Internal vs. External Definitions of Selfhood

Recently on the Extropy-chat email list there was (another) series of posts regarding the nature of selfhood/identity. This was begun by one correspondent as a challenge to other members of the list that their reticence regarding uploading and various other self-replication technology possibilities (eg some teleportation scenarios, etc) masked an underlying - unrecognised - belief in some kind of soul or self-essence.

The basic point being, that any argument which centred on an "it just wouldn't be me" claim is scientifically unsupportable.

The point of view which this correspondent is following is one which either A: denies any meaning to the words 'self' or 'identity' (regarding them as mere social fictions); or B: reduces these to a pattern of information or behaviour, either of which can be formally replicated from a material substrate other than the human body, and thus the same "self" will be present...
this substrate could be silicon (computer), machine, anything you like...the important thing is that if the precise set of information (memories/thoughts/behaviours) for a subject, say...Bruce Dickinson (why not?), are made to appear in something other than the original manifestation (Bruce's own original body and brain) then this new information-carrier will still *be* in any meaningful sense of the term, Bruce Dickinson.

The challenge then is this - if this is *not* any longer Bruce Dickinson, then what do we mean by these words? What in fact is the *self* of Bruce (or anyone else) which allows us to attribute identity to one manifestation of those thoughts and behaviours but not another?

There are several possible answers to this problem, and it is one hotly debated in philosophical circles at the moment.

I wish to deal with one particular angle which was present in the discussion on Ex-I. Why is it, the initial correspondent asked, that many people consciously commited to a materialist world-view still have an intrinsic hesitancy in allowing their sense of 'self' fluidity enough to include such uploaded versions? If there is no metaphysical essence or soul, then we must define identity in terms of thoughts, behaviour, memory. As one respondent put it, "the inescapable answer to the "but it's not me" objection is "well then, show us this me". It's just not possible; whatever you point at that might be you leads to absurdity". This is indeed the case. If we refuse anything non-material, then it must be something bodily which we are defining as the self. Yet (as Descartes argued all that time ago) the body can be almost entirely mutilated while still retaining this elusive 'self'-hood. Cybernetics theory has demonstrated the permeable boundaries of the individual to the extent that what we understand as 'self' in different contexts can include technological components (from a walking stick or a pacemaker to the computer through which we interact with other humans many miles away), while psychanalysis has succesfully allowed us to deconstruct the self into many separate and competing drives.

It has been argued that the defining element of self then is usually related to consciousness: it is the sense of self which most usefully confers selfhood. If there is no intrinsic link between 'me' as I sit writing this, and 'me' ten years ago, apart from the memories I have of being that person, then how would some other body (or even computer program) having the same memories and same capacity to think of itself as descending from that person ten years ago not also be me? How can this be a logically consistent position?

It should be noted that there is no real issue of transference of consciousness involved here (as some have been at pains to point out): consciousness itself does not get transferred, rather it gets split like a Y or a road which forks into two. Two bodies can then have the 'same' consciousness at the instant the copying process is completed, but will also instantly diverge as they have slightly different experiences etc. Because selfhood is not an essence there is not an issue of transferring the self - it can be precisely duplicated.

And yet still, to the dismay of the rational arguments' proponents, still many refuse to accept that another such upload could actually replace them or be a desirable future state.

It seems to me that it is not an anachronistic belief in a soul which prevents this acceptance, inherited in our subconsciouses from the religious heritage we have only recently begun to move beyond. The reason is rather a very subtle metaphysical implication present within our grammar, a grammar which is exposed both in our language and thought. People will not accept this because what we mean by the word 'me' can never refer to something outside of oneself. The word necessarily encompasses a sense of interiority. Anything which one can point to and say "that" cannot, logically, be "me". This is the only reason the acceptance of uploads etc is so problematic, and it's not because of a belief in some metaphysical self, it's because our conventions about the word and the concept of 'I' don't allow us to use it in reference to something oneself does not inhabit. The self that can be referred to in the third person is not the self, our grammar of thought doesn't work in that way.

