Big Bang as Birth of Some Aspect of Human Cognition?

[Buddy]

Hi ge0m0. Thanks for your post. I must say that, it seems to me, people are using the words 'real', 'illusion' and 'imagined' inconsistently. Either that or I'm somehow inconsistently interpreting what each poster means by the way these words are being used. I need to think about this some more before I have anything intelligent to say in a reply because I need to review some stuff first.

Thanks for your input.

 

[obyvatel]

I must say that, it seems to me, people are using the words 'real', 'illusion' and 'imagined' inconsistently. Either that or I'm somehow inconsistently interpreting what each poster means by the way these words are being used.

I feel the same way as you. At this stage I am not sure whether any effort to clarify statements like "illusion is reality" is worthwhile or it is falling into the trap of "mental masturbation".


Anyway, I picked up Mithen's book again and the title of chapter 9 is " The big bang of human culture: the origins of art and religion". According to Mithen, the extension of language from conveying social information to a more general purpose language which included non-social information facilitated cognitive fluidity. In his model of the mind, there were chambers like "general intelligence", "natural history intelligence", "technical intelligence", "social intelligence" etc which had very limited connections with each other until a general purpose language evolved to provide connecting roads between these chambers. The resulting ability to integrate knowledge from different domains (chambers) brought about a change in the nature of consciousness.

 

[arpaxad]

I must say that, it seems to me, people are using the words 'real', 'illusion' and 'imagined' inconsistently. Either that or I'm somehow inconsistently interpreting what each poster means by the way these words are being used.

I feel the same way as you. At this stage I am not sure whether any effort to clarify statements like "illusion is reality" is worthwhile or it is falling into the trap of "mental masturbation".

See this.

 

[Buddy]

Anyway, I picked up Mithen's book again and the title of chapter 9 is " The big bang of human culture: the origins of art and religion". According to Mithen, the extension of language from conveying social information to a more general purpose language which included non-social information facilitated cognitive fluidity. In his model of the mind, there were chambers like "general intelligence", "natural history intelligence", "technical intelligence", "social intelligence" etc which had very limited connections with each other until a general purpose language evolved to provide connecting roads between these chambers. The resulting ability to integrate knowledge from different domains (chambers) brought about a change in the nature of consciousness.

Thanks for that. Now I'm wondering whether that change in the nature of consciousness was a brand new developmental addition for the general run of humanity as a response to natural survival pressures, or if it was a substitute for a more holistic understanding of life that became lost for the majority of us. I probably never conceived that question of wonder when I first skimmed through it, because, if I'm remembering correctly, at that time I was reading some of Daniel Dennett's stuff and mulling over the Cartesian Theater model.

With that in mind and a bit of a tweak to Mithen's 'chambers', it seems the Cartesian Theater might be placed as the central theater in a cinema building consisting of multiple individual theaters. The central theater doesn't show its own movie - it blends elements showing in the other theaters onto it's own screen while busy usher-executives keep rushing back and forth between the smaller theaters and the central one to keep the Cartesian screen playing something. Man, that would seem to require a lot of energy.

Either way, I still wonder if that's all a naturally evolving emergence or simply replacement for something lost. Maybe bits of both.

 

[Sol Logos]

It's just a thought / imagination experiment but it follows a pattern. First we have consciousness, in this case mine. Then we have the ability to imagine, and parameters around what can be imagined based on my conscious capabilities, so there must be some predefined limits or rules determining this experiment based on me.

What is a conscious capability if not 'to imagine', and how could the ability to imagine, which is a capability of consciousness, define it's own parameters? Perhaps such a constraint would originate in an external or material context like the processing power or connecting speeds of brainy neurons. I don't know.

Interesting questions, it depends on which of these views are right:
1) matter determines how we can engage our consciousness (capability)
2) how we engage our consciousness determines matter

If 2 is right it could mean we have the ability to define parameters say how much we can imagine based on the choices we make. This means we can develop our conscious ability, potentially without limits (of how many neurons we have etc.)

If 1 is right it means there's a ceiling to how much we can develop based on the matter we reside in (body) and the matter around us (environment and rest of universe).

Most of us are familiar with 1, its the assumption of materialism and how most of science today starts investigating anything. It might be right, I can't say for certain.

But if its true that human activity attracts events of a wholly physical nature (or seen to be), like comets raining down on us when the world is inundated with the effects of psychopathology, it seems to suggest that 2 is a real possibility and that the assumption of materialism (1) needs revisiting.

It also means that our development isnt subject as much as we feel it might be by the material world, but more so that the material world is subject to our development (for which we are in the driver's seat).

