Michael Jackson Lives!

There is indeed life after death, and the disembodied spirit of Michael Jackson (among other notables) lives on among us.

But let me make clear at the outset that I don’t subscribe to any of the various species of dualism, which suggest that the mind is immaterial, and that there is some insubstantial spirit which, having a separate existence from the body, persists after death. Michael Jackson lives, like his colleague in song Madonna, in a material world.

I am quite convinced by Gilbert Ryle’s arguments against the “Ghost in the Machine” (Ryle, 1949) – and by the way, Searle’s homunculus in the Chinese Room (Searle, 1982) appears to be just another ghost in the machine – and I do consider the mind to be just what the brain does.

As Ryle points out, there is no reliable evidence of any non-material non-substance associated with our minds, and plenty of evidence that our minds and our bodies are inextricably connected. Furthermore, as a matter of common sense, in daily life we don’t treat others as if they were separate from their bodies.

U. T. Place (Place, 1956) makes the interesting argument that when we see a cloud we immediately recognize it as such. But when we are immersed in the cloud, it seems to us to be not a cloud but a fog or mist, and on closer examination, it appears to be a mass of tiny droplets of water in suspension. In fact the cloud is simultaneously all of these things, without ceasing to be any of them, and there is no need to regard the cloud, the fog, the mist, and the droplets in suspension as qualitatively different, separate, or mutually exclusive.

Place’s example of lightning also provides a flash of insight. We can see lighting in action, we can speculate on the internal physics of lightning, but we may have to be content with never being able to actually get inside lightning and examine what is going on in there up close, as we can with a cloud.

Similarly, we may have to be content with never being able to directly witness the millions, possibly billions, of simultaneous electro-bio-chemical interactions that take place at speeds of hundredths of a second within a single thought – let alone the body signals accompanying a brain state. For this reason alone we are unlikely to reproduce human intelligence exactly with a machine. And if we did, the machine would have to bear such a strong resemblance to a human being as to lead one to wonder what advantage building such a machine could confer.

But we certainly can reproduce aspects of the human mind with machines, aspects such as reasoning, calculation, and speech. One important example I’d like to look at more closely is memory.

One of the clearest distinctions between human beings and other animals is that human beings are alone in our capacity to store memories outside of our own physical bodies. We store our memories and our knowledge, things we rightfully consider to be a part of our minds, on external physical media, such as photographs, computer disks, books, and the Internet.

Recognition of this uniquely human capability can lead us to two conclusions. First, that memory is not immaterial but a physical mechanism, and therefore that the brain might be characterized as a type of physical media. We know that specific memories (and indeed many mental functions) reside in specific locations in the brain from the fact that they can be destroyed by trauma to those locations. This alone suggests that the mind is irredeemably physical.

Second, that the line dividing human life from the material world is becoming harder to draw as science progresses. We know that in addition to external material and mechanical aids to life, such as eyeglasses and canes, not to mention clothing and housing and food, we now also create internal material aids to life, such as medications, heart pacers, stents, dialysis implants, indeed whole organ donations from other human beings.

We also know that some 90% of the cells in our bodies (not 90% of our mass – bacteria are very tiny) are actually microbes with an independent life – or I should say semi-independent, since they are dependent for life on us as we are on them.[1]

All of which validates Einstein’s famous quote:

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. “

But who is that “someone” we are referring to when we speak of ourselves, or of a person like Michael Jackson? Our identity is surely a product of our own experience, but it is also a product of our heredity.

Turing writes of what makes an adult human mind (Turing, p.364). He notes three components: 1) the initial state of the mind, say at birth, which includes hereditary material; 2) education; and 3) experience.

Turing takes care to distinguish between education and experience, a distinction which I consider unimportant for the purposes of this discussion. The University of Experience is where one achieves the most advanced degrees.

Turing recognizes that heredity and what we sometimes call “instinct” are in fact a form of learning, a learning on the species level that informs our thoughts and our minds from birth. Heredity is how we pass on that species-learning, a small part of which is also the learning of our own individual lifetimes.

Michael Jackson’s children have inherited something from him, have been influenced by their time with him, and most certainly have been influenced by and will continue to be influenced by his images and music long after he’s gone. It can be truthfully said that some of Michael Jackson will live on in his children, and in his children’s children to the Nth generation.

