The Artist in Me
I think my mother is an artist but she has reservations about that label. She says an artist is more creative, that they can draw things out of their head. What she does is more exacting. She takes a photograph and replicates it perfectly in pencil or some other medium on a larger canvas. She usually employs this talent to create portraits of loved ones. She draws things she can see.
In high school I took a few art classes but did not display such potential. I asked her how she did it and she explained her method to me. "Nothing has lines in the real world," she said, "draw the object not the lines." Her advice was simple to understand but hard to implement; she told me to draw what I see, not what I think I see.
Though taking her advice was difficult in drawing 101 I think its really good advice and I've tried to apply it in other ways.
One way I've tried to apply it is my worldview. I try to see the world as it really is, not as I think it is and not as I'd like it to be. I will admit that I've been absolutely terrible at doing this at times but I feel like I'm improving. Just like realistic drawing it is a skill you have to hone.
I've turned my attention to the fundamentals. If you're going to try to understand things you might want to start by asking what it means 'to understand' in the first place.
How Does the Brain Understand?
Our brains are the computers that house everything we know. Actually a computer isn't the best analogy to describe the brain. It would be more accurate to describe the brain (or at least the neocortex part of the brain) as a memory system. It remembers stuff and connects that stuff to other stuff to recognize patterns both spatially and temporally. In short the brain creates models and nothing more.
When you think of what's in your fridge your brain doesn't actually transport through time and space to reference what is actually in your fridge, it simply remembers what you saw in the fridge last time you looked. It has created a model and then refers to that model when you remember stuff. This is knowledge: creating models of the data our brains perceive.
The actual mechanism by which this is done is entirely fascinating but its not important to our topic. What's really important is to keep in mind that the brain doesn't have direct access to the real world, it simply gets electrical impulses, detects patterns in those impulses and builds models, that's it. Those models are always approximations, they've got assumptions, they've got flaws, they're nice but they're never perfect.
Now, there's kind of a scary implication of this idea: what if someone could get control of your brain and feed it data that wasn't true? You'd never know. This means we could all be in the matrix or just be brains in jars interfacing with some super computer and guess what - we'd never know it; that reality would be beyond your sensing capabilities. We'll come back to that implication later, for now lets get back to the basics of epistemology.
That answer (that the brain creates models) comes from a neurological point of view but there are other options we should explore. Remember that all models have assumptions? Neurology makes a certain philosophical (and practical) assumption at the outset; that the brain is the mind, that there is no soul. Thinking about this question in a neurological light means believing that the mind or cognition or consciousness is nothing more than an emergent property that grows out of neuron to neuron interactions.
Neurologist make the assumption that there is no soul then do experiments that imply the same. That doesn't seem fair and we want to scrutinize and tease out the assumptions in our thinking. So lets look at this question of epistemology again taking the belief in a soul into consideration.
What Can I Know for Sure?
René Descartes, a philosopher living in the 1600's believed man had a soul (or a spirit). He did a thought experiment about a demon that had full control over him and his thoughts. Descartes concluded that if that were the case he couldn't trust his knowledge about anything... except one thing. Even in that case the demon would be manipulating someone, some mind. And what if the thought experiment was real? Could he ever know that it wasn't? Certainly not.
Descartes concluded that he couldn't unequivocally trust any knowledge he had except the knowledge that he was experience something, thinking something, being there. You know it the whole, "I think therefore I am" theme. As a matter of fact, he's the one that said it in the first place, "cogito ergo sum."
In Conclusion
So it seems that science and philosophy come the same ending on this topic: nothing can be known for absolutely certain save the conclusion that I am experiencing something.
Well, that's all folks! The End. El Fin.
Or is it? That is where a lot of intellectuals end, actually. And I just think that's appalling.
To end there is to say we can't know for sure therefore we shouldn't try and that's just wrong. One side of the epistemology coin is to recognize our limitations. The other side of the coin is to create models.
First you ask, "What can I know for sure?" Then you ask, "What do I do with everything else?"
In high school I took a few art classes but did not display such potential. I asked her how she did it and she explained her method to me. "Nothing has lines in the real world," she said, "draw the object not the lines." Her advice was simple to understand but hard to implement; she told me to draw what I see, not what I think I see.