It could be argued that we can think of a photograph or video as being 'me'. However there is a slight of hand in this process, for the image is only 'me' in a past sense; it is not the me, for precisely the reasons above. If pushed most people will see this and admit that in fact the photograph is not them, but a representation of the past-them. Just ask yourself, if that picture is 'you' then why does it not think or feel; why do you now not have access to its thought processes?

Of course, the flipside to this is that we do not have the same conventions regarding 'you', 'she' or 'he'. Therefore, it is perfectly permissible (and comprehensible) to say, "that (simulation) is her in exactly the same way that this (body) is her". This is because the second or third person is always necessarily external. We do not define others in terms of their internal states for we do not have access to these. The rationalist of course may argue that internal states are always describable in terms of externally available information (brain processes, etc). But to define something by this external information is to instantly remove it from the intrinsic definition of I-hood. It makes it an other by virtue of this very externality.

We can rationally think through our notion of self and work out why there is no essential difference between me and an exact copy of me; but the gut will always reject attempts to assign my selfhood to some other being.

A "that" can never be "me"...it will only ever be a that, he or she. (Or you).

Beyond Logic

Of course, what I have recently been primitively grasping at is the fundamental notion Wittgenstein was expressing the Tractatus: I have come to understand that the only truths that matter (and thus, the only accurate aim of philosophy) are the personal; the subjective. The truths of logic (which are what all external, or scientific, investigations lead to) are essentially meaningless: they every one reduce to tautology. Leibniz's A=A. Logic, science, mathematics...all are investigations of different ways of expressing this single principel which is their sole axiom. The arts (in the broadest sense) however, refuse any requirement of axiom. They begin from the individual, that is, life, with all the contradictions and irresolutions that implies.

This is why the philosophy that matters has to be carried out as an art. I want, I need, to say more than A=A.

The only blog about science, religion and the status of metaphysics you'll ever need to read

Okay maybe not, but I'm determined it's the last one I'm going to write. I'm absolutely sick of this subject now and want to get back to more interesting topics but I feel the need to lay down my feelings on this once and for all.

I'm getting increasingly worried by the "new atheists". This movement, for any who aren't aware, is the one spearheaded by Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris: top-ranking scientists, who wherever possible decry the stupidity of religion on all grounds. My major issue is how they misrepresent both religion and science. I will also say here that (despite how I may sometimes appear) I think science is a beautiful thing; I am not anti-science, this would be idiotic in the extreme. I also know that there are as many theistic fools trying to push weak arguments to win some fictitious 'battle' as there are atheistic. There is a middle road, but in order to walk that we need to understand exactly what the roles of science and religion are.

Sam Harris' recent article for the Washington Post carries a rational and appealing argument for the destruction of religion based on (a) the naivety of belief in God, (b) the intolerance of some adherents. I'll address his naive and offensive statements about Islam at the end of this blog, for the main part I want to concentrate on his belief that religion has no place in society.

Harris' claims that atheists should emphasise their "reason and intellectual honesty" as opposed to their absence of faith. He believes that grouping themselves as Atheists marginalises their arguments by placing them within a subset, one of many, belief-systems. This is a very complex and tricky issue, and one which requires strict untangling, but once unravelled may isolate the key problem in this entrenched battle of wills.

Rationalism is not a belief system. Or at least, it should not be one. Rationalism is a means of acquiring information. It is a way of thinking which places facts within a particular order, and allows us to draw conclusions from them. The type of conclusion is not determined by rationalism: in this sense, it is open. The key element of rationalism is its emphasis on empiricism and logic. The method demands no assumptions unless justified by one of these two means (usually empirical evidence takes priority, upon which logic is put to work to extrapolate further information). In this way, any truth is known to be grounded on solid inductive principles and understood to be beyond reasonable doubt.

The method and ideal is great: it has enabled massive advances in understanding the natural world, and these have led on to fantastic tools to improve our standard of life, our health, the passage of information and our ability to act in and upon the world.

