Can the part explain the whole? A video interview with Dr Guy Saunders, UWE
by adamsopticks
This video debate is a kind of a sequel to the written debate I conducted with Guy between October 2013 and May 2013. That’s available here. And here’s a direct link to the Horizon clip that we discuss.
Notes on an exchange:
I first got talking to Guy in the corridors at UWE where I work as a notetaker for disabled students. The joy of the job is that I get to attend a great many lectures and seminars – with the catch being that my professional responsibilities prevent me from engaging in any class discussion. Guy has a lovely attitude to free speech – he insists that everyone must be allowed a voice – and indeed I’m very thankful to him for letting me attend a few of his seminars on my own time where I was permitted to pipe up!
We disagree about a lot of things, and our starting points are very different. Nevertheless, I like to think that over the course of our interaction we’ve worn each other down on a few issues. Guy’s discussion of John Dylan Haynes’ work has been especially enlightening to me – there are some real problems with the interpretation of neuroscientific results in terms of human freedom, and with the ways these conclusions are sold to a wider audience. For my part, I’m hopeful that my attempts to collapse the distinctions between reductionism and holism, physicalism and non-physicalism, and patterns and stuffs have been persuasive to Guy. My feeling is that such dichotomies say more about academic tribalism than the nature of the world, and my hope is that a more comprehensive vision of science – as the search for predictive patterns – might preserve the best of all possible worlds, and promote exactly the kind of ‘collegiate’ approach that Guy himself advocates.
Finally, I’d just like to wish Guy the best of luck with his book, ‘Acts of Consciousness’. I was originally moved to disagree with Guy over his arguments against those sciences and scientists that I find valuable and interesting. It will be a real delight to hear his positive vision of a ‘Cubist psychology’ outlined in full.
Nice to read, hear and see this Joe, and that the majesterium project is still on, it always helps to hear the opposing side, or simply another point of view. I would agree with you on the academic tribalism. If you ever get the time or haven’t already read it ‘The Logic of Science’ By Karl Popper is a good exploration of the demarcations between what can be considered Empirical and Metaphysical.
Lovely to hear that Guy mentions Popper, who is very clear about distinguishing between what can be considered science, and other disciplines.
A current example I know is the scientifically backed resurgence in Acupuncture, where the autonomic nervous stimulation has a physical basis, it was merely the wording and lack of knowledge of past human cultures that, i.e the use of Ying/Yang (which could have been thought of as Body/Mind duality. I can’t agree with more with overstretching, in any and all disciplines. It would seem, there is no single ultimate answer, especially in the case of Free Will, which seems to be partially deterministic and partially not.
In science, especially in the writing/interpretation of results you can’t get away with going outside of your data, it simply doesn’t work, and then may well fall out of the bounds of Science.
To use a mild argument from analogy, the wave particle duality of light photons, is similar to this. Neil De-Grasse Tyson (soon to do a remake of Cosmos), dismantled several well held chesnuts, that consciousness may or may not be real in the physical sense, as well as the well worn “Maths is the language of the Universe”, he pointed out and I’m glad he made it clear it is a human language of understanding.
Scientism is infuriating, it seems to function on the maxim “scientists will solve it, we don’t have to worry about Climate Change”.
You could think of the various disciplines of Science as differing ways of looking at the same physical reality, but this logic could also spread to all the disciplines of human learning.
The collegiate approach, is massively important, as it ignores or tries to get round the old hierarchy of Academic subjects, Maths at the top etc.
Einsteins ‘What does a fish know of the water in which it swims?” seems to hold here.
There are far too many caricatures of everyone, and their ideas, for example there is an apparently banned TED talk, where the speaker mentions the fact that many physical constants vary and could may have ‘weather’ reports.
The complexity is the fun, the world and the people in it are complicated, the discussion between massively different views, keeps alive the constant need to view the world differently.
Many people are stuck as Guy notes, in some odd form of Hierarchical, Spectrum based, Competition learning isn’t right.
In general example; the subtle difference between disliking organised religion but not religious persons.
The big thing I learned from studying studying Evolutionary Biology, was that Proximate and/or Ultimate explanations are not a strict dichotomy or even a spectrum, and that most of science results in “we know this much, we don’t know this, here is how sure we are”.
Lots of these problems seem to be are an inability to distinct and idea, like the Gene as an ideal idea, from say how it affects the development of a given organism, in the physical phylogenetic sense.
Going to Dawkins’ recipe analogy, it is clear, from knowledge that if you were to pick ‘tablespoon’, it could be found that it is a tool, the sucrose in the sugar in the ingredients and the process of cooking the cake, when interacting with how a person tastes, make it sweet or not to that person.
I always thought this analogy was to make the point that is what people think reductionism is, when infact it’s something worse.
That explaining things, in a scientific way makes them somehow less, well it can’t it means they explained in a scientific way, one could always look at cake as a cook, a mother, a philosopher.
For example, at the Café I’ve been playing guitar in recently they had what I referred to as ‘Philosopher’s Cakes’, they ran to standard recipes, but used non standard ingredients, are they cakes?
This is a definitional issue, once I’d sat and thought, and enjoyed one of these cakes, they are a variant on the theme of Cake, an expression of that idea, they were also tasty.