Though taking her advice was difficult in drawing 101 I think its really good advice and I've tried to apply it in other ways.
One way I've tried to apply it is my worldview. I try to see the world as it really is, not as I think it is and not as I'd like it to be. I will admit that I've been absolutely terrible at doing this at times but I feel like I'm improving. Just like realistic drawing it is a skill you have to hone.
I've turned my attention to the fundamentals. If you're going to try to understand things you might want to start by asking what it means 'to understand' in the first place.
How Does the Brain Understand?
Our brains are the computers that house everything we know. Actually a computer isn't the best analogy to describe the brain. It would be more accurate to describe the brain (or at least the neocortex part of the brain) as a memory system. It remembers stuff and connects that stuff to other stuff to recognize patterns both spatially and temporally. In short the brain creates models and nothing more.
When you think of what's in your fridge your brain doesn't actually transport through time and space to reference what is actually in your fridge, it simply remembers what you saw in the fridge last time you looked. It has created a model and then refers to that model when you remember stuff. This is knowledge: creating models of the data our brains perceive.
The actual mechanism by which this is done is entirely fascinating but its not important to our topic. What's really important is to keep in mind that the brain doesn't have direct access to the real world, it simply gets electrical impulses, detects patterns in those impulses and builds models, that's it. Those models are always approximations, they've got assumptions, they've got flaws, they're nice but they're never perfect.
Now, there's kind of a scary implication of this idea: what if someone could get control of your brain and feed it data that wasn't true? You'd never know. This means we could all be in the matrix or just be brains in jars interfacing with some super computer and guess what - we'd never know it; that reality would be beyond your sensing capabilities. We'll come back to that implication later, for now lets get back to the basics of epistemology.
That answer (that the brain creates models) comes from a neurological point of view but there are other options we should explore. Remember that all models have assumptions? Neurology makes a certain philosophical (and practical) assumption at the outset; that the brain is the mind, that there is no soul. Thinking about this question in a neurological light means believing that the mind or cognition or consciousness is nothing more than an emergent property that grows out of neuron to neuron interactions.
Neurologist make the assumption that there is no soul then do experiments that imply the same. That doesn't seem fair and we want to scrutinize and tease out the assumptions in our thinking. So lets look at this question of epistemology again taking the belief in a soul into consideration.
What Can I Know for Sure?
René Descartes, a philosopher living in the 1600's believed man had a soul (or a spirit). He did a thought experiment about a demon that had full control over him and his thoughts. Descartes concluded that if that were the case he couldn't trust his knowledge about anything... except one thing. Even in that case the demon would be manipulating someone, some mind. And what if the thought experiment was real? Could he ever know that it wasn't? Certainly not.
Descartes concluded that he couldn't unequivocally trust any knowledge he had except the knowledge that he was experience something, thinking something, being there. You know it the whole, "I think therefore I am" theme. As a matter of fact, he's the one that said it in the first place, "cogito ergo sum."
In Conclusion
So it seems that science and philosophy come the same ending on this topic: nothing can be known for absolutely certain save the conclusion that I am experiencing something.
Well, that's all folks! The End. El Fin.
Or is it? That is where a lot of intellectuals end, actually. And I just think that's appalling.
To end there is to say we can't know for sure therefore we shouldn't try and that's just wrong. One side of the epistemology coin is to recognize our limitations. The other side of the coin is to create models.
First you ask, "What can I know for sure?" Then you ask, "What do I do with everything else?"
The answer? Model it.
Why Model the World?
What else is there to do but try to make sense of the world? Lets look back at science for an answer to this question, lets look at evolution.
Why do our brains model the world around them? So that we can avoid death. A big brain gave our species evolutionary advantage. We're able to make informed decisions. We're able to act on large amounts of data. We're able to build bigger models and understand cause and effect in our world better. That is the benefit of modeling the world around you: so that you can get along well in it.
And guess what, you have an upper hand. Having the correct understanding about what you can and can't know for certain actually makes you better at understanding the world.