But, what the proponents of rationalism have to realise is that not being a belief system is a double-edged sword. Because, humanity does need belief systems. The ordering of facts according to logic suits us when we need to approach the world logically. But there is so much more to life than this...logic cannot answer questions of value or meaning, it cannot offer us moral guidance or hope, and it cannot give us a framework in which to contextualise the importance of events in our own lives. Although many people try to bend scientifically discriminated facts to offer answers to these questions, what this actually does is distort the nature of science and go beyond the very remit of empirical-logical inference upon which science depends. Pulling answers about the meaning of life from Darwinian evolution, from quantum physics or from neuroscience misrepresents not only the facts but also the method by which they are acquired. Karl Popper and Mary Midgley (not to mention Ludwig Wittgenstein) have written extensively on the true nature of science, and the kind of questions that are accessible to the scientific method. They all conclude that much of human thought lies outside the realm of rational investigation, and that any attempt to cross this divide results not only in bad science, but also bad everything else (whether the subject be morality, language, religion, art, etc).

The questions of value, meaning and purpose do not have answers within the material world: these are metaphysical in the truest sense, and whether or not we can associate an area of the brain with the act of thinking about these things, the values and systems which these thoughts generate, the social superstructures arising from our mass contemplation on questions of human-import are not material entities, and do not follow the rules laid down by rationalism.

What religious belief systems offer is an approach to living which interprets the world through a particular system of values. What all religions have in common, is a transparent admission of their context for understanding the world and events within it. This is perhaps the one thing lacking from the peculiar form of western rationalism which has come down to us from Greece, via Anselm and Descartes. This peculiar rationalism claims to strip away all context from thought, placing the individual intellect above and beyond everything else: the implicit claim is that the individual can process logic so smoothly as to analyse the world's facts removed from any context. This idea, that the individual mind can reach outside of its own subjectivity and attain a rational peak from whence to view the world as it really is, in all its objective glory, constitutes such a firm base for western thought as to be entirely buried from sight. There is an interesting corrolary if we examine the concept: This idea of the self as a unitary entity comprehending space and time from outside mirrors very effectively the picture of God which the west has struggled so hard to rid itself of. The very idea of a rational intellect perceiving the world and its nature beyond its own particular subjective context has in fact replaced the naive God of centuries hence, with a naive Self. In believing that we as subjective beings within the world can raise ourselves above and beyond subjectivity, we betray not only our arrogance but also the very intellectual tradition which provides the context for western rationalist thought. Rationalism is not a universal, as the Enlightenment claim goes: it is embedded within the western tradition, and has the western tradition embedded within it: the emphasis on individualism is not a universal value. The value of culture is essential to many, and therefore cultural beliefs and nuances are taken much more seriously than in the west; tradition, which Europe claims to have broken with so effectively during the struggles of the Enlightenment and Renaissance, is regarded as essential to any understanding for the rest of the world: it is both naive and arrogant to believe that we as individuals can see so clearly now as to disregard the wisdom developed over millenia by our people. It is naive and arrogant to believe that we can even remove ourselves from it.

The proliferation of scientific attempts to describe the structure of the world should give us a clue as to the nature of the problem. We now have a whole host of competing hypotheses to choose from: multiverses, superpositioned particles, superstrings, two dimensions of time, Boltzmann brains, the universe within a black hole...for every experimental finding there are at least two theories adequately explaining the data, and in terms of the "big picture" we seem to have no way of knowing how to choose between different interpretations of what it looks like. This is because this big picture is simply beyond science's capabilities. It is beyond the capabilities of humans. We cannot objectively comprehend the world of which we are part. The subjective mind, no matter the elegance of its logic or the detail of its micoscopes, cannot step outside the universe and view it "as it really is". Our science is excellent at making predictions, which we can then test and establish with a degree of certitude whether they're true or false. This can lead us to an understanding of how the physical world works within the specific parameters of this action. What this cannot do is answer questions when we do not even know the context, or when the context is outside the physical universe. As different scientists attempt to give an answer to these "big picture" questions, we get a multitude of different pictures in much the same way as different religions offer different takes on the question.

