Non-greedy physicalism is at once appropriately reductive, non-epiphenomenal, and preserves ontic qualia without the need for strong emergence.
Read moreThree Ways I've Changed my Mind on Mind
In which I make the following points: 1. The Cortical Fallacy is Real, 2. Consciousness is (Essentially) Not Substrate-Free, and 3. Consciousness and Intelligence are Not the Same Thing
Read moreA New View of Induction
originally by Michael Lensi, April 2022
Despite Kant’s brilliance, David Hume’s crux metaphysicorum is still very much with us today. According to the SEP (Henderson, L., “The Problem of Induction”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Spring 2020 Edition], Edward N. Zalta [ed.], URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/>., hereafter “SEP”), “A number of philosophers have attempted solutions to the problem [of induction], but a significant number have embraced [Hume’s] conclusion that it is insoluble.” I would like to attempt a new solution here.
It is acknowledged by every early modern philosopher that we make observations of the world. That these observations count as knowledge is the hallmark of the empiricists. If we are to ever speak in anything but the past tense when it comes to factual knowledge, then, we must be able to convert these observations into knowledge, not necessarily of, but for the future. When an observation is thus accorded the status of a cause leading to an effect, such a conversion of knowledge from past to future is effected. That is a single prediction. When we expect we can repeat a prediction, we (implicitly or explicitly) posit a uniformity to nature.
Can we justify this process? At what point in the chain shall we justify it? Kant attacked this chain at about its earliest point by providing a priori causality as a necessary condition of experience. Arguably this secures everything downstream in the chain. My current endeavor is not to argue for or against this solution, but to re-inspect the chain and ask, is this really how empirical knowledge works in practice? If not, what is it, and how can we then justify it?
Working backward in the chain, I’ll first claim that although we do require nature to be uniform, what we mean in practice is that we may expect but do not require that observation is uniform. In fact, uniformity of observation - always observing the prediction or effect we expect - would imply that nature is “solved” by knowledge; epistemology and metaphysics would collapse into one. To expect the uniformity we require of nature to present itself in our observations of the world is to assert the end of philosophy.
Empirical knowledge, then, is the flexibility to accept and adapt in the presence of errant observation. All empirical work, in this view, begins with recognizing not uniformity, but the absence of uniformity. Induction, then, is merely the recognition that some observation has failed in some way. If that is a “downgrade” of induction from its heights as a “uniformity principle”, the upside to this framing of empirical knowledge and induction is that, as I’ll show, we can now justify induction on purely analytic grounds. Another advantage to this framework (over and above Kant’s - which is not up for dispute here) is that it would apply to natural objects in themselves, not just as they appear to us. I’ll not demonstrate this last claim. Here, I attempt only a new solution to the problem of induction - the crux metaphysicorum.
What Uniformity?
The first example of matter-of-fact knowledge given by Hume in the Enquiry is the astronomical phenomenon of sunrise (Enquiry, Section IV, Part I). Astronomical events are characteristically cyclical (to some degree). This means that modeling them to within a certain accuracy is trivial - being cyclical, the data itself is a good model. This is how the Babylonians were able to predict astronomical events before Newton, before Kepler, before Copernicus, before Ptolemy - without any further modeling than taking exquisite data. In other words, when astronomical events are the exemplar, it’s easy to conflate modeling and mere observation of the world. That is, it is easy to confuse the epistemological project of modeling-and-predicting the world with the way the world is.
The real epistemological project here begins, roughly, with Ptolemy, who noted discrepancies between new observations and the old observations. To solve this, he extended the concept of the cycle by nesting further cycles within the original, i.e. epicycles. Further modeling and explanation pivoted on further noted discrepancies, leading to Copernicus’ monumental shift of reference frames, then Kepler’s elliptical models, then Newton’s “universal” explanation of these, then Einstein’s “corrections” via the remodeling of space and time itself. At each stage, new modeling - new knowledge - begins with discrepancy between predictions of the old models and observation. In other words, the process of explanation (abduction) begins with and is grounded in induction which is nothing other than an observed discrepancy and the recourse that something in nature caused it, other than the cause we thought it was.