This is because you can keep an open mind, knowing that everything you think you know might be wrong. You're quicker to challenge your own assumptions precisely because you recognize them as assumptions. You're more patient when others prove you wrong. You're not married to ideas, you recognize that you're just an observer and if something you think is true is actually false you'd like to know it.
No scientist wants to waste time working on an incorrect theory, the faster they can disprove their own theories the faster they can learn new things.
How to Understand the World.
There has been a lot of theory about how to best understand the world. Firstly, you've got The Scientific Method. Its got a pretty good track record. This is the idea that you have a question about the world. You then construct an experiment and hypothesis, view the results and build a theory (a model) to answer your question.
Another notable method for coming to 'truth' is to get in the habit of using Socratic Reasoning. That's where you try to find exceptions to your assumptions. That seems to be a good way of getting to principle, you break everything down until you get to a situation without exceptions.
Those methods are great fun and help a lot in modeling the world around us. And already we understand them better: Socratic Reasoning and The Scientific Method give us truth* (with an asterix).
*There's always a caveat like, Socratic Reasoning is true so long as logic is true. This or that scientific theory is true if the results of our experiments are indicative of reality. Of course nobody actually speaks this way, it would be terribly redundant, its just implied.
In other words, truth is relative to the sphere in which it is placed. Is there such thing as objective truth then? Is there even such thing as objectivity? Yes there is to a point. Yes there is with assumptions.
If you assume that the world we see really is the world in reality then yes, there is objective truth because we can all see stuff and agree the sky is blue, the birds are chirping, the ice cream is cold. But if you dig deeper to the point of questioning what you experience as reality (if you think you're hallucinating for example) then objectivity breaks down and like René realized, subjectivity is the only fundamental truth.
But that shouldn't get you down. Every scientific advancement is built on other scientific models which are built fundamentally on assumption (verified assumption but assumption still). That doesn't mean the lights have stopped working, that doesn't mean the insulin doesn't help, we're fine.
In fact we're better than fine, scientific advancement, technological innovation has given us every material thing we love from toenail clippers to iPads! Seriously, a very good track record.
We're not building models on a sandy foundation, we're just recognizing that the bedrock of how we understand our perception is fundamentally made of sand.
The Downside of a Big Brain: You Realize Your Models are Inadequate.
This might all sound very confusing and I think that has more to do with my inability to communicate than the complexity of the subject matter. Either way you may be ready to throw in the towel and say that line of intellectual despair, "Who's to say, really?"
Don't do it. Look, the scientific method and Socratic Reasoning are helpful ways of creating models out of data. They don't validate the data as actual reality in any fundamental way.
But we humans yearn for that validation. We wanna know things are real, we wanna know if there's an afterlife before we find out. We wanna know what came before the big bang and what will transpire after the end of time. I get it. I wanna know those things and so many other things too.
But I can't. We can't, well we probably can't.
There are some who profess to have those answers and many others. Human history is full of superstition, irrationality, myths, legends, self deception, foolishness, and dare I say it, insanity.
How to NOT Understand the World.
Here's how to make sure you don't build rational models of the world; have prejudice.
Prejudice is bad, isn't it? Prejudging, making a judgment call before you have reason to make a judgment call. In short believing something without reason or even despite evidence to the contrary. That's bad.
We recognize this as rude, unintelligent and immoral when it comes to people but when it comes to belief, we don't make the connection. Maybe that's because we don't want to offend people's feelings. Well that's nice and we should respect other's feelings.
But believing things without or in spite of reason and evidence can be very dangerous. Just having the tendency potentially gives others control over you because if they can make you believe something without evidence to the point that you'll act on that belief then they can control your actions. Um... its usually called lying. And not only can you be harmed but others as well.
A person or population that believes things without reason or in spite of evidence to the contrary can do terribly destructive things. What if you believed that a certain type of people (that you didn't know well) were evil and that by killing them you were doing them a favor, preserving for them a spot in a heaven that you've never seen? That's a pretty obvious example of prejudice and it strikes me how similar faith is to prejudice.
Turns out faith is prejudice. Faith is judging without reason or in spite of evidence. Don't fight me on this; faith in order to be faith must be a the deliberate choice to believe despite contrary evidence or as the Hebrews 11:1 says, without evidence. If what you believe is obvious, if you have evidence you could no longer have faith. Faith's defining feature is the very definition of prejudice.
