies is my day job. It really is. And it’s the origin of my two decades and counting interest in what philosophies of ontology and epistemology have to say about the reality of … life, the universe and everything … which includes … my day job.

But firstly, immediately prior to today, the whole BLM eruption following the George Floyd murder and the widespread police brutality in responding to protests and curfews, egged on by the #fuckwitinchief in the White House. As ever it’s about the otherness of identity, in this case BAME minorities, but also recently and ongoing the feminist & LGBT+ “TERF wars”, before that and ongoing all the other binary choices Hillary (or Bernie or Biden) vs the fuckwit, Covid19 (or Brexit) on lockdown vs free-movement. The freedom fetish as I’ve dubbed it. But let’s stick with the otherness of identity.

It’s neatly summed-up in that Danish TV2 public information film that’s been doing the rounds recently – including as a ubiquitous “duty of care” moment on inclusiveness in the day-job context. It’s important to the message that it makes you smile, despite the seriousness of the BAME / George Floyd context of its immediacy.

The point is we have many identities, memberships of many classes, on many different dimensions, overlapping on many Venn diagrams. In fact our individual identities are the sum of those sets (*2). We can’t fundamentally choose any or all of our identities, but we can choose which (or which subset / pattern of) identities are appropriate to any context we operate in. The point – neatly summarised by Robert Frost as “Good Fences” (*3) – is *not* that we’re all the same, that differences – fences – are inherently bad and must be minimised or removed. It’s important to maximise the common ground, the overlap, but the individual classifications and identities remain real and important to understand, in context.

We give different things different names for good practical reasons. The dividing lines between classes, the distinctions between this and the other, me and you, the names we give things, are real and necessary for our world to function. They’re good fences, patterns by mutual agreement, but easily moved between contexts and across which the evolution of constructive dialogue is always possible. They’re rarely brick-walls or impenetrable fortifications to be defended at all costs. In fact there are many different kinds of distinction, whose relative values where they come into conflict require understanding. There’s no absolute freedom to choose. Human rights and freedoms are relatively important, but it’s important not to fetishise them as literally paramount or absolute.

Very few distinctions – a very small few – are individually fixed or definitively ruled “by the science” in all evolving contexts. But neither does that mean that all differences should be treated arbitrary or relatively meaningless. None should be imposed ideologically.

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Notes:

(*1) See > Ian’s take on W as an “elaborate, backfiring – but ultimately useful – joke”. In brief,  Witt’s shows two extremes – logical positivism (in TLP) vs linguistic games (in PI) – to be equally absurd, yet idolised by both camps of idolaters who failed to get the absurdity in the “joke”. Reality lies between (obviously).
(TLP – W’s Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus)
(PI – W’s Philosophical Investigations)

(*2) – “Intersectionality” is a buzzword for understanding these multiple overlapping sets of identities. Like “EvoPsych” or “Queer Studies” using the word “Intersectionality” for the general idea is not to be confused with a school of socio-political academe whose baggage has hijacked the same name. (See words and “private language”.)

(*3) See > Ian’s take on Robert Frost’s “Good Fences” and G K Chesterton’s “Gated Road in the Forest”.

See Also:

Rules for Guidance of the Wise

Identity Politics

Vive la Difference / Différence / Différance

Several social media threads sharing and either supporting or ridiculing this Lawd Shugga view – no happy media.

It’s not just the press / media / journalists themselves – they’re doing their jobs by holding to account – questioning and finding-fault in public policy statements – but it’s the whole public discourse these days. Critical thinking leads to the received wisdom that criticism – by fault-finding – is forensic, objectively scientific, so it must be OK, right?

Well it’s OK in moderation, it’s not the point of the exercise, the point is positive human progress. It’s the same problem as this (from existential comics):

Destructive criticism and undermining by sketpical questioning is so much easier than constructive, synthetic understanding. Social media and ironic memes mean everyone is an expert in pedantic debunking – or ridiculing – every would-be fact these days.

Same problem too in the “whataboutery” of the previous Massimo Pigliucci post. Critical questioning is never ending, every why & because is followed by another why & wherefore, or / and another thing, what about … No rule or proposition (in the real world, beyond an axiomatic system) is 100% fool-proof. Rules are for guidance of the wise, etc. They all require positive intent beyond a healthy dose of critical thinking.

Criticism is cheap. Creativity is valuable. Whitehead was right “creativity” is the most fundamental reality.

“Life, the Universe and Consciousness” is a forthcoming book by A T Bollands (Natural Philosopher). It’s a meme of a title, a nod to Douglas Adams I’ve used several times before myself.

It’s a good version because it captures the three elements – living, physical and psychic – which are bound up in so many of the controversial conundrums of … err … modern day science. Anyway, he’s started a series of tweets laying out the 12 “intractable problems” as he sees them, P1 to P12.

