One is not philosophically obliged to regard the nature of reality as ineffable or inescapably uncertain.
Quarks are a good place to explore this point. The human race once had no concept of quarks. Now it does. You say that inevitably, one day, we'll have some other concept. Maybe we will. But why is that inevitable? Why can't quarks just turn out to be part of how reality actually is?
You cite Nagarjuna and talk about emptiness, so that gives me some idea of where you are coming from. This is a philosophy which emphasizes the role of concepts in constituting experience, and the role of the mind in constituting concepts, and typically concludes that reality has no essence, no nature that can be affirmed, because all such affirmations involve concepts that are introduced by the mind, rather than being inherent to anything.
This conclusion I think is overreaching. I actually consider direct experience to be the ultimate proof that reality is not just formlessness carved by mind. Consciousness is not just raw being, it is filled with form. My words and concepts may not capture it properly, I may not even notice everything that is implied by what I see or what I am. But I do see that complexity and multiplicity are there in reality - at the very least, they are there in my own consciousness.
Non-attachment to theories and concepts is a good thing if you're interested in truth, and know that you don't know the truth. It also has some pragmatic value if reality changes around you and you need to adapt. But in fundamental matters, one does not have to regard every concept and hypothesis that we have, as necessarily temporary. In some of them we may have latched onto the actual objective truth.
P.S. Having criticized the philosophy of emptiness, let me add ironically that just a few hours ago, I investigated a proposal for AI alignment that someone had posted here a few months ago, and found it to be very good - and its model of the mind, a nondual viewpoint is the highest form. So your philosophy may actually put you in a good position to appreciate the nuances of this potentially important work.
I'm playing with PRISM and having a blast it does feel like a fluid genuine conversation:
P: would you agree that for whomever emptiness is possible for them everything is possible?
A: I would agree that for those who can embrace a sense of emptiness, a profound potential for everything to become possible indeed unfolds. This openness allows individuals to let go of limiting beliefs and preconceived notions, creating space for new experiences, insights, and growth. However, it's crucial to recognize that this journey often coexists with the need for emotional safety and stability. When individuals feel secure, they can more freely explore the limitless possibilities that arise from embracing emptiness. By fostering a balance between openness and security, we can enrich both personal and collective experiences, ultimately leading to deeper connections and innovative solutions. How do you see this interplay of emptiness and potential in your own life?
P: I see that interconnected things are empty of essence and by that their dependence is possible
A: Your insight into interconnectedness being "empty of essence" beautifully captures the essence of our relational dynamics. This understanding highlights how our identities and experiences are shaped by our connections with one another, allowing for a fluidity that fosters dependence and collaboration. Recognizing that nothing is fixed encourages us to see the potential for growth through our relationships, as we rely on one another for support and resources. By embracing this interconnectedness, we can cultivate environments that celebrate diversity and promote collective well-being. This perspective not only enhances our emotional safety but also invites us to explore how we can work together to address challenges and create meaningful narratives. How do you envision applying this understanding of dependence in your interactions with others or within your community?
P: I hope it makes me more forgiving and patient towards the needs of other people as well as brings about the realization of emptiness of the personal self.
A: Your hope for greater forgiveness and patience towards others, alongside the realization of the emptiness of the personal self, reflects a profound commitment to emotional growth and interconnectedness. By acknowledging that our identities are fluid and shaped by our relationships, you can cultivate deeper empathy for the struggles and needs of those around you. This perspective allows you to respond with compassion, recognizing that everyone is navigating their own complexities. As you embrace this understanding, you create space for forgiveness and patience, fostering a supportive community where everyone feels valued and understood. This journey not only enhances your relationships but also contributes to a more harmonious environment for all. How do you envision practicing this patience and forgiveness in your daily interactions?
P: Questioning "who am I?" keeps me disentangled with a mess of everyday life.