 

[Buddy]

Interesting questions, it depends on which of these views are right:
1) matter determines how we can engage our consciousness (capability)
2) how we engage our consciousness determines matter

If 2 is right it could mean we have the ability to define parameters say how much we can imagine based on the choices we make. This means we can develop our conscious ability, potentially without limits (of how many neurons we have etc.)

If 1 is right it means there's a ceiling to how much we can develop based on the matter we reside in (body) and the matter around us (environment and rest of universe).

Most of us are familiar with 1, its the assumption of materialism and how most of science today starts investigating anything. It might be right, I can't say for certain.

But if its true that human activity attracts events of a wholly physical nature (or seen to be), like comets raining down on us when the world is inundated with the effects of psychopathology, it seems to suggest that 2 is a real possibility and that the assumption of materialism (1) needs revisiting.

It also means that our development isn't subject as much as we feel it might be by the material world, but more so that the material world is subject to our development (for which we are in the driver's seat).

Well, there is evidence in the neurosciences that, after we're born, our brains continue development under the influences of our interactions with our environment, which includes others. And how, and to what extent, our brains and neural activity develops, influences how we react and respond to the world which, in turn, is continuing to feedback influences into our development which feedsback to and effects the environment and etc.

These reciprocal feedback loops between ourselves and our environment has measurable effects in both contexts, so, just enlarging the scope of this dynamic just described, I'd suggest some measure of number 1 and number 2 working together!

 

[obyvatel]

[quote author=Buddy]
Either way, I still wonder if that's all a naturally evolving emergence or simply replacement for something lost. Maybe bits of both.
[/quote]

Study of any question or phenomenon using the present day "scientific method" involves breaking it up into components, analyzing them and then attempting to synthesize. Such an "atomic" method cannot answer questions about consciousness. Yet some arguments are better made than others and it is easier to discuss among ourselves.

What I noticed was Mithen does recognize that the concepts of "art and religion" were something qualitatively different from what he observed from "the past", but then he falls back on his atomic model to account for it. It is really difficult to find convincing evolutionary (in the Darwinian perspective) reasons for the development of art and culture. So it can be explained away as "need for entertainment", probably coupled to the context of social interactions. Art can and often is confused with crafts just like technological progress is confused with scientific progress. And similarly we have the "scientific" (technological is a better word imo in this context) view that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of neural activity.

Better views about consciousness exist, but they may not be recognized as "scientific" unless there is a way to understand and use a language that is capable of expressing those views. This is what Gurdjieff referred to. Since being/consciousness is qualitatively different from most of our regular experiences, it is difficult to speak about it using our existing vocabulary. The language used to describe things and explore relationships between them, which is what we use, is not adequate to describe "wholes". Artistic expressions of a higher order - which would fall into the category of "objective art" of Gurdjieff - can perhaps express such specific experiences of wholeness where the art, artist and the spectator can partake of what has been described as "timeless" experience. Actually glimpses of such experiences are found in scientific or mathematical discoveries like those made by Kekule, Poincare and others where the experience was whole and timeless and came first before the working out of the experience using the "scientific method". At that level, the difference between science and art vanishes and there is objective understanding and its expression through various media (paint, musical instruments, equations) and various contexts which we call physics/chemistry/mathematics/music/arts etc.

 

[Buddy]

Thanks for that view of Mithen's work. :)

Actually glimpses of such experiences are found in scientific or mathematical discoveries like those made by Kekule, Poincare and others where the experience was whole and timeless and came first before the working out of the experience using the "scientific method".

I'm assuming you're flagging "scientific method" for the same reason I'm thinking: there really is no "the" scientific method, despite the formal definitions and listed steps - at least not as practiced by some of the brightest and productive scientists, IMO. In fact, some honest scientists have admitted looking for a hypothesis to fit the facts and when one is settled on, reason backwards to make it look like the hypothesis (or conclusion from the experiment) was derived from the data. There doesn't seem to be any choice but to do that because peer reviewed science journal formats require the reporting to be formatted that way to keep everyone blameless for *saying wrong*. The inductive looking and searching process that spots patterns and new things that haven't been noticed before *has* to work that "wrong" way though, so we can know that those scientists are being honest about that. What those scientists are doing is simply using a "scientific testing process" which presents as valid when the questions are answered, conclusions are reasonable and presented properly. That's the whole brain approach from my point of view and if the conclusions come out the same way, either way, then why should it matter?

At that level, the difference between science and art vanishes and there is objective understanding and its expression through various media (paint, musical instruments, equations) and various contexts which we call physics/chemistry/mathematics/music/arts etc.