What I’m attempting to demonstrate here is that empirical knowledge does indeed rely on a uniformity to nature. But it is not an epistemological uniformity. Epistemological uniformity is the stagnation of knowledge. Epistemological non-uniformity is required. This is nothing other than recognizing that empirical, or Humean matter-of-fact, knowledge is never guaranteed; it is never uniform. Epistemologically, what is uniform is the use of a given model. But using a model is not knowledge. Building the model (abduction) is knowledge, and it begins in induction.
When Hume asserts and hands down to us his so-called uniformity principle, he has not yet teased this out. The uniformity principle is stated variously throughout his works but here it is from the Enquiry, Section IV, Part II, “From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects”, or as characterized by the SEP:
Uniformity Principle (Humean), i.e. UP:
All observed instances of A have been B.
The next instance of A will be B.
As should be obvious by now, this can not serve as an epistemological statement or a valid framework for induction, because that is only the uniform employment of a given model. To do empirical work, induction can not be uniform. Like the use of astronomical data before more sophisticated modeling, we still need to separate out here what is actually uniform and what is not. We need to untie the metaphysical statement about the way the world is, and the epistemological statement of induction.
Untying the Knot
The uniformity we require is a metaphysical one that captures the way the world is. It may seem like a subtle reworking of the Humean principle but it is profoundly different:
Uniformity Principle (Metaphysical), i.e. UP-M:
All instances of A have been B.
The next instance of A will be B.
This statement is completely severed from observation and epistemology, as it should be. We might pause to note here that this is a trivial, definitional (relations-of-ideas a la Hume) claim, but I’ll demonstrate that later. Right now, we still need the corresponding epistemological claim, so let’s proceed thus.
Induction, by definition, is always uncertain, and never guaranteed in the way the metaphysical claim is guaranteed. Thus, to make the proper epistemological claim, consider how inductive knowledge is garnered in practice:
We observe facts. We [possibly] create or assume a model. We observe more facts. If conflicting with previous experience [or the model] (i.e. UP-M does not seem to hold), we do not discard the UP-M, we update or create a new understanding [model] of what happened. So that:
Uniformity Principle (Epistemic), i.e. UP-E:
All observed instances of A have been B.
The next observed instance of A will be B.
Unless what appears to be A happens to be an observation of A*.
In which case B* may occur instead of B.
(otherwise the non-occurrence of B is a contradiction of our metaphysical claim, UP-M)
We note that although nothing about the UP-E is uniform, we retain the nomenclature anyway, for ease of reference to its Humean origin. With this reworking of the uniformity principle, we can now finally justify induction on argumentative grounds. To do this properly, I will follow Hume’s original argument, in its reconstructed form per the SEP.
Solution to the Problem of Induction
Table 1: Hume’s Original Problem of Induction, Reconstructed (SEP §2)
Reading through the original argument in Table 1 above, we can see that the first horn fails because Hume’s original uniformity principle (UP) can not be demonstratively contradicted, and subsequently the second horn fails because a probable argument involving the UP is circular.
Replacing the UP with either the UP-M or the UP-E instantly resolves the argument at P4. That is, the negation of the UP-M is a contradiction, and the negation of the UP-E is a contradiction.
Let’s first work through why the negation of the UP-E is a contradiction. The negation of the UP-E actually leads to the negation of the UP-M. Let’s start with a straight demonstration of the UP-E, then its negation, using the following example (billiard balls, which Hume would appreciate):
A - blue ball rolls freely into unobstructed red ball at rest
B - red ball rolls away
A* - blue ball rolls freely into obstructed red ball (e.g. glued to table)
B* - red ball remains at rest
Starting with observation A and following the UP-E, we expect inference B. If we find that in (ostensibly) repeating A we do not get B, but instead observe B*, then it is not that A will not always give B (it will), but that what happened was we mistook A* for A. The UP-E (and the UP-E only) properly encodes the fact that induction is never certain.
The negation of this example would give not B* from A*, but B* from A. This is a metaphysical impossibility, i.e. it negates the UP-M. I had stated previously that the UP-M is a trivial, relations-of-ideas claim (and therefore its negation is a contradiction), and now it’s time to demonstrate this fact.
