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/
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