As well as inborn instinct, our selves are formed by our experiences, including our educational experiences. But these experiences are dominated by social interaction with the rest of humanity, in the first instance with our parents and family. In fact there can be no doubt that a great deal of what we consider to be our selves we owe to the family and the culture we find ourselves in. It is no exaggeration to say that we are to a considerable degree a product of a human culture and to a considerable degree a representation of that culture.

We can illustrate this by pointing to those unfortunate cases of children who are raised in cages or locked rooms or orphanages where they have little or no interaction with other human beings. Such children invariably grow up with limited language skills and limited cognitive skills. In fact we may say that through isolation such children have been denied a not-inconsequential portion of what it means to be a fully actualized human being, and after a certain age may never regain it.

The implications of this are quite significant, for it means that a considerable part of our own minds, including language, the very stuff of thought, is in fact a reflection of the greater social mind and all the memory, knowledge, and experience of our larger cultural environment. Our selfhood, often thought to be our private property, turns out to be inseparable from a larger humanity.

The reverse is equally true. Our selfhood, and indeed our very minds, belong not only to us but to a larger humanity, to which we contribute daily. This contribution takes the form of our daily work, our contributions to Wikipedia and the Internet, our interpersonal roles as teachers and friends. For some of us, such as Michael Jackson, our contribution takes the form of unforgettable music and images.

In fact we have two overlapping selves, one a private self, and the other a social. We are on the one hand a single body with a mind of its own, and on the other a single cell in the great body Hobbes referred to as Leviathan:

“For by art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth, or State, in Latin civitas, which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural…” (Hobbes, p. 115)

Michael Jackson’s mortal flesh may have passed on, but his spirit very much lives with us still. It has been disembodied by the circumstances of his bodily death, but his spirit has been absorbed into our greater self, the collective human mind.

What is “spirit”? It appears like the cloud of U. T. Place, which from a distance appears to be fluffy and white, but up close is seen to be a mass of tiny individual particles in suspension. “Spirit” up close can be seen to be composed of the individual memories of multitudes of people, and the spirit of Michael Jackson is the collective human experience of his time with us.

Gilbert Ryle’s example of “team spirit” (Ryle, 1949) is especially useful in making this point. He asks us to imagine a foreigner watching a cricket game, and saying that he sees all the players, but where can he see the team spirit? The answer is that it lies in the minds of the team, it operates collectively on the team and each of its members, and it evidences itself in both their individual and collective behaviours.

To conclude: our “spirits” are the contributions we have made to the collective consciousness of humanity, and in that sense our spirits live on, ghost-like, after our deaths. Our spirits are also captured in some sense in the genetic material we pass on to our children, reincarnated if you will, and that too is a lasting contribution to humanity.

But both kinds of contribution are registered on physical media of one sort or another, be it photographs, DNA, the printed word, or the memories of living human beings. Thus is the spiritual and the material seen to be one and the same.



References

Armstrong, D. M. (1970). The Nature of Mind.

Einstein, Albert. (1950). Out of My Later Years. New York, Gramercy Publishing Co.

Hobbes, Thomas. (1651). Leviathan.

Ryle, Gilbert. (1949). The Concept of Mind.

Searle, John. (1982). The Myth of the Computer.

Turing, A.M. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, New Series, Vol. 59, No. 236. (Oct., 1950), pp. 433-460.






[1] See Olivia Judson in the New York Times, retrieved from the Internet August 16, 2009 at http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/microbes-r-us/

Is belief in the external world a hypothesis?

In the first three chapters of his book, The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell makes the case that we cannot know for certain whether there is actually a real world outside of and independent of our perception of it. Is belief in the external world a hypothesis?

Understand first that a hypothesis is a sort of educated guess. It is a conjecture, an idea, a reasonable suspicion, to be proven valid only by experience, and by experiment, experience’s substitute teacher. Yet even a valid hypothesis is not a certainty.

That a real world exists is a sound hypothesis, with much evidence to hand in support – but it remains a hypothesis. Russell argues that we cannot ever know or prove the independent existence of reality to a level of absolute certainty. I think he’s right, and I’ll go one better by saying that while we can know things well enough to suit our purposes, I don’t think we can ever know anything for certain.

