Eden's Paradox?

I had proposed earlier that we, and life forms before us, have evolved calculating mechanisms which, when predicting future consequences from an assessment of their causes, have assumptions built in that causation in nature is purposeful - that we have in effect the will of nature to contend with. I should have added at the time that these mechanisms (some call them cognitive modules) need to operate from the further and somewhat contradictory assumption that we have the freedom to contend with nature's will.

So we seem always at cross purposes when these conflicting "wills" inevitably complicate attempts at an accurate determination of the future. This may also add up to a certain built-in distaste for paradox. Especially as we can't know when or even if either of these assumptions is correct.

Let's complicate this even further: If the assumption of purpose has led to a belief in gods or spirits, then you are virtually compelled to consider them as part of the explanation for any questions concerning life and nature. You "can't not" involve them in any of your calculations. Worse, they will have become factual considerations - no longer possibilities.

So would you then be able to ignore both these "facts" and the assumptions that "made" them into facts in any attempt to re-examine the correctness of your original programming, or even accept there was such a program from the beginning? Just how do you question a "truth" you know for a "fact" to be self-evident?

It would appear there is only one answer to this and perhaps to any other paradox: You (and I) can know nothing to any degree of certainty unless we concede that nothing at all is certain. (Probably.)

But if we have a will that can contend with nature's offerings, we'd be wise to see that as both our and nature's purpose - as life forms are likely nature's only construct with both will and purpose.

And as they say here in the Garden of Hawaii, "that's why hard."

Hyperactivity Afoot

Dr. Wilson's response posted below, raised a question that made me think of a possibly helpful answer. I'll post that here as well.

"But if there ARE these biologically based presumptions that natural events have a purpose, then they have in effect posed questions about what is behind that purpose and why. So these detection devices may now appear as costly byproducts for reasons that involve their misuse over the ages as attempts to understand our own purposes as necessarily connected to some purpose in nature. Religious mythology has so far appealed to many of us as having the best answer, but it has given us answers to the wrong questions. Because in the process we have been unaware of what there is within us that has prompted these ongoing questions and their so far unsatisfactory answers.

If we can come to understand that we already have what amounts to a built in belief that nature has a set of laws that do effectively govern us and "punish" us when we don't follow directions, and to understand what is prompting the search for a purpose behind these laws, rather than for, perhaps, the laws that serve our own human purposes, then this detection device won't turn out to have been a costly byproduct after all.It will have eventually led us to asking the right questions and the possibility of answering them through a more scientific process."

Well, I know what I was trying to say, even if you don't.

But I do need to point out that after reviewing at least some of the literature, the concept Dr. Wilson referred to as the hyperactive agent detection device postulates that we do have a bias toward suspecting such causative agents at work, supernatural or otherwise, but this concept doesn't envision the origin of such bias being from the same biologically built in "premises" (perhaps as cellular algorithms) that I have proposed exist, and would have existed since calculating mechanisms devoted to predictions sprang into life (pun intended).

Better Belate than Never

OK, I got a reply from Dr. Wilson today that makes me feel a lot better about my ideas. Here is the response:

DavidSloanWilson
Dear RoyNiles, There is nothing dumb about the issues that you raise. Everyone should know that when I don't reply, it is for lack of time, not lack of interest, and certainly not because I regarded a comment as dumb. With respect to memes, they are defined in a variety of ways, some broad and others narrow, as I describe in my first blog. There is definitely a process of cultural evolution (not everyone agrees, in part because the concept has a complicated past), which involves some cultural variants spreading at the expense of others, but these cultural variants need not be like genes in every respect. See Richerson and Boyd's "Not By Genes Alone" for the best discussion of memes and cultural variants, in my opinion. I usually avoid the term, although I used it in my blog to say that religions (and other cultural systems) are good at managing their internal environments.
Continuing my response to your comment, your point about built-in calculating mechanisms is also well taken. Numerous evolutionists think along these lines, such as Scott Atran (In God's we Trust) and Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained). These are broadly classified as "byproduct" theories of religion, because the elements of religion are hypothesized to evolve by genetic evolution for reasons that have nothing to do with religion, and then become the basis of religion. Your idea (if I understand it correctly) is close to what is sometimes called a "hyperactive agent detection device." I regard these ideas as quite plausible but a major issue needs to be addressed: Even if these elements of religion are byproducts as far as genetic evolution is concerned, how are they functioning (or not functioning) in their CURRENT form? One possibility is that they continue to function as costly byproducts without delivering any benefits to the religious believer, like a moth to flame. Another possibility is that they have been woven into highly adaptive current-day religious systems. Most current-day adaptations were the byproducts (or exaptations, to use a word coined by Stephen Jay Gould) of past ages.

