Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Jim and Transcendence
In Jim's book he remarks that the human mind is not transcendent. I know exactly what he means and why he said it but I immediately began to wonder if I agreed. What he means is that there is a particular human perspective from which we cannot hope to escape. We cannot become gods. He said it because Gaia theory is anti-humanist (Gaia, incidentally is way beyond a hypothesis now in spite of residual scepticism from the boneheads. They're probably the reason why Jim hasn't got a Nobel for one of the most important and firmly established new scientific ideas of our time. That and the incompetence of the Swedish Academy. And, please, Richard, accepting Gaia does not mean you have to accept Jim's warnings of impending disaster, though you should.) in that it overturns the humanist belief in the centrality of human-created values. We are absolutely subject to Gaia. But the human mind appears to be transcendent, most obviously through science. Science aspires to the transcendent ideal of an objective world view, but, as Jim often notes, we are constantly ambushed on the path towards such a view. So we conceive the transcendent ideal of science even if we often fail to achieve it. This applies to everything we do, we conceive the transcendent. I don't know if that refutes Jim's point or not. Perhaps it just deepens it.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
>We are absolutely subject to Gaia.
ReplyDeleteAre we? Are we not *part* of Gaia then? Not part of the biosphere? Any change humans have made so far is surely tiny compared with what the first plants did - flooding the atmosphere with a highly reactive gas (oxygen) that would have destroyed the entire surface of the planet. We're not that bad yet are we? Surely we can only be subject to - and work against - Gaia if we believe she/it has a purpose. And we would only know that if we could transcend Gaia. Maybe.
Pete
"So we conceive the transcendent ideal of science"
ReplyDeleteMaybe becasue I know that Goddess Gaia has me down for extinction around the year 2045. Bugger.
'Gaia' isn't a scientific idea, it is a metaphor that you dig or don't dig. The idea it encompases is either trivial (that there is a biosphere that everything that lives on earth depends on and it is radically interconnected) or loopy (the earth is itself a creature with mystical properties and human beings are a virus infecting it etc).
ReplyDeleteAs to its purported 'anti-humanism', 'Gaia' theory is actuyally an act of immoderate anthropomorphosism. The Earth is a goddess and goddesses, as we know, are just projections of the human ego.
I am mystified at how Bryan can embrace both the arch-futurologist Lovelock and the the arch-debunker of the charlatanry of prediction, Taleb.
That, John, is the most profound misunderstanding of anything I have ever come across.
ReplyDeleteI think you should begin by looking at Jim's CV.
ReplyDeleteImaginatively we can occupy, or try to occupy, a much larger domain than we in fact do; just as prisoners can dream they are free. The human imagination can conceive of a state in which we are not as we are, not limited, ordinary human beings, but - if you like - gods.
ReplyDeleteImaginatively we are at times not human; or perhaps to be not-human (or more-than-human), is part of being human. Whereas a dog can just be a dog and there's an end on it, human beings can at times adjoin onto this larger kingdom, where they are not ordinarily human - and this is one of the things which separates us from dogs, and one reason we have super-canine problems, and super-canine solutions.
Personally, i'd rather be a dog.
elberry
ReplyDelete>Whereas a dog can just be a dog and there's an end on it,
Beana thinks you're wrong. At least I *think* she thinks you're wrong. Beana can imaginatively transcend the warm bit near the fire and inhabit a world of fast, but catchable, rabbits and where that alsatian up the road gets what's coming to it. I think. But you seem to think otherwise. Any evidence for that? (Beana raises an inquisitive eyebrow.)
Pete
Say, for example, that the universe operates in 16 dimensions. From time to time a few geniuses might grasp this, but for 99.99 per cent of the rest of us we'd be left only with a bafflingly complex theory. We would never be able to experience the reality of it because we can't, even if we could understand the theory. The wiring upstairs is missing. Our circuit board is stamped "Operating Environment: Planet Earth 3D Only".