The definitional nature of the UP-M relies on its specificity, and uniformity, which is appropriate for a metaphysical claim, i.e. a fact about the world (not our knowledge of said fact, but simply the way it is in itself). Returning to the billiard ball example, in either case we are claiming nothing more than:
All instances of (A) billiard ball 1 colliding with billiard ball 2 under specific circumstances C have been (B) billiard ball 2 moving away with particular motion M.
The next instance of (A) billiard ball 1 colliding with billiard ball 2 under specific circumstances C will be (B) billiard ball 2 moving away with particular motion M.
In going from “all instances” to “the next instance” here, all we’ve done is leverage a definition. “The next instance” claim always follows from the “all instances” claim. In order for “the next instance” to ever not follow from the “all instances” claim would require a modification to a particular element of the claim, i.e. billiard balls which are not 1 or 2, circumstances which are not C, or motion which is not M. In which case, we have B* and/or A* as per UP-E.
Let me emphasize, as a definitional statement, the UP-M does not give us a scientific model. Induction and the UP-M set the stage for scientific modeling or any abductive explanations at all. Scientific models cannot be contradicted in the way the UP-M can; that is, they are not necessary. Induction is the flexibility to accept and adapt in the presence of errant observation. That is knowledge in itself (something has gone wrong with our old way of thinking!), and here I have shown it has a solid analytical footing. All we are saying at that point is that some explanation exists between some cause and its effect. We are not even required to give one. When we do feel compelled to give an explanation, the UP-M/UP-E will even hold under really bad explanations. This is why for so long in human history untenable explanations were proffered for inexplicable observations. Mistaking this further process of modeling for mere recourse to explanation is where we go wrong when we substitute methods appropriate for modeling (Bayesianism, Inference to the Best Explanation, Reichenbach’s Pragmatic Vindication, etc.) for justifications of induction.
At this point, we’ve shown that the negation of the UP-M is a contradiction (as a relations-of-ideas claim). We’ve shown that the negation of the UP-E leads to the negation of the UP-M. Thus the problem of induction fails at P4. QED. The problem of induction is no problem at all, and we have now set a proper foundation under inductive knowledge.
Conclusion
Early attempts at natural philosophy and inductive knowledge, taking a large cue from astronomical observation, led to a conflation of data (the way the world is) with models of that data (the heavens repeat themselves). Real epistemological work begins when one recognizes that one’s beliefs or models are conflicting with observation. Thus induction begins with non-uniformities; any expected uniformity comes from employment of a model and not actual expectations of the world itself.
Hume’s account of inductive knowledge as "From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects.” (i.e. the uniformity principle, “UP”) is not the correct account or framing of inductive knowledge. Whereas Hume expects similar effects, I have shown that we do not expect similar effects. My claim is that inductive knowledge posits either exactly similar effects from exactly similar causes (a trivial metaphysical statement, “UP-M”), or it merely expects some cause is available to explain observed effects in any way different from previous effects (“UP-E”). That is the correct framework for inductive knowledge. Does Hume’s skeptical attack (his argument from habit) on the foundation of this knowledge hold up on this new account? No. In every case, once we associate a cause with an effect, we refer to the UP-M, the negation of which is a contradiction. This accounting holds up under a rigorous reconstruction of Hume’s argument.
The Meaning of 1010011
All this research paints a picture of minute physical systems which build up via self-organization principles into what we call life. As Kolchinsky suggests, this is pre-cognitive behavior. Does this behavior eventually build up into and explain consciousness as well?
Read moreConsciousness: What is it Good For?
Consciousness allows an organism to leverage evolutionary principles within its own lifetime.
