Earth 1

 With a nod to Rachel Maddow, I will designate Earth 2 as the place where Donald Trump won the 2020 election but it was stolen from him by any number of factors. Back on Earth 1, we regard these "factors" as having one thing in common. They are imaginary.

For the sake of discussion, I will lump all imaginary universes into Rachel's Earth 2. In Earth 2:

• Jesus is the son of God
• We have a soul that survives death with various fates according to which continent of Earth 2 you inhabit
• Numerous observations about the real world or the nature of human beings (such as evolution or the distressingly meaty nature of the human) must be overlooked or outright denied.

The reader can readily see what I mean by Earth 2 and perhaps guess how easy it is to travel from one portion of Earth 2 (where Trump is saving children from Democrat pedophiles) to another, where Jesus reads our thoughts and helps us find our car keys.

In philosophy, Earth 1 is a place where "It is that case that ..." makes sense. It is the case that the Earth is billions of years old and that Trump lost the 2020 election. It is the case that I have 1,231.32 in my banking account, although I am free to debate about what "money" actually is.

There is a vast space between Earth 1 and Earth 2 since all of us are forced to live in a world with gravity (Earth 1) and, to some extent, believe that the lives have more meaning than a frozen pork chop (Earth 2). We live, so to speak, with one foot in both worlds. But this is a matter of degree. For example, about 1/3 of the American voting public lives quite comfortably in Earth 2, believing not only in conspiracies that robbed Trump of the election but in Jesus who read their thoughts, hates Democrats, and helps with the car keys.

Such considerations lead me to the broader question of how we might classify what passes for our "philosophy of life". By this, I mean philosophy in the ancient sense: the theory behind the way we act in life. The ideas that determine our goals and our ideas about who we are or perhaps who we should be. I seriously doubt that 75% of humans now alive have anything like a coherent philosophy of life. It's not essential and they don't miss it.

Nonetheless, I  find a remarkable distinction between philosophies based on Earth 2 and those with roots in Earth 1. "Western" readers will immediately recognize Christianity as beating an Earth 2 philosophy, with a fundamental world view at odds with Earth 1. Everything is created by a spirit called "God" who has a recognizably human personality. God stands in the place of Earth 1 physics. All serious Christians are forced to place a heavy weight on their foot that lives in Earth 2.

But Christianity is far from the only comprehensive philosophy. In fact, its place in history seems to be an accident of circumstance. As philosophies go, it is narrow and threadbare, almost childish. Beyond the imaginary quest for eternal life and the stunningly flexible set of rules to get there, it offers little of substance.

The philosophy that inspired this essay is "Stoicism", more precisely the Stoicism advocated by William Ervine in "A Guide to the Good Life".  Stoicism is an interesting set of ideas hardly deserving the name of a "philosophy" since in Ervine's view, it's mainly a set of mental tricks to maintain a calm mental state in the face of the trauma of life. As such, it belongs more in Earth 2 than Earth 1. It quite consciously attempts to alter the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening to us.  The language is, as far as I can tell, more or less what psychiatrists would call "Cognitive Therapy". It lacks the psychological depth of Zen (which offers radical Earth 1 procedures for observing the nature of thought) but simply acts as if we can just overcome such thoughts by reason alone. In fact, the awesome power of reason is coopted to the task of telling ourselves counter-factual stories about what life is.

In this aspect, Stoicism (Ervine version) renders itself to be indistinguishable from broader, more effective programs for self-improvement such as Stephen Covy's "Seven Habits of Effective People", the latter including the tricks of the former but much more besides.

This is a shame because the original (Greek) version of Stoicism seems to have been more comprehensive with ample room for Earth 1 consideration. According to Ervine himself, this school offered instruction in logic, physics, and ethics. 

"Logic" refers to the Greek advances in logic, geometry, and mathematics that eventually became the vast field of modern mathematics underlying, for example, computer science. Philosophers may nit-pick about the issue, but most of us regard mathematics as having a foundational place in Earth 1.

"Physics" refers to an interest in how things work in the "real world". This would eventually expand into what we now call "Science".

"Ethics" was concerned with virtue, not exactly what was sold to the Romans, mere peace of mind.

Even in the case of "Virtue", we can see the roots of the vast field of Law, which (effectively or not) attempts to reward virtue and punishes the lack of it. For example, in a court, it makes sense to ask if A intentionally misled B, thereby committing fraud. A jury is charged to determine the facts of the case - i.e, what is the case ...

I am left with the impression that Ervine has rather dropped the ball. in packaging Stoicism for sale and therefore must face competition with the vast category of self-improvement books which fail to rise to the status of "philosophy". The "Greek" version seems to have a shot at being comprehensive though possibly incomplete. It needs to be taken seriously and updated to the present state of knowledge. There is something appealing in the attempt to structure a student's education (for Stoicism was a school) in this way.

I am left with curiosity about the Greek insights, which seem to augment and complement the foundational concepts behind Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen.  All of these begin with observation of the human condition. All attempt to provide a framework for daily living. None of them can be boiled down to pop philosophy in the self-help section of the book store. 