But if you think I'm picking on religion think again. What if you believed that your government (which you know little about) was supremely benevolent and that by waging war in another country you were actually bringing them democracy (a the supposed ideal which you've never experienced and which literally means mob rule)? Well then you'd be just as dangerous, except probably a little more because you have an army. Looks like patriotism is prejudice too.
Look, I've given you two examples of how to understand the world accurately and what comes of it and I've given you two examples how to avoid understanding the world accurately and what comes of it.
I began employing the former methods and I stopped employing the latter. You may love the implications I've come to or you may hate them. Either way I promise not to go and make any more religious or political statements moving forward. Because this post is focused on the beginning, not the end of wisdom.
The Super Reality
At the beginning of this post I outlined a benefit of recognizing the fundamental limits of knowledge. Now I've got a another benefit to add: The lines between fantasy and reality don't get blurred so easily.
There's probably some nut out there who literally believes that he's in the matrix. You know with the Neo and the bullet-time and the slimy pink fluid? He probably thinks its all real. He believes in a super reality. A reality that is by definition imperceptible, beyond reason and evidence.
The matrix super reality is fundamentally no different than the brains in jars super reality or René Descartes' evil demon super reality. You can't detect anything of that reality, you can't weigh reason and evidence concerning it and you can't change it. It is for all intents and purposes not real, but it could be.
And so what if it is so what if we are in the matrix? You might say I'm like the evil guy in that show, give me my stake and make it taste good! Except the matrix wasn't a super reality for him, it was reality, he could see it, he knew what was going on.
The matrix super reality is like any other - totally irrelevant. Sure, we could all be biological slaves to power hungry machines but that doesn't mean we can't have a good time. I personally don't subscribe to any super realities if I can help it because if I have no reason to choose one superstition over the others... well that's not fair to all the rest. Does Zeus or the sun God Ra deserve such discrimination?
The problem with super realities (and fantasies of any kind, really) is that when they are taken seriously problems big and small usually occur. If our hero who thinks he's in the matrix starts killing white men in black suits and sunglasses then we've got problems.
When fantastic beliefs cause people to act in our shared reality here on earth the consequence happen in our actual shared earthy reality and the fantastic repercussions (of getting rid of agent smith) remain fantasy.
Most people have some kind of super reality they somewhat or totally believe is that actual reality of the universe beyond what they can see, sense or logically derive. This could be a stubborn mystic belief such as, "everything happens for a reason." This could also be something more detailed and formal such as a religion. The trick is to recognize the limitations of knowledge; if its beyond your senses or logic its a super reality.
Super Realities are fantasies or even theories about an actual reality that can't be validated by reason or evidence. The Super Reality requires faith to believe it to be true. Super Realities are dangerous because they are inherently prejudice.
I think believing in a super reality is a symptom of a larger problem - not being able to recognize the limits of our knowledge. People want to know what is true because they believe they can actually determine what is fundamentally true. When the limits of what we can actually know are acknowledged, however, the question changes from "what is true?" to "what makes the most sense given what I can see?" The question is one of modeling the world around us not finding absolute truth we can latch on to.
The Beginning of Wisdom
You may have noticed that I've been trying to define things as we go as often as it is practical. I defined knowledge as modeling the world, reality as perception and truth as the theoretical reality that those models indicate. I defined prejudice in detail and with examples, I defined faith and super realities.
This is because I want to communicate well and we should be on the same page as much as possible. Confucius said that "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name." If you share a definition of 'red' with someone you can start to communicate about red. But if you don't share the definition communication is hard.
I think the same principle can be applied to one's own mind. If you have a clear and unchanging definition of faith you can compare that definition to science or prejudice and see things more clearly than if your definition of faith was ambiguous or ever changing.
This way of thinking improves the quality of your communication with yourself which means you can create better models of the world faster. Whenever I'm confused I start defining stuff.