Russell argues, for instance, that we can only know our own sense-data for certain. However, the existence of such phenomenon as “phantom limb syndrome”, wherein amputees feel distinct sensations from missing limbs, proves that even our own sense-data are suspect. I find Russell’s arguments shaky throughout, but due to constraints of time and space, I will try to address only a few select issues in this post.

Russell spends time discussing tables and the properties thereof, using them as an example of something real and commonplace that we take for granted. He argues that:

1. Our understanding of such a thing as a table comes not directly, but through sense data.
2. Sense data are not identical to the table itself.
3. What we know is therefore not the table in and of itself, but sense data
4. Sense data are unreliable and superficial representations of physical objects
5. Therefore the real table, and by extension, the real world is not truly known to us.

Although I agree that the existence of the external world is a hypothesis, Russell’s argument for this conclusion hinges on a common but fallacious assumption about knowledge, namely that knowledge is data. That the data we do have about a physical object may be incomplete or inaccurate does not negate our knowledge of that object.

The assumption that data is knowledge can be easily refuted, as anyone who has worked in the world of computers can attest. Computers can amass vast quantities of data and store it in databases. Is this knowledge? If it were, we would not have a separate word, “data”. But data is not completely separate from knowledge – it has the potential to inform knowledge.

The telephone company records every second that every cellphone customer spends connected to their network, and stores that carefully in company databases. Look at this data closely and you will discover that it’s a jumble of ones and zeros. Look at sense data closely – and science has – and you will discover it’s a jumble of bio-chemical and electro-chemical reactions. Is this knowledge?

Not yet – it has a long way still to go. First this data has to be organized into meaningful elements and components. It has to be put into a formation that is intelligible to the human mind. It is the job of the modern Information Technology (IT) department, and the computer programs they develop, to turn data into information – to put data “in formation” – so that it can be interpreted by a human being. Out of a mountain of data comes a series of reports, prepared by computer programs. Now the data has been turned into information. But is it knowledge yet? If mere data does not constitute knowledge on its own, does information?

Not yet – it still has a way to go. When I connect to the Internet, I can connect to billions of pages of information. The Internet is a galaxy of information, and I have access to all of it. But does having all the world’s information at my disposal, however well organized and well “in-formed” it is, mean I have all the world’s knowledge?

Of course not. Knowledge is more than data and more than information. If it were not, we would not have a separate word for it. But what is that secret sauce that turns a sandwich into a banquet?

When management at the phone company reviews the dozens of reports produced by the IT department, they don’t do so to admire the quality of the paper or the readability of the typeface or the logic of the categorization of the information. They review those reports in search of something actionable. They ignore information that can’t be used, however well “in-formed” it is, because information that can’t be used is by definition useless. And can we describe useless information as genuine knowledge? Of course not. For information to be regarded as knowledge, it must be useful for something; it must have a use-value. What good is information if you don’t know what to do with it? Knowledge is information that is usable. Knowledge is information with a use-value.

And here we can return to Russell’s arguments about sense data. Science has shown that our senses receive signals from the environment, some of which may indicate the presence of a physical object such as a table. Of course, our experience of the table is not immediate, but is mediated, meaning it comes to us through various media, among them light waves and sound waves, which tell us of the existence of the table.

Russell and many of his critics seem to agree that if our perception of the table is not immediate, it is invalid. Why this should be so is quite unclear, for surely we can perceive the table through various media, and can do so reasonably reliably.

This data is received by our sensory organs as a blooming, buzzing confusion. Our minds seek to arrange or formulate this data into some sort of meaningful, recognizable pattern. (This is why we sometimes see castles in passing clouds or a face on the moon.) This activity is analogous to the activities of the IT department at the phone company, when it turns mountains of data about cellphone use into meaningful information.

As Jeff Hawkins points out in his recent book, On Intelligence, our minds then engage in an extremely rapid process of comparing this sense-data to previously learned patterns, looking for something relevant. Our minds may be able to match patterns of incoming sense-data to previous experience, and if they do, the sense-data is translated into meaningful information.

This is a table, on the table is a cup and a pen and paper. There are two chairs, the floor is hard, and there’s a scent of flowers in the air, and the temperature is slightly cool. All this information is assembled from sense-data, given formation through pattern-matching and language, and then ever so briefly reviewed by the mind to determine how useful it is.