One of the biggest mistakes of the atheist take on religion is that religions are defined principally by their metaphysical claims. The reduction of Christianity down to the doctrine of the trinity, for example. This approach (a) misses so much of what actually constitutes the religious life and (b) sets religion up as a rival to the realist truth claims of science. We must see that religion is not be understood in terms of truth claims about material reality. This is the fundamental mistake which is made by so many on both sides of the theistic divide. What religion does is offer a structure for interpreting life in terms of value and purpose by appeal to a level beyond rational, subjective thought. The structures of religion describe the metaphysical realm to which realism is not relevant: God must not be thought of as a being which we can ascribe existence in the same way we do to a chair or a table. Such ideas, that we can argue about and establish the existence or otherwise of God, demonstrate a dangerous category error which places metaphysics within matter. Metaphysics, of course, covers an enormous amount of ground: The ideals and categories of thought, the structure of logic and number, and the meaning and value of life are non-physical forms to which we can ascribe no temporal or causative relation with material existence. It is useless even to ask the question of whether these things precede spatio-temporal existence, or are generated from within it. It is a waste of intellectual effort to attempt to establish these metaphysics as underlying and guiding matter, or as being mere epiphenomena of human thought processes. They are both, and neither. If we view things from a rationalist-empiricist standpoint (ie, a reductionist material one), then they appear to emerge from the lifeless, inert interplay of material processes: it is matter which somehow generates minds, which then develop metaphysics. If we view things from a logical or mind-based (ie metaphysical; religious) standpoint, then they precede and through the pre-eminent structure of logic and number or transcendental consciousness, inert matter arises as a means of giving expression to these principles through the eventual emergence of individual consciousness: it is for the expression of these eternal principles that matter comes about. Whether we take matter or metaphysics/mind as the prime element of reality depends entirely on how we phrase the question, and according to what rules we answer.

The crucial thing we must realise is that both elements are equally important, and for we humans, as subjective beings, we are accountable to the metaphysical forms just as much as we are to the material. Human life is lived as much within the social noosphere of cultural thought as it is within the material world. It is the metaphysical structures of logic, archetypes, morality, which inform our understanding of life and the way we live. They place restrictions on us just as powerful as the material world, and they cannot be altered (or removed) from our consciousness any more than the limitations of matter can be removed from our bodies. To have minds is to exist within the metaphysical realm of thought-forms and implicit structures of interpretation. We can understand this clearest through maths: even though numbers are an abstraction from the material world, when we begin to investigate the abstract structure of numbers, we discover eternal principles and relationships such as irrational numbers; the sequence of primes; Fibonnaci numbers; degrees of infinity. These structures are inherent within number itself, independent of human experience of the world. Although numbers do not exist in a material sense (even the most simple integers do not exist; they are merely expressed through matter, or abstracted from matter, depending on how we look at it), they have qualities which are independent of human opinion. Irrational numbers such as the square root of two were not invented by humans: they were discovered within the nature of number itself. So it is with all metaphysics. The step we need to take is to disregard claims about 'realism', for this is a red herring. Realism cannot and does not apply to metaphysics. The nature of metaphysical entities however is independent of the minds which conceptualise them. Through the examination of these entities and structures we can discover new things about their nature, and understand better how they influence and effect our lives. Whether we understand mind as an epiphenomenon emerging from material reality, or as the guiding principle underlying it, the metaphysical structures which are expressed through it need to be investigated in order for us to understand the social-mental-cultural world of meaning in which we live.

One cannot really blame those of the new atheist movement for their attack on religion: in part, it is purely defensive. As rationalism has advanced and consumed everything in its wake, religions have assumed the form of rational belief systems in order to survive. This application of religious and scriptural myths to the material world, reflects the precedence which science has given to matter. The current debate over creationism vs evolution in schools is only one area where religious myth is being pushed far beyond its mandate and encroaching onto territory it has no claim to. The right of science over religion in this area should be obvious. Factual material and historical claims must be based on empirical data and reasoned thought, not myth.

