Clarifications on the Reduction of Experience

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From early on in writing the papers for my website, I've always wanted to make something clear but both procrastinated and couldn't find just the right spot for it. I'll clarify it here. It concerns the reductionist approach we seem to take towards experiences at various points throughout the website - at some points decomposing experiences into their parts, at other points showing equivalence relations - but all the while passing over in seeming ignorance the fact that we declared experiences to be the fundamental elements of the universe to which all real things reduce, and beyond which no further reduction is necessary. So I feel this needs to be accounted for.

What was argued was not that experiences are irreducible, but that reduction isn't necessary if one's goal is to find the ultimate basis for things. At no point was it argued that experiences can't be decomposed - they certainly can, and indefinitely. What was argued was that such reduction gets one no closer to a fundamental basis. Albeit, this was the very argument leveled against physical reduction, and was the prime reason for abandoning it. However, the reason why this warrants abandoning physical reduction, but not that of experience, is very subtle. The reason is that with physical reduction, one begins without a grasp on the ultimate basis for the physical phenomena in question - the essential character of their manifestation, the reader will recall, being contingency through-and-through - whereas with experiential reduction, one begins with such a grasp - the essential character of their manifestation being necessity. Thus, in both cases of reduction - physical and experiential - the decomposition of the object of interest into its parts, though easily done, is futile and pointless. In the one case, the ultimate basis for its existence is absent at no matter what level of reduction, and in the other, it is there at every level. In the one case, one can't attain an ultimate basis, in the other, one has no further need to.

Perhaps the best account of this given in my website is figure 3 of The Advanced Theory which shows that we reach an ultimate level of reduction by reducing the physical to the experiential, yet at the same time, one can reduce either the physical or the experiential along physical or experiential lines (respectively) indefinitely. The point we want to get across, however, is that one can do so until one is blue in the face, and one will be no closer to an ultimate basis for anything. If one reduces along physical lines, one gets no closer to the experiential hierarchy of reduction because such a reduction heads in the wrong direction, and if one reduces along experiential lines, one still gets no closer but this time because one is already there. However, if one reorients the direction of reduction - by 90 degrees clockwise according to the figure - one is not only able to reduce the physical to the experiential, but one stops there content to have found where the path ends.

There is also the matter of our epistemic awareness of our own experiences. We argued, at one point, that even those experiences of which we have epistemic awareness can be reduced beyond the level of such epistemology. We argued this on the grounds that their physical counterparts - namely, neuro-chemical phenomena - can likewise be so reduced. But at another point, we argued that anything and everything that an experience can be reduced to must be experienced through-and-through. We said:

Meaning is always beheld - it is always "inside". It must be because, as the core essence of experience, it must be felt... Because there is nothing in an experience that is hidden from the beholder, it will be felt down to its very depths, right down to the fundamental level where reduction no longer holds.

But if we lose epistemic awareness beyond a certain point of reduction, in what sense can we continue to say that the experience is "felt down to its very depths"? We can say this in the sense that what an experience feels like is different from our knowledge of it. Our lack of epistemic awareness past a certain level only means we won't be able to identify - epistemically, cognitively - any one detail or component apart from the full collection consisting of every other detail or component. But we can certainly know and feel the whole collection. The thing is, the question of what the whole feels like and that of what the components feel like - that is, the components collectively - is, essentially, the same question. So to feel the whole is, ipso facto, to feel the parts - but that is, to feel the parts collectively - and why should it be any other way? If we carry out our reductive analysis properly, we shouldn't deduce the presence of any one, or any subset, of details or components separately from the rest. The parts we uncover in the final analysis should come along with every other part that belongs to the original experience.

But then the issue is complicated by the introduction of equivalence. Following that concept is the implication that none of the details are there in the original experience. The reason why the original experience feels uniform and homogenous is because it is uniform and homogenous. The only experience that exists therein is the one we are epistemically aware of. But this is not as problematic as it might at first blush seem. Equivalence is a useful concept for understanding the sort of reduction that applies to things whose essential character is semantic as opposed to physical, objective, tangible, or something of that variety. The sort of reduction in question is such that the meaning at every level is the same, and indeed one, but the forms or expressions of that meaning are not only different but not even the same entities. This is completely unlike physical reduction whereby the sum of the components just are the whole - that is, they are the same entity - but with equivalence, the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

So albeit the issue is complicated by equivalence, it is not complicated in a way that proves to be a problem for us. Notwithstanding the fact that one can still trace a path along a reductive line (however much that line is defined in terms of equivalence), the worry over how one feels the components imbedded in one's experience despite having no epistemic awareness of any subset of those components is nicely done away with. It is no longer a question of how one feels these components, for the components aren't actually there. There is nothing to feel but the whole experience - uniform and homogenous - and because any equivalent set of experiences would bear exactly the same meaning, the subject, having only epistemic awareness of the whole, of the singular meaning, would discern not one distinguishing feature between the equivalent experiences. Essentially, what this means to say is that one can't feel any other experience than the one that is uniform, homogenous, and whole, for one discerns only one singular meaning. To feel a whole set of experiences, though it may be equivalent to the single one, would be to discern more than one detail therein - that is, to be epistemically aware of more fundamental components - and indeed this may be the case in certain hypothetical scenarios. For example, we could conceive of brains whose epistemic centers were sensitive not only to whole neurons firing from within other centers, but activity below the level of neurons - activity such as the passing of potassium and sodium ions through channels, or the release and binding of neurotransmitters to receptor sites. We can safely say that whatever experience we think we're feeling - because we are epistemically aware of feeling it - we are not only correct in thinking this, but it is the only experience we're feeling. Any other set of experiences we might reduce it to isn't so much there "in" the experience, but merely equivalent to it.

Having said this, a final word is perhaps in order - a word to address the principle we laid down for the interchangeability of equivalent experiences. We said that:

...there is no basis upon which we can proclaim any one experience as the "real" one and the others simply waiting to pop into existence should there be a need to replace it. Where their realness is concerned, they are all on equal footing...

Now it seems we are retracting this statement. It seems as though we are saying that only the singular and whole experience we are epistemically aware of - the one we feel as uniform and homogenous - is actually there. This may be true, but it is not to be taken in an absolute sense. It is true relative to one's epistemic awareness. If we like, we can decompose the experience - or contrive an equivalent set - and treat that as what's, in fact, being experienced - and there would be no error in this - but what we must do in addition is to carry out a similar substitution for the epistemic awareness associated with the original experience. The reason for this become clear when we examine the same maneuver as it applies to the physical brain. Suppose, for example, that the original experience was a visual one, and its neural counterpart was a neuron from the occipital cortex. When we replace the experience with a set of equivalent ones, this move corresponds to a decomposition of the neuron into its parts - say its molecular constituents. But the catch is that it makes little sense to decompose the neuron like this without decomposing every other physical system whose relations to the neuron are relevant to this scenario. In other words, a good rule of thumb to follow in these mental exercises - perhaps a must - is that when we reduce any one component of a system to its parts, we ought to do the same for every other part. In that case, to reduce the visual experience to a set of equivalent experiences, we must also reduce the experience of being epistemically aware of the original experience - we must consider the set of experiences that are equivalent to that epistemic awareness, and at the same level of reduction to which we have taken the visual experience. It follows from this, however, that the experiences we would be considering are not the epistemic awareness we are familiar with. They are a different, though equivalent, set. That being said, we have no reason to expect that the set of experiences equivalent to the visual one we started out with should come along with any epistemic awareness. We would essentially be epistemically unconscious of them.

In brief, the one experience we are epistemically aware of is felt in isolation from any other equivalent set because it is uniquely associated with our epistemic awareness, and the other equivalent sets in question might indeed be said to be "on equal footing" with respect to their ontological standing, but they wouldn't be associated with our unique position in and perspective on the grand system of experiences that is the Universal Mind. Such a position, such a perspective, is defined in terms of human experiences - that is, the experiences we are familiar with. These experiences are what make us human, and without them, we wouldn't be ourselves. In other words, to replace any one with another equivalent set would entail replacing them all, and we would be left with a mind that isn't us - at least, not us as we know ourselves.

Having said such a mouth full, I would like to close this post by addressing one last concern. That concern is the dependence of all experiences on other experiences prior to them - that is, on the experiences that entail them. This might come off as confusing to some because it seems to conflict with the principle of the independence of experience from anything but itself due to its roll as the fundamental basis for all things real. This independence is independence from anything below it in reductive terms - that is, unlike a rock which is dependent for its existence on its constituent atoms, an experience is not dependent on any constituents. Again, though, it can be decomposed into constituents (or shown to be equivalent in any case), but not that it depends on any. When it comes to entailment, however, we are dealing with a different sort of dependence. This dependence is akin to causal dependence - that as, as with physical things, they depend on a prior cause for their present state of existence (though I'm reluctant to use the word 'cause' in the case of experiences as causation is too mechanical a term, and not semantic as is the nature of and reason for the flow of experiences). This, however, is not reduction; it is a manner of explaining the origins of things. It is following a path in time rather than scale. Furthermore, although we may have to concede that all experiences are dependent on antecedent ones, we can say that all such antecedents are still experiences, and thus experience in general is independent from anything save itself.


Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

A New Insight Into The Problem of "Matching"

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

Kant's Achille's heal, according to most contemporary philosophers, is the manner in which he seems to fly right over the glaring contradiction in professing knowledge and conception of an unknowable, inconceivable thing-in-itself. If I were to say to you: behold! There are things in the world of which no one can know and not even conceive! You would undoubtedly retort with: but then how do you know this? How can you even profess to have conceived it? For those who don't know Kant's general metaphysics, this is, in a crude sense, what he did, and many philosophers since have pressed him with the same kind of retorts. Kant's metaphysics begins with the idea that the world as it appears can only be an artifact of the mind - much like MM-Theory says - and the world as it really is is something beyond appearance - that is, something that can't be captured in appearances, for appearances are exclusively mental in nature. So for example, even though the desk in front of me appears dark, long, overlain with a wood-like pattern, and to the touch feels hard, a bit cold, heavy were I to lift it, and so on and so forth, Kant would say that these features do not belong to the table itself but to my way of experiencing it - that is, to my mind. What features, if any, belong to the table itself? Kant says none that can be known or conceived. That is to say, the table-in-itself, if it bears any inherent features or has a distinct essence, is unknowable and inconceivable. We are therefore cut off from it, separated into a world of phenomena - that is, a world of appearances - and the "real" world, the world of noumena, of things-in-themselves, although they surely exist, cannot be known or conceived.