I’ve never identified specifically 12 hard problems resolved by a new philosophical worldview, although my own thesis is that these are in general solved by already available alternate – non-orthodox – views, ancient and new, most of which are self-consistent beyond their own rhetorical choices of language.

ie my position is (a) that scientific orthodoxy is the problem, and (b) that alternative views exist that solve it. However I’m interested in a new 12 point formulation of the problem, whether or not they’re really just multiple corollaries of three or four problems, or maybe reducible to a single issue? In fact, in his opening post he does call it “the Big Problem” in the singular.

They are P0, followed by P1 to P12 under this pinned tweet, with all the dialogue under the 12 replies to the original. (Good use of Twitter.)

Let me tell you about Life, the Universe and Consciousness…

In particular, let me tell you about what I call the Big Problem of 20th Century Science. It can be summarised as follows…

— Natural Philosopher (@ATBollands) April 22, 2020

• • • P0 – We are pretty sure the 20th century scientific worldview provides the correct foundation for understanding the world around us; we just can’t understand why there are so many intractable problems that cannot be solved, given this worldview. (P0)
    • P1 – We are pretty sure that humans possess consciousness; we just don’t know why, given that every material thing is made ultimately from simple non-experiencing material things, and whenever we combine such things, we expect to create another non-experiencing material thing. (P1)
    • P2 – We are pretty sure that human brains create consciousness; we just don’t know how, given that it’s inconceivable how brain processes, involving non-experiencing matter, could possibly create consciousness. (P2)
    • P3 – We are pretty sure that only animals with larger, complex brains possess consciousness, we just don’t know which ones, since we don’t know the physical, functional or behavioural characteristics of animals that possess it. (P3)
    • P4 – We are pretty sure that humans and other animals evolved to possess consciousness; we just don’t know how, since we cannot see when consciousness evolved or what evolutionary advantage it could have given us. (P4)
    • P5 – We are pretty sure we have free-will and consciously choose how we act; we just can’t see how, given that the behaviour of all matter in the universe is determined by the Laws of Nature. (P5)
    • P6 – We are pretty sure the behaviour of everything is determined by the Laws of Nature, we just can’t say what these are, because our best theories of physics – General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics – are incompatible and cannot be reduced to a single underlying theory. (p6)
    • P7 – We are pretty sure the theory of Quantum Mechanics provides an accurate description of the sub-atomic world; we just don’t see how, since the world it describes does not make clear, coherent sense. (P7)
    • P8 – We are pretty sure, from the General Theory of Relativity, that the universe began with a Big Bang; we just don’t know how or why, since there was nothing that existed before the Big Bang that could have caused it. (P8)
    • P9 – We are pretty sure the fundamental Laws of Nature were fixed at the time of the Big Bang; we just don’t understand how it was they were finely tuned to enable Life to exist some billions of years later. (P9)
    • P10 – We are pretty sure that Life began on earth around 4 billion years ago; we just don’t understand how, given that the chances of a living thing capable of evolution emerging by chance were vanishingly small. (P10)
    • P11 – We are pretty sure that living things exist; we just don’t know how they are able to maintain their ordered existence, far from equilibrium with their environment, in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. (P11)
    • P12 -We are pretty sure that Life exists; we just struggle to say what it is, despite multiple attempts to define a clear and meaningful distinction between living things and non-living things. (P12)

Obviously, given the nature of twitter timelines, I didn’t see every point in real time, but I interacted with a few I noticed along the way.

Equally obviously, given my existing metaphysical position, I disagreed with most of the “We are pretty sure that …” statements, in the sense I’m pretty sure they’re not true. Not least the overall premise P0. The point is we are pretty sure the orthodox 20th C scientific worldview is flawed.

And pretty clearly the rest are grouped in topics:

• • • The nature of consciousness & free-will? in P1, 2, 3, 4, 5
    • The nature of the physical world & its laws? in P6, 7, 8, 9
    • The nature of life? in P10, 11, 12

An odd order to me, given my evolutionary understanding: Big Bang > Physics > Life > Conscious will and the recurring questions.

• • • What is physics and how do we get from zero to physics?
    • What is life and how does physics come to life?
    • What is wilful, intelligent consciousness and how does it evolve from life?

Good sign that P11 has the 2nd law in there – It led me to presume Bollands may hold a metaphysical / ontological position similar to mine. One public paper of his is a case for pan-psychism, but it seems that’s not his position. In fact all dialogue suggested he didn’t agree with any of my informational / pan-proto-psychist takes – which left me intrigued. The inevitability jumps out of the 2nd law at me.

[I should be clear “my metaphysics” isn’t some wild new grand unified theory of everything (TOE) like some crank hanging round the public library. My position is simply a statement that the answers to all these “problems” are already out there in mainstream science and philosophy which has simply been drowned out by the orthodox memes of objective science in our modern days of “science with everything”.]

Popper said “All life is problem solving”. I await Bollands’ further thoughts in anticipation.