The Artist
Alright, we've come along way in this one blog post. We've discussed what we can and can't know fundamentally. We've realized that all truth is only true provided it's underlying, implied assumptions are true. We've explored how to build good models of the world around us. Then we compared that to a method that isn't particularly helpful in building an accurate model of the world around us and why. Lastly we've discussed how using solid definitions in our language can help us understand concepts and communicate clearly.
Don't do it. Look, the scientific method and Socratic Reasoning are helpful ways of creating models out of data. They don't validate the data as actual reality in any fundamental way.
But we humans yearn for that validation. We wanna know things are real, we wanna know if there's an afterlife before we find out. We wanna know what came before the big bang and what will transpire after the end of time. I get it. I wanna know those things and so many other things too.
But I can't. We can't, well we probably can't.
There are some who profess to have those answers and many others. Human history is full of superstition, irrationality, myths, legends, self deception, foolishness, and dare I say it, insanity.
How to NOT Understand the World.
Here's how to make sure you don't build rational models of the world; have prejudice.
Prejudice is bad, isn't it? Prejudging, making a judgment call before you have reason to make a judgment call. In short believing something without reason or even despite evidence to the contrary. That's bad.
We recognize this as rude, unintelligent and immoral when it comes to people but when it comes to belief, we don't make the connection. Maybe that's because we don't want to offend people's feelings. Well that's nice and we should respect other's feelings.
But believing things without or in spite of reason and evidence can be very dangerous. Just having the tendency potentially gives others control over you because if they can make you believe something without evidence to the point that you'll act on that belief then they can control your actions. Um... its usually called lying. And not only can you be harmed but others as well.
A person or population that believes things without reason or in spite of evidence to the contrary can do terribly destructive things. What if you believed that a certain type of people (that you didn't know well) were evil and that by killing them you were doing them a favor, preserving for them a spot in a heaven that you've never seen? That's a pretty obvious example of prejudice and it strikes me how similar faith is to prejudice.
Turns out faith is prejudice. Faith is judging without reason or in spite of evidence. Don't fight me on this; faith in order to be faith must be a the deliberate choice to believe despite contrary evidence or as the Hebrews 11:1 says, without evidence. If what you believe is obvious, if you have evidence you could no longer have faith. Faith's defining feature is the very definition of prejudice.
But if you think I'm picking on religion think again. What if you believed that your government (which you know little about) was supremely benevolent and that by waging war in another country you were actually bringing them democracy (a the supposed ideal which you've never experienced and which literally means mob rule)? Well then you'd be just as dangerous, except probably a little more because you have an army. Looks like patriotism is prejudice too.
Look, I've given you two examples of how to understand the world accurately and what comes of it and I've given you two examples how to avoid understanding the world accurately and what comes of it.
I began employing the former methods and I stopped employing the latter. You may love the implications I've come to or you may hate them. Either way I promise not to go and make any more religious or political statements moving forward. Because this post is focused on the beginning, not the end of wisdom.
The Super Reality
At the beginning of this post I outlined a benefit of recognizing the fundamental limits of knowledge. Now I've got a another benefit to add: The lines between fantasy and reality don't get blurred so easily.
There's probably some nut out there who literally believes that he's in the matrix. You know with the Neo and the bullet-time and the slimy pink fluid? He probably thinks its all real. He believes in a super reality. A reality that is by definition imperceptible, beyond reason and evidence.
The matrix super reality is fundamentally no different than the brains in jars super reality or René Descartes' evil demon super reality. You can't detect anything of that reality, you can't weigh reason and evidence concerning it and you can't change it. It is for all intents and purposes not real, but it could be.
And so what if it is so what if we are in the matrix? You might say I'm like the evil guy in that show, give me my stake and make it taste good! Except the matrix wasn't a super reality for him, it was reality, he could see it, he knew what was going on.
The matrix super reality is like any other - totally irrelevant. Sure, we could all be biological slaves to power hungry machines but that doesn't mean we can't have a good time. I personally don't subscribe to any super realities if I can help it because if I have no reason to choose one superstition over the others... well that's not fair to all the rest. Does Zeus or the sun God Ra deserve such discrimination?
The problem with super realities (and fantasies of any kind, really) is that when they are taken seriously problems big and small usually occur. If our hero who thinks he's in the matrix starts killing white men in black suits and sunglasses then we've got problems.
