John Horgan defends not knowing

[Eugene I]

I agree but that seems the opposite of what DH is saying. You seem to saying that some degree of veridical cognition is possible.

Yes, but only with the help of cognition, and DH actually said that in one of his interviews: his theory of CA is exactly the way our cognition (with the help of math) can "pierce" through" the "user interface" screen of our senses into the deeper levels of reality.

[Jim Cross]

However, evolution also provided us with a special tool - cognition - that actually enables us to make inferences and model the reality on the levels hidden from our senses.

I agree but that seems the opposite of what DH is saying. You seem to saying that some degree of veridical cognition is possible.

DH has always maintained basic logical reasoning is adaptive, so there is no internal contradiction there.

Where has he maintained that? Where is logical reasoning in his model?

But let's agree he does say that. Then logical reasoning and ability to see relationships would allow us to achieve some degree of veridical cognition so his main argument would be invalidated.

[Eugene I]

But let's agree he does say that. Then logical reasoning and ability to see relationships would allow us to achieve some degree of veridical cognition so his main argument would be invalidated.

His main argument only applies to senses, not to cognition. He never studied the evolutionary adaptability of cognition in his evolutionary experiments.

[AshvinP]

I agree but that seems the opposite of what DH is saying. You seem to saying that some degree of veridical cognition is possible.

DH has always maintained basic logical reasoning is adaptive, so there is no internal contradiction there.

Where has he maintained that? Where is logical reasoning in his model?

But let's agree he does say that. Then logical reasoning and ability to see relationships would allow us to achieve some degree of veridical cognition so his main argument would be invalidated.

Veridical cognition, yes. It would allow us to see the relationships and study them, eventually realizing the pictures we perceive cannot possibly be the totality of what is 'out there', and then later realizing they cannot even resemble what is out there. Again, all modern sciences which have asked this question have reached this same conclusion, so I don't understand why you find it so hard to accept. All educated materialists will claim the same thing about "objects" in the world, except they won't go so far as to conclude spatiotemporal dimensions are not fundamental... not yet, but that is also changing pretty quickly.

[Jim Cross]

DH has always maintained basic logical reasoning is adaptive, so there is no internal contradiction there.

Where has he maintained that? Where is logical reasoning in his model?

But let's agree he does say that. Then logical reasoning and ability to see relationships would allow us to achieve some degree of veridical cognition so his main argument would be invalidated.

Veridical cognition, yes. It would allow us to see the relationships and study them, eventually realizing the pictures we perceive cannot possibly be the totality of what is 'out there', and then later realizing they cannot even resemble what is out there. Again, all modern sciences which have asked this question have reached this same conclusion, so I don't understand why you find it so hard to accept. All educated materialists will claim the same thing about "objects" in the world, except they won't go so far as to conclude spatiotemporal dimensions are not fundamental... not yet, but that is also changing pretty quickly.

So evolution does favor veridical cognition. Yes, I agree.

[Jim Cross]

But let's agree he does say that. Then logical reasoning and ability to see relationships would allow us to achieve some degree of veridical cognition so his main argument would be invalidated.

His main argument only applies to senses, not to cognition. He never studied the evolutionary adaptability of cognition in his evolutionary experiments.

cog·ni·tion
noun
the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

There isn't a sharp dividing line between senses (if you want to exclude it) and cognition. For example, our perception of a table. Is that purely a matter of light reflecting off something? Or, does it also involve an understanding that it is something we can sit at for dinner? Does our perception of lion include the thought that we might be prey? Obviously, if it doesn't, there would be no reason to run from it.

This article is pertinent.

How expectation influences perception

For decades, research has shown that our perception of the world is influenced by our expectations. These expectations, also called “prior beliefs,” help us make sense of what we are perceiving in the present, based on similar past experiences. Consider, for instance, how a shadow on a patient’s X-ray image, easily missed by a less experienced intern, jumps out at a seasoned physician. The physician’s prior experience helps her arrive at the most probable interpretation of a weak signal.