Finally, I'd like to quickly address Harris' claims about religious extremism. It's become traditional to blame religion for the terrible crimes of the past, and also for events such as modern day terrorism. What Harris, along with so many others, fails to comprehend is that it is through the tools of science that these hate-crimes have been achieved: if religion is to blame for men wanting to crash airplanes into buildings, then it is science that has provided the ability for men to express anger so effectively. No one blames science for the atom bomb or the gas chamber. These things presumably were sitting dormant, waiting to be discovered; it is not the lack of moral conviction on the part of scientists (or in fact the lack of ingrained morality in science generally) which is at fault here - the blame is solely on the one who authorises their use. Swords, guns, bombs, tanks...all these are the result of science, of people applying the scientific method to manipulate the materials of nature. Why was morality not applied to stop implements of torture being designed and manufactured?

Secondly, in looking solely at the terrorist acts of some Muslims, Harris fails to engage any kind of debate about why people feel this angry, and why the people who provided some of the world's most just, peaceful and tolerant nations and empires have now reached the stage of such desperation that they have resorted to terrorism in order to make their voice heard. Blaming religion for this anger is stupid, plain and simple. In fact it's fucking stupid, but this is what comes of not having looked enough into the context and history that current events have grown from. It's what comes of the west's ignorance of its own traditions of brutality and manipulation, both explicit and covert, leading right up to the present day.

Okay, that's the end of the serious stuff. I needed to get that off my chest.

And now, a little light relief in the form of satire...

Does the Universe Have A Purpose?

This is a response to The John Templeton Foundation's recent panel interview. Correspondents were asked to answer the question "Does the universe have a purpose?". Those interviewed were selected from a variety of disciplines, including astronomy, theology, astrophysics, biochemistry and computer science among others. The answers cover the entire spectrum from categorically No to certainly Yes, many opting simply for 'unsure' or 'possibly'.

The first thing that struck me about the question, was the fuzziness of what was being asked: It seems like a relatively straight-forward question, but once I begin to break it down, I find myself wondering who or what we are expecting an answer from – to which strata of 'reality' are we speaking?

My central point here is that in asking "Does the universe have a purpose?", we need to understand where we are locating the context of the question. Are we attempting to answer for the material structure that we inhabit, are we asking to the universe itself "Do you have a purpose, forget about our ideas, what do you say?"? Or are we asking within the sphere of human culture, does life have a grand (non-subjective) purpose, one imbued by our nature as conscious beings? Or, are we asking individually, do I experience purpose in my life?

These are all very different questions. The first, which many of the correspondents assume is the only angle, presents enormous difficulties. For there to be any 'objective' purpose to the universe (that is, one above and beyond human thought), we must needs postulate some grand power which defines it. As biochemist Christian de Duve points out, the idea demands some anthropomorphic creator-figure, one who has both the power and the will to determine Meaning for all creation. The question then becomes one of theology: an atheist must simply answer 'no', and a theist will almost certainly answer 'yes'. The problem with this interpretation, the objectification of Purpose, is that it forces us to attempt to see beyond our own minds. This begs the question of meaning: to even ask whether there is purpose outside of subjective consciousness is to attempt ourselves to assume a God's-eye-view on reality. How can we, as subjective, particularised minds attempt to state a truth (either positive or negative) outside of subjectivity?

Polymath Paul Davies' answer is particularly thought-provoking on this issue, reminding us that if 'purpose' is a solely human category (as chemist Peter William Atkins claims), then so is every concept employed in the practice of science: whenever we try to say anything about the world, we are applying human principles and ideas to 'objective' reality. Science (in fact, even perception) would be impossible without doing that. We are on a dangerous slope towards solipsism if we begin questioning the validity of concepts simply because they come from our minds.

There is a similar problem with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's claim that bacteria would view the purpose of human life very differently from ourselves (ie as a mere food source/habitable environment): bacteria would give no answer to the question. I find it hard to believe bacteria could even ask the question. To do so is entirely a human enterprise: of all the world that we know, it is only humans who are 'meaning-making beings'. It is only us who find any need of the concept of 'purpose'.

