I am leaning towards the much-maligned concept of spirit. Energy presents a dizzying array of forms. And evolution has been going on for an extremely long time. Who knows what shape a very, very long-lived type of spiritual entity might take? I

I've just been re-reading Foundations of Cognitive Science by Michael Posner, and the chapter on experimental methods kind of concludes directly on point with the OP.

"The history of humankind is one of increasing use of tools for extending our power, expanding or amplifying our physical senses, and more recently for amplifying our intellectual senses, our mental powers."

So, the question really is, to what extent can we effectively use these tools without understanding them?

I've been arguing that lack of understanding of the tools is a serious problem. @Ciceronianus has been arguing the opposite. The chapter I just read tends to support his perspective, citing evidence that experts are generally unaware of the subtle cues and mechanisms whereby they effect their judgments. So I guess the only real problem is when it comes to the creation of the tools themselves. Can we have a healthy and integrated society where there is sharp division between the majority who use the tools, and the minority who understand and develop them?

I agree, there's a case to be made for conflating consciousness and self-consciousness. My main idea is, that if nature evolves to produce these discontinuous realms, who is to say there isn't another beyond whatever is our current apex?

The psychological reality is the awareness. — Raymond

Self-consciousness versus consciousness though......

Yes, I knew this was coming.

But the self-perpetuation of the manufactured portion of the "natural" world consisting of human products is contingent on the transmission of cultural knowledge, which means that the kind of understanding-gap problem which is the theme of the OP then becomes a critical issue.

Ok, I will look at that for sure. Do you think there is any reason in principle why there may not be even higher levels of description than those accessible to us? I doubt the amoeba has much awareness of its own psychological reality.....

What a picturesque scenario. Almost romantic, in a weird way. — john27

Yes, although I'm not sure if picturesque or graphic is the word I'd choose....

Karl Jaspers notes that there are obvious discontinuities happening between different levels of description corresponding to the apparent hierarchy of evolving physical systems - physical - chemical - biological - psychological. While a lot of effort goes into reduction, Jaspers is not incorrect. I see no reason why there could not be more.

:up:
Yes, there was a lot of talk about the film production a few years back. I've been holding my breath.

Yeah, despite the dire setting, I wouldn't necessarily agree that violence is an ethical response. — john27

I don't believe that violence is ever an ethical choice. But I think that the "defense of reason" position may be one of the strongest.

edit:

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, a farmer in the north of Scotland had his hour of fame. He was said to possess the art of curing insanity. Pinel notes in passing that this Gregory had the physique of a Hercules: "His method consisted in forcing the insane to perform the most difficult tasks of farming, in using them as beasts of burden, as servants, in reducing them to an ultimate obedience with a barrage of blows at the least act of revolt."

I first read this shortly after the book came out. When I was eleven I found it picking through the grown-up side in the library. Re-reading the wikipedia, I see that might have been an abridged version, so I just ordered a copy from Amazon. This is hands down my favourite science-fiction novel.

Huh. So violence is like a cure/response to madness, if I understand correctly? — john27

That is the suggestion, as an historical analysis. Violence as enforcing reason. It is kind of chilling.

I'm just reading Foucault's Madness and Civilization, which characterizes the horrific brutality with which the Age of Reason addressed what is antithetical to reason, madness. I guess in those terms, violence is seen as being ethical when it is applied to unreason:

...the age of reason confined. It confined the debauched, spendthrift fathers, prodigal sons, blasphemers, men who "seek to undo themselves," libertines. And through these parallels, these strange complicities, the age sketched the profile of its own experience of unreason.

From your list you might enjoy The Forever War, if you haven't read it already.

Well, the natural world is a self-creating, self-maintaining, and organically fundamental and essential environment, for starters.

I'm not so focused on the power dynamic aspect of things. But I do think more and more people know less and less about the world they live in. Farmers traditionally have been able to fix vehicles and build and use tools that rely on principles of mechanics (tackles, etc), construct things, etc. I'm thinking your average city-dweller dropped in the wilderness would survive about 3 days. Technology is insulating us from reality, not enhancing it.