ReplyDeleteI suppose our unease comes from sensing that a bigger picture is out there but that something in us cannot grasp it. Our sense perceptions are so limited that we have to take a huge amount on trust. Anyone seen an atom lately?
If anyone is still around in two centuries, it will be interesting to see whether Gaia is filed under science or mysticism or perhaps and more correctly under both. (And it's probably not possible to be a happy bunny without generous helpings of both, too.)
There is nothing - I repeat, nothing - mystical about Gaia. It is the hardest of hard science. The name misleads. It has been, in the past, dismissed as such by scientists who should have known better - including Dawkins in The Extended Phenotype. But then his mentor, Bill Hamilton, decided Gaia was right and the neo-Darwinians had to climb down, though there are still stragglers. Other grand attacks have been made on the theory, all have crumbled, though you might not know it because, rather than admit defeat, the crumblers have just given Gaia another name. Note that the introduction to Jim's new book is written by Martin Rees, not exactly an airy-fairy individual.
ReplyDeleteAh, but can Beana imagine being other than a dog? - i can imagine being a dog but can she imagine being Elberry?
ReplyDeleteAll speculation, as you point out - perhaps dogs do have tremendously powerful imaginations and just give no evidence of it. Or perhaps they've moved beyond us to a point where they realise there's no point fussing with such matters.
Before enlightenment, chop wood & carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood & carry water.
"There is nothing - I repeat, nothing - mystical about Gaia. It is the hardest of hard science. "
ReplyDeleteTo my mind hard science is the stuff that makes empirically testable predictions. That isn'rt Gaia.
God's teeth, John, it's made nothing but testable hypotheses, that's what it's for. That's all Jim understands. He once stopped a conversation with me because he said we couldn't be right because we both agreed. He's also admitted calling it Gaia may have been a mistake as it will lead people to make the wrong assumptions that you do. For the record, there's ten specific Gaia predictions, eight of which have aleady been confirmed, listed in the book. You'll now say that this is self-serving because they're in his book. That is because you don't know Jim and don't appear to have read anything he's written. If Gaia were to be disproved tomorrow, he'd be on Newsnight admitting he was wrong, Honestly.
ReplyDeleteMr Lovelock is too nice a guy, ive never seen him without a smile on his face, maybe he is looking forward to his space flight?
ReplyDeleteI personally think the climate is a lot more robust than we give it credit far, so I don't really buy Mr Lovelocks tipping point fears, I hope and he hopes he is wrong.
Whatever the case maybe he is a very fine scientist
Well, we'll have to disagree Mr A. Gaia goes beyond science and that's always been an important part of its appeal. In the same way someone could say that the Apollo missions were all about science and reaching the moon. Sure, but their most lasting impact is that they completely transformed the way we look at our planet. One doesn't invalidate the other. Why does everything have to be either/or? A really good theory, which this is, is a bit more robust than that.
ReplyDeleteHmmn, looking at this thread and the avatars it seems that dogs are becoming popular around here.
Ouch. Word to the wise, John M. You don't need to keep explaining the Dawkinsian worldview here as if it's a novelty. We do get it, honest, and staggeringly, it isn't the end of philosophy.
ReplyDeleteJohn M, you say:
ReplyDelete>
To my mind hard science is the stuff that makes empirically testable predictions. That isn'rt Gaia.
It also isn't evolution, (or Big Bang theory). As has been pointed out, Lovelock has made predictions that have been empirically verified. Evolution is posited on 'random' heritable mutations happening on which selection can work. Somewhat by definition, random mutations can't be predicted - are you an evolution denialist as well as a Gaia denialist then? Big Bang theory makes predictions about the mass and age of the universe that are contradicted by empirical evidence (hence the thought-experiment "Dark Matter/Energy").
Thinking about it, the standard model of the atom doesn't predict mass either - somewhat at varyance with empirical evidence.