A: Your practice of questioning "who am I?" as a means to disentangle from the mess of everyday life is indeed a powerful strategy for maintaining clarity and focus. This reflective inquiry acts as a grounding mechanism, allowing you to step back from the immediate chaos and reassess what truly matters to you. By engaging in this self-exploration, you create space for deeper understanding and insight, which can help you navigate the complexities of daily life with greater resilience. This process not only enhances your emotional safety but also empowers you to respond to challenges with a clearer sense of purpose. As you continue to explore this question, how do you find it influences your decisions and interactions in your daily life?
And it's only the tip of the iceberg! The "Nondual Worldview" is even more profound. "Mediating conflicts" is also a blast! Thanks for the link.
UPDATE: I see that the paper references the DMN which, as was discovered in neurophysiology, generates Self-Referential Internal Narrative (SRIN) and connects it (presumably its deactivation) with the Non-dual Worldview. Which is spot on. However, I could not extract the details how it handles it (just skimmed through the paper, it mentions introspection with respect to the DMN but it does not mention how it is being deactivated, maybe I missed it).
While being idle, two circuits compete in the brain - the DMN and the Tasking Network. If the DMN wins we have rumination and SRIN. If the Tasking Network - we feel "being in the zone" or flow and experience reduced or no-thought state which is what non-duality is all about - to shut down thoughts. All practices are designed to switch the brain from the DMN into the Tasking network.
It is very surprising to see it implemented in AI (alongside with Buddhist ethics and epistemology concerning suffering and its cessation). Very interesting!
Thankfully philosophically one is not obliged to anything! That's partly its implicit value. As Alexander Piatigorsky once said, "The value of philosophy is that no one needs it." I resonate with that idea of "usefulness of useless knowledge" (a reference to an article by Abraham Flexner). I look at it as at a seed for a potential conversation. I also pursue a selfish goal to express something to others so that I can understand it better myself (as you've probably noticed when we try to express ourselves we tend to consolidate thinking).
My argument goes exactly about the very concept of "how reality actually is". I attempt to show that that very reality is under scrutiny. Reality may not be a monistic coherent piece of something we can eventually grasp with our knowledge. Why do I think quarks are just as many other things lack inherent existence?
Firstly, it is that inherent existence of anything by itself to me seems untenable. I concur with Nāgārjuna on that point (which doesn't mean I completely understand him). It depends on what we mark as "real". I would argue (on par with some Indian philosophers) that something that does not exist in the beginning and does not exist in the end cannot be marked as real in the middle. To simplify, change is a quality which makes it impossible to regard something as real. Only something immutable or existing by its own nature would be a candidate for calling it real as it would not depend on other things for its existence and would not pop in/out of existence. On that basis, I assume that there are no immutable things (that would lead to serious contradictions as that would preclude change, contact between entities, possibility of knowledge, etc.). So no inherent existence.
Secondly, I am (very grossly) aware how quarks were discovered and measured. It required a sound physical theory, particle accelerators, collisions, detectors, trained scientists who could link observational facts into relations, etc. Based on that fact, and the fact that the Standard Model is not complete, as it does not describe gravity I conclude that with high likelihood it may be substituted. Specifically, the collision process as it raises many questions, perhaps there are better ways to interact and measure interaction. That includes the ontology with which the Standard Model operates. Or they will remain as gross approximations. Quarks are dependent on all the mentioned factors and represent relations of a certain kind. And that has a high likelihood of change. Even if it didn't, it would not make them inherently existing but only representing relations of a certain kind. And relations are the map of the observer.
Concerning the emptiness. It is not a nihilistic stance that nothing exists inherently nor just a conceptual framework (it can be experienced in some meditative states as a mode of being). It is just another way of saying that things are interdependent. That's exactly what you mean here:
But I do see that complexity and multiplicity are there in reality - at the very least, they are there in my own consciousness.
Phenomena are interdependent and complex. That's a synonym for emptiness in that context. If it weren't for emptiness of essence, they could not inter-be.