If on entering the room a colleague throws you a tennis ball, everything you have perceived, consciously or unconsciously, falls away, discarded by your brain as just so much useless information. Your brain focuses on the task at hand, catching or avoiding the throw. The sense-data that your mind translated into information about the ball has now become useful knowledge. Thus intelligence moves from data to information to knowledge.

No analogy is perfect and the analogy between our minds and computer and information processing technology is full of holes. But the parallels are sufficient to suggest that we may have created electronic information processing on the model of our own mental processing.

So what was missing in Russell’s account of the table? The use-value! How can we claim to any knowledge of such a thing as a table without understanding its use, its purpose, its telos? The moment we introduce the property of usefulness and purpose to a physical object, we possess the key to knowledge of it, because the concept of utility itself includes the concept of the relation of the physical object to humanity.

The very word “table” is a human construct, a symbol intended to convey the use of a physical object to other human beings. Its use as a word contains the implication that humanity has a relationship not only to tables, but to the physical world. This object before us is something that is reasonably flat and stable, so one can put a cup or dish on it without spilling, write a legible note on its surface, etc. It can have four legs, three legs, no legs, or it can be a stump or a flat rock. If we focus on data about the table – its color, how many legs it has, the material of which it is constructed, how its surface looks under a microscope, etc. – and ignore its use, as Russell and other writers appear to do, we will never really know or understand the table or the qualities of tableness.

There are numerous attributes of any particular table that are more or less irrelevant to its use-value as a table, and indeed to its status as a representative of the class of tables. These qualities fall mainly under the heading of “Useless Information”, and should therefore not be the yardstick by which we measure our knowledge of such a thing as a table. To do so, as it seems Russell and his critics have done, is to miss the point.

We don’t have all the data about a table or any other physical object, and indeed can never have it. Furthermore, because our perception of the table is not immediate, it is subject to any number of distortions internal and external to the perceiver. For these reasons and others, the existence of the external world remains a hypothesis. It is nevertheless a fairly sound hypothesis and a reliable guide to action – and that’s good enough.

One can only know the physical world insofar as one knows the use to which one seeks to put it. Our understanding of physical objects is inextricably linked to our intentions towards them, and the failure to recognize this can only result in the sorts of philosophical absurdities Russell warns us never to be frightened of…

References

Russell, Bertrand (1997). The Problems of Philosophy. New York, Oxford University Press.
Hawkins, Jeff (2004). On Intelligence. New York, Henry Holt and Company.

The Intelligence of the Hive-Mind

A recent article in National Geographic highlights a foundational concept of my understanding of intelligence – “swarm theory”. Swarm theory is a cross-disciplinary field of behavioural studies that has proven that animals behave more intelligently as a collective than they can possibly do as individuals.

The exemplary species for swarm behaviour is the ant. Collectively ants perform extremely complex tasks and behave in an apparently highly intelligent manner – they grow and harvest food like farmers, they engage in complex wars with their neighbors, they attack and kill animals much larger and stronger than themselves, they tend other insects like cattle and use them for food, they take slaves from other ant species, and so on. Yet the ant has a brain not much larger than the head of a pin.

How does the ant do it? There are apparently only a limited number of rules an ant follows in its daily life – but in combination with other ants, the resulting behaviour is highly efficient and highly intelligent.

Similarly, the bee hive has been shown to make intelligent decisions about, for example, which new home to move to, on the basis of a collective appraisal by dozens or hundreds of scout bees. Each scout bee makes its own decision about which location would make the best home. A study cited in the above article from National Geographic has shown that when 15 scout bees reach a consensus on a new home, the entire hive accepts that decision and makes its move. At the same time, there may be five other homes available with only five or ten scout bees at each. They lose the vote, so to speak, and rejoin the hive at their new home.

The remarkable thing the study proved was that the chosen home was always the best choice for the hive, based on criteria identified beforehand by scientists who have studied bees. The implications of a study such as this are far-reaching, for they point at a biological basis for a theory of democracy.

If we take evidence such as this and combine it with work done with human beings, such as the various studies cited in the recent book by James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, we gain insights into how human intelligence and human political democracy work. Each of us seeks our own path, and though few of us ever walk a straight line, we arrive collectively at a better solution than we might have working alone.