But how can Kant espouse such a view without implicitly, and perhaps inadvertently, claiming to know and conceive of such things-in-themselves? That's the Kantian dilemma, and it so happens to be a dilemma for a non-solipsist subjectivist as well. We who subscribe to MM-Theory find ourselves caught in the same Kantian web of contradiction. We say, in one breath, that there exist non-human experiences out there, beyond our minds, but in another breath, that no one can refer to, or even conceive, anything beyond their minds. The latter claim is essentially equivalent to the Kantian claim that the things beyond our minds are unknowable and inconceivable.

This problem was, of course, addressed in Reality and Perception under the section The Infinite Regress Problem in which we solved it by appealing to an alternative set of criteria for a theory's "correctness", criteria that any system model of consciousness, of which MM-Theory is a clear example, ought to heed - namely, to observe internal logical consistency. Of course, we were also upfront about the fact that this "solution" might be taken more as a concession rather than an effective defense of our theory. We also noted, in the last post of this blog, that this concession brings up a problem for belief in our theory - namely, that to believe the theory, at least according to this particular solution to the infinite regress problem, is to automatically invalidates the belief. We offered three different construals of what it is to "believe" a theory, the last of which seemed to restore a sense of pride in our theory, but not nearly to the same degree as it once was at. Thus, our confidence is a little shaken. We are still burdened with the obligation to keep in mind in what sense we can say we "believe" our theory.

Well, I don't so much intend, in this post, to revert back to the conventional sense, but I would like to restore our sense of confidence in our theory. I would like to offer a substitute to the conventional sense of "correctness", one that, although not an alternate sense itself, supplements the sense given by a system model of consciousness. That is to say, we will hold onto our system model criteria for assessing the correctness of our theory, but in addition, I offer some hope that a sort of "connection" can be maintained between the theory and what lies beyond it in the "outer world". This sort of "connection", I feel, rekindles the sense of confidence that was stripped when we abandoned a window model's criteria for "correctness", but without being an alternative set of criteria per se.

The way I intend to do this is by solving the Kantian dilemma, and the solution I offer carries over perfectly well to MM-Theory and the particular problem under discussion which plagues it, for they are indeed, at base, the same problem.

***

We generally equate "accuracy" in a concept with its tendency to reflect or mirror the outer world. It is the same with photographs. We say that a photograph is an accurate depiction of things in reality - a scene, an event - when it mirrors precisely those things. So we equate "accuracy" with "replication". Only if an idea, or a photograph, is a replication of the outer world do we call it accurate.

This stems from the bias of dualism, from the presupposition that the perception and the perceived are separate. If they are separate, then in order for the perceived to in fact be the perceived, the perception must be a perfect replica of it - otherwise, it simply isn't perceived. It also stems from the window model of consciousness which, although not strictly dependent on a dualism of perception and perceived, maintains that if there is a dualism, the perception must be a replication of the perceived, for otherwise consciousness is much less window-like and more system-like.

This view can be most credited to John Locke who espoused a "copy" theory of mental content. That is, he described mind as a storehouse of "copies" of things taken from the outer world. The outer world is first sensed, and the very process of sensing is a sort of photocopy process. The photocopy is then stored in the mind as memory, knowledge, and conception of the things sensed.*

This view, I believe, is archaic and oversimplified. I propose a different model: the key and lock. There is indeed a sense in which our knowledge and conceptions "matches" the known and conceived, but not in that they are replications of the latter. They match in the same sense that a key matches a lock. A key is indeed the perfect match for a lock when it effectively and consistently unlocks it, but by no means does this entail that the key is a copy, a replication, of the lock. If it were, it would be another lock, and completely ineffective in unlocking the first.

In other words, according to this sense of "matching", a thing is the right match for another thing only when there are key differences between them. They must not be perfect replicas of each other. If a concept, say, were a perfect replica of the conceptualized, it would cease to be a concept. A concept of a tree, for example, could not be a tree itself, for then it would cease to be a concept and there would be no conception of the tree to be had.

Numerous examples can be cited for matching in just this sense. Dating services try to find the right "match" for those seeking companionship. Specific nucleotides "match" up with specific other nucleotides along the length of DNA strands. Specific personnel files "match" with actual people. In none of these cases does the sense of "matching" insinuate that the pair in question are identical to each other. It is necessary that they differ in certain ways in order to be the right matches.

The relation between a concept and the conceptualized is a match in much the same sense. This is true regardless of whether the theory of mind we uphold is subjectivist or objectivist. If it is objectivist, then there is no question that concepts differ from things in the world - the former is mental in character and the latter physical. Perhaps the objectivist in question is a Platonist. Then the latter is still not mental but a different sort of metaphysical entity: one of the "forms". The whole reason the mind/body problem exists in the first place is because we attribute such drastically different features and essences to mind and matter - concepts being an instance of the former, the conceptualized being an instance (in some cases) of the latter. Even a materialist, who reduces mental things like concepts to brain states or neural events, can't argue that such things are obviously different from their referents in the world. The concept of a rock, for example, if we are to describe it in terms of neural activity, is not in any sense the same in structure or essence as the rock itself. The materialist takes the neural activity to be a signifier and the rock, the signified. Signifiers and signified are again good examples of this sort of matching. In order for a symbol to be the right match for the symbolized, it must differ in some way - otherwise, it is not a symbol but an instance of the symbolized.

And if one were a subjectivist, then again we see a difference between the concept and the conceptualized. Concepts are formed (usually) by our other experiences - our visual beholding of a tree, for example, entails the idea of the tree in our minds. But the former is a visual experience, the latter a cognitive one. They are different qualities of experience. If it is possible to form concepts of experiences beyond our minds - which we will soon argue is indeed possible - then the same reasoning applies: the concept is a cognitive experience, and the conceptualized is a different quality of experience all together. If the concept in question had to be a perfect replica of the conceptualized experience, it wouldn't very well be a concept; thus, there would be no concept to speak of. Therefore, in order to have the right concept - for anything - it must refrain from replicating the conceptualized.

I would even venture to say that the key and lock is such a fitting analogy that not even the grooves and teeth of the key are replications of any feature belonging to the lock. One may disagree with this, objecting that even things that match by means other than replication must have something in common, some feature or characteristic that is identical. Any robust understanding of the mechanics of locks, however, proves this wrong. The closest one comes to finding replications of features on the key within the lock is the warded lock. The principle of this lock is that grooves on the key match up with protrusions in the lock. The key fits these protrusions like a mold. But the thing about molds is that where grooves exist, there is nothing of the mold there - there is only empty space - unlike the corresponding protrusions of the molded. As for the grooves in the molded (i.e. the lock in this case), a similar point can be made. To put this another way, the sense in which the key matches up with the warded lock is not in that the grooves and protrusions of the key are replicated in the lock, but that they are opposed. That is to say, where we find grooves on the key, we find the opposite in the lock - we find protrusions (and visa-versa where we find protrusions on the key). So it is exactly the opposite principle from replication which is at work in classical key and lock matching.

The significance of this key-and-lock model is that it allows for proper concepts to form of things to which we have no experiential access. Concepts can be categorized according to two general classes: those of things of which we have epistemic awareness and those of things we don't. It seems the manner by which concepts are formed in the former case is through a rather automatic process. Experiences are had and those experiences are acknowledged. Acknowledging those experiences allows for epistemic awareness, and thus concepts of them to be properly formed. Speaking metaphorically, it is a process that starts with a lock and ends with just the right key for it. But it doesn't follow that this is the only process by which the right key can be formed. It is possible to have keys that match locks even if the manner by which the key was formed is any of a number of arbitrary methods. It is possible, therefore, that concepts that would fall under the second category might still match things in the world in this key-and-lock sense - even though we have no experiential access to them.

Of course, we have no warrant to say that any alternative to the automatic process by which concepts are formed from acknowledged experiences can guarantee that the concepts thereby derived are at all accurate. If the conceptualized is beyond our experience, we don't even have the means to verify the concept's accuracy. Nevertheless, the possibility remains open. It is still possible to form keys that may be just the right match for some lock out there. The lock may be inaccessible to us (therefore unverifiable), and the key formed by some arbitrary, maybe even random, process, but there is no reason to dismiss out of hand the possibility of their matching - even if only by sheer coincidence.

Of course, for the most part, it is not sheer coincidence. There is often some measure of reason to the madness of our philosophical musings, some reliable process of cogitation that can yield results worth believing in. When we delve into metaphysics, or entertain ontologies beyond what we can directly access experientially, we try to stick reasonably close to logic and craft our arguments as deductively as we can. This is a methodology - the rationalist's. We draw our philosophical conclusions with as rational a head as we can maintain. It is hardly an exhaustively random or blind process. It seems to prove quite fruitful in many cases wherein our conclusions refer to things we can verify - that is, things of the empirical world - such as when those conclusions are scientifically testable. Why not for things beyond the testable, things which can't be definitively verified? Who's to say that the latter class of things is of such an all together incommensurate nature that they can't be subjected to the same process, the process of matching them up with concepts derived from a more abstract and rationalist method?

But why would the photograph model - the antithesis of the key-and-lock model according to which proper concepts are necessarily replications of the conceptualized - not also work in this sense? Why, for example, would it not be possible to produce a photo, or perhaps a painting, that so happens to replicate some scenery or some event out in the world with a reasonable degree of accuracy, even though the painting may have been mocked up, or is a product of random creativity? After all, if we are allowing that some locks may be "inaccessible" to our experience yet it is possible to form keys for them, then why should a scenery or event be accessible for a photograph of it to be formed (at least, in the context of the metaphor)? Why should we limit the photograph model to the observable?

This objection misses the point of the key-and-lock model. It's not so much in the possibility of deriving a "match" as it is how that matching is characterized: as perfect replication or as key essential differences. Of course we could employ the photograph imagery in the same way we employ the imagery of keys and locks. We could say that a photograph matches a scene or event in exactly the same way a key matches a lock, and therefore it seems the key and lock imagery is unnecessary. But the reason this misses the point is that it fails to address the usefulness of the key-and-lock model, a usefulness that the photograph model is simply ill equipped to emphasize however much we keep in mind the sort of "matching" we intend for it to signify. The reason why it is ill equipped is because photographs are meant to invoke impressions of similitude - not differences. The fact that a photograph is two dimensional, for instance, whereas the scenery or event it is a photo of is three dimensional is generally regarded as a shortcoming of the photograph - at least, insofar as its function is to replicate the scenery or event. If it were possible to replace the modern camera with some more advanced technology - say holographic imagery - there would be much motivation to pursue such replacement. It would be seen as better. This is not so for keys and locks. No one would say that a key built in the exact structure as its lock, with all features identical, is a better key. They would say it is a terrible key, for it doesn't work!