Read moreCognition as Maps-of-Maps
[reading time 5 minutes]
It has been said at least twice recently (by philosophers Patrick Grim and Peter Godfrey-Smith) that consciousness is somehow attributable to "loops" in neural processing. In the jargon of signal processing (as in robotics), this would be called "feedback". In computer science, such processing is called "recursion". Yet neither robots nor computers as we know them are conscious. I have previously proposed that insofar as cognitive loops give rise to consciousness, this could only be done by a system which can map in space and time which then maps itself. Among other things, this is why you must sometimes return to a certain room or area of space in order to recover a thought. From pages 11 and 12 in The Phenomenology of Animal Tracking (link):
After that, what might the next step in conceptual evolution be for such a creature? It could - and this, as I’ll put forth, would be momentous - develop a nervous system to “map” its world - where are the food and predators (at one moment in time - more on this later). I would argue that this would be the most rudimentary brain possible, as - while not conscious - it would lead to the development of consciousness, because once you have a Complex Adaptive System which has invented a way to map, you have one component of a system which can take advantage of folding its processing back in on itself.
I want to briefly distinguish this concept from the more familiar concept of recursion in Computer Science. Recursion is simply the reuse of code or circuitry to either save memory or otherwise make a device or piece of software more compact. It is clever, in a logical way, but it can always be rewritten to accomplish the same goal with non-recursive loops, and it never results in an amplification of processing or abstractive power - in the jargon of Complex Adaptive Systems, it never results in improved schema.
What I’m talking about with maps is, if a system develops an architecture which can keep track of entities in space, then that architecture - itself a collection of entities in space - might further develop into a system which applies its own mapping structures to map itself, thus resulting in a new and more powerful architecture. In the realm of conceptual evolution, then, this is a plausible beginning to how higher-order brains developed from simpler nervous systems. Only a system which is naturally designed to process spatial/temporal data with mapping and memory could possibly take advantage of mapping and memory abstracted internally. No computer as we know it today could do this - could abstract its power by adding more of the same architecture. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
Once a creature can map, and make maps with maps of maps, the stage is set for the next major step in conceptual evolution. If you can create a map, then you can modify your map - you can add and delete elements. There is nothing special in this - you go to spatial position Y to retrieve food which you earlier marked at Y. If the food is still there, you eat food at Y, and you erase Y from your map. Or you find the food has already been eaten, so you also erase Y from your map. However, if you begin to use your map to in essence overlay maps in time, you develop the next (and perhaps ultimate as we’ll see soon) ability in the realm of conceptual evolution. You can make predictions. In other words, spatial and temporal processing architecture could be developed in such a way as to take advantage of turning its processing back onto itself, which develops maps into maps of maps, and these into predictive schemata. Now, whereas once such a creature was wholly a Complex Adaptive System by bodily architecture alone, now it is that Complex Adaptive System architecture with another Complex Adaptive System inside of itself - its brain. It is a model of the world, within a model of the world. It is all material. Yet it is mind and body. And that is us.
What I want to add here are two pieces of independent research which corroborate my cognition as maps-of-maps hypothesis. But first, briefly, a note on the term "cognition". If within our minds and bodies we employ both conscious and unconscious cognition, and realms in-between these two as on a spectrum, and we take this spectrum as occurring elsewhere in the evolutionary chain of life, at least in part, by "cognition" here I mean anything on the spectrum which produces some type of qualia or subjective experience. That is, any form of cognition which is not wholly unconscious (non-conscious, robotic, etc).
Now, the first piece of corroborating evidence is from Milner and Goodale's seminal paper on the two-streams hypothesis (link). This research lays out the now well-established fact that after visual data reaches the occipital lobe, it is processed twice: once as a "where" stream of information (the dorsal stream), and separately as a "what" stream of information (the ventral stream). The "where" stream is shown in their paper to process map-type information for vision-sensed objects, and this is done non-consciously. The "what" stream - which yields visual recognition of objects - is processed consciously, with full awareness of the observer, or as John Locke would have it "perceiving that he does perceive".
I propose that - evolutionarily - the unconscious dorsal stream developed first. This is a robotic mapping of one's environment. Once this can be accomplished, the visual processes themselves can be mapped - made amenable to tracking and predicting. This became the ventral stream**, and this is exactly the neural-level definition of conscious processing. In other words, this is what consciousness is - neural mapping architecture applied to the architecture signals themselves.