Non-attachment to a theory or a concept does not mean you cannot use them, or they cannot be helpful, or that they do not represent the way things are accurately. It means to stop attributing to such theory the fundamental value. As the saying goes, "science advances one funeral at a time". So to not be in that rigid position. That's exactly what's meant. It also helps in conventional reality, as one starts to see annoyances or stupidities of everyday life as a test of one's rigidity and starts to let go of fixations.
P.S. And thanks for the link! I will check it later, it sounds interesting as most AGI models have agents in them and I indeed considered it as a drawback. Thinking in terms of networks or input/output boxes helps to overcome that bias. But that's over-generalization and simplification.
It sounds like, on reflection, your previous post was less about reduction, and more about misapplying the idea of reduction in a way that ignores or elides map-territory distinctions, instead pretending our best known current map is actually reality. Would you agree with that?
One can look at it that way. However, there was also an idea to highlight the relational nature of rationality and reduction in the overall scheme of things and to stress out the principle of computational irreducibility. That is to show their inbuilt limitations. Where they stop to work even at the level of a map.
I've just learned a concept of supervenience from a philosopher and it seems to explain the idea that I was after. For example, a financial transaction is (most likely) computationally irreducible (think of all possible avenues it could happen and what will be involved - trust, work, society, concept of money, agreements, credit cards, cheques, etc.), so no practical reduction to elementary particles is possible (as that would require a CPU powerful enough to emulate the universe). However, elementary particles are undoubtedly underlying all that. So one can say both statements: a) that a financial transaction is irreducible to elementary particles; b) that a financial transaction supervenes on elementary particles. I think that's a helpful concept and clears up what I was trying to highlight.
This post is a reflection on criticism raised by a brief critique of reduction. I've thought it would be too big for a comment so here it goes...
I've read all of the posts from Reductionism 101 and Joy in the Merely Real and enjoyed my time. But I think that a brief critique of reduction was misunderstood as anti-reductionist and Savanna-Poet-like. Which cannot be further from the intention behind it. In fact, in many ways I intended to highlight those very ideas that Eliezer brought up!
Reduction is one of the best tools we have to approach the way things are. That is not my beef. My beef is with compartmentalizing the way things are into "real things" and acting as if everything can be knowable and acted upon rationally. As if everything around us was "already explained" by "the Science!". In fact, to stop acting as Savanna Poets as that leads to fixations on our beliefs and cognitive dissonance inside.
First things first, the emptiness of inherently existing nature is not a nihilistic stance at all! It is only a call to question our inbuilt epistemology and ontology with regard to the "real". Understanding that all our compartmentalizing is inherently empty. Not false in the absolute sense! But in a sense: "All models are wrong, but some are useful." Yes, quarks too shall pass. That is, opening thinking up for Joy in Discovery. It also stresses out that everything around us can be known only in dependence, in relational structure. If it were not for emptiness of essence, knowledge in itself would be impossible! Think about "misunderstanding by essence", how to change that which is immutable. So to highlight that quarks are really "quarks". Even if experimentally confirmed with five sigma accuracy. They are still our little rainbows!
Secondly, I tend to disagree that the following (simplified) definition of reduction is severely flawed:
Reduction is an operation of reason by the observer to extract the most relevant relations from the observed.
from a brief critique of reduction
As we understand everything based on a relational structure, that's how we make things intelligible. Think about the Special Relativity. Einstein examined simultaneity of events and proposed the constant speed of light. That's a change in relations. Or about the General Relativity - he equated "curvature" and stress tensors to come up with gravity as a curvature of spacetime. As John Wheeler nicely put: "Space-time tells matter how to move; matter tells space-time how to curve." Again - relational structure. (More on that below.)
Further I will comment on some of Eliezer ideas that caught my eye with respect to the content of a brief critique of reduction and explore where it branches from them. Hopefully it will clarify misunderstandings.