The process of combining prior knowledge with uncertain evidence is known as Bayesian integration and is believed to widely impact our perceptions, thoughts, and actions. Now, MIT neuroscientists have discovered distinctive brain signals that encode these prior beliefs. They have also found how the brain uses these signals to make judicious decisions in the face of uncertainty.

https://news.mit.edu/2019/how-expectati ... ption-0715

Actually, this is mostly what is the problem with DH's PDA model. It only works for cued actions. It would be like we evolved to have a sensory perception of lion to trigger the automatic reaction of running. But there won't allow us any nuance. We would run if the lion were in a cage or across a river and unable to reach us. It also wouldn't handle a bear perception or a tiger perception. We would need to evolve unique perceptions for each type of threat.

Aside from that, if ability to create models about the world that are to some degree accurate evolved, then why would it necessarily be true that our senses would evolve to be totally inaccurate?

[Eugene I]

cog·ni·tion
noun
the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

There isn't a sharp dividing line between senses (if you want to exclude it) and cognition. For example, our perception of a table. Is that purely a matter of light reflecting off something? Or, does it also involve an understanding that it is something we can sit at for dinner? Does our perception of lion include the thought that we might be prey? Obviously, if it doesn't, there would be no reason to run from it.

Aside from that, if ability to create models about the world that are to some degree accurate evolved, then why would it necessarily be true that our senses would evolve to be totally inaccurate?

Notice that all our senses can do is to sense the "behavior", the patterns of what nature does. "Sitting at a table" means a specific behavioral pattern of sensual data that we observe. With out cognition we can study these patterns and recognize certain regularities in them, and then apply math models to approximate these regularities, this is what we do in natural sciences. Again, all of that only applies to what reality does. So yes, our cognition allows us to acquire certain degree of veridical knowledge about the behavior of reality. But none of it, neither senses, nor math models, can give us any veridical knowledge of what reality actually is.

Now, there is a special area of cognition called "philosophy" where we try to extend our cognition to "metaphysically" study what reality actually is. However, (at least so far) all we got from it is a variety of metaphysical models and hypotheses with no way to prove with certainty which one is actually "true" even to a small degree with respect to what the reality is. We can be certain that Schrodinger equation at least to a good level of accuracy describes what nature does when it comes to patterns observable with senses. But we cannot be certain that materialistic or idealistic or neutral monistic metaphysical model of reality have any relevance to reality as it is at all: they may be quite accurate or they may be totally inaccurate and false. But we can still combine them with our math models and develop the encompassing models of what reality both is and what it does, and compare these models both on the ground of their numerical prediction/description accuracy and logical consistency and explanatory capabilities (lack of contradictions or explanatory gaps). That is what materialistic and idealistic sciences are trying to accomplish.

[AshvinP]

Where has he maintained that? Where is logical reasoning in his model?

But let's agree he does say that. Then logical reasoning and ability to see relationships would allow us to achieve some degree of veridical cognition so his main argument would be invalidated.

Veridical cognition, yes. It would allow us to see the relationships and study them, eventually realizing the pictures we perceive cannot possibly be the totality of what is 'out there', and then later realizing they cannot even resemble what is out there. Again, all modern sciences which have asked this question have reached this same conclusion, so I don't understand why you find it so hard to accept. All educated materialists will claim the same thing about "objects" in the world, except they won't go so far as to conclude spatiotemporal dimensions are not fundamental... not yet, but that is also changing pretty quickly.

So evolution does favor veridical cognition. Yes, I agree.

According to me, and I would argue all consistent idealists must adhere to this, "evolution" is the evolution of cognition. How we perceive the phenomenal world is a manifestation of how our cognition develops - just as it is when we evolve from a newborn to an infant, adolescent, and adult. There is a tradeoff in numinous meaning of perception for 'clarity' of perception due to that cognitive development, and it is precisely that same cognitive development which allows us to restore the balance. Perception-cognition are inseparable, as you also pointed out above, which then points to the fact that all we perceive or could possibly perceive is interlaced with thought, and that is really another way of saying "idealism is true". It most certainly is a way of saying "physicalism is false".

[JustinG]

Belief in the supernatural is what makes science impossible.

