Claim, Rebuttal, Objection, Revision - This Is How You Discuss Deep Ideas | Dr. Stephen Hicks

okay so so let let me run something else by you since we've laid out this I want to run a proposition by you and it's sort of a variant of the meme theory although it takes into account the idea that so-called memes abstractions compete across historical and evolutionary times so imagine this so this is memes in the Jordan s the yeah yeah so imagine that there is this level of sensory input that is as close to corresponding with objective reality as as we can manage and then imagine that that's interpreted within this hierarchical framework that

we described levels of abstraction that ra rise up to in ineffability essentially that would be something like the meaning of the fact that you hit the table in this particular context right okay so now imagine you've got this imagine that every level of that hierarchy and the to ality of the hierarchy competes across evolutionary time so one way of grounding our thinking in data is to assume that all of what we know emerges from raw sense data but there's another way of thinking about it which is that the data is interpreted within a hierarchical framework

that's full of feedback loops right and there's varant forms of those those upper level hierarchies but those forms compete across time mhm and only and the more successfully they compete across time the more they become instantiated physiologically there's that's a Baldwin effect selection mechanism the higher order interpretive structures that produce the best reproductive outcome across time are more likely to become automated at a instinctual level emotions would be like that like they're not as automatized as spinal reflexes but they're quite automatized because the sets of emotions that human beings have are very similar anger fear

surprise Joy Etc everyone feels those when and where is different but the fact of the emotions is the same so then imagine that this is something like the domain of iterable and playable games so imagine that there's a variety of different interpretive Frameworks that we lay upon more basic sensory data but that a relatively small subset of those interpretive Frameworks has the capacity for sustainable Improvement so you could think about this think about this in the context let's say of a marital relationship right there's a very large number of ways that your marriage can go

wrong like an indefinite number of ways that your marriage can go wrong but then there's a constrain number of ways that it will go right and that's because it's it's a difficult Target imagine that the specifications are something like for your marriage to be successful the micro routines and the macro routines have to be such that you're voluntarily okay with them and your wife is voluntarily okay with them and they bond you more tightly together across time and and this would be the optimal situation as you lay them out together they improve okay and so

you could imagine that as the basis for an optimized contractual relationship of any form but then you could also imagine that the number of variants of the way that you can treat each other for all of those conditions to be met would be low there's a there's a very small number of voluntary playable games that are iterable across large spans of time that improve as you play them okay so then you'd get an evolutionary pressure as well on the philos on the domains of possible philosophy right that they'd fill up something like a space and

that seems to me to be reflective it's weird because that's also reflective of an empirical reality but it's not it's not the reality that's associated with basic sense data it's more the fact that there is a finite number of complex games that are voluntary playable and that improve and that's also a fact right I mean and and that would be I think that's partly why there are patterns of ethics that tend to emerge in many different cultures even independently right it's it's and that also makes a mockery in some ways of a really radical relativism

it's like it's not the the value space the philosophical space isn't relativistic because there's a finite number of interpretive Frameworks that actually have anything approximating productive staying power and that is reflective of something like the structure of reality it's more sophisticated reflection than the basic sense data and so see I'm I I'm I'm saying this because I'm trying to mediate between the postmodern claim that we see the world through a narrative which I think I think that's true I think all the Neuroscience data points in that direction and then you might say well any old

Story Goes that it's like no just because we see the world through a story doesn't mean that the stories themselves aren't constrained by empirical reality in its most sophisticated sense and it also doesn't mean that the stories even though their stories fail to correspon to reality okay that's extraordinarily Rich everything that you're laying out there let me just uh start with one thread to pull it I do not like the language that says we see reality through a narrative um I understand the attraction of it make a more technical description no no no no if

we just start with that formulation I think that is I think that's a dangerous formulation I do think the postmoderns are on board with that but notice what it says it says there's a we there's a me and then there's a narrative and then there's reality out there and that I have to go through this narrative get to reality a screen that's right and it it might be you know it might have some chinks in it it might be opaque right but also what this narrative is is has got a huge amount of stuff built

into it right all kinds of background expectations and theories and uh slippery terms right and and so forth what I would say is to use this language is that narratives are things that we use to see reality if the narrative is true so sometimes narratives get reality right sometimes narratives are wildly basis yeah that's in keeping with this idea of competition across time okay that's for sure but rather than seeing the narrative as a screen or as an obstacle or an intermediary it itself is a tool it's a state that our psychological conscious apparatus is