I’ve argued in an earlier post that the basis for morality is the best long-term interests of humanity. If you wish to act in what could be called a moral fashion, if you wish to act morally, you must act in a manner that you consider will advance the best long-term interests of humanity.

The counter-argument is typically, “who decides?” What you consider to be in the best long-terms interests of humanity might be the opposite of what someone else thinks. So who decides who is right?

The answer lies in the parable of the ant or the bee. By pursuing individually what each ant or bee considers the “right” thing to do, the individual may be wrong but makes an essential contribution to the collective intelligence – and the collective morality – of the whole.

This is also the central argument in favour of diversity. As individuals we are incapable of holding numerous conflicting points of view. It is only collectively, socially, that we can do so. As Surowiecki points out, groups with a diversity of opinions and viewpoints almost invariably make better decisions than homogenous groups or even individual experts.

A Simple Theory of Morality

The average person operates on the assumption that the moral sphere is somehow quite separate from the ordinary concerns to which we apply the language of “right” and “wrong”.

We speak of the right way to cook rice and the wrong way to carve a roast, the right way to kick a football and the wrong way to throw a baseball, or of the right time of year to pick blackberries and the wrong time of year to plant sunflowers, and so on. We find these everyday uses of terms like “right” and “wrong” useful to refer to things that are correct or incorrect, reasonably efficient or not very efficient, best proven practices or not likely to produce desirable results.

We use the concepts of right and wrong hundreds or even thousands of times each day to guide our most pedestrian acts, including the literally pedestrian acts of where to place one’s feet when walking, or whether to jaywalk or cross the street at the intersection.

And yet when we apply concepts of right and wrong to questions like when to speak the truth and when to lie, when to steal and when to show generosity, when to offer peace and when to quell with violence, we seem unconsciously to enter another realm, the realm of morality, which is apparently immune to the logic of efficiency, effectiveness, and best practices.

This split, the dividing line, is reflected in moral philosophy unquestioningly. One apparently does not decide moral questions on the basis of what works best – works best for what? Instead we consult the oracles, we ask the Gods for guidance, we attempt to define oughts, and universals, and the greatest good for the greatest number – we search for a morality gene!

Why can’t moral decision-making be as simple as the other daily decisions we make in our waking lives? Is it a matter of weight?

A common argument from religious moralists is that there is no scientific basis for morality. Theologians typically contend that Darwin and evolutionists see no point in existence, see it as just an accident of evolution, and see therefore no underlying principle and no rock on which morality can be built.

Unfortunately there are some prominent evolutionists who agree with them – Dawkins being the prime example.

But of course humanity does have a point, and does operate according to very visible and very profound principles, as does every species on earth. The point of life, as I have argued in an earlier post, is to persist. What living creature is not motivated by the desire to persist and not to perish? What species is not motivated by desire to reproduce and therefore to create the conditions for its genetic materials, the very blueprint of its existence, to persist through the generations?

The over-riding principle of existence is persistence. This is the rock of ages upon which the strong foundations of morality can be built.

In real terms, this principle guides our every action – we seek to persist as individuals as well as to persist as a species. Tellingly, those acts which are interpreted as supporting and advancing the long-term persistence, survival, and flourishing of the human species are those that are regarded by our culture as moral.

A maxim for a scientific theory of morality would therefore be: to act everywhere and always in the best long-term interests of humanity.

Intelligent Design

In my last post I argued that there *is* intention and intelligence in the universe. If that is true, wouldn’t that make the case for “intelligent design”?

The theory of “intelligent design” is a recent form of an old argument for the existence of God. If there is evidence of intelligence in the universe, says this argument, this is proof enough that its source is an intelligent being.

The theory incorporates a related theory, the Teleological Argument, which argues that if there is design, there must be a designer. If there is evidence of a purpose to life, this is proof that its source is an intelligent being, since there is no purpose without intelligence, and no intelligence without purpose.

These arguments recognize the evidence of intelligence and intention in the universe, and ascribe these to a Supreme Being, supernatural by definition. But both these arguments presuppose that evolution by natural selection is an unintelligent, purposeless process, senseless and aimless, random and without logic. Unfortunately, many evolutionary theorists accept this argument, in what one suspects is a gut reaction against theories of supernatural intervention. Overeager to deny the existence of an intelligent designer, they deny the existence of intelligence and design.