We might also add that photos and paintings have a special kind of psychological effect on viewers, one that keys don't - namely, to "transport" the viewer into a world, or at least an imagined scenery, in which the viewer feels he is really there. It's the same effect as that which happens at the movies. The viewer forgets that he's sitting in a theater, and that the images he sees are just color blotches projected onto a screen by a stream of light. He is transported to an alternate world. This psychological effect, this optical illusion as it were, most likely helps a great deal in fostering the replication model. I believe this is why the photograph imagery, or the "copy" terminology, seems more fitting for emphasizing the replication model of concepts and mental content in general. Photographs and copies have many features in common, obviously, with what they are photographs and copies of, and this helps part of the way in facilitating the understanding of the replication model, and the fact that they have this "transporting" effect on viewers carries it the rest of the way.

So there is hope after all that the concepts we trust to represent phenomena beyond our minds might indeed be faithful "matches" for that phenomena. We still wouldn't have any guarantee that they do match - no method of verification - but the possibility is there.

This works out Kant's meaning. When he displays what seems to be knowledge and conception of the inconceivable, unknowable thing-in-itself, his conception is a key to a lock. The concept of the thing-in-itself is not supposed to be a perfect replication of the thing-in-itself. Kant can have a model of it in his mind even though it doesn't bear any semblance at all to that which it models. When he says of it that it cannot be known, cannot be conceived, what he really means is that its own inherent features, and its essence, are not of any quality that can be replicated in the mind. He is essentially arguing against the window model of consciousness - this should be obvious to anyone who knows his phenomenology - and to argue that the thing-in-itself couldn't reside within the phenomenal world is a logical extension of this. What Kant needed, in addition to this, was the key-and-lock model given here. It is needed because with any phenomenology like Kant's - like ours - the connection between inner reference and outer referent (between knowledge and the known) is essentially severed. Any access to a world beyond one's experience is lost. Therefore, what is needed is a way of understanding how this connection can still be maintained. Such a connection is intuitive in a window model of consciousness - the perception is a replication, a mirror image, of the perceived. It was in the language of this model, I believe, that Kant spoke of the unknowability and inconceivability of the thing-in-itself. The language needed for a system model of consciousness - like his phenomenology - would have to be constructed first - a task he failed to take on. He could only speak, in other words, to the naive realist, for it is the latter's understanding of consciousness, after all, that Kant addresses and, in the end, rejects. He was saying "If you require that proper knowledge and conception of a thing be a mirror reflection of that thing, then I'm afraid to say that no such knowledge or conception is possible for things as they are in themselves." Kant didn't have an effective way of explaining the sense in which such knowledge and conception are possible (i.e. the key-and-lock sense), and so he fell short of accounting for his own knowledge and conception of the thing-in-itself. Building the new language required for this would be a task following the conclusions of his phenomenology, but alas he did not go the extra mile. The key-and-lock model is an example of a building block belonging to this language (a significant portion of the rest can be found in Reality and Perception).

This also allows us to rekindle a sense of "belief" in our theory in the usual sense. Without the key-and-lock model, we struggle, as the previous blog post shows, to understand in what way it makes sense to believe. We found that, according to the solution to the infinite regress problem proposed in Reality and Perception, to believe in our theory means merely that we take the reasoning underlying it to have good form, or that the premises are consistent with the conclusions (and perhaps carry the weight of plausibility). But the same could be said of valid arguments no matter how absurd the conclusion, such as the example given of green men. So it seemed to trivialize belief. We looked at a couple other senses of belief, but neither fully satisfied. The most satisfactory one was the third which gave us the right to believe fully in our premises (insofar as those premises were derived from experiences within our minds), but that because the conclusions required a certain leap of faith or inductive reasoning, the logic didn't really follow through from begining to end, from premise to conclusion. Our reasons for believing in the premises, therefore, could not be applied equally to the conclusions. We could deem the conclusions plausible, or persuasive, or likely, etc. but we could not claim to have proven them nor, therefore, to know them. Thus, belief in them was just beyond limits.

Now, with this new key-and-lock model, we can invest fully in belief in the conventional sense. What blocked us before was that we had no other way of understanding "belief" than as a matching between an idea and the referent of the idea, and that we had no other way of understanding "matching" than as a replication of the referent in the mind. The latter notion seemed inseparable from a window model of consciousness, and thus it seemed that to believe in our theory was to invoke that model, essentially contradicting the system model it upholds. But this new understanding of "matching" doesn't invoke the window model, and so we are not burdened with a sense of contradiction. We are free to believe without negating the theory we believe in.

***

If the key-and-lock theory is correct, then it implies that no concept is a match for anything else in the sense of replication. It wouldn't make much sense to say that some concepts are mirror images of the conceptualized, but that other concepts only correspond to the conceptualized as a key to a lock. This means that even simple concepts of things we can experience directly, like the visual beholding of a tree, are not replicas of such experiences. This says something about certain conclusions we drew at various points in the explication of MM-Theory. So in this last section of the current post, I'd like to go over them (at least those that have come to my mind).

For one thing, we argued at length, in The Inconceivability of Consciousness, that, as opposed to all our non-sensory experiences, objectification produces the right concepts for the things we sense. But what does the "right" concept mean in this context? Surely, if no concept is a replication of the conceptualized, then perhaps objectification isn't needed after all to form the right concept of any experience. For instance, it was said in The Inconceivability of Consciousness that we in fact don't have the right concepts of our emotions and our thoughts - although we certainly know when they're present, and some concept, however short of accurately representing them, does come to mind automatically - because, unlike sensory entities, we have no right to objectify them, at least not if the aim is to grasp conceptually their true essence. But if accurate replication doesn't stand in the way anymore, perhaps we can form the right concepts after all.

So what does objectification do for sensory experiences that it doesn't for other kinds of experiences if not to build the concepts accurately? Well, it isn't so much that it fails to building concepts accurately, nor that objectification isn't important for the proper construction of concepts pertaining to sensations; it's that objectification doesn't necessarily hinder the proper conception of non-sensory experiences. Objectification is indeed needed for conceptualizing sensory experiences because it adds the element of "thing-ness" which is the essence of sensory objects. But "thing-ness", although not essential to other kinds of experiences, doesn't hinder the proper conception of them.

What this says, essentially, is that objectification is not a general requirement for the construction of proper concepts, but a specific one for sensory experiences alone. What is general is that it be the right "match" - the right key for the lock - and this matching has little to do with objectification, with "thing-ness". Although our concepts will always have this thing-like character - objectification always having its way with them - it is more of an epiphenomenon, an out-dated tag-along harkening back to objectification's original purpose (i.e. dealing with sensations). But as an epiphenomenon, it is really quite harmless. We can appreciate this especially by considering what we have repeated many times: that we usually have no trouble dismissing the thing-like impression we get from our objectified concepts; we are usually not fooled into believing that the most abstract of our concepts are literally things just because there is an air of "thing-ness" about them. So long as we remain wary of this, our objectified concepts, replete with "thing-ness" as they may be, can still be the right keys for the particular locks they aim to open. In fact, we might even have to say that since "thing-ness" is an essential characteristic of all concepts, it is required to form keys, but this should not be misunderstood as a requirement for matching that particular key to its particular lock, but only that it is required for it to be a key. The lock, on the other hand, may stand free from any thing-like status, and it does so without requiring that the key also stand free. Therefore, if it feels as if we have the right concepts for our non-sensory experiences - that is, it feels like we understand what they are - we probably do.

The key-and-lock model leads me to wonder something further: if we can say that we have (or can have) the right concepts for all our experiences, then can we say the same for all experiences in general? Can all experiences, regardless of their quality, be thought of as locks, and therefore keys for them theoretically possible? Are concepts the sort of thing with the capacity to match anything non-conceptual? This is a very interesting thought. It means the entire universe is potentially comprehensible, at least in principle. It means that in the hypothetical pool of experiences considered in The Basic Theory, there is a concept for every unique non-conceptual experience. It means that at least 50% of the experiences therein are concepts for all the other non-conceptual experiences (and if each and every concept should have a matching concept of its own - every key also being a lock for another key - the ratio of concepts to non-concepts may verge towards infinity to zero).

Even if this were possible, it doesn't mean we can acquire any concept we wish. It could be that some of these concepts are still beyond the human mind's capacity to comprehend. Perhaps some undiscovered alien intelligence can, but not us. It could be that the algorithm required to build such concepts requires starting from a point that is beyond our reach considering where we are now - like a point on land across a great chasm, accessible only to those already on the right side.

Another consideration is how far back towards a window model of consciousness this new idea of "matching" takes us? Whereas a system model gives us a sense of disconnect with everything beyond our minds, this key-and-lock theory re-establishes a connection. Is such a connection grounds for classifying our model of consciousness back into the window camp? No. We still aren't experiencing the phenomena our concepts match up with - not directly, not as if looking through a featureless window - but there is now a new kind of relation between our concepts and the conceptualized, a relation defined by "matching" in the in key-and-lock sense. This key-and-lock sense only works in a system model of consciousness; the alternative - the window model - is banked on replication if anything. We still don't intend for our theory to be taken in a window model sense, and neither does this new idea of "connection" give us the right to propose an alternative sense in which it can be taken. MM-Theory is a system model of consciousness, and that is exactly, and only, the sense in which it is meant to be taken. This new idea of "connection" is not a whole other theory of consciousness; it is merely a footnote to the one we already have, something to consider after the facts of a system model have been laid out, an idea that says: even as we take our theory in a system model sense, it is still possible that, in a sense, it might match the state of things in the world beyond our minds.

However, the meaning of "correctness" is once again brought up and not as easily dismissed. On the one hand, on a subjectivist's account, an idea is always correct because it defines a reality for the subject to believe in (it constitutes a reality design). On the other hand, if there is this sort of connection with an outer world, then it's possible for the key to be a mismatch for the lock it is supposedly made for. Or, to put it another way, the right lock may not exist. In that case, wouldn't we have grounds to say the idea is wrong? Not necessarily. Just because we're toying with this new sense of "connection", it doesn't follow that it must serve the same purpose as that according to a window model of consciousness - namely, to be the criteria according to which ideas are judged right or wrong. That is to say, according to a (radical) window model of consciousness, truth exists out there, in the world, and we only call our beliefs "true" if they match those truths. This sort of matching is the traditional kind, the sort we're calling "replication" - that is, the belief must be a replication of the truth out there. For a window model of consciousness, that is the criteria for deeming a belief "true". But according to a system model, the criteria is all together different, and simpler - it is that an idea be believed. If it is believed, it is true (for the believer), for "truth" is what it projects itself as. That is to say that a system model of consciousness brings truth in from the outer world and into the mind, and in fact fuses it with belief. Therefore, the question of what makes a belief true is no longer a matter of the "connection" it bears to an outer world - it is no longer a matter of "connection" at all. In this post, we are not reversing this idea back to what it was, but showing how the old "connection" that we abandoned still has an equivalent, albeit of a different sort. Since a belief is true by default, the character of the new "connection" can't be defined as the criteria for truth. Instead, it is defined as a "match" in the key-and-lock sense.