*****
There was no response to some of the other stuff that I had added - mainly to be provocative - and that's probably all to the good. It was the feedback in general that was sorely needed and has now been gratefully received.

In Awe of the Obvious

I asked this question on David Sloan Wilson's Huff Post blog yesterday and he hasn't answered. I didn't think it was particularly dumb, but perhaps to him it seemed just dumb enough: 

"Two small quibbles, perhaps: First, I note that you make mention of memes here as if there really were such things, when other prominent scientists (Steven Rose for one) appear to regard that concept as fanciful and more importantly, essentially untestable. Your hypotheses won't necessarily suffer, regardless, but I'd like to know or at least understand if and why you find it tenable. And I've heard Dennett speak of them with a certain reverence which is almost embarrassing.
Second, I've learned much from your other writings, but I've not seen (or have missed) any discussion of the possibility that religion differs from other social and mythological constructs because we, and life forms before us, have evolved calculating mechanisms, that, in predicting future events from an understanding of their causes, have a built in premise that every cause in nature is purposeful - every act had some form of intent behind it. In fact, I doubt that organisms would have survived and evolved without at least that initial assumption enabling quick decisions be made where immediacy is crucial.
It's not that I believe this assumption is correct (I don't) but there are more reasons to believe organisms would have had more advantage sticking to the use of that premise than have had reason to find it a disadvantage.And if you're involved with a super-organism that has found ways to turn that assumption to advantage by tapping into such an unlimited source of power, and the laws and strictures that would seem to accompany it, you have a huge competitive advantage over almost all who rely more on themselves for such powers. Does this make any sense to you as something worthy of further consideration in this particular project?"

Maybe the awkwardly put 'memes' reference put him off? Or perhaps it was too much to propose that groups could tap into a power that existed mostly in their imagination. Maybe mass delusion and self-delusion have no lasting effects. They may last a longer time than we have to wait, but that's perhaps an academic question - and I'm not a recognized academic.

I did add this later today in any case:
"I do feel that I have leave to make a last comment about something that every one should know from Biology 101: Virtually all life forms capable of replication have some sort of calculating mechanism to make at least rudimentary predictions, and virtually all of these are seeking answers based on some form of "what and why" questions, even if not yet some form of when and where, and later who and how. And it's the nature of all questions to have some sort of premise that enables the what and why to exist. And that existence doesn't need to have depended on an understanding of the concept or the nature of any part of this process. Questions looking for a reason in this mechanical sense are at the same time looking for what we would call a purpose. In other words the organism doesn't look for a reason separate from a purpose. Signals that would point to one or the other are virtually the same at that stage. So to argue that calculating mechanisms DON'T have premises of one sort or another built in, if only to allow them to work at all, is just plain silly. And to hold that in any case one of the first premises needed for the operation to begin was not involved with purpose, or used purpose in a selective way to begin with, is even more silly."
I knocked that off rather quickly, but I stand by the sentiments expressed. I suppose I could have added that in a fight or flight response, potential prey may need to assess from at least previous experience why an animal may be sitting up in the next tree. Or the fly to assess the purpose of an upraised swatter. One can't calculate "why" anything without a mechanical version of that concept somewhere in the working parts.
If an organism "wants" a chance to survive, it has to get a certain percentage of its decisions and predictions right. But It hasn't a chance in hell if it can never ask the right questions.
3-1: In response to another post related to apes versus humans, I added the following:
"What makes you so certain that apes (and other sentient beings) don't have some instinctive need to behave in accordance with some apparent encouragement from nature for correct behavior, and discouragement for crossing boundaries that other apes seem to feel should not be crossed. How do you know the one ape is not right about what his fellow apes feel and not capable of having some glimmer of why that could be?