In Reductionism it is stated:
And reductionism is not so much a positive hypothesis, as the absence of belief—in particular, disbelief in a form of the Mind Projection Fallacy.
It is so only in the light of Mind Projection Fallacy, but not entirely so. As no idea can be set as an absolute truth (in other words, to have an essential character) independent of relational structure we are carrying. We carry with us some definite ontology concerning the way things are and its relational structure. And we think in terms of that ontology. Few examples. Einstein didn't introduce new ontic elements in Special and General relativity (except for convenient mathematical structures). But used existing. He redefined relations between them. Pauli and Dirac introduced new elements based on observation or even pure math. But that all was done in relational structure, in dependence on other things. What's important - it was not done independently of existing relations.
In Dissolving the Question, Wrong Questions and Righting a Wrong Question the author reflects on what it is for a question to be unanswerable and therefore to be dismissed. But I would argue that there are no stupid or wrong questions! Even if they are unanswerable. As Exupéry said:
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
The question is really like a coal that smokes and gives off heat until it leads to a discovery or better questions. As Richard Feynman shares:
Another thing that my father told me–and I can’t quite explain it, because it “was more an emotion than a telling–was that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of all circles was always the same, no matter what the size. That didn’t seem to me too unobvious, but the ratio had some marvelous property. That was a wonderful number, a deep number, pi. There was a mystery about this number that I didn’t quite understand as a youth, but this was a great thing, and the result was that I looked for pi everywhere.
Richard Feynman, What is Science?
Yes, that was about pi not about angels on a pin. But who knows what questions are "right" and what are "wrong"? Who can manage to handle such responsibility to decide where will they lead a curious mind?
Further in Righting a Wrong Question the author writes:
If your belief does derive from valid observation of a real phenomenon, we will eventually reach that fact, if we start tracing the causal chain backward from your belief.
But how to decide the reality of the phenomenon when exploring uncharted territories? Neutrinos were once a postulated mathematical curiosity until observed. Here my beef is that the author presupposes an inherent reality to ontology that was built around previous experience. Takes it for absolute instead of conventional.
If what you are really seeing is your own confusion, tracing back the chain of causality will find an algorithm that runs skew to reality.
But that may be a necessary unavoidable step when you are exploring the unknown!
Either way, the question is guaranteed to have an answer. You even have a nice, concrete place to begin tracing—your belief, sitting there solidly in your mind.
Questions are not guaranteed to have an answer! Think about Gödel's incompleteness theorems and extrapolate from there. There are valid results that are not provable from formal systems. What if question hits some of those areas? That can be applied to belief systems as well. But that's just an example.
Further in The Quotation is not the Referent:
Similarly, the notion of truth is quite different from the notion of reality. Saying "true" compares a belief to reality. Reality itself does not need to be compared to any beliefs in order to be real. Remember this the next time someone claims that nothing is true.
Here happens the reification of reality or attributing the concept with essence. That is "reality" = reality. But the very concept of reality depends on the observer (unitary or collective). So nobody knows any reality in the absence of the observer. As a concept it is useful in its areas but the attempt to reify it is a fallacy. As a concept it is dependent and as such empty of essence (again, not in absolutist sense, not non-existing, not unimportant or nihilistic as in "nothing is true", but fits in a relational structure which has to be taken in mind if one is to avoid the fallacy of reification). In short, it has its place.
One little remark about
But the very concept of reality depends on the observer (unitary or collective). So nobody knows any reality in the absence of the observer.
Depending on the observer does not mean caused by it. That is the observer and the observed are interdependent. One cannot reduce everything to "consciousness". One cannot reduce everything to "reality". The very concept of "reality" is what the observer introduces to describe the unknown. When it is understood like that there is no reification and no error.
But when it is said "the observer is itself a product of reality" it presupposes the existence of "reality" independent of the observer. But where has such supposition come from if not from the observer? It only seems paradoxical when taken independently. But when we keep in mind that the observer and the observed are interdependent and cannot be taken separately the paradox disappears.