The only daunting challenge to this position (that I can think of anyway) is examples of how this key-and-lock matching can sometimes be verified, such as when the lock so happens to be blatantly accessible to our experience. For example, when someone (a friend, a lover, a relative) gives us a gift (say on our birthday), and we feel so sure we know what it is (say because we've been asking for it), we can verify our beliefs by opening it and observing what's inside. If our belief turns out to be thwarted, this sure seems to act as a powerful criterion for tearing down the belief and its truth status. So observing the lock and recognizing it as a mismatch for the key seems to reinforce the old notion that a proper "connection" is required for a belief to be true. But let's recall what was said about this, or something similar to this, in Reality and Perception (under the section of the Infinite Regress Problem). We said that it wasn't so much the observation itself that served as the criteria, but the knowledge yielded by that observation. We said that

On the other hand, we do insist that whatever we believe and claim to know, it is imperative that it match up with our empirical experiences - or at least, that such empirical experiences don't falsify it. What is this all about? First, keep in mind that this sort of "matching" between belief and empirical experience is not the kind of match we have in mind. Even if an empirical experience confirms one's belief, there is still a very clear distinction between the structure of an empirical experience and a belief. The former is sensory, the latter cognitive. The requirement we are obliged to meet has nothing to do with matching - not in this sense, at least. It has to do with the fact that such empirical experiences entail their own knowledge. I see traffic on the road, I know there is traffic. It is this knowledge that puts demands on our belief that they conform to its terms. Only contending knowledge can decide whether the knowledge contended against is right or wrong, and the human mind so happens to be built such that if the knowledge in question is derived from empirical experience, it has the final say.

So the real criteria seems to be truths that have been inserted into the mind by one's observations. Since those truths have trumping power, if they don't match one's preconceived beliefs (this time à-la-replication), they will stamp out the latter and become the new beliefs. When this happens, when they are the only surviving beliefs, they become the dominant truths that hold sway over one's reality.

Something similar to this is going on even in our thought experiments wherein we imagine a key and its corresponding lock mismatching - even if the lock is beyond verification. If we imagine that we have a key in our minds but that it fails to match its lock in the outer world, this gives us a general sense that the key, the concept, must be wrong. It instills a sense that we must heed to the old window model criteria for judging the correctness of our concepts. But the thought experiment is setup from the start to affect us in the same way that empirical observation does - namely, to allow for fresh knowledge or truth to be inserted into our minds, and thereby overrule all contending preconceptions. Obviously, this affect is due to our knowing that the key and lock don't match. We define the thought experiment in just this way. So we have no chance, going into it from the start, of inspecting the irrelevance of this sort of matching to the truth criteria for our beliefs.

It may be true that empirical observation is what, in many cases, establishes truth to begin with, but that doesn't make it a criterion, for beliefs can be established in many other ways. A criterion is a requirement, not an option among a list of choices. The one thing all such cases of projected truth have in common is that they are believed, and thus belief, it seems to me, is the sole criterion.

This also means that we are still obliged to observe the principle of Referential Monopoly which says that "no conscious being, finding itself in a subjective reality, can make reference to anything, whether physical, abstract, or any other form, beyond its own subjective reality". In other words, although this new brand of "connection" makes it seem as though our beliefs and ideas refer to those entities they are "connected" to, this is not quite warranted. If it were, we would be back into the window model of consciousness and the state of the entity our beliefs and ideas refer to would indeed be the criteria by which they are deemed right or wrong. So Kant's beliefs about the thing-in-itself don't actually refer to the thing-in-itself (that is, the lock for the key) but to mental models in his own mind. Likewise, the non-human "experiences" that MM-Theory makes so many claims about don't actually refer to anything beyond the human mind (the "mind", that is, as a self-presenting-the-model, as we put it in Reality and Perception - although they would refer beyond the mind as a self-in-the-model), but to mental models of experiences within our minds. So we have not quite escaped this unseemly predicament, and our solution to the infinite regress problem remains the only feasible one thus far appreciated.

But what do our beliefs and ideas refer to? Themselves? No, not themselves, but to concepts (at least, for the most part). It is important to distinguish between beliefs, which project as truths, and concepts, which project as something else, usually objects or "things" (although I have entertained the notion of "essences" as perhaps the best way of understanding the form in which concepts project - but that's best put aside for another post). For example, one may believe that "it's raining today" and this belief would consist of, but wouldn't be identical to, the concepts of "rain" and "today". This goes even for non-beliefs - or statements in general - such as what would be true in a story or fantasy world. It goes for any reality design whether that design be one's subjective reality or an invention put together by some creative genius, like George Lucas's Star Wars. For example, if we take the statement - or truth as it would be in the context of the design - "Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father", and we ask "What does the statement refer to? What is it talking about?", the answer clearly is "Darth Vader" and "Luke Skywalker". That is to say, the statement, or truth, refers to specific elements that, in part, make up the reality design in question, in this case concepts. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are, at the very least, concepts. There will be cases in which the statement or truth in question refers to things other than concepts, things like sensory experiences, emotions, or other mental content, but we will deal with these in turn. First, let's deal with concepts as the referents that statements and truths refer to.

Obviously, one of the first things the reader will notice is that the concepts that statements and truths refer to are, without any exception I can think of, constituents of those statements and truths (well, in the case of statements, they are constituents of the idea the statement is meant to invoke). A belief such as "it's raining today" indeed consists of the concepts "rain" and "today". This doesn't make it self-referencing, but it does point back to a component within itself. It is the component that is being referenced, not the whole. Some may be mislead to think that the former implies the latter - that is, that the component may not be referenced without the whole with it - but in order to understand that this is not the case, we can recall our discussion from The Inconceivability of Consciousness about arrows and how they perform their function. We said that in order to determine what an arrow points to, it is not enough to look at what lies in its path (that is, along its axis), but to know what its purpose is - that is, what function it is meant to serve. This function can only be determined by the one who drew the arrow, for he is the one who intends to convey something by drawing it, to point to something, to refer. Likewise, we have to understand the functions of our statements and beliefs, what we mean to refer to in uttering them. We mean to refer to the concepts that are expressed in those utterances. Therefore, since it is the concepts we mean to refer to, and not the whole belief or idea itself, then those concepts are the referents, and the fact that they constitute the belief or idea that refers to them is as irrelevant as the fact that an object may lie in the path of an arrow's axis is to determining what that arrow points to.

Do these concepts in turn refer to other things? I would say no - they don't refer at all. If I were to bring to mind the concept of a butterfly and apprehend that concept alone, I would not be making any statements or entertaining any belief. I would, therefore, not be referring at all. I would simply be exercising a rather meaningless, purposeless mental act. It would be true that I would be apprehending something - I would be apprehending "butterfly" - but this isn't a reference to anything. Perhaps "butterflies are beautiful" would be, but as you can see, this is a statement, an idea, perhaps a belief.

On the other hand, it could be argued that the belief or idea itself constitutes a concept, one that perhaps rises above the mere sum of constituent concepts the belief or idea refers to. For example, to believe that "it's raining today" requires at least conceiving of it raining today. without such a concept, how could one possibly believe it to be true? But that doesn't mean that the belief refers to that concepts. It still refers to the constituent concepts of "rain" and "today". Perhaps a thought like "it raining today makes me miserable" would refer to "it raining today" but the reference is now a different statement. It's a statement about "it raining today" as opposed to the more elementary concepts "rain" and "today".

But any way you cut it, the fact that the belief that it's raining today is constituted by the concept of it raining today seems to insinuate that concepts can refer. If the belief refers to the concepts "rain" and "today", is this not equivalent to the concept "it raining today" referring to those same concepts? Not quite, for the same thought experiment can be carried out - the one wherein we imagined entertaining the concept "butterfly". We can imagine entertaining the concept "it raining today" without believing or referring, so the concept itself doesn't refer. Something extra is needed in order to form a belief out of it. Perhaps a belief is just the result of making a concept refer. It is surely the result of taking a stance on the ontological standing of a concept - that is, whether or not it depicts something in, or the state of, reality - but perhaps taking such a stance is just the act of making the concept refer. If this is the case, then it is indeed possible for concepts to refer, but they must be made to refer, and at the end of the day, they still refer to things within the mind. The things they refer to, whether more elementary concepts or otherwise, are not made to refer - they are the referents - and so the referential path terminates with them.

So beliefs and ideas typically refer to concepts within one's subjective reality, or at least a reality design of some sort, and they say things about - indeed, they constitute - the intricate relations between those concepts which define the reality in question and thereby automatically sanction their truth. However, it could be argued, by bringing to our attention obvious cases, that often our beliefs and statements refer to other kinds of experiences. For example, if I were to see my wife walking up the stairs, I could think to myself and believe "hmm, she seems to be going up the stairs". In that case, it would seem that I am referring to something I sense rather than a concept I introspect. This may or may not be true, but in either case, I find it irrelevant to our present concerns. Having said that, I would think that there must be some conceptual medium by which I can make such a reference, for if I did not conceive my wife walking up the stair, how could I even utter it to myself? Indeed, it seems necessary that I at least conceive it in order to note it to myself. It would seem, therefore, that some kind of conceptual apprehension must mediate my sensory experiences and my being able to refer to them. This would naturally be true of any of my non-conceptual experiences, for I would have to at least understand that I'm having such-and-such experience in order to refer to it, and such an understanding constitutes conceptualizing it. Whether or not this entails that such a reference is to those experiences directly or to the concepts I depend on in order to understand what I experience is another matter, and to me seems irrelevant, for whatever the case, it would still be a reference to something within the mind, and so the principle of Referential Monopoly holds true.

***

Having said that the key-and-lock model considered here doesn't allow us to reference anything beyond our minds, one might be left asking what the point of introducing it is. There are three points: 1) to solve the Kantian dilemma, 2) to rekindle a sense of justification in believing our theory, and 3) to resurrect a sense of "connection" with a world beyond our minds even if that sense is not quite the fully fledged one that a window model of consciousness offers. Let's look at these three advantages provided by the key-and-lock model in order to close this post with a full understanding of what it accomplishes.