Is Artificial Intelligence Stuck in the Language Bubble?

"Artifical Intelligence" raises more questions far outside the field of technology.

As one who has spent a full career in "Information Technology", I can testify that "IT" is directly or indirectly about language. New languages and new development environments come and go, but they all boil down to the interpretation of text.

As Mitchell's book teaches us, even "deep learning" models that "recognize" faces ultimately depend on masses of text - even "languages" whose vocabulary is nothing but ones and zeros.

This touches on a problem that has been recognized for thousands of years, most notably by Buddha and Lao Tsu (founders of Buddhism and Taoism respectively) and recently by Ludwig Wittgenstein, that "language", no matter how clever or deep, only stands for reality. It is about reality but it is not reality itself. You may say that this points to a fundamental problem that we may share with machines - "software" can never be more than a "description" of reality. However, unlike machines, our knowledge of the world relies on the fact that we are flesh and blood participants in the world. Billions of years of evolution have made us objects in the world that react and learn in ways that go far beyond knowledge. To cite a simple example, our hearts beat perfectly well for millions of years before we discovered the circulation of blood. The same goes for our "understanding" of the world, which seems to mostly take place "under the surface".

Mitchell gives us a snapshot history of the futile effort to make a list of everything a human "knows" by "common sense". The effort mostly shows the sad fact that computer programmers should read more philosophy. To mention just one example, Hofstader's "Surfaces and Essences" sketches out the way that virtually infinite bits of "knowledge" can be spun out from the sparse base of human experience by analogy - the engine of thought. Computers need to be "taught" to recognize analogies, such as whether there is a car in the picture. They are terrible at it. And what you get, in the end, is a clunky attempt of the computer to "learn" from thousands of people to "recognize" categories that it is utterly unable to recognize on its own.

It's even worse than that. As philosophers endlessly point out, human categories are somewhat arbitrary - suited for the unique situation that humans find themselves in the world. A chair is only a chair if you are a human that knows about sitting. 

Notes on:

Authority: The Core of Religion

The issue of authority did not come out of the blue. It's a recent baby step in the process of "cleaning house" - organizing the clutter left after decades of thought.

I've had a lot of time to read lately, including Buddhist, Taoist and Christian writings. I've been increasingly annoyed at the tone of these writings: "This is the way things are". Content either comes directly from the source (such as Jesus or Buddha) or from "authoritative" commentator, such as St. Paul. The validity of these writings depends completely from authority of the writer or the authority he quotes. There is much ancient wisdom to be found in the "scriptures", but also a lot that is plainly unacceptable to the modern mind. And, of course, there is the elephant in the room. The fundamental assumptions underlying all of these writings - so fundamental to be not worth questioning or even mentioning - is the existence of God. This an offence to reason and we are constantly left with the job of finding something valuable in the writings of people who would regard us as dangerous heretics.

Another factor was Asimov's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Mathew uses logical back-flips, mis-quotes and fallacies to make his case that Jesus is the Messiah foretold by the Old Testament prophets. I happen to know quite a bit about this issue, having written a term paper on the subject back in my University days. The Messiah of the prophets is clearly a mythological creation, what I call "Everything that Israel Stands For"-the Super Jew. Connection to the person of Jesus  (or any real person) is risky at best, but I didn't appreciate how flimsy until I read Asimov tear Matthew to bits, verse by verse. Asimov (a jew by birth and an atheist by choice) is careful to point out that the Jews at the time violently opposed Matthew's logic and happily stoned its advocates to death. While the penalty seems extreme, their objections seem quite reasonable. If you take the Old Testament seriously, the New Testament is heresy. If you don't take the Old Testament seriously, the New Testament is irrelevant.

Asimov does a similar job with Mark and the life story of Paul, as told in Acts. I had always felt that the personality and character of Jesus somehow "shone through" all this hype, interpretation and glorification. Once Asimov was through with me, I wasn't so sure. Did I know anything at all about Jesus? This is not the first time such a thing has occurred to me. I wrote about it in "Monkey Boy", one of the most popular posts in this blog.

So, If I have lost that feeling of connection with Jesus, which was more about liking the man rather than the teachings, what is left? If we set aside all the politics of the Zealot, the theology of John and the Messianic hype of Matthew, what's left?

Not much.

And then, the inevitable question arises: suppose you did have a collection of the actual, unfiltered sayings of Jesus (once I thought I had such a thing in the Gospel of Thomas)? Why would I take it as more authoritative than any other writing? The answer inevitably depends on whether I believe that Jesus is divine. Obviously I no longer consider this to be a possibility.

I was influenced further by Asimov's commentary on the Old Testament, which reveals that what we regard as "orthodox Judaism" was relatively new in the time of Jesus. For example, it did not exist in the time of David or Solomon. Like much of the rest of the Old Testament, Priestly religion is read back into everything from Genesis onward -- something I knew already but it had not "sunk in". Bottom line is that you see Judaism still in flux during the time of Jesus, with Jesus quite likely stepping in as a reformer of Judaism, preaching mainly (or exclusively) to Jews with a message that is not likely to be intelligible, let alone relevant to modern readers. To believe that Jesus had a message for non-Jews, you need to accept Paul's "spin" on Jesus, which was vigorously resisted by the original disciples, all of whom were Jews.