So yes, of course 'purpose' presupposes a mind to conceive it, whether that mind is the cause of reality or merely the perceiver of it – but we must also ask, does not the term "universe" presuppose a mind to conceive it? In order for there to be a concept 'universe', there must be a subjective mind which is perceiving it and creating concepts based on it. Reality itself, stripped of consciousness, simply is: it makes no claims and generates no concepts. It is not merely the positive assertion of purpose which is beyond objective material reality, but also the negative denial of purpose: To stamp one's own anti-teleological preferences onto a mechanical system is to go far beyond what empirical evidence could possibly entail. As Lawrence M Krauss succinctly states, "The conclusion is in the mind of the beholder, and it is outside of the realm of scientific theory and prediction". Purpose (or lack of it) is a conclusion, it is not a property which can be investigated by material science.

Removing then the theological option, at the opposite end of the spectrum we have pure subjectivity. This third approach makes no grand claims beyond the subject's own opinion, localising the ability to claim purpose within individual consciousness and having no bearing on the structure of objective reality. But one feels this approach is something of an apology for human thought. It commits the same error as the first, in placing human consciousness as an isolated sphere within objectivity – it is subsumed by the 'grander' material Real World, that which is not merely personal opinion. This relativism places all opinions – whatever they are – on the same footing, effectively saying "make your own mind up – it doesn't actually affect anything anyway"

The universe we live in is one determined by culture and the broader social context. We do not live in a universe of particles, bouncing billiard ball-like, or one of quantum fuzziness. We live and act within a sphere of human value, human endeavour, one where organisms exist and interact as part of a web of meaning. Individuals have values, and experience reality through the conceptual substrata of social conditioning. It is this "noosphere", the realm of intellect (both conscious and unconscious, individual and collective) which we experience reality through: the conceptualisation of material properties happens culturally. We experience a cup, not a collection of atoms adhering to each other. We experience the joy and horror of global social events, not meaningless organisms bouncing off each other. It is this broad social context which confers meaning, and this which confers our sense of purpose. Surely, it is within this context that we must locate any search for the answers to this question?

Lawrence M Krauss opens the possibility of empirical evidence for divinely-ordained purpose through the medium of a cosmic "I am here" blazing across the sky. I contend that it is not an "I am here" we should be searching for, but the knowledge that We Are Here. The vain attempt to escape human teleological thinking and place meaning and purpose outside our own intersubjectivity, outside our own value systems, has left us bemused to find there is none. We find ourselves asking 'so we can find no meaning outside of what we think of as meaning?' What would we expect! Material science in this sense seems to want us to take measurements after throwing away the ruler! If we remove the influence of the subjective human mind from what we are perceiving, what data are we left with? What is there to be seen when we are eyeless?

The Value of the "Merely Human"

The problem with science -and what we must now try to counteract- is its disregard for the human mind, for experience, feeling and human categories. Although the theories of quantum mechanics do replace consciousness (or at least the conscious observer) to an important role in the cosmological scheme, we are still left with a somewhat etiolated appreciation of subjectivity. Value, morality, purpose - these things are still beheld as not existing in relation to the "most important" aspect of reality: the material. These things are given a cursory glance as evolutionarily-developed traits selected for their utility, at best something to be enjoyed during our time here, but ultimately not being intrinsically relevant to the world.

The value of religon in this sphere is that it sacralises precisely these "merely human" elements - these qualities are essential not only to human society, but are what the structure of the cosmos depends on. Most religions teach that value is determined outside of human thought, and therefore is a pre-existing structure which we must do our best to abide by - it, in fact, is why we are here. It is the measure by which we are judged. It cannot simply be abnegated by appeal to objectivity.

This centralising of the "uniquely human" is something we must cultivate. Not in the sense of placing humanity (as was implicit at one time) as the rulers of the cosmos, as the mark by which everything else is judged, but by accepting that the powers we have, which we have acquired (or indeed, which are handed on a plate to self-conscious,socially-organising beings such as humans), come with a responsibility to use them wisely, according to the traditions of morality and value which have been passed down to us.

Why the Everyday World makes Sense

Some people seem quite confused by the discrepancies between microscopic (quantum) reality and macroscopic (everyday) reality. The fact that the quantum level doesn't follow our normal logic has caused a lot of trouble for scientists (and only slightly less for the general public).

How can a level of reality, that we experience in our everyday lives, make perfect sense when it is generated from a completely illogical, counter-intuitive level beneath it?

