Architectonica (a Rule 12(b)(3) violation)
Kris Sargent returns with a theory of a theory of all knowledge …
Ready for some philosophizing, freshman-dorm style? (Mr. Poulos can moderate).
First, let’s all admit what everyone’s thinking: the fact of external testes is definitive proof of Unintelligent Design, or, alternatively, no design at all (my opinion). As Alan Walker, Professor of Biological Anthropology, Penn State University, said in his Princeton University Public Lecture, “To have the gonads, the gonads, the stuff that carries the genetic message from one generation to the next, in a little bag between your legs…[this is] intelligent design?” (fast-forward to 18:10 for a full explanation of this point). Whales and seals managed to reverse this mistake and put the boys back in. Why not us? You might say we’ve been left holding…
Ahem! Well then.
And then there’s all that other evidence. A plethora, you might say (I do). More than enough, an excess: what more do you need to be convinced that we are just animals after all. Special animals, to be sure: clever, proud, and delicate. But animals just the same.
I realize this is a sticking point for many — for many reasons. I won’t condescend and say “I understand you”, because I largely don’t. To me our existence as nothing more (and nothing less) than extraordinarily intelligent organisms — bipedal apes with big brains — is patently obvious and daily compelling. We certainly comport ourselves like biologicals; groping blindly in the dark, we’re a species of few destinations and many arrivals.
And that kind of brings me to the point of this post. I think it’s time to face up to the disturbing (‘disturbing’ in a functional sense) fact that we seem to be undesigned outcomes of a complex-but-natural process. In other words, we seem (stressed yet again) to be a unique species lacking prior purpose.
If we can just do this — just admit to ourselves that it sure looks like we’re out here all alone, surrounded by the roiling silence of infinite spaces — I think I have an idea you might be interested in. An opportunity, you might say.
(Though to be perfectly honest and up-front, I am almost certainly in error, in part or (heaven forbid) in whole; you might say my only hope is that this “error” rises to the level of stochastic resonance.)
I think we’re at a point where we can build Architectonica (seriously! — i mean it.) — i.e., a systematization of all knowledge (See Richard Kraut, The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Pg. 351: “The fundamental step in architectonic thinking is to set out a correct substantial account of flourishing with its ramifications: this will provide a ‘target’ for ‘political’ action (NE 1.2.1094a22-6)“) Or as Quine would say, I think we currently have enough distributed knowledge, working brains, and communicative potential that we can finally and successfully “naturalize” normative epistemology, build an ethical architecture, and engineer (a scary word, I know) a flourishing, mutually-advantageous society. And I say this as a radically self-interested individual who hates authority.
I think the way to do this is to usher into an epistemologically-idealized Original Position four additional perspectives while modifying the first (we must also discard Rawls’s deontological ethics, and everything it supports). In order of sophistication, these perspectives are the Selfish Gene, Myworld, Myworldline, Ourworld, or Ourworldline.
The primary goods for each can be characterized in the following way: From a Selfish Gene perspective, the good is biological, impersonal, evolutionary. From a Myworld perspective, the good is experiential, existential, individual, mental. From a Myworldline perspective, the good is aspected, abstracted, biographical, connotational. From an Ourworld perspective, the good is phenomenological, environmental, (eco)systemic. From an Ourworldline perspective, the good is world-historical; it is the accumulated facts of the species, the worldline of Man as seen from the outside looking in, after the fact. (Note: this harnesses the very simple idea that if you have 1) a perspective, and 2) a destination, you can derive “ought” from “is”; here the destinations are not particular places but particular place-types with domain-specific languages and characteristics).
I’m convinced that, by adding these perspectives to the Original Position (Rawls’ extraordinarily fertile imaginative device), and pursuing unanimity (a Nash equilibrium) among the idealized constituents, we can put together an architectonic scheme to guide us through the dark of a thrown, finite existence. (Particularly, problems like “survival vs. justice”, which plague Rawls’ A Theory of Justice and other similar efforts, completely dissolve, as the elements which animate these issues are re-situated into harmonic chords of higher abstraction.)
To some of you, this may seem absurd, stupid, misguided, maybe even masturbatory. But that’s why I’m posting it! More than anything — and this is where you come in — I want to know if and how I’m wrong.
Discuss!
It’s certainly (IMHO) the right idea. I don’t think there’s anything misguided or foolish about seeking a universal ethics, and in fact one might call it the subconscious project of good-faith international institutions.
The way you’re talking about it supports something I believe, which is that open-minded, level-headed people, even those who seem diametrically opposed to each other, have a better chance of agreement long-term than either do with knuckledraggers who are superficially on their side.
I’ll also add my own thoughts on prerequisites for universal ethics; perfect information, past/present/future (technically impossible, but one should strive) and a metric for the good; this Rawlsian tack of yours seems to be an excellent attempt to address the latter.