Pete
I ot saying that Lovelock is a bad scientist, just that 'Gaia' idea is a silly ans unscientific one. I haven't read the latest book but I would be ointerested ina single example of a prediction that has been empirically tested. As NN Taleb would happily explain, predictions about the climate and how we will react to it are simply beyond human capabilities. Whatever his other virtues, Lovelock, when it comes to forecasting, is either a fool or a charlatan according to NNT. We just cannot forecast anything so complex as climate, let alone how it will affect human society.
ReplyDeleteThe Gaia hypothesis is clearly biocentric environmentalism rather than humanistic environmentalism. However, consider a comment Lovelock made in a recent New Scientist interview:
ReplyDelete"I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare."
That seems to be a solid affirmation of the humanist principle that humanity is capable of progress.
Does thinking about this give new meaning to the term transcendental meditation?
ReplyDeleteJohn Meredith,
ReplyDeleteI do not think NNT would disapprove of Lovelock at all, because Lovelock is not a modeler but an empiricist. His "forecasts" are based on observed facts in exactly the way NNT's were when he foretold the subprime fiasco.
Gordon,
ReplyDeleteYou quote JL as saying:
For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species ...
and conclude:
That seems to be a solid affirmation of the humanist principle that humanity is capable of progress.
You don't say what you mean by progress (fair enough in this context)but couldn't this rather be an affirmation that *Gaia* is capable of progress because she/it has evolved an intelligent (etc) species that only exists because of the prior changes brought about by Gaia (as in your quote from NS)? Or do you see humanity as being somehow outside the changes that have happened - and are happening - to our planet? You seem to imply that *only* humanity is capable of progress and also that 'progress' only has meaning in a human context. Do you reject any idea that *Gaia* can progress and that species such as the first photosynthesisers (in your quote) and humans, may be part of that larger progress?
Pete
Wait -- Howard Jones used to sing a song about "Gaia." Remember him? Very scientific vegetarian new age guy. Singer.
ReplyDeleteAnd, Bryan, until you said it i had no idea God had teeth. Guess he must be made in our image or something....
Gordon
ReplyDelete"That seems to be a solid affirmation of the humanist principle that humanity is capable of progress."
If that's the humanist principle, count me out. It seems to exclude any thought for the individual human as opposed to humanity. Whilst it might be nice for any one individual to benefit from the 'progress' of humanity over the course of a few billion years, that doesn't really help the untold billions who would have been and gone in the meantime.
It sounds a bit too Marxist-Leninist to me, as in loving the people as an abstract, but not so sure about liking the unmouldable individual.
Pete,
ReplyDeleteThe humanist principle that humanity is capable of progress, doesn't entail that only humanity is capable of progress.
Recusant,
The humanist principle that humanity is capable of progress is consistent with the value of individual humans.
"John Meredith,
ReplyDeleteI do not think NNT would disapprove of Lovelock at all, because Lovelock is not a modeler but an empiricist. His "forecasts" are based on observed facts in exactly the way NNT's were when he foretold the subprime fiasco."
I think you have misunderstood NNT. He did not foresee the sub-prime fisaco, he simply pointed out that banks had stupid risk models because they ignore the inevitability of unlikely, unpredictable, consequential events. The whole thrust of his argument is that the future is inherently and irredemeiably unpredictable, not just because we do not know enough, but because of the way information is structured. And the more we know, the less able we are to predict. JL may be an excellent empirical scientist qua empirical scientist, but as a forecaster he is no better than the next bloke along the bar. Which means 'Gaia' is pretty much drivel except in the most trivial sense.
As to JL being exasperated at the vulgarians who mistake his idea for some sort of exercise in mysticism and/or anthropomorphosism, by the way, can I just point out that his latest book is called 'The Revenge of Gaia', that is, glossing slightly, 'The Revenge of the Earth Goddess'? No anthropomorphosism there, then.
You read the title, John. Yeah, I'd call that glossing slightly.
ReplyDeleteIt's not nice to fool Mother Nature
ReplyDeleteThis is transcendental cutting edge science?
Where is this man? I want to invite him over for a home cooked meal. The Taleb man, I'm not so sure about.