But my argument is that intelligence and intention are quite compatible with the theories of evolution and natural selection. The mainspring of intention is the inbred motivation of all species to persist through time. The intelligence of the universe is embodied in each of them and displayed through the learning and ingenuity of their genetic material.

This understanding breaks down the division in traditional monotheism between the Creator and His creations, and places humanity, intelligence, and intention squarely in the natural world. As the ancient Hindu wisdom states, “Thou art that” (Tat Tvam Asi in the Sanskrit) – you are inseparable from the ultimate reality, you are part of it and it is part of you.

It is possible to make a leap from the assertion that intelligence and intention are built into the universe to saying that the Supreme Being may not have human form, but may be just an amorphous guiding force, composed of the universe and all that’s in it. But how does that differ from the naturalist interpretation, that all there is is there in nature to be witnessed and experienced, and there is nothing supra-natural, nothing that is above and beyond nature?

Is this the meeting point of science and religion?

The Mainspring of Intention

Where does intention come from? Why do we know that some things have intentions while others do not?

In an earlier post, I noted that the earliest forms of life were unintentional by-products of chemical interactions under certain environmental conditions. When some elements (such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.) come into contact with other elements, they will bind and form complex molecules and chemical compounds. No matter the urgency with which these elements are drawn to one another, they bind as a strictly unintentional by-product of their inherent properties.

I also noted the obvious, that those things that do not persist through time cease to exist. Turn this around, and we can say that those things that exist have the capacity to persist through time.

A living creature is the result of a series of reactions and interactions between groups of chemical compounds and the environment in which they find themselves. Through processes that are under active investigation and research and about which scientific understanding is growing daily, certain types of chemical compounds – amino acids, proteins, RNA, DNA, and other genetic materials developed the capacity to record the sequence of organic chemical reactions that result in a given life form.

We can therefore think of DNA and other genetic materials as a kind of technology for recording a pattern of reactions between chemical elements that result in a life form. This is why DNA is often referred to as the “blueprint of life”.

DNA allows life forms to reproduce – in effect, to make copies of themselves. But because copies are not always perfect, the development of DNA unleashed the grand experiment we call evolution. Over millions of years, an inestimable number of imperfect copies, mutations, and variations of RNA and DNA were produced, and for the most part vanished just as quickly as they arose.

But some of these genetic variations gave the creatures that carried them a greater ability to persist through time. Some of this genetic material recorded patterns that even in simple life forms we can begin to describe as “behaviours”. Some behaviours helped the creatures that displayed them to survive and reproduce. Other behaviours led to extinction.

Over a myriad of generations, our genetic material and our DNA “learned” what organic composition and what behaviours will allow a species of living creature to survive and to persist through time.

Genetic learning results in intention. Understand that this intentionality is hard-wired into the instincts of every living creature. Behaviours that help an individual and its species to flourish become the instinctual intentions of that species. Every creature from the simplest virus on up unconsciously or consciously intends to behave in such a way as to enable its species to survive, to persist through time, and to flourish.

We consider a behaviour to be intelligent insofar as it accomplishes its intentions and enables the creature exhibiting this behaviour to flourish.

Which brings us to a consideration of the concept of “Intelligent Design”. According to this theory, the universe and the creatures within it show signs of having been designed by an intelligent force, which is usually interpreted as an omniscient God. Various authors, among them Wayne Dyer, author of “The Power of Intention”, argue that God’s intention is immanent in every living creature.

If we understand the origin of intentionality as the intention to survive, to persist through time, and to flourish as an individual and as a species, then yes, we can say that there is intelligence and intention immanent in every living creature. But from this there is no logical necessity to impute the existence of a superior being, still less a personal God. The intelligence and intention inherent in the universe is a logically necessary result of the march of time.

This is the “logos” of which Heraclitus wrote as the fundamental organizing principle, the logic of the universe. This is that same Logos we read of in the bible: “In the beginning was the logos [usually translated from the Greek λóγος as “the word”], and the logos was with God and the logos was God.”

One of my goals for this blog is to map basic religious concepts to natural phenomena, to show that religious symbology is more than just fanciful mythology, but that is a pointer to and a metaphor for characteristics of the real world.