My conviction is that these primary goods, when organized into a hierarchy, need to emphasize the society over the individual, anathema as this is to libertarian thinking. Although I would never want to see the rights of the individual dissolved or relegated to the very nether pits of political consideration, as in theoretical communism, and while I absolutely recognize individual reward as both a resource for greater public projects and an end in itself, I can’t help but think that a primary focus on collective well-being is the only way around the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’-style logic pitfalls that have always plagued societies the world over.
— Clarke Ries · May 10, 04:11 PM · #
Clarke Ries, you write: “My conviction is that these primary goods, when organized into a hierarchy, need to emphasize the society over the individual, anathema as this is to libertarian thinking.”
Interestingly, this is one of the paradoxes on which Rawls’s original theory founders. This is a quote from Nozick’s critique of Rawls’s argument that the difference principle “represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset and to share in the benefits of this distribution whatever it turns out to be” (pg. 101):
“People will differ in how they view regarding natural talents as a common asset. Some will complain, echoing Rawls against utilitarianism, that this ‘does not take seriously the distinction between persons’; and they will wonder whether any reconstruction of Kant that treats people’s abilities and talents as resources for others can be adequate. ‘The two principles of justice…rule out even the tendency to regard men as means to one another’s welfare’ [writes Rawls — therefore, Rawls is consistent only] if one presses very hard on the distinction between men and their talents, assets, abilities and special traits.”
Rawls responds to this by characterizing these “attributes” as alienable possessions of a prior self, and not identical to it. As Michael J. Sandel argues in his Liberalism and the Limits of Justice:
“While this defense evades the inconsistency, it quickly invites a related objection of incoherence, for if Rawls must invoke the distinction between the self and its possessions in this thoroughgoing way, the question immediately arises whether, in avoiding a radically situated subject, Rawls does not lapse into the opposite extreme of a radically disembodied one.”
Seeing as this effort to hit the bulls-eye between the Humean “radically situated” and Kantean “radically disembodied” self is the cornerstone of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, this is a problem for Rawls.
The reason why I led my comment with ‘interestingly’ is that Sandel offers Rawls the same advice that you do:
“If the difference principle is to avoid using some as means to others’ ends, it can only be possible under circumstances where the subject of possession is a ‘we’ rather than an ‘I’, which circumstances imply in turn the existence of a community in the constitutive sense.”
In other words, an Ourworld perspective.
This is why I think the addition of four more enfranchised perspectives to the Original Position is necessary. First, it by-passes these paradoxes by reformulating and broadening the universe which gives rise to them. Second, it replaces obscure meta-ethical humpery with simpler conceptions of these stubbornly resistant ancient ideas. Third, in its Architectonica phase (the middle-ground where we systematize knowledge to properly structure the Original Position), we scientifically define the idealized algorithms in a Russian doll kind of progressive subsumation, and thereby avoid situations where the ethics we come up with are “primarily” concerned with one level over the others.
The demand of unanimity means no ethic which emphasizes the society “over” the individual would get a ‘yes’ vote from the Myworldline, Myworld or Selfish Gene (each level is considered rationally self-interested with domain specific primary goods, and, in the Original Position, all perspectives are equally well-informed).
This formalizes the very real fact that a society which doesn’t attend to the natures and needs of its constituent parts won’t last long. Since “existence” is the fundamental good, a rationally self-interested Ourworld takes this into account when voting.
— Kris Sargent · May 10, 06:01 PM · #
To flesh this out a bit:
Importing the perspective of the Selfish Gene keeps the Original Position tied to the realities of the external world; it is an impersonal, uncaring perspective on which everything else depends.
For examples of how this dynamic plays out.
1. A concept of “social justice” evolved, along with morality in general, to keep gene-carriers together to keep them alive. Judgments of justice and injustice are experienced — and reflected upon — at the Myworld level. These judgments can be strong enough to spawn micromotives, which, if themselves strong enough, can then lead to Ourworld, system-wide macrobehaviors (See Thomas Schelling). Nations can fall, and lives can be snuffed out — in other words, things of great interest to all the perspectives in the Original Position.
2. Personal morality is often seen as separate from public morality, and with good reason. Let’s say that, during a pre-reflective impulse emboldened by alcohol, I cheat on my wife (I don’t have one, but bear with me). Afterwards, my mistress becomes pregnant, and, when I won’t return her calls, she shows up at my house and tells my wife everything. My wife divorces me, and I become cynical and cautious about love. My whole life — experienced in Myworld mental quanta, judged from the outside by Myworldline — becomes something less than it could have been, had I kept it in my pants (this is a shortened story).
On a personal level (at a reflective Myworld-level), is there some ethical rule I can find that would harmonize the ends of my Selfish Gene, my Myworld, my Myworldline, Ourworld, and Ourworldline (the latter being the relationship “vehicle” between my wife and I, as mentioned by George Lakoff*). I think, even on this personal, non-world-historical level, the answer is yes.
Make no mistake, the theory is meant to discover the genetic, constitutive codes of a well-ordered society. But it’s also useful elsewhere.