The second piece of corroborating evidence comes from Jeff Hawkins' intelligence research outfit, Numenta, and their work on the role of grid cells in cognitive processing among cortical regions (link). In a word, their research shows that objects are recognized in allocentric (object-centered) coordinates, where grid cells perform coordinate transforms between object and observer coordinate frames. That object mapping is so central to object recognition is extremely telling in the story of how evolution yielded consciousness, as should be obvious by now from the rest of this post.
The case here is by no means closed. Yet my cognition as maps-of-maps hypothesis is very amenable to testing, both in biological systems as well as more artificial ones. In your own map of technologies and scientific ideas to watch out for, keep this idea pinned.
** - note: work by Dehaene et. al. suggests the conscious/unconscious split between ventral and dorsal streams is not so clear cut, but in a way that suggests only that the recursive mapping mechanisms, while capable of producing consciousness, may also operate in or contribute to unconscious modes of cognition; see Dehaene “Consciousness and the Brain” pages 58-59.
Two-Minute Zen: Your Big Bang
Can you remember when the universe was only a 1 inch cube, and time was timeless? I do not mean the big bang - I mean your big bang - your birth. At this moment the universe for you was tiny beyond measurement. You received inputs to your senses but had not yet mapped them into the world beyond your mind. Had you heard the song of a bird, the notes would have rang as if the bird was right next to your head, for that is exactly where the sound was (and is) registered. You had not yet learned to distinguish far or near. Your universe, was you.
The bird is in the tree, all on its own. But the bird is also in the tree because we put it there. It is both in the world and constructed in our mind.
If we put the bird in the tree - what else do we put in that scene? Everything. Down to the very birdness of birds. And beyond to judgements.
In meditation, we can strip our universes of all their essence, all our judgements. We can even strip the universe of space and time.
So go. Hear birds. Hear the birds in the world. Hear the birds in your mind. Even if just for a moment, reverse your big bang, and unlearn far and near. Unlearn the universe. Unlearn yourself.
Sleep Paralysis, the Mind-Body Problem, and the Non-Self
[reading time 5 minutes]
Last night I had my first full episode of sleep paralysis.
It started with this weird-ass dream (see supplementary post). I half-noticed a sound in real-life which ended the weird dream about eating penguins. This was the beginning of the real strangeness. The sound (which I now believe was a high-pitched moment of music in a YouTube video my daughter was watching) became immeasurably loud in my mind - out of control - as if amplified in a feedback loop. Eyes still closed and half-in and half-out of sleep, I had the urge to scream, partly to get whomever was making the sound to shut up, and partly so I could hear my own voice and in that way take a sounding of the depth of noise I was at sea upon.
Details of the Episode
My body lurched in real space and I opened my mouth. I had the sensation of screaming but was realizing the sound was completely in my mind - or was it? Confused and scared, I opened my eyes, and at that moment my mind and senses were fully conscious of reality but my body was still locked in sleep. I had stopped the internal pressure - the will and command to scream - and was now looking at my cat about a foot away from my face, just ignoring my ridiculous situation in his cat way. My body was canted over in some unknown fashion, seemingly tilted at an impossible, gravity-defying angle, but also not. I think I tried to move my arms and legs and experienced no movement as if I at once applied the force to both move and keep them in place. I could now hear the veridical music of my daughter's YouTube video and knew she was alright (when I first heard the runaway noise I also had a feeling that she was in trouble), so I called for her help. No sound came from my mouth. My mouth could not even form the shape of words, despite desperate effort. I could push air, almost - summon a pressure with my breathing muscles - but still no sound came out. I became incredibly fearful, such that I lay there savoring it - I had never felt such a way in my life and recognized the singular experience. I was at once scared, humorous, relaxed, and in awe of myself.
Still unable to move except for automatic breathing and the beating of my heart, I was finally able to produce a sound. I tried to say "help" or yell my daughter's nickname, which came out as a pathetic "ugh-UGH". I had heard myself make this sound two other times in my life. The first was in post-op for a tonsillectomy, I noticed someone yelling and as I wished they would stop I realized it was I who was making ludicrous noises. The second was in waking from a random nightmare.