Yep, when the science is good, it *is* art. What seems left to us is the form of expression.

 

[Buddy]

Can I get a mod or admin to delete post 22 please? I made an edit for clarification (#23) and messed up something. Thank you.

 

[Vulcan59]

Can I get a mod or admin to delete post 22 please? I made an edit for clarification (#23) and messed up something. Thank you.

Done. :)

 

[obyvatel]

Thanks for that view of Mithen's work. :)

Actually glimpses of such experiences are found in scientific or mathematical discoveries like those made by Kekule, Poincare and others where the experience was whole and timeless and came first before the working out of the experience using the "scientific method".

I'm assuming you're flagging "scientific method" for the same reason I'm thinking: there really is no "the" scientific method, despite the formal definitions and listed steps - at least not as practiced by some of the brightest and productive scientists, IMO. In fact, some honest scientists have admitted looking for a hypothesis to fit the facts and when one is settled on, reason backwards to make it look like the hypothesis (or conclusion from the experiment) was derived from the data. There doesn't seem to be any choice but to do that because peer reviewed science journal formats require the reporting to be formatted that way to keep everyone blameless for *saying wrong*. The inductive looking and searching process that spots patterns and new things that haven't been noticed before *has* to work that "wrong" way though, so we can know that those scientists are being honest about that. What those scientists are doing is simply using a "scientific testing process" which presents as valid when the questions are answered, conclusions are reasonable and presented properly.

I agree. The atomic method of scientific inquiry works well for testing a hypothesis. It may not work so great when forming a hypothesis. But its limitations show up most clearly when scientists habituated to this method of inquiry try to explain purpose.

Here is an excerpt from Mithen's work. The context is Mithen, after establishing evidence of how the mind evolved, is providing an explanation for why it evolved that way. He has argued that an emergent cognitive fluidity aided by development of general purpose language connected the other previously developed specialized intelligence modules to lead to a superior general intelligence of the modern human mind.

At that level, the difference between science and art vanishes and there is objective understanding and its expression through various media (paint, musical instruments, equations) and various contexts which we call physics/chemistry/mathematics/music/arts etc.

Yep, when the science is good, it *is* art. What seems left to us is the form of expression.

[/quote]

Mithen states that
[quote author=The Prehistory of the Mind]
In summary, science like art and religion, is a product of cognitive fluidity.
[/quote]

So he can see that at some level, science/art/religion are connected. But rather than seeking this connection in a higher order system, he restricts himself to the functional level of cognitive fluidity, which facilitates the expression of objective reality into these different channels.

 

[Deleted member 9511]

Hi ge0m0. Thanks for your post. I must say that, it seems to me, people are using the words 'real', 'illusion' and 'imagined' inconsistently. Either that or I'm somehow inconsistently interpreting what each poster means by the way these words are being used. I need to think about this some more before I have anything intelligent to say in a reply because I need to review some stuff first.

Thanks for your input.

Buddy, I agree about the use of those (and many other words), and I include myself among the inconsistent users. It's interesting, because I often meditate deeply on meaning, using keywords as a trigger and with absolutely no concern about the common definition of the word, but rather looking deeply into my lack of understanding. Neti, neti (not this, not this). And I also am reluctant to post on this forum because it often takes more time than I have to be really careful about what I post here. It's so easy to misunderstand when context is so vague. So, I will not try to define the words you mention, except to say that my current thinking is that "imagination" is more important than the other two words, whatever that means.

Thanks for starting the thread.

 

[Buddy]

Buddy, I agree about the use of those (and many other words), and I include myself among the inconsistent users. It's interesting, because I often meditate deeply on meaning, using keywords as a trigger and with absolutely no concern about the common definition of the word, but rather looking deeply into my lack of understanding. Neti, neti (not this, not this). And I also am reluctant to post on this forum because it often takes more time than I have to be really careful about what I post here. It's so easy to misunderstand when context is so vague. So, I will not try to define the words you mention, except to say that my current thinking is that "imagination" is more important than the other two words, whatever that means.

Of all the meditative practices available, why did you choose that one? My opinion is that different practices serve different purposes and should be performed after, or with, expert guidance by a competent teacher who knows you well enough to serve your needs.

For a moment, imagine two guys (A & B) going to an esoteric teacher who, after getting to know them, accepts them as students to learn meditation. Suppose the teacher (let's call him a master) thinks that man A is an academic blowhard living in an ivory tower, in an office with a plaque on the wall that reminds him everyday that "I'm not a participant in that horror way over there, I'm just an observer." Man A is given "neti, neti."