In the language of religion, the logos is the Holy Spirit. It is the immanence of God in nature. And Christ is “the logos made flesh”.

Knowledge and Experience

I’ve argued in an earlier post that knowledge is information that has a use-value. The importance of truth to knowledge is whether that knowledge is reasonably reliable – in which case it can be described as true.

What is the source of knowledge?

Traditionally, there are several sources:

• Authority
• Revelation
• Intuition
• Personal experience
• Inductive reasoning
• Deductive reasoning
• Instinct
• Science

Knowledge by Authority

Authority is knowledge passed down from an individual or institution. This sort of knowledge is best used as a sort of rule of thumb for decision-making in areas in which the decision-maker has no direct experience or other heuristics to draw upon.

The problem with authority as a source of knowledge is that it may be unreliable. Authorities have their own agendas to promote, and may not always have based their own authority upon solid ground.

The most reliable authorities have based their knowledge on their own experience or the experience of the institutions they represent. There is nothing wrong with respecting authority if that authority is deserved, especially if that authority has provided valuable and reliable knowledge in the past.

We could not possibly be expected to know the law, medicine, physics, plumbing, or any other area of expertise without extensive training and personal experience. Therefore it is reasonable to respect an opinion in these areas from an accredited practitioner as a guide to correct action.

It goes without saying, however, that some forms of authority cloak vested interests, and may therefore be valid only insofar as they support those interests. Religious authority, corporate authority, or political authority are especially suspect, since they may offer only partial truths while ignoring most of what might undermine their agenda.

My point here is only that knowledge by authority is based on experience – not personal experience, but the experience of the authority themselves.

Knowledge by Revelation

One common meaning of revelation is truth “revealed” by the divine. Typically this truth is revealed to an individual.

There is no doubt that an individual can achieve a truth through a sudden epiphany or blinding insight. Whether this insight is valid remains to be proven in practice, and whether or not it is of divine origin may never be provable.

Revelation is an intensely subjective experience and almost by definition is neither repeatable nor verifiable. This makes it a rather unreliable guide to action and a weak base of knowledge.

Knowledge by Intuition

Intuition is often regarded as “gut sense”, an insight gained on a non-intellectual level for which there appears to be no rational justification. But as Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink made clear, intuition is in fact a very rapid calculation made on an unconscious level, but based on genuine observation and often very sound mental and emotional reasoning.

One may feel as if one knows something by intuition alone, based on nothing more than a vague “feeling”, but dig a little deeper and intuition proves itself to be a device for rapid pattern recognition at a pace faster than can the mind can follow.

All pattern recognition is based on past experience of that pattern. If we take Jeff Hawkins’ work On Intelligence, all intelligence is not more than the ability to predict based on pattern recognition. In other words, all intelligence is based on experience.

Knowledge by Personal Experience

Knowledge by personal experience is obviously valid if it works for you. But it goes without saying that just because something works for you doesn’t mean it will work for others, and just because it works for you doesn’t mean that it is the best way to do things. Knowledge by personal experience is most valuable if confirmed by the experience of others.

Knowledge by Inductive or Deductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning is the process of generalizing based on specifics. For example, every duck I have ever seen can swim; I can therefore induce that all ducks can swim. Deductive reasoning moves from the general to the specific. For example, I know that all beetles are insects and therefore by definition they have six legs. Therefore I can assume that all beetles in Uruguay have six legs, even though I have never been to Uruguay.

Both types of knowledge are obviously based on experience.

Knowledge by Instinct

Instinct is not typically seen as a form of knowledge, but as I have argued in an earlier post, what we call instinct is the summary of the experience of the previous generations of our species, as recorded in our genetic materials.

Knowledge by Science

Science is knowledge obtained through the scientific method. The scientific method is nothing more than the systematic and thorough testing of a hypothesis through experience.

The word “experiment” shares the same root as the word “experience” – the Latin “ex”, meaning “out of”, and “peritus”, meaning “testing”. Experience is knowledge gained through repeated trial.

An experiment is an attempt to create or recreate a certain type of experience through systematic observation and analysis. The purpose of the scientific method is to discover or confirm a repeatable and verifiable outcome of a set of identifiable conditions.

The scientific method, therefore can be regarded as nothing more than the systematic confirmation of experience.