By now my daughter had heard my sounds and was asking what was going on. I wanted to explain but couldn't. Confident, somehow, that voluntary movement would soon return to my body, I was finally freed and able to tell my daughter I was having a bad dream. Later that morning I fully explained the paralysis.
Philosophy of the Episode
This strange happening pokes its fingers in the eyes of many philosophical topics. First of all, when I say "voluntary movement", I do not mean a return of my free will - for there is no free will, only determinism. I only mean the causal connection between my relevant neural circuitry and subsequent motor responses.
But the more profound insight here - the more tenacious eye poke - is in the face of the mind-body problem. That is, do we have a soul, or is our consciousness wholly the result of an assemblage of material parts?
If we have a soul - a non-material driver of consciousness - does it depart during sleep? If so, where does it go? If not, how can the soul effect a half-sleep, half-awake state such as sleep paralysis?
As usual, it is much simpler and profound to do away with such a thing as a soul. So how then does a material consciousness express itself liminally between sleep and wakefullness? There are proposals for the neurological mechanics of sleep paralysis, such as this paper which discusses an abnormal interplay between cholinergic and serotonergic neural pathways.
This interplay reminds us that although ultimately we as living beings are constructed from one basic material "stuff" (call it, say, quantum particles), at the relatively low entropic levels which allow for life, this stuff has organized and differentiated such that each of us is not really one singular "self". This is true even at levels of cognitive organization well above the simple neurotransmitter level (whether cholinergic, serotonergic, or what-have-you). Consider, for example, Jeff Hawkins' (and his team's) Thousand Brains Model of Intelligence. This multi-self paradox of self is so pervasive in the tree of life, it is even present pre-cognition, evolutionarily speaking, for example, in the quorum sensing behavior of bacteria.
Anyone familiar with Buddhism will find much to ruminate on here. Or not :-)
If you do choose to further reflect here, think about this: if the brain is really more like a thousand mini-brains, or merely chemicals which get to "vote" to establish thought in the overall brain and behavior in the overall organism - what, truly, is the self? If self is the result of a vote, then self is a concept, not a thing. To be not-a-thing is very profound.
The Weird-Ass Penguin Dream
[Supplement to Sleep Paralysis, the Mind-Body Problem, and the Non-Self]
I had just received my order at a nameless sit-down restaurant. The order was just as I wanted - whole penguin with French fries. The three penguins on my plate looked like flat penguin-shaped cookies and were simultaneously cartoonish and true-to-life in that quantum superpositional way only possible in dreams, like when you're in a room which looks like your old high school but which you also instantly recognize as your home living room. Biting into the penguins, something was immediately wrong. The skin changed from a glossy to a mealy, crushed-velvet texture and the meat inside was, well it turned out to be wrapped in a plastic bag which the chef had neglected to remove before re-skinning and cooking. As I grew pissed and confused over this, my experience with sleep paralysis began.
Two-Minute Philosophy: Happy International Women's Day aka Down with Idealism
Literally everything that has ever happened in human history has come out of a woman. This is the profound implication of birth. All of us owe at least this to women. Happy International Women's Day indeed!
But the act of birth contains further, more philosophical - metaphysical - implications. The fact of our births alone is enough to thoroughly discredit Idealism, wherein it is said there is no such thing as external, material reality - everything is in your head. For if we take Idealism as true, then being born from a woman is reduced to an unnecessary fiction we carry around with us in our thoughts. It is much more realistic to not throw the material reality babies out with the metaphysical bathwater, so to speak. This leaves us, metaphysically, with either Dualism or Materialism, and that debate I tackle in another post.
Thanks to all women, mothers or no, for solidly situating humanity in this wonderful material world.
Thanks too to those women who've specifically contributed to Philosophy. I could not do better in celebrating these women than Project Vox. A particular favorite of mine at Project Vox and in history at large is Margaret Cavendish, whom I've quoted in my post on the philosophy of infinity.
Happy International Women's Day. A good day for Philosophy. A great day for humanity.
image from garlandcannon, Nasturtims Giving Homage to Georgia O'Keeffe