If of course they were cut into molecular, atomic or even nano particulars you would have a tough time, at a certain level of depth working out what you had was a part of, well anything in particular, let alone a Cake.
Taste/Colour perception comes up against many of these issues, they are, if it is not too circular to say as common to all humans as they are individually different.
You don’t stop Eukaryotic cells being what they are by learning their constituent parts.
I would possibly go further than Dr Saunders and say all human learning is artificial and arbitrary, it is a best effort to understand observable and obvious complexity, even (and here I show this bias in the academics) the language of Maths.
The Mind and the Brain are separate entities, the Brain (when not pendantically called a a noun in English to label and partially describe, ‘that lump of grey cells in the cranium of human animals) is a physical system, even if it is at the whim of quantum mechanics, seeing as many of its’ processes are ultimately electron flow based.
The ‘joke’ “what is mind, never matter, what is matter, never mind, seems to fit here. You can’t explain the Universe if you simply look at an Electron, to my knowledge it isn’t even known if the Universe itself is a closed system, if it isn’t the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, would be revised as applying to certain scales, times and states of Matter/Energy, as they flow in and out of this Universe.
Every human being has a Brain, that is roughly similar, or based on the same model if you will, but every mind is far more individual than even an individuals genetics.
Genetically speaking all humans are so closely related as to be as one family, with varying degrees of relatedness, this is the fact that makes a nonsense of eugenics.
It is a lynch pin in ‘Nature vs. Nuture’ or complex interplay?
Guy’s points, are very valid and true (though truth is highly complex) science offers partial, highly detailed, falsifiable theories, testing methods and factual results about reality. It is not a silver bullet, or panacea to existential quandaries.
There is no Equation for Love, despite the tabloids, who along with much of the media distort science horridly, or simplify it’s ideas down to appeal to this non-existent ‘fool’ demographic, most people if you talk to them understand scientific principles, concepts et al, but the label and their schooling gave them a fear, dread or simply a boredom factor about it.
Guy is right, not everything is physical, this does not mean, that certain metaphysical concepts such as Deities, are real, the burden of proof rests on those wishing to prove them in existent.
You can be spiritual without accepting the super-natural, it’s easy, look at the stars, consider the known facts, imagine the potential exo-planets, etc.
Music too is conceivable as purely mathematical ways, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t move humans emotionally, or spiritually (in a broad sense).
Beware self labelling, it is hazardous.
Battle in Hastings, corresponds to what Guy describes, only because of records, etc do you ‘know’ in some sense what happened there, if the heritage site wasn’t there, it would be a lovely walk round a lumpy field in England.
It would seem to me that every idea has boundaries, Popper didn’t make a sword on which to fall, but made a careful scalpel to separate types of thinking from one another.
There is no one solution, to any and all problems, Psychology it would seem, has confirmed that astrological personality numbers are relatively accurate, given the distance from those two ideas.
You hit the nail, humans are predisposed to notice patterns, nature seems to work on patterns, but patterns can be made of things, ideas, and their interactions.
This all stems from the main problem in Western thought, it lacks the holistic, ‘The Force’ sort of idea that much Eastern thinking has, which science has shown to be true, we ARE all connected, in many ways, to each other, the universe etc.
We cannot be truly objective about the Universe, or ourselves as we live in it and are it.
Ideas must be looked at in relation to their entire environment, that includes, culture, the individual and even the universe itself.
Things don’t splinter, or schism, they are as Guy notes, there is a new part found or needing to be looked at, Psychology is especially good at this as a Science, Physics has numerous genus. They all have different names because they address different things, i.e it annoys me when people say “oh you studied Biology, when I’ve just told them I have a degree in Evolutionary Biology, a specific area in Bioscience as a whole.
Guy’s book sounds interesting, just from his basic description, of people as polyphonic, people are Polyphonic ,Consciousness (whatever it is) is a very understudied area, especially in this ‘multi- organisational’ way, from the world of Maths, proper Chaos theory and fractal mathematics (not this silly butterfly effect over simplification) starts at the complex and ties it to the simple and then watches the interplay.
He is right, the world is built between your Brain mechanisms, your cultural view, how you feel that day, what music you may be humming.
It is has also been adapted by people and other entities, present before your existence.
As XKCD pointed out, “I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that” is a very handy sentence for any Scientist, Philosopher, Thinker or any Person wishing to find greater understanding of anything.
The Big Electron idea as posited by R. Feynman, notes an amusing, near unfalsifiable yet possible consequences of Q.E.D (here Quantum Electrod Dynamics) “that there could only be one Electron in the whole universe, as they/it are able to move through spacetime in a way we are not”.
Jim Al-Khalili has on his Twitter front page the following ” Nothing moves THROUGH space faster than light but space itself can stretch at any speed.” I find this genuinely profound as it crosses the boundary between science, metaphysics and many other idea groups and disciplines, it is close to many Zen/Hindi ideas.
Great debate and discussion I shall be on the lookout for the book.
Nice to see you’ve met a Guy, literally who is of the mind to separate the Majesteria and be collegiate.
“Without Music, I could not have studied Science, without Science, I could not be a Musician” would be what I would say, if I was forced to sum it up in a sentence.
I apologise this is a little rambling in places, I’m doing it on the fly before heading out to a Festival, fantastic mental stimulation however!