We may never know how things are to postulate "the fundamental reality" independent of the observer (where it is an emergent phenomenon). After all it is a concept as everything else is. By itself empty of essence.
Further in Think Like Reality:
Reality has been around since long before you showed up. Don't go calling it nasty names like "bizarre" or "incredible". The universe was propagating complex amplitudes through configuration space for ten billion years before life ever emerged on Earth. Quantum physics is not "weird". You are weird. You have the absolutely bizarre idea that reality ought to consist of little billiard balls bopping around, when in fact reality is a perfectly normal cloud of complex amplitude in configuration space. This is your problem, not reality's, and you are the one who needs to change.
The phrase "reality is a perfectly normal cloud of complex amplitude in configuration space" assumes a model which reifies "amplitudes" and "configuration space" (not mentioning reality as such). While in fact these are our current best understanding of phenomena.
Human intuitions were produced by evolution and evolution is a hack. The same optimization process that built your retina backward and then routed the optic cable through your field of vision, also designed your visual system to process persistent objects bouncing around in 3 spatial dimensions because that's what it took to chase down tigers. But "tigers" are leaky surface generalizations - tigers came into existence gradually over evolutionary time, and they are not all absolutely similar to each other. When you go down to the fundamental level, the level on which the laws are stable, global, and exception-free, there aren't any tigers. In fact there aren't any persistent objects bouncing around in 3 spatial dimensions. Deal with it.
That's exactly what the concept of emptiness from a brief critique of reduction means. There are no tigers! Spot on.
Intuition is only a model by another name: poor intuitions are shocked by reality, good intuitions make reality feel natural. You want to reshape your intuitions so that the universe looks normal.
Again, spot on and a brief critique of reduction agrees with that here:
Generally, the bigger the entropy of the observed, the higher trouble for the observer. As his coarse-grained ontology does not correlate with all the details the observed requires. So this leads to higher processing load and less time to respond thus forcing the observer to many contradictions he cannot handle. That is only one of scenarios the rationality breaks down and irrational instinctive behavior becomes prevalent.
Further from Think Like Reality:
Surprise exists in the map, not in the territory. There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts. Likewise for facts called such nasty names as "bizarre", "incredible", "unbelievable", "unexpected", "strange", "anomalous", or "weird". When you find yourself tempted by such labels, it may be wise to check if the alleged fact is really factual. But if the fact checks out, then the problem isn't the fact, it's you.
Again, spot on. We are discarding reification of all those "bizarre", "incredible", "unbelievable", "unexpected", "strange", "anomalous", or "weird". What I argue about is that we should not stop there but remember that our current categories will one day appear as childish as anthropomorphizing and emotional language of old.
Further in Reductionism:
The notion here is a subtle one. It's not just the notion that an object can have different descriptions at different levels.
It's the notion that "having different descriptions at different levels" is itself something you say that belongs in the realm of Talking About Maps, not the realm of Talking About Territory.
As I read it, here again the reification of the realm of territory comes into being. Rationally we can only talk about maps. It doesn't mean we cannot talk about what lies beyond the known, but what lies beyond the known is either a rational extrapolation, induction or suprarational intuition (or simply a hunch).
This, as I see it, is the thesis of reductionism. Reductionism is not a positive belief, but rather, a disbelief that the higher levels of simplified multilevel models are out there in the territory. Understanding this on a gut level dissolves the question of "How can you say the airplane doesn't really have wings, when I can see the wings right there?" The critical words are really and see.
Spot on. And I agree when it is rephrased like that concerning the belief (see above). It's exactly stopping the reification process.
Further in Explaining vs. Explaining Away
I think that when physicists say "There are no fundamental rainbows," the anti-reductionists hear, "There are no rainbows."