The answer has to do with the way we are looking at the problem: macroscopic reality must make intuitive sense. Our minds have developed precisely in order to form predictions about the everyday world. We experience reality at the level of tables, chairs, grass and human actions willed by other minds. Our grip on the world is at the macroscopic level, and over the millenia individual consciousness has developed in order to understand the world at the level where it is active. Our sensory apparatus filters and interprets the world, applying forms and categories to the seething mass of undifferentiated data which bombards us. From this, we isolate and extract narrative threads which allow us to act effectively in the world. We cannot dispute that there are other events going on that we fail to comprehend. There are other narrative streams which simply don't fit into our minds, which don't make it through the logic filter, and so we don't connect isolated events which, seen from another dimension of thought, would be a clear process of cause and effect.

For example, we think in only one temporal direction. We find it exceedingly difficult to view cause and effect running from the present to the past. But doesn't this say more about our minds and the way they work, than about reality itself?

The reason the quantum world doesn't make sense in the same way the day-to-day world does, is not because of a structural shift between two levels of reality; it is because our minds suddenly reach 'home-ground' when we return to the everyday world.

The big question which this is leading up to, of course, is of the relationship between 'objective reality' and the subjective experience. But this is a topic for another blog.

A post-structuralist understanding of reality.

Re: Astronomy vs Astrology. As the 12 constellations no longer match up to the designated divisions of the solar year, does this discredit the Ancient art of astrology?

Again here the physicalist paradigm must be brought into question. The last 400 years have seen an increasingly rationalist interpretation of reality and the human experience. But this does not mean that we can disregard the structures which emerged from the prerational 'dreamtime'  of early human consciousness. To do so is to retroactively enforce our modern belief system onto the past. It is a grand mistake to think that the ancients drew up these beliefs as a rational interpretation of the cosmos...they have a much deeper significance. One that goes beyond the reductionist-materialist lens we in the 21st century have chosen to wear.

If we can accept a post-structuralist understanding of literature,we are saying that the intention of an author is irrelevant to the relation between text and reader. That is, the author alone does not determine the correct meaning of a text: the reader creates anew the text as she interprets it, using her subjective apparatus, the filters of her past experience and belief systems/personal mythology. The intention of an author is in fact not an intrinsic part of the text at all. That is due solely to the reader. The question I ask is, why can we not also accept this of reality? The individual creates anew the world through their own experience of it, and their subjective relationship to events, placing a unique and unchallengable sense of meaning onto the mere 'fact' of matter.

To claim that an atheistic physicalist universe can only be correctly understood in atheistic physicalist terms is to run counter to the very implication of this cosmology...if there is no 'creator', no deity to enforce an absolute "intention" behind facticity (that is, no deity to assign one and only one true interpretation of the facts; to make true a single claim "this happened because of this...", "if x then y", disallowing - negating - any other interpretation), if there is no such dominant power in reality then there is only subjective awareness to place the multitude of perspectives, opinions and interpretations upon the soulless facticity which exists nebulously 'outside' of us.

If there is no objective viewpoint, then we cannot subsume individual interpretations under a hierarchy of correctness. There is no 'correct'. It is the responsibility of each individual to create the meaning and the relationship between events in their reality. Causality is something we must actively create ourselves. Mythology is our own responsibility. Living is an activity, something we do creatively and must take responsibility for.

The Teleological Suspension of the Objective

Fear and Trembling sets forth Soren Kierkegaard's attack on the absolute ethical system of Hegel. Using the example of the biblical patriarch Abraham (whom God tested by asking to sacrifice his own son Isaac), Kierkegaard shows how an individual can, through religious faith and a personal relationship with God, suspend the normally absolute code of ethics. Thereby, acts which normally - from an objective standpoint, would be considered immoral, in fact entail no evil; and because they are not comprehensible from a logical viewpoint, only from the 'absurdity' of irrational faith, they transcend the universal code and establish faith as the basis for something far more important than the everyday 'rules' of life.