First, the solution that the key-and-lock model offers the Kantian dilemma doesn't require any reference to things beyond the mind. To understand why, we need to understand a couple things about the manner in which Kant's conception of the thing-in-itself has been altered under the light of the present considerations. First, we can always interpret Kant's meaning according to our solution to the infinite regress problem, in which case we would not say that it is Kant's own mind, or ours, to which the thing-in-itself is inconceivable, but the mind-in-the-model as it were. That is, in constructing a model of reality - with its distinction between phenomena and noumena - Kant tells us that the noumenal world is both unknowable and inconceivable to those minds which find themselves at the center of phenomenal worlds, but because these minds are elements in the model, Kant has every right to, at once, conceptualize the thing-in-itself, thus rendering it conceivable to himself, and claim that such a thing is inconceivable to any mind capable of forming concepts, for the latter refers only to minds as they exist in the model. As they are defined by the model, they may very well be incapable of conceiving the thing-in-itself (also as defined by the model). Of course, this may not, and probably wasn't, the sense Kant intended for his view to be taken, but as it seems to be the closest approximation that works vis-à-vis the dilemma needing to be absolved, it will be the sense in which we take it.

The second manner in which Kant's thing-in-itself has been conceptually altered is by way of the key-and-lock model. Without the latter, the former alteration - that is, the distinguishing between the mind-in-the-model versus the mind-presenting-the-model - wouldn't amount to much of a redemption of Kant's view, for skeptics could still argue that although the mind-in-the-model could indeed be said to lack the ability to conceive of the thing-in-itself, this says nothing of our ability to conceive the thing-in-itself as it exists beyond our minds. Without the key-and-lock model, those same skeptics might go on to say that because we surely seem to have such a conception, and because we couldn't be referring to anything beyond our own minds (according to Kant's own logic), Kant has no right to carry the implications of his claim from the model itself to anything having to do with reality. That is to say, he couldn't say, in addition to claiming that the thing-in-itself is inconceivable to minds-in-the-model, that it is inconceivable to us - we who are minds-presenting-the-model. The mere act of thinking about the thing-in-itself entails that it is verily conceivable.

The key-and-lock model, however, allows us to posit that although we indeed have such a conception, it need not bear any resemblance to what it might correspond to - if indeed there is such a corresponce - should it match, in the key-and-lock sense, something beyond our minds. So just because the thing-in-itself is conceivable, it need not imply that the relation that bears between the thing-in-itself so conceived and the mind-in-the-model can't match up with an analogous relation between that concept and something beyond the mind. In other words, the key-and-lock model can be taken as a response to Kant's skeptics, telling them that as long as Kant's metaphysics is understood in the light of the solution to the infinite regress problem - where we distinguish between minds-in-the-model and minds-presenting-the-model - there is no basis on which to level the criticism that Kant's conception of the thing-in-itself can't possibly bear the same kind of relation to things in reality that other concepts, models, theories, and cognitive structures in general bear. Such a relation may hold without anyone actually referring to things in reality, to things beyond their minds.

Furthermore, we may believe that such a relation exists without reverting back to the window model of consciousness. The problem of belief, which we looked at in the last post, was the problem of how to maintain belief in a theory like ours when to do so seemed to imply that we weren't taking our theory according to the terms of a system model of consciousness, terms we are obliged to heed by the theory itself. Rather, it seemed the mere act of believing was to take our theory in terms of the window model. We offered three renderings of the meaning of "belief", none of which seemed to fully satisfy, but now that we have the key-and-lock model, we can spell out a fourth: to believe, according to the key-and-lock model, is to uphold faith that there exists a relation between the theory so conceived and a corresponding lock, a relation that is of the same type, the same integrity, as those between properly formed concepts and their corresponding locks. We put it in terms of "faith" because our theory still doesn't rest on a bedrock of deductive arguments, but at least faith isn't something so problematic as to make the theory self-negating. Such a definition fits perfectly square with a system model of consciousness, and therefore no need exists to fret over the threats posed to such a model by the implications of believing.

Such a rendering of belief need not imply that we are, or think we are, referring to things beyond our minds. It may require referring beyond the mind in order to define belief (and even then, the "mind" in question is the mind-in-the-model), but defining belief is different from the act of believing. We can define belief in terms of the key-and-lock model without referring beyond the mind in the act of believing. Since the key-and-lock definition we have given for belief is perfectly compatible with a system model of consciousness, we can rest assured that believing our theory does not make it self-negating.

And after all is said and done, the key-and-lock model still furnishes a sense of "connection" with the outer world even if that world is beyond our ability to even reference. Even though we are always limited to referencing things within our own mind, there is a certain brand of relation that holds between the referencing idea and that which it matches in the world beyond the mind. Knowing that this relation holds restores the sense of "connection" alluded to. It is the same kind of connection that exists between any properly formed concept and the conceptualized. Although this connection may not be formed by a kind of direct conscious exposure to the conceptualized, as a window model would have it, it is characterized in a specific and idiosyncratic way - namely, by matching in the key-and-lock sense. And so just as the window model of consciousness allows for a sense of connection, so too does the system model of consciousness when it adopts the key-and-lock model of matching. These types of connection are the equivalents of each other; it is only the manner in which it is established and what characterizes it in an essential way that differs. Thus, we who uphold a system model of consciousness have our own reason to believe in the authenticity of our model, a reason that matches that of the window model, and although this reason differs noticeably, it is nonetheless equally valid, and so we don't have to feel nearly as cut off from the world outside our minds as we might without the key-and-lock model presented here.

* In quite another sense, he didn't espouse a copy model - in fact, he argued against it. Locke divides experience into two categories: those that are replicas of the world, and those that are simply isomorphic to it (he calls these, respectively, primary qualities and secondary ones). So he was not a window model adherent for consciousness overall, but only for his primary qualities. However, he did maintain that whether the sensory experience was a replica of the outer world or merely an isomorphic representation, the conception of it was always a replica of the sensory experience.

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

The Error of Belief

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

In my paper Reality and Perception, I attempted to resolve the "problem of the infinit regress" as I called it. Hopefully, this solution sits well with those who have read it. However, a question that has lately been brewing in my mind has been this: do I have the right to believe my theory? I ponder over this question because, if you think about it long and hard enough, the aforementioned solution seems to imply that to believe in the theory immediately invalidates that very belief. How so? Well, consider the solution in more depth: it says that we need to abandon the window-to-reality model of consciousness, and we need to abandon it even in light of the theory itself - that is to say, based on the theory's own tenets, we have no right to lay claim to any knowledge or proper conception of reality as it actually exists beyond our minds, but that we can settle for confidence in the logical integrity of the structure of the theory itself - that is, we can boast confidence that, regardless of whether the theory is right or wrong vis-a-vis its matching up with ultimate reality, it is internally consistent and makes sense. Now, to invest such confidence in that is to uphold belief in the logical structure of the theory - to take an affirmative stand on the valid relation between the premises and the conclusions, and any argumentation in between - but not so much to affirm the truth of the theory. So when the question comes up: do I believe the theory? - I am a little lost for words. To say yes intuitively implies that I take the theory to be true - to be the right "match" for reality - but to say no seems to imply, intuitively, that I ought to abandon the theory - disowning it as pure nonsense. So I'm going to devote this post to a thorough consideration of this question. What should I say to one who asks me: do I believe in MM-Theory?

First off, belief is typically a personal matter. The very question on the table bears nothing on MM-Theory - at least, not if we take the solution to the problem of infinite regress to heart. That is to say, if we present MM-Theory in the spirit of a system model of consciousness, boasting only that our theory is consistent and logically valid, and that listeners can take it or leave it on those grounds alone, it really doesn't matter, to us or anyone, whether we or those listeners subscribe to the theory and invest belief in it. That's a choice we can all make on our own and bears not the slightest consequence to the consistency or logical validity of theory as presented. That being said, however, each of us, in our considerations of whether or not to believe, ought to take stock of the question of whether such belief is self-annihilating - that is, self-annihilitating insofar as one understands the implications of believing - namely, that to believe in the theory seems to be equivalent to taking a stance on the nature of ultimate reality as it is beyond our minds. So the question is not whether belief in the theory invalidates its internal consistency or logical integrity, but whether committing ourselves to an exclusive focus on such internal standards rips us of our right to believe in the first place.

The correct approach to answering this question, I'm convinced, is the same approach taken towards the problem of the infinite regress itself. The approach we took there was to understand what it means for a theory to be "correct" according to a system model of consciousness. Likewise, therefore, we ought to understand what it means to "believe" accord to the same model. After all, to "believe" means to "take to be correct". But as we can easily see, the adjustment made to the meaning of "belief" becomes a tad bit dissappointing. If the meaning of "correct" turns out to refer exclusively to a theory's logical consistency, then "belief" turns out to refer to our recognition of that same consistency. In other words, when we say that we believe in the theory, we mean only that we believe it to be logically consistent. We have effectively abandoned any faith in its fitness for mirroring ultimate reality. Of course, this in no way implies that an alternative theory can be any better a match - as we argued in Reality and Perception, the whole problem revolves around ultimate reality being "unmatchable" - so no theory suites as the perfect match. Nonetheless, such a notion would seem to imply that we ought to abandon belief all together, and this seems rather unsatisfactory.

Therefore, for the remainder of this post, I would like to work towards embellishing this notion of "belief" - that which a system model of consciousness leaves us with - with concepts that are a bit more flattering. I intend to approach this from a variety of angles, one of which, I feel, fully restores our sense of flattery.

Angle 1

Before we get to this most flattering of embellishments, however, let's examine the meaning of "belief" we have so far derived. We said above that according to a system model of consciousness, a "belief" can be logically vindicated so long as it constitutes a valid appraisal of the logical integrity linking a set of premises to their conclusions. According to this meaning of "belief", I can say that I believe the following syllogism:

     All grass is green.
     All men are grass.
     Therefore, all men are green.

What it would mean for me to say that I believe this is that I take the statement

     If all grass is green, and if all men were grass, then all men
     would be green.

to be true. That is to say, it means that for any argument, theory, mental model, etc., if we express it as one all encompassing conditional statement - where the premises constitute the antecedent, and the conclusion the consequent - then we take that statement to be true.