Added to this is my previous decision to stop identifying myself as a Christian, mainly as a protest about all the mayhem that has been committed in the name of that religion since New Testament times.

So I wind up with a total rejection of Christianity, pulled up by its roots.

But then, why is Christianity so popular? Why have others not followed my train of logic? The answer, it seems to me, is authority. Acceptance totally relies on authority - ultimately in the divine authority of Jesus Himself. Seen from this perspective, assuming there is no such thing as "divine", you see the divine aspect of Jesus as a necessary pre-condition to claiming Him as the ultimate authority and, less plausibly, for those who claim to inherit the same authority by mystical means.

Rejection of all religion on the same basis is just one step further.

I then turn to ask if there is any human authority. Could there be such a person? I'd say that authority comes (if at all) from what the person is saying, not the reputation of the person. For example, we regard Euclid's theorems on geometry as authoritative but don't feel obligated to know anything about Euclid or his political opinions (in fact Euclid may not have existed at all). Einstein said a lot of things that were profoundly true and a few things that were plausible but wrong. If a previously-unknown paper by Einstein turned up, it would get special attention because of its famous author but it would not be simply accepted without question. We have grown up enough to think for ourselves and respectfully disagree with any human being, even the wisest among us.

Does character count for nothing? I'd say only in a negative sense. Someone who is known to be a liar or a con-man deserves to be totally ignored even if what he says seems reasonable. This that we are entitled to ask about not only the content of what a person is saying but to ask why he's saying it. Life is short. We don't have time to carefully weigh the evidence for every crack pot conspiracy theory, "proof" of God or revolutionary theory of everything.

But we also don't need to be right about everything. It's OK to be wrong and OK to trust no authority at all.

What, if Anything, is "Reality"

We are hard-wired to accept the direct and indirect evidence of our senses as painting a picture of the "real world". Whatever disagreements we may have over interpretation, we all take it for granted that there is a real world "out there". We are just limited in the amount of evidence we can collect, the power of our analytical tools etc.

The inevitable conclusion for all of his is that "reality", as we experience it, is about our experience (something that happens in our heads) and is not something separate. Our ideas about the world are not the world itself.

This observation has been made repeatedly down through the ages. I encountered it twice at approximately the same time back in the 1970's. First in the Tao Te Ching:

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things

and in the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said that what we could not talk about in the "language game" must be passed over in silence.

Later, I struggled to understand a much deeper and more fundamental issue, the "EPR Paradox" in which Einstein directly challenged the standard interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, in which we can only speak of the results of experiments and not what is "really going on". Einstein, quite reasonably, felt sure that there was an underlying reality there whether we measured it or not. He designed a "thought experiment" that would settle the issue. To make a long story short, it was eventually possible to actually perform the experiment and Einstein was wrong. In a fundamental sense, there is nothing "going on out there" apart from the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences.

Before I go on, I must point out that both Wittgenstein and the EPR paradox are right at the edge of what I able to grasp. I'm not an expert or even a passable student of such issues. In fact, in the link I provided above, the EPR paradox is described in a way I have not seen before.

You don't need to be immersed in the arcane world of Western Philosophy or Quantum Mechanics to run into this issue. Most recently, I encountered it in an issue of National Geographic, which covered he phenomenon of "Mary worship" around he world. Along the way, we learn that there are literally thousands of people who claim to have been visited by the celestial Mary. Possibly quite a few more than have actually performed the EPR experiment.

How can we deal with this? It seems to me that the answer lies in the concept of "intelligibility", combined with the rather awkward interpretation of "reality" that we see culture in general. Even in Science, our confidence in what we know about "reality" comes out of consensus. For example, a Scientific experiment or observation is not seen as valid unless it can be repeated or shared with anyone. But the same criterion, if thousands of people agree that that they have seen the risen Virgin Mary (or Christ, or any other celestial being), then you have .... what?

What you have is a shared experience. Something that "believers" can talk about in a way that "makes sense" to each other. "Reality" can never be more than what we agree it to be. What's worse, that "reality" will differ in fundamental ways depending on who is talking to whom.

All this leads me to a certain humility when I am tempted to dismiss the world view of religions, which are basically communities of people who can discuss their "reality" in terms intelligible to each other.

There are ways to wriggle out of this interpretation, but it's wise not to leave humility behind. One way that makes sense to me, proposed by Alisdair Macintyre is to think that my philosophy is somehow superior to yours if I can "explain" or talk intelligibly in my universe about yours but you cannot do he same about mine. For example, I have no problem explaining (in my terms) why a "cargo cult" culture might emerge, but that culture would have problems explaining how actual aircraft work.

That's all very well, but it still leaves you with the conclusion that "reality" is what we say it is and what it really is is perhaps forever beyond our grasp. In fact, I find Macintyre's interpretation of the situation to be both satisfying and deeply discouraging.

See also related post "What, if anything, is the real world"