The most important implication of Kierkegaard's teleological suspension of the ethical (as it is called), is not in its new, faith-based attitude toward morality: it is in the possibility of the particular ascending above the universal.

Kierkegaard does not dispose of the universal (as later existentialists would); he does not strip reality down to a purely subjective experience, meaning and truth inscribed only from the pen of the individual. He accepts that the universal is there as guide and rule. There is indeed a perfect form against which everything must be judged. We, the particular, the individual in manifestation, stand perpetually in relation to the awesome form of the Absolute. But this relation is not insusceptible to change - for the fluid power of particularity can at times break it banks and overcome the iron hand of objective Truth. At these times reality is turned inside out, and individual experience takes the upper hand, the power of A Mind, My Mind, reaches up and over the staticity of Mind the Form, and we realise the imperfection of that which is prefect. For the Absolute cannot change, has no ebb and flow, it has no power of adaptation. The personal only can approach and be influenced by situation, and in this way its imperfection is the very thing which makes it perfect.

And this in some small way is the meaning of life - that to be an individual, no matter how weak, corrupt and ephemeral we are, tossed between the hands of destiny and lost in the flow of statistic and chemical interchange, we still can overcome all of reality, and place ourselves above that which defines truth; we can, by means of subjectivity, rewrite the rules of reality.

The Dangers of Language

"Our own language has been invented for the purpose of expressing our own experience. When we use it for discussing other peoples' we assimilate their experience into our own". (RG Collingwood, The Principles of Art)

It's funny how much of our lives we live entirely within the realm of symbolism. The human mind interprets experience in terms of concepts, words. This is a beautifully unique capability of human beings (to our knowledge), but the problems it generates - and conceals - hold a curious fascination for me.

Language is essentially a limiting force; it reduces experience into universally comprehensible units of data. The word 'chair' is the universal form of particular instances. The word represents all and anything which falls under the concept 'chair'. Plato argued that the universal is the true expression of an object - that particulars are but shadows of the universals that the human mind utilises. But this misses so much of the quality and impact of the particular. Imagine the difference between the word chair and the experience of a chair! While Plato is correct in seeing the purity and eternity of the universal (the concept represented by the word), it is also an etiolated, bloodless extraction from reality. All power has gone from it, stripped and corrupted from reality into mindstuff. Meaning without experience.

But all symbolism does this, for communication demands it. There is no other way to transfer an experience from my mind into yours. We must reduce reality to a vastly simplified representation...and just as MP3s grow in size as they grow in quality, the amount of information in our communication increases exponentially as we try to do the experience justice - to give the listener more depth and quality, we have to use more and more words.

But there is a crucial problem here: it is impossible to give a completely accurate description of an experience. Language always masks the particular by translating it into a universal, and no matter how hard we try we cannot fully communicate the depth of an experience without the listener being in exactly the same place at the same time. In effect, the representation would need to mirror the experience on an atomic level, so that it was precisely the same as the original. But, still the listener would not know how the experience felt to us. Our experiences are based on associations and past experiences (again the dreaded 'concept' enters the equation...we colour an experience of the sun, for example, by what we know of it, and what we have experienced of it before. One who has seen an eclipse in all its glory, or understands the nuclear process ocurring within it from moment to moment, is not experiencing the same sun as one who knows nothing of these wonders).

Experience itself, in all its unthinkable glory (that is, unintellectualisable - or undepictable) cannot be transferred between minds. It can only be more or less represented, a general sense given and we hope that too much isn't lost in the translation. Essentially though, the more different someone's experiences (including their feelings about the source objects/relations), the less they will comprehend our own meaning behind the words.

Precisely this is the beauty and the danger of symbol, of language. Of concept. The experience loses so much in being reduced to language. So much of our experience is cauterised by the boundaries of intellect and language that our understanding of reality is often more like an autopsy than a marriage. It is the inexpressible that is truly captivating, and this is what is killed by representation.

The return to subjectivity within philosophy, the gauntlet that Kierkegaard threw down to Hegel and his followers, represents this same knowledge: that the universal may be perfect, but its meaning and impact is nothing compared to first-hand, lived experience. Logic shrinks into insignificance when faced with everyday life.