How is supernatural being defined? One definition is: departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature. So if it just means that which science currently can't explain under the provisional consensus construct, then wasn't the idea of quantum entanglement, once described as 'spooky action at a distance', and once considered impossible according to the 'natural' laws of classical physics, also once defying and transcending what had been considered 'natural'? Did that preclude further scientific investigation? Just because science hasn't yet come up with an explanation, hasn't yet expanded the current category of 'natural', doesn't mean it's impossible.

Science is based on the premise that there are natural laws and explanations. That doesn't mean that everything can be explained but it means that we are looking for explanations involving measurable forces and objects. It means we can't pull rabbit out of the hat every time there is something that cannot be explained. It means we don't toss aside everything we know through science just because of one anomaly unless there is theory that incorporates better what we know and the anomaly.

The point is that there is a method to science that involves observations, theories, experiments and replications where possible. It is somewhat inherently conservative.

I don't know if you've heard of Arthur Reber or read any of my posts on him..

https://broadspeculations.com/2021/01/1 ... ciousness/

He engages in some pretty wild speculations about the cellular origins of consciousness. But here he writes about Cardeña’s paper on parapsychology.

While the paper bothered us on several levels, our primary concern was that it was symptomatic of a larger, more important issue that was being missed. It is not a matter of reviewing the existing database, scratching at the marginal and highly suspect findings of meta-analyses for something that passes the “< .05” cutoff point. It is not a matter of rummaging around in arcane domains of theoretical physics for plausible models. It is more basic than that: parapsychology’s claims cannot be true. The entire field is bankrupt—and has been from the beginning. Each and every claim made by psi researchers violates fundamental principles of science and, hence, can have no ontological status.

We identified four fundamental principles of science that psi effects, were they true, would violate: causality, time’s arrow, thermodynamics, and the inverse square law.

This enterprise has involved literally thousands of papers, hundreds of conferences, dozens of review volumes, and nothing has been learned. Parapsychology is precisely where it was in the 1880s. Why, we wondered, are researchers still running experiments, using ever-more sophisticated statistical techniques, reaching out to ever-broader realms of science, expanding their analyses into studies of consciousness and mind? This pattern of persistent belief in the anomalous may be the most psychologically interesting phenomenon associated with the study of psi. One of us (Alcock 1985) has argued it is likely linked with a vague sense that science, hard-nosed and physicalist, lacks that mysterianist element found in religious or spiritual realms. The lure of the “para”-normal emerges, it seems, from the belief that there is more to our existence than can be accounted for in terms of flesh, blood, atoms, and molecules. A century and a half of parapsychological research has failed to yield evidence to support that belief.

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2019/07/w ... t-be-true/

I would add, however, that, if and when parapsychology produces definitive evidence of what it studies, the evidence will be used to create a yet more expansive theory involving measurable forces and objects. It won't be a science of the unmeasurable because that wouldn't be science. If you want to argue there are things unmeasurable, that would be a different debate and I might even agree with you. I just don't think it can be called science.

Jim,

I stumbled across this post of yours and hope you don't mind me resuscitating it, as I am familiar with Reber's work and some of his arguments trouble me (although I really liked his book on cellular consciousness).

I have two main issues with his views:

1. In the The Skeptical Inquirer article,

Reber and Alcock said:
We did not examine the data for psi, to the consternation of the parapsychologist who was one of the reviewers. Our reason was simple: the data are irrelevant. We used a classic rhetorical device, adynaton, a form of hyperbole so extreme that it is, in effect, impossible.

To my mind, the notion that any experimental data in relation to parapsychology can be rejected on a priori grounds is very unscientific. Even prominent skeptic Paul Kurtz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurt ... paranormal), who advocated that skeptics should "actively investigate claims of the paranormal" would not agree with such a view.

2. I can't really see how Reber reconciles his skeptical views with his speculations on cellular consciousness.

Reber appears to be a physicalist reductionist, so I do not understand how he can consistently maintain that consciousness has causal efficacy. I have discussed this in detail, including reference to one of Reber's papers, in the following peer reviewed paper : https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/ ... e/view/704.