But to say that a conditional statement is true is one thing; to say that the premises, on their own, are true is another. Returning to the syllogistic form of the statement, it is only to say that we take it to be valid - but not necessarily that it is sound. Soundness, of course, requires more than valid form; it requires that we also take the premises to be true, the conclusion becoming true consequently.

It would be nice if we could take the premises of MM-Theory to be true, and thus the theory overall to be true. But the solution to the problem of the infinite regress seems not to allow us this priviledge. It doesn't allow us to believe our own premises. We are reduced merely to demonstrating the valid form of our arguments. On a brighter note, it doesn't compel us to take our premises as false either; rather, what the solution to the infinite regress problem demands is that we disregard the whole question of the truth or falsehood of the premises, focusing exclusively on logical form.

Of course, if it is form we're interested in, we should note now that we won't find a stringently deductive structure to the theory's logic through-and-through. In many places, we quite openly go out on a limb, make inductive leaps, invest somewhat in faith, and so on. These shouldn't be taken as flaws in our theory, for when we boast internal consistency in our theory, we mean that it is free from internal contradictions (so my use of the term "logical validity" is to be taken informally). We can freely venture into a bit of speculation here and there without necessarily contradicting what we have said elsewhere.

Nevertheless, what we are concerned with, according to the meaning of "belief" under consideration, is the truth of the conditional form of our theory - that is, the truth of our theory when expressed as: if our premises are true, then our conclusions are also true. If we make certain inductive leaps here and there, the proper form of this statement ought to read: if our premises are true, there is the possibility, even the plausibility, that our conclusions are also true.

It's important to include such words as 'plausibility', for our theory certainly has more value than a syllogism about green men. The validity of its logical form - or rather, its consistency - is perhaps the least it has going for it. The fact that it's persuasive, even believable (the current question on belief notwithstanding), and effectively solves the problem of mind and matter (which itself could be taken as only a problem in the logical consistency of certain relevant concepts*), gives our theory value above and beyond its internal consistency.

Thus, it is perhaps not so bad that we interpret "belief" in this way. Even if we are reduced to taking a stance on the truth of our theory expressed as a conditional statement, it is still quite a significant statement, one whose implications many may find interesting and of value in one way or another. After all, if the premises of MM-Theory were true, then it is this sense of "belief" that we must apply to any theory of reality - even objectivist ones like materialism or niave realism (giving them the benefit of the doubt, of course, vis-a-vis their logical consistency). Nothing on the matter can be proven one way or another otherwise. That is to say, neither model of consciousness - whether a system model or a window one - can be proven conclusively; therefore, whether we are all dealing exclusively with mental models of reality, none of which can be said to bear the slightest degree of resemblence to reality outside the mind, or we are apprehending reality for what it truly is, our beliefs on the state of reality depend on which model we uphold. Thus, it can be said that any such belief is always theory dependent, always reliant on some model of reality. All we are ever doing, in the end, is adopting one model of reality or another, along with one model of consciousness or another, and starting with that, building all our other beliefs upon them. These primal models and theories are selected for many reasons, often good ones, but they are indeed unfalsifiable, and as such they are selected somewhat by free choice. Nothing ever proves one over any other to be the ultimately correct and final one. Each one is a fundamental and quite significant premise, held up only as an assumption, from which all our other beliefs follow. All we are doing, in the end, is trying to build a model from it as consistently and persuasively as we can.

Angle 2

Even though I generally take an agnostic view of my own theory - saying more often that I don't know whether or not it is true (and therefore refrain from full fledged belief) - there is another sense in which I say it is my belief. I don't mean this in the sense that if I can't rely on infallible reasoning or conclusive evidence, then I must rely on something like faith or educated guessing (although I could mean it in this sense); rather, what I mean is that the theory belongs to me - I created it, I take pride in it, and I use and defend it in philosophical discussions as well as my private thoughts. In short, I use this sense of "belief" to mean that the idea is mine.

This is not an uncommon sense. Most religious views are clung to for this very reason. Most people don't believe their religious convictions because they have been proven in any way, but simply because they have been passed down to them. "I am Christian" often means that I have been raised to observe Christian ideas or that I come from a Christian community. It is a part of one's identity and stems from the fact that the beliefs in question have been "given" to them (by parents, by community, by teachers, by authority, etc.). Being given, these beliefs become one's own - as though it were a piece of property - and therefore become referred to as "my beliefs".

One harbors a special sense of ownership over one's beliefs when those beliefs are not so much given but invented. The inventor of anything is duly recognized as the owner of his invention - probably more so than one who has been given something instead.

Even if we regard MM-Theory as only a model whose value lies in its internal consistency, that model is still invented. I created it, and therefore I regard it as mine. It is my idea. I defend it in discussions and I use it to answer questions if I deem it relevant. I put it to use, just like a tool I own. We don't question the truth or falsehood of a tool, and it has nothing to do with its usefulness. The same can be said of a model in the mind - regardless of whether it is true or false, or whether truth/falsity even applies, it can still be useful. It might be regarded as a computer program, as my paper Practical Applications makes clear, a sort of abstract tool that we implement on the more concrete tool we call the brain. This, therefore, may be acceptable criteria for calling it a "belief". In this sense, when I say that I believe in MM-Theory, I mean that the idea is mine and that I use it, like a tool, on a regular basis.

Angle 3

What the solution to the infinite regress problem prohibits us from doing is believing in anything beyond our minds. What lies within our minds, however, we are free to believe in. A moment ago, we looked at certain syllogistic forms and concluded that we had no right to believe in the truth or falsity of the premises, for that would lead one necessarily to the truth or falsity of the conclusion, a conclusion about things beyond our minds. But what if the premises were about things within our minds? Would we then have the right to believe in them? It seems we should, but the problem, of course, is that if they lead irrevocably to the conclusion, which posits the existence of things beyond our minds, then the truth we attribute to the premises also gets carried through to the conclusion, and thus so does our belief.

The premises MM-Theory starts with are, more or less, the three defining features of all experience - their being an instance of qualitivity, their possessing the essence of realness, and their being meaningful - and we get these premises from reflecting on our experiences and describing their commonalities. These experiences are, of course, within the mind, actually constituting it, and therefore we have the right, not only to incorporate these premises into our model, but to believe them. We might also include the correlative formula we gave for the relation between mind and behavior in the Basic Theory as an additional premise. Whether or not "behavior" counts as a phenomenon beyond our minds depends on the context, but I believe the context in the Basic Theory was conciliatory to this - meaning that "behavior" can be said to refer to that which we see within our subjective realities, and therefore within our minds.

In any case, we seem to be free to grant the truth of these premises since it doesn't seem to initiate the infinite regress. We can know about our experiences. In fact, we gain such knowledge because those experiences entail that knowledge. That is, the truth of this knowledge is justified by the experience it is about. Such is how entailment works.

So we can at least believe in the premises of our theory, but what happens when we try to carry this belief through to the conclusions? What happens is that we have to make an inductive leap. Even in generalizing the three features of experience to all experience we have access to, we hit a limit, the limits of our own minds. If we want to say that these three features apply to all experience - not just all our experience - we have to argue inductively. The notion that the truth of the premises carries through to the conclusion only works when the argument in question is thoroughly deductive. We have stressed above that MM-Theory is not thoroughly deductive but makes innocuous leaps of faith here and there, the inductive leap currently considered being one of the major ones. This is not just happenstance. It is inherent to the kind of theory that MM-Theory is. It is the kind of theory that requires an inductive leap in order to posit anything beyond our immediate experiences. So the answer to our question is no, the truth of our premises don't carry through to the conclusion (not that it makes it false either), and therefore neither do our beliefs.

What we get, then, is a model that works consistently with premises we can believe in, but it is still only this consistency which we hold up as valuable. It is still persuasive, however, especially given the believability of the premises. Although we have to rely on induction, induction can still be very tantalizing. If not, no one would be persuaded by scientific evidence (see Hume's argument on induction and the limits of science), no one would be persuaded by statistics, no one would be conditioned by their own life experiences. So long as we have a large enough sample size to draw inductive conclusions from (and there is quite the qualitative diversity within the human mind), induction is quite alluring. It is for this reason that I say MM-Theory has value above and beyond the mere fact that it is consistent.

We still don't get to invest full belief in MM-Theory, but what we have is the right to believe in the premises and the right to be persuaded by the plausibility of the model suggested by an inductive leap from the premises. We have the right to believe in the premises and to find the conclusions reasonably plausible. This squares quite well with our longing for a more flattering sense of "belief". It means that we only need to suspend full belief in the theory to the extent that we would admit it rests on a bit of faith. In other words, if we are willing to admit there is some faith invested in our theory - that is, a few inductive leaps - we are doing nothing different by denouncing absolute belief. It amounts to the same thing. Nothing can be known for certain. Nothing can be believed in full.

Now in my next post, I'm going to do our sense of flattery one better. I'm going to go further than where the solution to the infinite regress problem seems to leave us. It leaves us at the point where we have to settle for the consistency in our theory as opposed to its truth, but I think I can conjure up a way according to which we can say that our theory is "right" - not just in terms of its internal consistency, but in its "matching" the world out there. It won't be the same sense as the window model would have it, but it does restore our sense of "connection" with the outer world. So stay tuned.

* I often consider the problem of consciousness - what it is and how it arises - to be like a logic puzzle, or something from a book of brain teasers. It therefore need not reflect anything real - that is, there doesn't have to be consciousness in order for there to be the problem of consciousness. What makes it a problem is that the inherent concept are problematic - they don't work together - and that we cling to certain assumptions about the nature of consciousness because we have trouble dismissing these concepts. Like I said in the introduction to my website: the strength of MM-Theory is that it reduces two seemingly distinct philosophical problems - that of ontology and that of consciousness - to one - but neither ontology nor consciousness need be real for this, only that our concepts of them be clearly defined.

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

Re-Wrote Basic Theory

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

I have re-written a major chunk of the Basic Theory - mostly everything from the introduction to Experience and Meaning. About 50% of the material there is new or completely editted.

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

Is Logic Contingent?

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/

Although the human mind is capable of thinking along consistently logical lines, we more often than we like to admit stray from this line. We commonly commit logical errors. Logicians have therefore provided us a thoroughgoing list of logical fallacies so that we might be wary of them (for example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacies). There is, for example, the fallacy they call "affirming the consequent" whereby the consequent of a conditional proposition is assumed to imply the antecedent. If I were to say "All criminals were breast fed as babies. Bob was breast fed as a baby. Therefore, Bob is a criminal."* I would be affirming the consequent. Yet when one hears this, there is at first a brief impression of soundness in the reasoning. Only the skilled logical thinker is able to suppress this impression and recognize the fault that lies therein. But so many are not so skilled, and the fallacy of affirming the consequent is readily made and passed over.