That doesn't mean there is (or is not) such a natural force - only that all life may be predisposed to feel there is. None of you seem to have given that possibility any serious consideration - you may say otherwise but all I've seen is baseless speculation in that regard - with the apes left out except to discuss an innate moral sense seen only as evidence that ours as well does NOT come from the gods.But any suggestions as to why we and the apes may have this strong sense that it does are just dismissed as biologically baseless superstition. Superstition it surely is - biologically baseless it is surely not.

You may think you have some advantage over other atheists and agnostics in your factual understanding of religious belief. You may in fact be seriously wrong where they are merely ignorant. 

And in case you're assuming I think moral sensibilities come from some force in nature, I don't. What they come from in virtually all species, consciously or not, is from a fear that there is such a force to contend with. 
Simplistic? Sure. Obvious? Apparently not. Underly complicated? By the standards of academia, yes."

Long ago when I heard the call of wild wolves, I wondered about who or what they might think they were calling to - and why.
I lived with Indians at the time who told me they were calling to the moon. There's little doubt now that they were.

The Devil Made Me Do It

Excerpts from comments recently made by Jesse Bering, 
Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queens University, Belfast, in an Edge symposium:

"Psychologists now know that human beings intuitively reason as though natural categories exist for an intelligently designed purpose. Clouds don't just exist, say kindergartners, they're there for raining." Also, "a mind designed by nature cannot be changed fundamentally."

Because a purposeful nature suggests a planned nature, and that suggests a controlled nature, such an instinctive surmise seems relevant to the ever stewing debate concerning determinism versus free will - with perhaps a dash of compatibilism thrown in and stirred by agents of the supernatural.

But eschewing the supernatural, we may still believe that the laws of cause and effect make events inevitable even if not predestined by intent or purpose. Yet in reality, we must act as if consequences are not inevitable and choices are necessary - even if made for us long ago by circumstance.

And we must act as if we can somehow determine or postpone our fate, while at the same time instinctively turning to "fate" as an explanation for any failure of those actions.

And some of us with religious beliefs must nevertheless act as if our gods have no real control over our actions - even if we believe that one or more of those gods are the cause of an inevitable or predestined fate.

And (obviously) this is because our innate calculating mechanisms force us to make choices, regardless of any philosophical or other belief that such choices were not ours to make. So it would seem my missionary father was right - that our gods do help those who help themselves.

And it occurs to me there was no real point to this post, but I was forced to write it anyway.

Karma or Schmarma?

Earlier today I was informed again that,"what goes around comes around." It seems most of us either believe something like that or want to believe it, as if fate was somehow a living thing with an innate sense of justice and the power to enforce it. And of course consequences can at least be de facto punishments or rewards.

So if we (or certain other organisms) sense or feel a reason or purpose for everything, and that "purposefulness" is built into our calculating mechanisms, then we have likely factored in the possibility that these reasons also involve some form of reward or punishment. And if so, what might we have done to deserve either and be the cause of the "consequence" in question, and what might be done to change those results now or in the future? If it's punishment, can we somehow make it seem unjust and thus affect the consequences in "mid-stream," and if a reward, what should we NOT do that would tend to alter or stop the process?

And if the "consequences" can possibly be a combination of both reward and punishment, what can be done to affect one aspect of this purpose without adversely affecting other aspects by mistake in the process?

So we can see that the mere consideration of purposefulness by an organism in making calculations complicates the process considerably, especially when the assumption is that everything results from a purposeful act, and if so, from an actor that senses feedback and can assess the effectiveness of its efforts.