I think there is a real distinction between expert knowledge and not knowing how electricity works. Or gravity.

There a huge knowledge-deficit that is a snowballing social problem, yes, for sure.

Seems to me that, in a situation like this, the more technology evolves, the larger the deficit grows, the more the world is going to be subject to corrective back-pressures....

Check out the movie "Don't Look Up" if you haven't already seen it. It is a hilarious (and frightening) look at people enslaved by their own tech.

Interesting. Having found out recently that I am coming into enough money to finally retire, I have been asking myself what I would like to do.

Of course, there's a big difference between having just enough to live comfortably, and having a great surplus. But that's kind of the key to me. Life is just a series of habits. As we live, so we think. For me, my thoughts are to have a nice home gym, to establish healthy patterns of eating and exercise, to read and write a little more, to donate a bit more to and also volunteer a bit with some local charitable organizations, like the food bank. Maybe we will buy ourselves a nice, new electric vehicle (I'm thinking of a Hyundai Kona).

If I had a whole lot of money, and allowed my life to become about buying a lot of things, well that would become one of my dominant and defining habits. I'm not sure how that advances the set of cognitive habits that constitutes me. It doesn't really make me anything more than a consumer, a hyper-consumer. That's not something I aspire to be.

What do you aspire to be?

Technology is not an end in itself; it is just one of many means that we humans employ in the project of survival. So even if our goal is only to survive, having an imperfect or limited understanding of technology reduces the value of that technology itself. Everyone knows how to make a wheel. So even if all the wheel-factories in the world were to be destroyed, people could still build their own wheelbarrows and carts. Most people don't understand the science of electricity however. So if there was an apocalyptic event, a few people would be able to generate electricity; most couldn't.

If the project of humanity is more than just survival, then the problem is even greater. Let's say the project of humanity is to optimize human existence. Not just survive, but survive in such a way that individual and social existence is improved as much as possible. Bare minimum, this can only occur if advances in human life are passed forward from generation to generation. However you only use a technology optimally to the extent that you understand it. And you can only pass forward what you understand.

For example, many people think that discovering a source of unlimited, inexpensive power would solve the world's problems (fusion energy). This is naive. All power, when used or applied, ends up as heat. So suddenly increasing power-consumption by an order of magnitude could result in an environmental catastrophe.

Technology can only be used optimally to the extent it is understood. Or to the extent that it's use is directed and controlled by those that really understand it, I guess....

In The Open Universe Karl Popper has some interesting arguments about the theoretical limitations of omniscience within known physical constraints. Worth a read.

Philosophical "truths" are inevitably derived through processes of reasoning that traverse the boundaries of induction and deduction. So they are not amenable of proof as in mathematics, or verification, as in science. Rather, they evolve through consensus. However, since cumulative experiences (knowledge) are invariably variable, my understanding of the inherent truth of the allegory of the cave, for example may be different than yours, and Plato's. Some philosophers argue that an author's intentions establish the definitive content of his claims. Some believe that writings only achieve their fullest elaboration through their readership.

For me, the one constant seems to be that everyone now agrees that there is an interface between mind and matter. There is just a lot of disagreement over which side has priority, and where exactly that interface occurs.....

Madness & Civilization by Michel Foucault
A fitting start to 2022?

My 2021 readings, in chronological order:

• First Principles by Herbert Spencer
• Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
• Ideology And Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge by Karl Mannheim
• The Intellectuals and The Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia by John Carey
• Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham H. Maslow
• The Antiquary by Walter Scott
• An Essay on Metaphysics by R.G. Collingwood
• The Metaphysics of Pragmatism by Sidney Hook
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger
• Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Constitution of the Human Being by Max Scheler
• On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings by Max Scheler
• The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka
• Selected Philosophical Essays by Max Scheler
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
• The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley
• Reform or Revolution & Other Writings (Books on History, Political & Social Science) by Rosa Luxemburg
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
• On Individuality and Social Forms by Georg Simmel
• Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
• The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
• The Epic of Gilgamesh by Unknown
• Descriptive Psychology by Franz Brentano
• The Idea of Nature by R.G. Collingwood
• The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne
• Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead
• Adventures of Ideas by Alfred North Whitehead
• Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
• The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory by David J. Chalmers
• Naming and Necessity by Saul A. Kripke
• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio
• Damasio's Error and Descartes' Truth: An Inquiry into Consciousness, Metaphysics, and Epistemology by Andrew Gluck
• The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding by Humberto R. Maturana
• The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget
• De Anima (On the Soul) by Aristotle
• Philosophy of Existence by Karl Jaspers
• Story of Psychology, The by Morton Hunt
• The Origin and Goal of History by Karl Jaspers
• Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud by Herbert Marcuse

I always like to think of false beliefs as being dissonant with reality, — Tzeentch

But are we talking about scientific truths? Or moral truths? What about aesthetic truths? Moral and aesthetic truths can appear to contradict natural or scientific truths (it is better to give than to receive). And maybe some kinds of suffering are better than some kinds of satisfaction (it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied...).

It isn't so much that science is to blame for today's woes as that people try to use science in lieu of traditional normative institutions; for which it is, unfortunately, a poor substitute.

Foundations Of Cognitive Science
by Michael I. Posner (Editor)

Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud
by Herbert Marcuse

I have one high-CBD strain that seems to facilitate hyper-focus, great for reading and writing. I find I read a little slower, but I really squeeze every last drop of meaning out of every sentence; often I'll anticipate upcoming developments in the text. My days of doing psychedelics are behind me; those were more about personal psychological epiphanies for me.

I also have the music going constantly. Renaissance classical or instrumental jazz. Good for neural development.....

Yes, I was hypothesizing about the transfer of some essential spiritual thing into a bio-mechanical context and wondering at what point the translation of something ideal "an essence that is the complex me" breaks down into how that essence can be expressed physically. More or less.

But the hypothesis is that you are transferred. So what is transferred then?

"What is it to be Enlightened?"

To know that the best way to keep a secret is by telling everyone.

I wonder if my consciousness were transferred to another body (brain) whether my signature would stay the same, or be slightly different because of different learned neuromuscular habits (i.e. I would essentially be forging my own signature)?

As far as I see, Huxley fits squarely in the tradition of spiritual realism, by which I mean that the spirit is real. As I mentioned, this is in general typical of eastern cultures, as opposed to the scientific materialist orientation of the west. It is one of Weber's primary theses.

To what extent is consciousness based on the physical basis of human experiences? — Jack Cummins

I think it is necessary to recognize at the outset that identifying the mind and the brain is a uniquely western problem. Eastern cultures have a tradition of fundamental spiritualization (Weber, Jaspers, etc.) compared to Western that, to a certain extent, transcends the mind-brain problem.

No doubt the brain is capable of engendering behaviours in response to stimuli. But if you adopt the spiritual perspective, these behaviours themselves could be thought of as subject to direction. A theory of will could be constructed along these lines.

If you become aware of a bias you have begun to mitigate it. So even if bias can't be eliminated, this does not mean we should not attempt to minimize it.

https://effectiviology.com/cognitive-debiasing-how-to-debias/

According to Joseph Sirgy, people in general function through a combination of the desire to achieve self-consistency, self-esteem, and self-knowledge. These motives can conflict.

The Origin and Goal of History
by Karl Jaspers

Philosophy of Existence
by Karl Jaspers

Lots of things happen can happen in nature that are disruptive of their surrounding systems. These things either disappear, or completely disrupt existing systems resulting in new ones. The question is, should we be disrupting our biosphere or harmonizing with it?

I highly doubt that if you take even the most prestigious physicist today and sent him back in time, would be able to make such contributions as Aristotle or Descartes or Hume. — Manuel

Interesting. And this is the kind of thing that makes me think that cultural contents (what is understood) are as important as the thought process itself.....