When fantastic beliefs cause people to act in our shared reality here on earth the consequence happen in our actual shared earthy reality and the fantastic repercussions (of getting rid of agent smith) remain fantasy.
Most people have some kind of super reality they somewhat or totally believe is that actual reality of the universe beyond what they can see, sense or logically derive. This could be a stubborn mystic belief such as, "everything happens for a reason." This could also be something more detailed and formal such as a religion. The trick is to recognize the limitations of knowledge; if its beyond your senses or logic its a super reality.
Super Realities are fantasies or even theories about an actual reality that can't be validated by reason or evidence. The Super Reality requires faith to believe it to be true. Super Realities are dangerous because they are inherently prejudice.
I think believing in a super reality is a symptom of a larger problem - not being able to recognize the limits of our knowledge. People want to know what is true because they believe they can actually determine what is fundamentally true. When the limits of what we can actually know are acknowledged, however, the question changes from "what is true?" to "what makes the most sense given what I can see?" The question is one of modeling the world around us not finding absolute truth we can latch on to.
The Beginning of Wisdom
You may have noticed that I've been trying to define things as we go as often as it is practical. I defined knowledge as modeling the world, reality as perception and truth as the theoretical reality that those models indicate. I defined prejudice in detail and with examples, I defined faith and super realities.
This is because I want to communicate well and we should be on the same page as much as possible. Confucius said that "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name." If you share a definition of 'red' with someone you can start to communicate about red. But if you don't share the definition communication is hard.
I think the same principle can be applied to one's own mind. If you have a clear and unchanging definition of faith you can compare that definition to science or prejudice and see things more clearly than if your definition of faith was ambiguous or ever changing.
This way of thinking improves the quality of your communication with yourself which means you can create better models of the world faster. Whenever I'm confused I start defining stuff.
The Artist
Alright, we've come along way in this one blog post. We've discussed what we can and can't know fundamentally. We've realized that all truth is only true provided it's underlying, implied assumptions are true. We've explored how to build good models of the world around us. Then we compared that to a method that isn't particularly helpful in building an accurate model of the world around us and why. Lastly we've discussed how using solid definitions in our language can help us understand concepts and communicate clearly.
The mind looks for patterns in everything. It models whatever it can and language can be an awesome aid to that process. It can help make accurate models by providing more data and it can help make inaccurate models by providing manipulated data. Be very careful and scrutinize data you only get through language.
The mind not only makes complex models it also makes simple ones. The drawings of a child are often simple, squiggly representations of reality. The stick figure is classic example of the brain's ability to model, simplify and approximate data.
"Nothing has meaning except the meaning you give it." Have you heard that before? I forgot who said it, but I think its right.
The mind wants to find meaning in everything. Its constantly looking for patterns; that's all it does. Lock yourself in a pitch black room and don't move for hours and hours you might start hallucinating because the mind wants data!
It can even be difficult for you to keep your mind from doing that. Ever seen a cloud and said, "Doesn't that cloud look just like my little pony?" The brain is always modeling things and part of that is making connections to other things. Its always meshing and molding and creating new things.
As Kathryn Schulz has said, "The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't."
I think creativity and trying new things in new mediums, new fantasies are a lot of fun. Its pretty cool that people can create things that they've never seen before. And I think it is a awesome that the mind does this in so many unpredictable ways.
But to tell you the truth I've got a lot of respect for the artist talented enough to draw what they really see.
The mind wants to find meaning in everything. Its constantly looking for patterns; that's all it does. Lock yourself in a pitch black room and don't move for hours and hours you might start hallucinating because the mind wants data!
It can even be difficult for you to keep your mind from doing that. Ever seen a cloud and said, "Doesn't that cloud look just like my little pony?" The brain is always modeling things and part of that is making connections to other things. Its always meshing and molding and creating new things.
As Kathryn Schulz has said, "The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't."
I think creativity and trying new things in new mediums, new fantasies are a lot of fun. Its pretty cool that people can create things that they've never seen before. And I think it is a awesome that the mind does this in so many unpredictable ways.
But to tell you the truth I've got a lot of respect for the artist talented enough to draw what they really see.
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