And chances are it's only the more advanced organisms that can afford to consider some things as purely accidental in making these calculations, as such considerations would have to come after attempts were made to counter an act, rather than first trying to see if it was in fact intentional. Benefits from recognizing an act was accidental might only come to an organism advanced enough in its calculating and strategic abilities to find value in ignoring the aspect of purposefulness.

But note that even the most advanced or emancipated of us believe there are no accidents in the sense that every occurrence is in some way consistent with a "natural law," and the existence of such laws themselves may not be accidental.

But can't we then believe they may serve a purpose while not at the same time be purposeful? I'd like to think so.

Are we just Kicking the Gong Around?

I just read with interest the article in ScienceDaily, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823164846.htm, titled "Astronomers Find Gaping Hole In The Universe." Associated press has a follow-up article "Giant hole in universe found."
This later article has a comment from a UH astronomer that holes probably occur when when the gravity from areas with bigger mass pulls matter from less dense areas, and that after 13 billion years these holes are losing out in the battle to where there are larger concentrations of matter.

Both articles make reference to the universe beginning with the "big bang" as does the "13 billion years" comment. But my other reading indicates a number of scientists now question whether time, or the universe as we think we know it, actually began with that big bang - as they appear to have found evidence to the contrary.

It seems we have had an easier time accepting that something came from nothing than, in the alternative, there has always been a something and never a nothing. But then a further question would be, if there has always been something, would there not be a finite amount of whatever that something is? Because for that mass of energy or matter to increase, we come back again to acceptance that something may well be able to come from nothing.

But then there's this: If the universe had no beginning, can there still be limits to its size and dimensions? And if not, can there be finite limits to its matter at all?

So if the universe that we can observe includes signs there was matter around before the big bang, does the "gravity pulling matter from one area to another" theory hold up as the likely reason for these gaping holes? Because if so, what pulled matter into areas where there apparently was none before, if matter didn't start with the bang, and yet has expanded into our sphere of the universe since that event?

Did some mystical "big banger" pull stuff from somewhere else and push it our way, or is there a "big recycler" in action somewhere? Clearly these gaping holes have given us a lot more to think about, and we can't turn to the usual suspects for answers.

The Ugly Truth about Beauty?

A recent Seed essay contained comments that we are hardwired with several natural instincts for knowing truth - referring to beauty as one of these to illustrate that a sense of truth seems inherent in our very make-up.

My comment in turn is that statements like this are fanciful at best.  A sense of beauty is less than reliable as an indicator of truth, as the appearance of beauty is often used to conceal truth or to mimic it. Beauty offers an incentive to approach with the expectation of finding desirable qualities within the object that projects it. It is not a quality in and of itself, but an illusory representation of those qualities.

Yet in studying nature, we can't seem to help but apply our "understanding" of the way life projects beauty to natural objects in general - as if their beauty was also created for a purpose and as a signal that these too were objects of desire.

We are wired to make accurate predictions, but in my view it's not a sense of truth that is inherent in our make-up, but a sense of the most probable - about which we are of course frequently mistaken.

We almost certainly have "premises" built into our calculating mechanisms that make truth less than obvious from the outset.  Before we acquired some facility in the use of abstractions, our more primitive mechanisms would have included the built-in equivalent of these concepts if and when they added to our chances of survival.  And these mechanistic "assumptions" will have had a margin of error - which guaranteed then and now that any resulting predictions will be less than absolute where "truth" is concerned.

One important example seems clear - that there is a presumption built or wired into our calculating mechanisms that all cause and effect stems from an initial purpose, so that any accurate or reliable conclusions will need to have first taken an element of purposefulness into account. We evolved by the necessary "assumptions" that other life had a strategy similar to ours, and that nature was the fountain of this life and therefor of its purposefulness as well. And while our more rational mechanisms have since been able to see in the abstract that this purposefulness may have begun with life rather than preceded it, our hardwired mechanisms still operate from an opposite presumption.