*The quote from Lakoff: “The lovers are travelers on a journey together, with their common life goals seen as a destination to be reached. The relationship is their vehicle and it allows them to pursue those common goals together. The relationship is seen as fulfilling its purpose as long as it allows them to make progress toward their common goals. The journey isn’t easy. There are impediments, and there are places (crossroads) where a decision has to be made about which direction to go in and whether to keep traveling together.”
— Kris Sargent · May 10, 06:37 PM · #
I find myself simply bamboozled by people who believe that evolution supports the notion of perfect/unsituated/true knowledge. Belief in evolution is utterly incompatible with belief in total or perfect or true knowledge. Natural selection does not create perfectly fit systems. It merely eliminates those systems so unfit as to be unable to survive. Our consciousness mechanism evolved the same way any other mechanism evolved; it gave those with the mutation some small advantage over those without it in terms of survivability, and they thus had a greater chance of spreading their genes and the mutation. The mechanism then iteratively improved, but again, only in small steps, and only in steps that had an immediate positive impact on the survivability and reproductive ability of the mutated animals. I hate to use the language of design, but I think it’s helpful to say that consciousness solved certain problems for the pre-human species, such as food-gathering, mate selection, risk assessment, danger alertness. None of those problems included “perfectly understand and order the world”, “create a theory of everything”, “assess the fundamental questions of the cosmos.” There is no evolutionary advantage to solving those questions, and there certainly is no reason why pre-human animals who hadn’t developed the capacity to do so would be so disadvantaged in terms of reproduction as to be eliminated through natural selection.
— Freddie · May 11, 01:38 AM · #
Freddie, it discourages me that nothing you wrote is responsive to my post.
— kris sargent · May 11, 02:22 AM · #
If there’s no God, there is no real good. There is no real ethics. You can invent one, if that makes you feel better, but it’s a waste of time, because it has no predicate in objective reality.
— Derannimer · May 11, 07:10 AM · #
“If there’s no God, there is no real good. There is no real ethics. You can invent one, if that makes you feel better, but it’s a waste of time, because it has no predicate in objective reality.”
I agree with your first point, and disagree with your second. It’s not a waste of time if has a direct impact on objective reality.
But you’re right. We can’t discover Ethical Truths in a metaphysical sense, and that was the point of my beginning with the fact that we seem to be a species with no prior purpose — literally, we are animals in a universe which has no embedded teleology.
However, we can construct Ethical Algorithms that, when “run” by us humans, tends to deliver a “preferred lottery” of possibility space and probability distributions — not theoretically, but in the Real.
— JA · May 11, 05:18 PM · #
Freddie, it discourages me that nothing you wrote is responsive to my post.
It discourages me that you refuse to acknowledge how what I wrote responds to your post.
— Freddie · May 11, 07:36 PM · #
I find myself simply bamboozled by people who believe that evolution supports the notion of perfect/unsituated/true knowledge.
Never said it, don’t believe it. And I don’t think bamboozled is the word you’re looking for.
Belief in evolution is utterly incompatible with belief in total or perfect or true knowledge.
Not entirely, but close enough. Still, never said anything about perfect knowledge.
Natural selection does not create perfectly fit systems.
Never said it did (didn’t you get the whole “external testes” thing?)
It merely eliminates those systems so unfit as to be unable to survive.
That’s not all it does, but close enough. Never said otherwise.
Our consciousness mechanism evolved the same way any other mechanism evolved; it gave those with the mutation some small advantage over those without it in terms of survivability, and they thus had a greater chance of spreading their genes and the mutation. The mechanism then iteratively improved, but again, only in small steps, and only in steps that had an immediate positive impact on the survivability and reproductive ability of the mutated animals.
Not entirely (you’ve left out autocatalysis thresholds and other things), but close enough.
I hate to use the language of design, but I think it’s helpful to say that consciousness solved certain problems for the pre-human species, such as food-gathering, mate selection, risk assessment, danger alertness.
Actually, consciousness solved exactly none of these (most of these problems have been solved by fixed action patterns). Watch this video, and you’ll see what I mean: The Quest for Consciousness. Or you can listen to these lectures at MITOpenCourseWare on animal behavior.
None of those problems included “perfectly understand and order the world”, “create a theory of everything”, “assess the fundamental questions of the cosmos.”
Fair enough. Never said otherwise.
There is no evolutionary advantage to solving those questions, and there certainly is no reason why pre-human animals who hadn’t developed the capacity to do so would be so disadvantaged in terms of reproduction as to be eliminated through natural selection.
Never said anything about this. Though if I were you I’d be a little more modest in my grand declarations about what evolution eliminates versus what it allows. While most geneticists follow the principle of parsimony, they also understand that sometimes an advantage with no diminishing marginal returns, and no space-energy upper-limit, can lead to autocatalysis.
Perhaps you should reread what I wrote. I think you’ll find you didn’t respond to it after all.
— JA · May 11, 08:48 PM · #