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experience the good that comes from it that's hall.com Jordan for 3 months free okay so let let me reformulate the description and then let see if that rectifies that problem and then let's see where we can go with that problem because I'll object to your objection and and see where that goes so I would say a narrative is a description of the structure through which we see the world right that's a different claim so so because it's not a narrative until I tell it to but then you've dropped reality out of the picture well that

that's exactly why I want to have this discussion because I don't I don't want it I think it's very dangerous it's kind of obvious to drop reality out of the situation but you're you're right that the danger of the postmodern formulation is which is that we see the world through a narrative let's say is exactly that is that the reality drops out of the equation there's nothing but the text let's say like if there's a competition between narratives for their functionality let's say reproductive and otherwise that would go some way to addressing that problem because

there'd be a darwinian competition between narrative structures that would prioritize some over others and so but the description part that the idea that it's a description is relevant so imagine that wolves in OPAC at a perceptual level the Wolves distinguish the rank order of the wolf that they're seeing they do that extremely rapidly highly social animals are unbelievably good at that and so the story of the dominance the story of the hierarchy of the Wolves is implicit in the perception of the wolves and if you describe that it's a story but it's not a story

before it's described it's whatever a story is before it's described it it seems to me like it's something like the weights in a neural network returning to that idea is that there are certain facts let's say that present themselves to us that are much more heavily weighted and that's axiomatic it's built into the system and those would be facts for imagine that evoke emotional response very rapidly they're weighted and that waiting has a biological element and a cultural element now that's not a story but if you describe that that's what a story is the scientist

who's studying the Wolves is creating a story or con no not cre I want to say constructing a story or it's a story about something that's not happening mediated through stories in the Wolves yes right for the Wolves it's a pattern of behavior and a pattern of perception it's not a so so imagine this is when when you go to see a movie you take on the waiting the value structure of the protagonist now human beings are very good at that like we look at each other's eyes and we see what people are attending to

and we watch their patterns of attention and we infer their valuation and their motivation we're unbelievably good at that and that's what you're doing when you're going to a movie we we watch how the protagonist prioritizes his attention and his action what his priorities are and you infer from that the perceptual structure that well that's the question does it bring some facts to light and make others irrelevant and if so is it a screen like most of the world we don't see most of the world is screened out from our perception some of that's biomechanical

I can't see behind my head but some of it is I'm looking at you so I can't see the faces of the cameramen right now right so that's a that's a choice that's dependent on my determination of how to focus my attention now the fact that I'm prioritizing you I can see your face I'm using the fial center of my vision and I can't see these guys because they're in my periphery that's kind of like a screen right the place where it's most open is this central point of vision over here it's obscured and over

here it's just gone completely so now you you objected to my characterization because you said you know Observer screen reality and you didn't like the proposition of the intermediate intermediary screen and I know the screening idea isn't exactly right but on the counter side we have this problem some things are Central to our perception and other things are peripheral and that's dependent on our values and our patterns of attention and our actions so well I'm curious about what you think about that well I think you're putting two kinds of examples out on the day they're

going to be related I think the first one where we are looking at a human being say an actor on a screen right putting ourselves in that person's shoes and reading all sort reading the world I think that's very extraordinarily complicated um and I think the interesting thing there is going to be while you say that we humans are very good at that uh the interesting thing is going to be how much of that is learned uh because it does seem to be a highly fallible process ESS I I know I just don't want to

get too personal here but there will be lots of times I've been in Social circumstances and I think I'm pretty Savvy about reading people but I'll be with my uh with my wife and she will say after we've had a conversation with someone but did you notice how you know upset that person was about blah blah blah women and their interpersonal perception okay that so there may be uh you know sex gender differences better read that are going on but also at the same it's not to say that I couldn't learn how to do that

yeah so when we say people are very good at that I think that's true but we still have to epistemologically unpack everything that goes into what makes us good at being able to do that I think that's going to be a very very sophisticated story but then the other example uh takes us back to perceptual cases where you're talking about are you looking at me or me looking at you and we're also aware that we're in a room that there are other people in the room who are filling and so on but getting right down

to issues of if I choose to focus right on one thing then it is true that everything else goes pales by comparison yeah that's right and pales is metaphorical so uh if we're not if we're going to try to then unpack the the metaphor I think we would say we focus and unfocus and then we can give descriptors of what the state of unfocus is and what the state of state of focus is and I would prefer using that language to the language of screen because screen really is something that is is in the way

it's it's it's a thing itself that is a that's another obstacle right so if you know if there's a dressing screen between the two of us and I'm undressing for privacy right the whole idea of the screen is that it that it's blocking right so the metaphor is too simple that's Sor right that would be different from uh I think a better metaphor would be to say to filter and I think sometimes our sensory app ruses are engaging in filter they're just attending to some things and not attending to to other things but a filter

is different from a screen okay so I and also but also just to stay on this one issue here the issue of focus and unfocus I think is not it's not a filter either [Music]