[Lou Gold]

How is supernatural being defined? One definition is: departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature. So if it just means that which science currently can't explain under the provisional consensus construct, then wasn't the idea of quantum entanglement, once described as 'spooky action at a distance', and once considered impossible according to the 'natural' laws of classical physics, also once defying and transcending what had been considered 'natural'? Did that preclude further scientific investigation? Just because science hasn't yet come up with an explanation, hasn't yet expanded the current category of 'natural', doesn't mean it's impossible.

Science is based on the premise that there are natural laws and explanations. That doesn't mean that everything can be explained but it means that we are looking for explanations involving measurable forces and objects. It means we can't pull rabbit out of the hat every time there is something that cannot be explained. It means we don't toss aside everything we know through science just because of one anomaly unless there is theory that incorporates better what we know and the anomaly.

The point is that there is a method to science that involves observations, theories, experiments and replications where possible. It is somewhat inherently conservative.

I don't know if you've heard of Arthur Reber or read any of my posts on him..

https://broadspeculations.com/2021/01/1 ... ciousness/

He engages in some pretty wild speculations about the cellular origins of consciousness. But here he writes about Cardeña’s paper on parapsychology.

While the paper bothered us on several levels, our primary concern was that it was symptomatic of a larger, more important issue that was being missed. It is not a matter of reviewing the existing database, scratching at the marginal and highly suspect findings of meta-analyses for something that passes the “< .05” cutoff point. It is not a matter of rummaging around in arcane domains of theoretical physics for plausible models. It is more basic than that: parapsychology’s claims cannot be true. The entire field is bankrupt—and has been from the beginning. Each and every claim made by psi researchers violates fundamental principles of science and, hence, can have no ontological status.

We identified four fundamental principles of science that psi effects, were they true, would violate: causality, time’s arrow, thermodynamics, and the inverse square law.

This enterprise has involved literally thousands of papers, hundreds of conferences, dozens of review volumes, and nothing has been learned. Parapsychology is precisely where it was in the 1880s. Why, we wondered, are researchers still running experiments, using ever-more sophisticated statistical techniques, reaching out to ever-broader realms of science, expanding their analyses into studies of consciousness and mind? This pattern of persistent belief in the anomalous may be the most psychologically interesting phenomenon associated with the study of psi. One of us (Alcock 1985) has argued it is likely linked with a vague sense that science, hard-nosed and physicalist, lacks that mysterianist element found in religious or spiritual realms. The lure of the “para”-normal emerges, it seems, from the belief that there is more to our existence than can be accounted for in terms of flesh, blood, atoms, and molecules. A century and a half of parapsychological research has failed to yield evidence to support that belief.

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2019/07/w ... t-be-true/

I would add, however, that, if and when parapsychology produces definitive evidence of what it studies, the evidence will be used to create a yet more expansive theory involving measurable forces and objects. It won't be a science of the unmeasurable because that wouldn't be science. If you want to argue there are things unmeasurable, that would be a different debate and I might even agree with you. I just don't think it can be called science.

Jim,

I stumbled across this post of yours and hope you don't mind me resuscitating it, as I am familiar with Reber's work and some of his arguments trouble me (although I really liked his book on cellular consciousness).

I have two main issues with his views:

1. In the The Skeptical Inquirer article,

Reber and Alcock said:
We did not examine the data for psi, to the consternation of the parapsychologist who was one of the reviewers. Our reason was simple: the data are irrelevant. We used a classic rhetorical device, adynaton, a form of hyperbole so extreme that it is, in effect, impossible.

To my mind, the notion that any experimental data in relation to parapsychology can be rejected on a priori grounds is very unscientific. Even prominent skeptic Paul Kurtz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kurt ... paranormal), who advocated that skeptics should "actively investigate claims of the paranormal" would not agree with such a view.

2. I can't really see how Reber reconciles his skeptical views with his speculations on cellular consciousness.

Reber appears to be a physicalist reductionist, so I do not understand how he can consistently maintain that consciousness has causal efficacy. I have discussed this in detail, including reference to one of Reber's papers, in the following peer reviewed paper : https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/ ... e/view/704.

Justin, I very much liked your paper Liking What's Good for You: Evolution, Subjectivity and Purpose. Thank you for this deeply meaningful defense of feeling. I agree that feeling has radical implications for evolution, metaphysics and science.