But as assumptions go, there is at least a third possibility, if not a probability, that purposefulness does exist elsewhere in the universe wherever there are other life forms, and that somewhere some of these forms have or had the propensity to interfere with whatever other such forms are out there. But whether or not they are responsible for any of the beauty we observe in the universe - representative or not of some universal truth - is for the moment highly uncertain.


And as a corollary to the above commentary, my feeling has been that If there is some conceivable purpose behind, or involved with, the evolution of the universe, it is nevertheless unlikely to be one that's immediately responsive or amenable to human persuasion. And thus its "beauty" would likely be indifferent to any demonstrations of our adulation.

On the other hand we clearly have good reason not to trust in nature's beneficence. It's the effort to earn that beneficence through an appeal to its proverbial "good nature" that will be essentially unproductive.

Tinkered Predictions

I wanted to add that I have some problems with game theory as it applies to predicting animal and especially human behavior - and the fault may just be in my own lack of understanding. But if what I understand is correct, game theorists will deliberately ignore aspects of a situation they don't see as relevant to determining the relative payoffs that result from the choice of available strategies, AND they seem to choose only those strategies that offer alternative routes to the end or ultimate "payoff."

But in doing so, they will have assumed that the end payoff is the determinant of all behavior from the outset. And yet that is most often not the case when considering the purposes for which animal (and human) intelligence have actually evolved

For example, they would seem to be completely ignoring long term versus short term payoffs, and the necessity to survive for the short term before concerning oneself at all with long term goals.

Instead, they appear to see short term solutions as ultimately controlled by long term consequences, when in fact the reverse may be more often true.

So why then does game theory seem to work in spite of this apparent error in its general concept? It may be because when the predicted results are inconsistent with other observations, some tinkering occurs - sometimes by adding what are referred to as "equilibrium refinements." Or as at least one adherent has said, one of the most valuable features of game theory is that additional relevant features of the interaction may be integrated into the game-theoretic models.

But when we tinker with the theory of the game in this fashion, is it still the same game? Or are we just applying logical corrections to what must inevitably result from flaws in the initial premise of game theory?

An Alternative to Truth

This is something I had on another site since 2006, but since it was hardly ever accessed there, I thought, why not post it here as well so there would be another place from which people could choose not to read it!

Investigative Strategy and Assumptive Differences - Reliability versus True or False

The noted philosopher and logician, Bertrand Russell, at age 92, wrote that reason had its limitations. "Beware of rational argument," he reminded us; "you need only one false premise in order to prove anything you please by logic." Leading me to an illustration of how, when it comes to investigative strategies, the rational parts of our brain are more prone to error than we might have suspected:

Take for example this version of the liar paradox (also a subject of Russell's writings), which was ascribed to the ancient Greek, Epimenides the Cretan, who said that, ’All Cretans are liars.’ We have here a statement that seemingly cannot, by traditional logic, be judged either true or false. Can it be true if this Cretan is not a liar, yet can it then be false if this Cretan is not lying?

But instead of just reading that statement, imagine that you actually met Epimenides, and he said to you personally: "All Cretans are liars." Your first reaction might be to wonder why, being a Cretan, would he say that, even if he thought it was true. And secondly, does he mean all Cretans always lie, or that no Cretan always tells the truth, or no Cretan ever tells the truth?

Your "emotional" and intuitive brain areas are thus examining signals reflecting the degree of probability that the statement is or is not reliable, as reliability is the key concept here. In a face to face encounter, these parts of the brain will automatically consider multiple scenarios, such as the speaker's motives, rather than operate from a presumption that the statement will be either true or false. It's the "rational" brain's assumption that things have to be one or the other that creates the apparent paradox.

"Paradox" has been defined as an assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises. And of course there's no paradox if Epimenides is simply lying about being a liar. Or if he is simply wrong and doesn't see the contradiction implicit in his also being a Cretan. But because we can't make a valid deduction without having more evidence available, we will intuitively treat the statement as unreliable, yet not necessarily know why, or know how to resolve the apparent contradictions.

