Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!emory!swrinde!pipex!demon!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: Is there a spiritual force etc.?
References: <SOSUSER.2.2E731869@sos.net> <JUH.105.779391202@stpc.wi.LeidenUniv.nl> <1994Sep13.030258.1803@news.media.mit.edu> <1994Sep13.120437.5515@datcon.co.uk> <3546sj$4ef@infosrv.edvz.univie.ac.at>
Organization: Royal Institute of International Affairs
Reply-To: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.27
Lines: 73
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 07:48:44 +0000
Message-ID: <779528924snz@chatham.demon.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk

One can ask grammatical but meaningless questions: "why do pigeons not have 
fur?" One can ask if there is a spiritual dimension to human affairs. 

Typically, such a question is posed by someone who has a model (that there 
are a bundle of self-contained forces which operate over or apart from what 
we see as our everyday reality; and then there is us; and the domains leak 
weakly one into the other through various forms of mediation and intervention. 
To the question: "is this a broadly true picture of affairs" on would have to 
respond that it is not an important *operational* truth. It is not something 
which has to be taken into account; there is no technology available for 
taking it into account which produces operational changes in circumstances; 
that the conditions under which individuals report results are such that they 
encourage the form of subjectivity and self-delusion which would invalidate 
investigation in any other sphere. That aside, if it helps, keep taking the 
pills, Mrs Jones.

We can, however, ask whether there are any influences about which we are forced 
to take note that are somehow disclocated from the patterns in which our 
understanding is grounded.

This thought gives rise to two questions:

1: We have a model of how the physical universe operates and came to take on 
   the general shape that we now observe. We ask: is it necessary to take into 
   account a set of influences which are not open to decomposition to this 
   broad frame of reference in order to explain the subjective experience which 
   we have of life and human interaction, introspection and emotion?

2: The answer to (1) may be (in my view, is) that there are indeed phenomena 
   which require irreducable frames of reference in order for them to be 
   understood (that is to say, to be encapsulated in a model which is both 
   harmonious with other models which we hold and find useful and also of 
   sufficient predictive power to be useful in its own right). Assuming this to 
   be the case, we ask if these models are entirely self-referential (whether 
   we understand "markets" as a consequence of what we know of human behaviour 
   and "human behaviour" to draw on what we know about "markets"). Are there, 
   in other words, loose threads which lie outside of the weave that we have 
   made by which to understand the world which we have made and which has made 
   us?

Responding to (2), the Romantics point to the following as "exogenous" 
fundamentals.

 * human emotionality and empathy. Neurophysiology and sociobiology have 
   things to say which appear likely to invalidate this.

 * the existence of beauty and harmony. Why should our perceptions of what is 
   have these overtones; and how is it that we are able to manipulate and 
   enhance these? How is it that the natural order so frequently appears to be 
   beautiful and that disorder does not?

 * the moral sense that societies display in direct proportion to their 
   complexity. Favoured by the C19th, this perspective has taken something of a 
   hammering from history, sociology, anthropology.

 * the consistent belief of all societies arrived at independently that there 
   is Something More. Unfortunately, comparative religion and anthropology, 
   once again, suggest that the differences are greater than the similarities 
   and the motivation rooted in the common experience of the dark that lies 
   beyond life's short, weak camp fire.

All of this is not necessarily a diversion from the issue of understanding 
and engineering cognition, which is what this usegroup is intended to address. 
It is clearly the case that knowledge is hierarchical, diffuse, volatile and 
driven by exogenous and self-generated objective functions. Engineered 
solutions (and the understanding that these bring of ourselves and our 
potential to transcend what we have been) will have to build upon such 
foundations.

_________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