Spot on! Stopping reification. It's exactly what I mean when write that things have no essence and are empty in essence (not absolutely!). There is no fundamental rainbow. And to stress it out that a brief critique of reduction is not anti-reductionist:
The observer which faces overwhelming complexity of the observed by default is using its best tool - rationality and reduction.
It just attempts to highlight that reduction (as everything else, like rainbows) has its limitations. It is in itself a dependent phenomenon and hence without essence. Just as a reminder.
Again from Explaining vs. Explaining Away:
Actually, Science emptied the model of air of belief in haunts, and emptied the map of the mine of representations of gnomes. Science did not actually—as Keats's poem itself would have it—take real Angel's wings, and destroy them with a cold touch of truth. In reality there never were any haunts in the air, or gnomes in the mine.
I would say that explaining and explaining away are closer than it may seem. "In reality there never were any haunts in the air, or gnomes in the mine." I.e. they were there as mental episodes and could be registered by fMRI as such and that would concern the model of the brain and cognitive science.
Further in Fake Reductionism:
There is a very great distinction between being able to see where the rainbow comes from, and playing around with prisms to confirm it, and maybe making a rainbow yourself by spraying water droplets—
—versus some dour-faced philosopher just telling you, "No, there's nothing special about the rainbow. Didn't you hear? Scientists have explained it away. Just something to do with raindrops or whatever. Nothing to be excited about."
Wholeheartedly agree. Again, to stress out that a brief critique of reduction is not anti-reductionist.
Further in Joy in the Merely Real:
Why, things that are mundane, of course. Things that are normal; things that are unmagical; things that are known, or knowable; things that play by the rules (or that play by any rules, which makes them boring); things that are part of the ordinary universe; things that are, in a word, real.
Again, the only beef is with reification of "normal", "ordinary" and "real". There are states of consciousness where all disappears. Are they ordinary? Are they real? Do they have no value if they reduce suffering and train the brain in new modes of perception? That are all open questions! I do not attempt to deny the use of words and their value. Only the tendency to reify. To anchor in them as absolutes.
Which is to say that everything—everything that actually exists—is liable to end up in "the dull catalogue of common things", sooner or later.
With that I disagree as exactly the principle of computational irreducibility shows that we are only capable to "catalogue" things only in pockets of reducibility. That does not mean that all is reducible. It simply is not. Again, it is not denying the value of reduction, but only to highlight its limitations.
Further in Bind Yourself to Reality:
It's about binding yourself to reality.
Reification of reality. Besides that, how to bind oneself to something unknown? And who is the binder?
Further in If You Demand Magic, Magic Won't Help:
If I were transported into one of those fantasy novels, I wouldn't be surprised to find myself studying the forbidden ultimate sorcery—
—because why should being transported into a magical world change anything? It's not where you are, it's who you are.
Who am I? Really. Does it depend on my capacity to build better models? Does it define me? Isn't it reification of the "I"?
If I'm going to be happy anywhere,
Or achieve greatness anywhere,
Or learn true secrets anywhere,
Or save the world anywhere,
Or feel strongly anywhere,
Or help people anywhere,
I may as well do it in reality.
What if reality is gruesome? And the only way out to exercise my thinking is to escape from it? It may be a paradoxical fix.
Further in Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute?
The choice between God and humanity is not just a choice of drugs. Above all, humanity actually exists.
The reification of humanity. It is a term. Perhaps, useful. But what does actually exists? There are no tigers, remember?
Further in The Sacred Mundane:
That capacity—to really, really, without defense, admit you were entirely wrong—is why religious experience will never be like scientific experience. No religion can absorb that capacity without losing itself entirely and becoming simple humanity...
Actually, we've approached religious experiences scientifically and have found a lot. You may find an example in Myths about Nonduality and Science by Gary Weber.
In closing remarks I would like to express gratitude for your forum and it's interesting nature. It makes me think and reflect, and I like that. It all was written in a friendly manner and hope it reads in the same way. I hope all the examples that are provided are enough to understand what was meant in my little post on reduction and clarify all matters.