This is no doubt a consequence of neural wiring in the cognitive centers of our brains. But then it also follows that this wiring isn't uniform across individuals, for it is obvious that some are rigorous adherents to consistent logical thought whereas others are hopelessly poor at it. Furthermore, it is equally obvious that no one begins life as a logic expert. The kinds of fallacies known to logicians are most frequently succumbed to by young children. Logical thinking is a skill we acquire as we mature. Even then, however, not all people acquire the skill as easily, or at all, for there are many adults, even ones in prominent and highly valued positions in society, who are demonstrably lacking in the department of logical thoroughness. By no means does this mean that such adults can't acquire the skill with enough practice and attention paid to their thinking, and indeed it has been shown that such acquisition is possible even for those getting on in age. Therefore, it seems reasonable to suppose that logical thinking is not something innate, not something that can be simply passed off as the "nature of thought", but something learnt.

But then who is the teacher? Are we taught solely through our schools? Is logic just an arbitrary idea - like a particular religion, like a particular philosophy, like a particular political ideology - that we learn only because the older generation wishes to preserve it by passing it on through our educational institutions? Some may say so, but not I. I say we learn logic from the world itself. We learn by making mistakes. We learn after being shown, by the world itself, time and time again, the fallacies we inadvertently stumble over. Logic is where we come to rest when we've finally trained our minds to make predictions about real-world outcomes that consistently come true (notwithstanding predictions based on inductive reasoning and random guessing, of course). So logic is a style of thinking used by those who have acquired a deep understanding of the inherent pattern by which the world operates.

I say this understanding is "deep" because it touches on something more profound than what science teaches. Science can tell us about particulars and contingencies - for example, that Kepler's laws guide the manner in which the planets orbit the Sun, or that life is intricately determined by DNA, or that all matter is reducible to particles such as electrons, protons, and neutrons - but that Bob isn't necessarily a criminal if he was breast fed is something supported not so much by scientific evidence, but by the fact that the world is such that Bob couldn't be a criminal solely on the basis that he, along with all criminals, were breast fed. To understand this is to understand something so "deeply" fundamental to the nature of reality that the discoveries of science become irrelevant. Science could have taught us things radically different from what we know, and logic would still have to hold. Reality simply could not cohere otherwise. (I believe this is the distinction between David K. Lewis's possible worlds and impossible worlds - regardless of what world Bob lived in - whether it was one in which he was a criminal or another in which he wasn't - the erroneous syllogism given above could not be the basis for this in either world).

So then to the central question on which we will, from here on in, focus: if we indeed learn logic through real-world encounters, does that make logic contingent? And if so, what does this say about the seeming necessity of logic? Would the contingency of logic serve as license to generalize the necessary character of our thought (at least, how it feels) beyond strict logic? Beyond thought? After all, one who commits a logical fallacy does so because he/she is totally oblivious to the fact - he/she believes with all honesty that his/her fallacious conclusions are supported necessarily by the reasoning. Shouldn't we say, therefore, that necessity - at least, the veneer of necessity - is apparent in any style of thought insofar as it is taken to support one's belief?

Let's be sure the question is understood: we are not asking whether logical rules - such as modus ponens, modus tollens, D'Morgan's Law, etc. - are necessary - they surely are - rather, we are asking whether it can be taken as contingent that the world turns out to conform to those rules - and if so, whether this implies that a different logic would be equally necessary should the world have turned out differently (assuming that's even conceivable :)). In such an exotic logic, the fallacies mentioned above - such as affirming the consequent, illicit major, illicit minor, etc. - may turn out to be the rules. A further point to keep in mind is that contingency does not necessarily exclude necessity - so we are not asking whether it is either/or - for sometimes it's both. For example, it used to be believed, and still is by many, that the laws of nature were unyieldingly necessary - that they could never be broken under any circumstance - but even today we are hard pressed to understand why the world should adhere to the laws of nature (even if it is only an extremely high statistical probability). Therefore, from the standpoint of the human perspective, the laws of nature, despite whether they are necessary in themselves, are contingent to us. In the same vein, the fact that nature works according to logical principles, as well as logic itself, as well as the fact that the world teaches us to think logically, is not devoid of necessary underpinnings, but because these necessary cases are, from the standpoint of the human perspective, contingent, they may be both necessary and contingent at the same time. Even more interesting is the notion that this may imply that a completely different and contradictory logic may very well be just as necessary. Let's see how far we can go towards this notion.

First, let's talk neurology. It is no mystery that real-world experiences are one of the major contributors, if not the major contributor, to our neural programming - that is, to what determines which neurons are connected to which others and in what ways. To show how this might unfold, let's consider a purely hypothetical scenario - one in which, I must disclaim, I really have no idea as to its accuracy in reflecting the way our brains actually work, but works nonetheless in principle as a hypothetical model. I will assume - as a hypothetical model - that the fallacy of affirming the consequent can be modeled neurologically as follows.

Let's denote the antecedent of a conditional (i.e. "If one is a criminal...") as A and the consequent (i.e. "...then he was breast fed as an infant") as B. Then, I will propose that the statement "If A then B" primes two MODs or two neural firing patterns in the brain to be sensitive to one another. That is to say, if A corresponds to the thought "one is a criminal" then A represents the experience associated with one of the two MODs or neural firing patterns in the brain, and B, which would correspond to the thought "one was breast fed as an infant", represents the experience associated with the other of the two MODs or neural firing patterns. The statement "If A then B" would prime these two MODs or neural firing patterns to be sensitive to each other - meaning that if one is activated by the utterance of either A or B (which ever it corresponds to) then it stimulates the other into activation as well. The utterance "If A then B" doesn't actually trigger the activation of either - it only primes them for sensitivity to activation. What actually triggers the activation is the utterance of either A or B. That is to say, the major premise (if A then B) only prepares both to become activated in response to the other being triggered into activation, and the minor premise does the activation.

This is, of course, the neural configuration of a brain that has yet to learn the fallaciousness of such information processing. Using this configuration to predict the truth of A when B is shown to be true is sure to fail at least part of the time. These failures, if the brain properly adapts to them, should result in a re-wiring such that the configuration as it is changes to one in which the utterance "If A then B" only primes the MOD or neural firing pattern B into sensitivity to the activation of A, and not visa-versa.

Yet, there is still a difference between such a re-wiring as it takes place within the specific MODs or neural firing patterns corresponding to the thought "If one is a criminal then one was breast fed as a baby," and that corresponding to the more general understanding of the logical principle of modus ponens. That is to say, the former sort of re-wiring is only done to one's understanding of the relation between criminal status and having been breast fed, whereas the latter is done to one's understanding of the actual logical principles at work here. In the former case, one may learn from real-world experiences that one ought not to assume that if one was breast fed as a child, one is a criminal - and one may keep this lesson at the forefront of his mind for the rest of his days - but nevertheless fail to apply this lesson of logic to all such cases of affirming the consequent. In other words, one may still fall into the same trap, affirming the consequent to a whole array of situation, always being careful not to do so over the question of the criminality of those who were breast fed as infants.

So how should we model the neural process by which one learns the logical principle, as opposed to contingent states of affairs such as the fact that not all who were breast fed as children turn out to be criminals? How does one learn to apply proper logic to all situations one encounters or contemplates? Well, for one thing, we can expect that a MOD would exist or a specific pattern of neural firing would be frequent that represents the understanding of the logical principle in question. Let's call this MOD or neural firing pattern C. C might have effects on those corresponding to the more specific instances of modus ponens or affirming the consequent. That is to say, concerning A and B above, the MODs or neural firing patterns corresponding to them would react differently when C is present compared to when C is absent. C would have the effect of preventing the MOD or neural firing pattern corresponding to A from activating when the MOD or neural firing pattern corresponding to B is active, but it would allow B to activate when A becomes active. C would have to have the same effect on all instances of this sort - that is, all MODs or neural firing patterns corresponding to thought processes which adhere to modus ponens when C is present, and could potentially lead to affirming the consequence when absent.

Now, these neural changes are examples of changes in one's expectations over particular events, or changes in how poorly thought out logic is implemented. The individual who makes mistakes in his expectation due to poorly thought out logic will go on to make more mistakes, being corrected by the world each time, until he is corrected on a higher, or more abstract, level - that is, on the level where he grasps the basic principles of logic. On this level, he not only takes account of how he was wrong on any one particular occasion, but on the whole series of such occasions (insofar as he can remember them), and then - only then - realizes there is a principle of logic to be learnt from this. This lesson is encoded in his brain as the MOD or neural firing pattern we have denoted C and it oversee most, if not all, future applications of this logical principle on real-world situations.

So it would seem that the principles of logic are lessons learnt from our experiences with the real world. If it were possible to experience the world differently, we might learn a whole other set of logical principles. Far from being a fallacy, affirming the consequent may be one of these rules. So we are confronted with a world that just so happens to play by the rules of logic as we know them. We don't know why it does - it just does. Does this give us the right to say that logic is contingent?

The answer is yes and no. It is no in the following ways. First, logic in itself is necessary. We will not go so far as to say that if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates may somehow be immortal. The conclusion is still bound by the premises. Second, the nature of the world itself may be necessary. We have been speaking as though the world could have been different - as though Socrates could have been immortal in another world even though he is a man and all men are mortal. But it may be that such a world is necessarily impossible. When we talk of possible worlds, we usually entertain different possible contingencies - such as the possibility of the dinosaurs having survived for much longer should there never have been an asteroid that hit the Earth, or the possibility of JFK serving his full term in office should he never have been assassinated - but when it comes to necessities - such as the rules of math and logic - these could not be different in any possible world. So the fact that the rules of logic hold in our world may be necessary. Third, it may even be necessary that we learn logic after so many experiences with the world. That's not to say that everyone, by necessity, must learn logic at some point, but that when it happens, it happens according to certain necessary principles. If we were to put this in term of physics, we'd say that the events in the world that teach us logic do so by way of their physical effects on our brains. We first experience these events through our senses, then our brains are programmed with the right neural circuitry to grasp the principles of logic. All of this can happen according to a complex system of physical laws that operate on our senses and our brains, thereby rendering the final effect - namely, our being programmed to think logically - an inevitability in such specific cases. We can also put this in term of MM-Theory - that is, in terms of experiences. We would say that the flow of experiences prior to our having sensations - which entail by necessity - necessarily entail our sensations, which in turn necessarily entail our cognitive experiences about them, which in turn necessarily entail the grasping of an insight - the principles of logic.