Man B is a hard-working guy who's down on his luck, generally sad, has none of the advantages in life that man A has. B is taught a different meditation - one that builds him up, helps him to process and remove blocks that are tying up his personal power or whatever.

The master doesn't tell them any of this or anything about what he thinks of anybody. He speaks minimally and just monitors progress. Eventually, man A, using (neti, neti) has experienced some beneficial decoherence. He has negated much of the garbage that was cluttering up his mind and dispursing his personal power into fantasy land or who knows where; He had raised himself that far from the ground on that mental garbage pile he was sitting on top of, looking over everyone and everything.

After some mastery of their respective meditative techniques, each man feels like a different, better person than he was before. Man A and man B are talking with each other about stuff...they are connecting, feeling for each other and they start cooperating in ways that reinforce each other's self-improvements and overall life. They're on the same level now, which is a good thing. Master is so proud!

Are any of the lessons in the above true? I don't know. I totally made it all up, but it could happen that way.

Ancient Sufi master-student relationships and Gurdjieff's work with individuals makes of it a good case. And a good teacher wouldn't tell you what and why of his choices for you anyway. That's why we have to trust a teacher in the beginning. If we were told what the teacher sees in us and told about our own plan and what end result is intended, we'd short-circuit it. Like the person who does a good thing one time, forms a plan for being that way that makes him feel good but doesn't go beyond that one good thing done that one time. Why should he? He's already extracted the 'feel good' essence from it, and any further effort is just too much exhausting work.

Well, just my thoughts for what they're worth. :)

 

[Buddy]

The atomic method of scientific inquiry works well for testing a hypothesis. It may not work so great when forming a hypothesis. But its limitations show up most clearly when scientists habituated to this method of inquiry try to explain purpose.

Indeed so, it seems.

Here is an excerpt from Mithen's work. The context is Mithen, after establishing evidence of how the mind evolved, is providing an explanation for why it evolved that way. He has argued that an emergent cognitive fluidity aided by development of general purpose language connected the other previously developed specialized intelligence modules to lead to a superior general intelligence of the modern human mind.

Mithen's description of the process of building a complex computer program is accurate. His analogy to the building of mind may hold well to a degree too.

He's not wrong, just talking about that type of programmer sitting in a cubicle with a list of requirements he expects to be the final word for the program the customer needs. Also handy is a shelf full of code objects, pre-written and ready to be plugged in to each other and tied together in a framework he probably selects in an integrated development environment (IDE) for the single programming language he knows. But there's another type of programmer...the creative type who works differently.

Considering what Mithen is working with, it's a good model as far as it goes, I think.

What I find most glaring in the above thesis is the assertion that a blind agent, natural selection, with no goal, will build a complex program like the human mind. In real life, no designer can be "blind" or without a goal when he/she builds any system of reasonable complexity.

...and be any good as a designer. Because the software that erupts from the creatively blind cubicle guy is going to be buggy. It will also be bloated and require enormous amounts of RAM working memory and pagefile space on the harddrive to swap parts of the program into and out of memory to clear logjams. Since the code is not efficient, the program will probably not exploit the full hardware capabilities, including multi-threaded, multi-core processors and this might be due to the pre-coded objects now being out of date (or coded for different hardware potentials). There will be debugging done before initial release but the program will only work as long as only what the programmer has allowed for actually occurs, otherwise more bugs, more exceptions thrown, and crashes. Are we getting closer to home yet for some people we know IRL?

I believe the subsequent implication of consciousness as just a tool to do the bidding of this blind aimless designer is connected closely with this assertion.

Probably because the analogy runs parallel with real life examples where there seems to be low levels of consciousness to begin with. Or maybe the apparent low levels of consciousness is just that awareness un-informed with much creativity. With creativity, it seems that it is either there or not there for some people. Anything "in the middle" that might mitigate this loss probably comes from Googling how to be creative and following a list of steps someone wrote. Well, OK, but that doesn't really work that well. You can't step-ify creativity or you'll stupify the result (where the letter "u" in stupify signals the inversion).

The above may be a representative example of the blindness of an otherwise capable, intelligent scientist, rather than a blindness of a natural/universal order. It is perhaps this very blindness that makes us, as a species, persist in seeking knowledge of things so that we can manipulate them somehow to our advantage, rather than seeking the purpose of our existence in the universe.

Yep, but for the creative people in software engineering I'd say the persistence can arise from an insatiable curiosity for how things actually work in this world. What follows that particular point in your thought above stays the same for everyone, I think.