Clearly, an assumptive premise that a thing is either true or false would be the flaw in this process, and without the input from the rest of the brain that the statement may be deliberately deceptive, for example, the rational brain, given that initial premise, would have a harder time realizing that this additional aspect of assessing "reliability" can be in fact the key to the problem.

The inference to be drawn here is that a "true or false" assessment alone is not sufficient as part of a successful investigative strategy. It is reliability that we are seeking through these strategies, and the concepts of "true" and "reliable" are not interchangeable. Truth is a part of the reliability assessment, but the main component is the degree of predictability involved. The brain is essentially a predictor of consequences, and the reliability of these predictions is more important to it than assessments of whether they are simply right or wrong.

Aphorism for thought: We might find more truth in a search for reliability, than find reliability in a search for the truth.

******

As to the paradox per se, here's its simplest form: "This sentence is false." Is it true? If so, it's false. Is it false? If so, it's true. My own solution: It's not necessary that it's either, especially if it's both. Because it's simply true that it's false. Or not so simply.

Because it's not false that it's true.

Do We Muse In Multiple?

I read an article in Scientific American (6-2007) concerning "The Traveler's Dilemma" and the application of game theory to its solution, and found it of value as an an exercise in showing that the form of logic used by game theorists is - at least in this case - less than careful in guarding against false premises, as the assumptions behind the premises involved were themselves based on an inaccurate assessment of actual human behavior.

And to me, the greatest error in these predictions appeared to stem from a belief or assumption that human brains calculate from one or two premises or inferences that are complimentary and follow a linear or at best bilinear logical process to a hierarchy of possible/probable solutions.

We may receive that impression through awareness of a stream of consciousness that seems to rise from a single source or result from a common analytical process. But more than likely we are seeing elements from several thought trains as they intersect with our consciousness for a variety of monitoring purposes. And what we don't see is the final arbitration process in the emotional and otherwise unconscious brain areas.

Because it's fairly clear, in my view, that our brains operate from multiple suppositions, some complimentary and some antagonistic, and the "logical" processes follow multilinear and complex routes in both competitive and cooperative fashions to "solve" the same or different aspects of the same or different immediate problems. Survival needs for the here and now have not permitted us the luxury of doing one thing at a time, so to speak.

Why would I presume the above to be true, or at least highly probable? To me that's not the right question, as it's clear from recent brain-imaging experiments alone that there's more than one "module" of the mind acting at the same time to address the same given problem, but with different strategic parameters. But intuition should have told us that, if nothing else. The real question is the extent to which this is happening.

I would speculate this extent involves the need the brain has - and that certain individual's brains may develop - for the number of multiple processes that most efficiently deal with what have been the most urgent and pressing needs for solutions through each species' evolutionary "experience."

Perhaps the more deceptive and therefor dangerous the environment, the more need for separate "modules" and/or biological "algorithms" to operate concurrently to overcome these dangers and form a consensus as to the most trustworthy paths to take in each instance. But as we may find there are limits to the efficacy of decisions made by committee, there are doubtless limitations to these processes in each species' nervous systems and brains for the same general reasons.

Factoring in what scientists have now observed about the brain's structure, it would appear a viable proposition that any biological systems which could have developed such a multiple "algorithmic" mechanism would have gained a distinct competitive advantage. And because we're becoming more and more aware that the progress of evolution is fueled as much by need as by happy accident, what is both possible and valuable to that progression might well be probable.

2-20-2008: I regard the following item as offering a modicum of support for the above speculative musings:

Nature Reviews Neuroscience
March 2008 Volume 9 Number 3

"There is a growing consensus that different types of memory are mediated by multiple distinct systems, but how these 'multiple memory systems' are organized in the brain is still a topic of debate. Nature Reviews Neuroscience presents a series of articles that discuss recent findings and controversies regarding the neural substrates of different memory systems and their components, drawing on data from neuropsychological, cognitive, neuroimaging and animal studies."

I wish I had access to the complete series, but as of now, I don't.