Of course, it is true that quantum mechanics has other lessons in store for us - namely, that the world does not operate right down to the bare bones by necessary processes. But this is simply the going consensus among the majority of scientists who make quantum mechanics their expertise. No one can be absolutely certain about whether the world is inherently probabilistic or necessary through-and-through. So we hold out for the possibility that the world is exhaustively ruled by deterministic - that is, necessary - forces after all, and that these necessary forces are there in the very processes by which we learn logic.

The way in which logic is contingent is in how we learn it, how we are confronted with it. If it's true that we don't begin life thinking perfect logic at all times, and that we make logical mistakes without realizing it, then it can't be said that we expect to learn it, that we can predict a future point at which we will stop making mistakes and start thinking more logically. In other words, that we should eventually learn logic is not something we can figure out a priori, for that term - a priori - presupposes a grasping of logical principles to begin with. Therefore, the real-world lessons that teach us the errors of our cognitive ways strike us as a matter of contingency. That is, after all, what it means for a thing to be contingent - that is, it can't be deduced as matter of logical necessity. From the point of view of the subject, the world just so happens to turn out that way.

That's not to say that one can't reflect on his/her own thought processes and figure out that one is making logical mistakes, but this doesn't count as a deductive prediction that one will eventually learn to think logically; rather, it is the very act of learning it. It requires logical thinking in order to occur. It's true that this wouldn't involve learning from real-world experiences, but it would be the equivalent as it takes place in a thought experiment built to simulate the real world. To put this another way, learning to think logically by reflecting on one's own thoughts and noticing the mistakes is the equivalent of using logical thought to deduce that a contingent fact is necessarily the case on account of seeing that it is the case. That is to say, it is like saying that if X is the case, then necessarily it is the case. It's a simple tautology. It's only true in virtue of Aristotle's first principle of logic: the law of identity. It doesn't make X any less contingent, for the type of circular reasoning that the law of identity leads to is no defeater of the contingency of anything. Just the same, learning to think logically by reflecting on one's own thoughts is no defeater of the contingency of the lesson learnt. To predict logical principles using logical itself is the equivalent of seeing that those logical principles hold - just like seeing that it so happens to be a rainy day - and this sort of 'seeing', whether of the real world or our thought experiments, comes upon us contingently.

Could the world have turned out differently? I highly doubt it. And by that, I mean I don't think so at all. Some contingencies may have turned out differently - for example, our solar system may not have been right for sustaining life, the dinosaurs may not have been wiped out, president Kennedy might not have been assassinated, etc. - but I can't imagine a world in which Socrates is immortal even though he's a man and all men are mortal. I can, however, imagine a world in which I have not learnt the basic rules of logic, and might expect Socrates to be immortal. I may not be using logic proper to back this expectation, but I can see how I might mistake myself for using it. The fact of the matter is, after all, people don't always think logically, even though they sometimes think they do. If they really believe they're thinking logically, it must be because they feel their thoughts flowing in a necessary manner.

What this means, then, is that the necessity we feel in the logic of our thoughts is there regardless of whether that logic is proper and formal or sloppy and flawed. So the question becomes this: on what grounds can professional logicians hold true to the claim that formal logic, as conventionally understood in the discipline, is the "right" logic and all other so-called "logics" are inauthentic and flawed? They can say this on the grounds that it is this formal logic that seems to be the destination, the final resting point so to speak, at which the cognitive programming stops. That is, it is the state the human mind tends towards as it gets programmed by real-world experiences. That is to say that although one person's brand of logic may feel absolutely necessary despite the many flaws a professional logician would point out therein, it is still subject to correction insofar as this person has the opportunity to experience his expectations and predictions, derived from his logic, being thwarted, and thereby coming a step closer to formal logic by learning from those mistakes and making the appropriate modifications to his thought. This process - the mistakes, the thwarted predictions, the learning, the adjustments - can go a long way, but it does reach a point of perfection, of completion. There seems to be a point at which one has learnt all that one can from the world about the proper way to think - and this we call formal logic. Once one has learnt the full set of basic logical principles, and has trained himself to heed them in his thinking, we can take his mindset, call it "formal logic", and hand it over to the logician as his field of expertise.

Note the implication: that formal logic doesn't so much stand out from other kinds of logic (informal logic, folk logic, flawed logic, etc.) in that it is necessary whereas the others are not, but in that the tendency is for those other kinds of logic to evolve towards the formal kind and not visa-versa (at least, it seems pretty darn unlikely that one's mind can be programmed from formal logic to another informal kind). To put this another way, formal logic seems to have the power to correct and assimilate other brands of logic (by example, by demonstration, by evidence, etc.), effectively converting or annihilating them, whereas the latter don't have the same power over the former. But insofar as the latter are left to their own devices, they will feel just as necessary to the beholder as the former.

This can be understood by considering what makes the flow of electric information through our neural circuits necessary. It doesn't matter how they're configured, the way they process information will be governed by the laws of chemistry, neurology, and electrodynamics. Therefore, whatever the thought process - whether ruled by a learnt set of formal logical principles, or as yet unrefined by these principles - it will feel necessary. The only reason logical fallacies seem necessarily impossible to the seasoned logical thinker is because the corresponding physics in his brain makes it impossible. His brain is physically wired to process information in a specific way, and any alternative is physically impossible. And because the lessons that teach us to use the rules of logic are contingent, the necessity of logic is also learnt contingently. One might very well learn as necessary something other than logic.

But now there arises certain paradoxical implications. How can Socrates be necessarily mortal for one person, while at the same time not necessarily mortal for another? How can the same conclusion follow from a set of premises both necessarily and not necessarily at the same time? To answer this, we need to look at the roll the UOS (Universal Operating System) plays in all this.

Should the reader recall from the Advanced Theory what we mean by the UOS, he will recall that we mean those experiences corresponding to atomic structures and process of all things in the universe. The importance of the UOS for our current purposes is to recall that it continues to run while no activity can be discerned on the more macroscopic level. That is to say, for example, that although no experience may correspond to an inanimate macroscopic structure like a rock or a table just sitting there doing nothing, there are indeed experiences corresponding to the more lively actions of the atomic structures composing the rock and the table, actions such as electrons orbiting nuclei, atoms vibrating, positive and negative charges attracting and repelling each other, etc. This flurry of activity can be seen not only in rocks and tables, but in the neural networks in our brains - that is, even when they are not actively processing signals.

Therefore, the way to show how the necessity of seemingly contradictory systems of logic holds is, first, to more precisely point out the sort of effect the real world has on the neural circuitry of logical thinking - the circuitry, that is, even in its latent state during which no signals are processed. We said it was to program those neural circuits such that logical thought becomes more standardized throughout the whole of our cognitive and neural networks. But programming neural circuits is not the same as activating or stimulating them - it is simply to fortify the neural connections, pathways, and overall configurations. What this entails is that the arrangement of atomic and molecular scaffolding making up the neurons and their overall circuitry is being reconfigured. What this entails in turn is that the UOS, at least that part of it corresponding to said atomic and molecular scaffolding, undergoes certain permanent changes. These changes introduce a set of experiences, still part of the UOS, that play a significant roll in the flow of the logical thinking corresponding to the circuitry. These experiences, corresponding as they would to activity that constantly reinforces itself, reacquiring its prior states, are more or less stable and endure even throughout long moments of silence on a more macroscopic level. In other words, syllogisms like the one about Socrates don't flow necessarily only because of the meaning in the premises, but because of the meaning in the experiences of the UOS that the structure of the circuitry is based on. In other words still, Socrates is not mortal only because he is a man and all men are mortal, but also for some additional reason that can only be expressed in the experiences of the UOS. Take away those reasons, and it doesn't follow from the explicit premises that Socrates is mortal - at least, not necessarily.

It's almost as though a third term is added to "All men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man" - namely, "the world works according to the rule of modus ponens". This third term is not part of the argument, of course, not part of the logic, not an explicit premise, but it's what makes the logic necessary. It's like saying the form of logic, as opposed to its contents, is the third term, and that it is learnt just as contingently as "All men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man". If we do not learn this third contingent term, as in the case of children and some adults, the UOS will be different amidst our cognitive networks, and so will be the third term.

So the reason why Socrates can be both necessarily mortal and not necessarily so is because in the one case, there is a third term that makes it necessary and in the other, that term is lacking (or there is a different term that makes it unnecessary).

The real world is partially responsible for this. It is responsible for laying down that particular form of the UOS in the vicinity of our cognitive neural networks. In terms of experience, it lays down the "third term" that defines the rule of modus ponen (and, more generally, all other rules of formal logic), and in terms of neurology, it lays down the specific neural circuitry that makes logical thinking necessary with the use of that circuitry.

Now I want to bring this discussion to a close by following it through to its logical conclusion - namely, that the scope of necessity spans far beyond formal logic. Patterns of thought which would be ordinarily deemed illogical and plagued with fallacies of every sort would be deemed necessary by the one who believes them. The necessity he feels is not to be found in logic, but in the narrow range of possible streams down which his thought can flow. This range is narrow because the neural wiring in his brain is configured in such a way to allow only for that particular flow of thought during that particular instance. In other words, the necessity is to be found in the rigidity of the physics of his brain. Whether he is extremely practiced in the science of logical thinking or hasn't got a clue, his brain and the neural circuitry within it are configured in a particular way. Given that configuration, the particular style of thought it makes possible - logical or fallacious - is necessarily the style of thought he employs. He can't help it. The laws of physics hold even in his logic depleted brain.

Now if this is the basis for the feel of necessity in our thoughts, then it must be the basis for the feel of necessity in any experience - cognitive or otherwise. All our experiences correspond to neural and chemical activity in the brain. This activity is likewise governed by physical laws. These laws regulate what goes on therein in quite a determined manner. Hence, what happens therein happens necessarily, and we feel that necessity in the very experience that corresponds to it.

Thus, I hope this lends some support to the argument made in the Advanced Theory, the argument whereby I tried to show how the necessity of the flow of our experiences spans far beyond the scope of logical thought. Although logical thinking is perhaps the best example of the necessity of this flow (because most reasonable thinkers will agree that logic is indeed necessary and that it describes the pattern according to which we think - some of the time anyway), it is only one very specific instance, and necessity can be generalized far beyond that. It can be generalized to all experiences as all experiences correspond to the operations of physical systems - operations that are characterized by necessity in virtue of their conforming to the necessary laws of nature. That, I say, is where we find necessity.


* My thanks to my grade 10 math teacher who provided this syllogism as a means of demonstrating the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Read my theory: http://www.mm-theory.com/