Kind: captions
Language: en
the universe doesn't care about your
personal narrative you can just have met
the person that is going to be the love
of your life it's the culmination of
your whole project for happiness and you
step into the street and a truck hits
you and you die
that's mortality mortality isn't just
some far-flung event it's that every
moment
we are subject to fate in that way so
you can think of lots of little deaths
you experience whenever
all the projects and the plans you make
come up against the fact that the
Universe can just roll over them
the following is a conversation with
John ravaki a psychologist and cognitive
scientist at the University of Toronto I
highly recommend his lecture series
called Awakening from the meaning crisis
which covers the history and future of
Humanity's search for meaning
this is Alex Friedman podcast to support
it please check out our sponsors in the
description and now dear friends here's
John viveki
you have an excellent 50-part lecture
series online on the meaning crisis and
I think you describe
in the modern times an increase in
depression loneliness cynicism and wait
for it the term used
technically by Harry Frankfurt and
adopted by you so let me ask what is
meaning
what are we looking for
when we uh engage in the search for
meaning so when I'm talking about
meaning I'm talking about what's called
meaning in life not the meaning of life
that's some sort of metaphysical claim
meaning in life are those factors that
make people rate their lives as more
meaningful worth living worth the
suffering that they have to endure
and
you study that what you see is it's a
sense of connectedness
uh connectedness to yourself
to other people to the world and a
particular kind of connectedness you
want to be connected to things that have
a value and an existence independent of
your egocentric
sort of preferences and concerns this is
why for example having a child is
considered very meaningful because
you're connecting to something that's
going to have a life and a value
independent of you
now the question that comes up from me
well there's two questions one is why is
that at risk right now and then secondly
and
I think you have to answer the second
question first which is well yeah but
why is meaning so important why is this
sense of connectedness so important to
human beings why when it is lacking do
they typically fall into depression
potentially mental illness addiction
self-destructive behavior and so the
first answer I give you is well it's
that sense of connectedness and people
often express it metaphorically they
want to be connected to something larger
than themselves they want to matter they
don't mean it literally I mean if I
change you to a mountain you wouldn't
thereby say oh now my life is so
fulfilling right so what they're trying
to convey they're using this metaphor to
try and say they want to be connected
they want to be connected to Something
Real they want to make a difference and
matter to it and one way of asking them
well you know what's meaningful is tell
me what you would like to continue to
exist even if you weren't around anymore
and how are you connected to it and how
do you matter to it
that's one way of trying to get at what
is the source of meaning for you
is
if you were no longer there you would
like it to continue existing
that's not the only
part of the definition probably because
there's probably many things that aren't
uh source of meaning for me that maybe I
find beautiful
that I would like to continue existing
yes if it contributes to your life being
meaningful uh you're connected to it in
some way and it ha and it matters to you
and you matter to it and that you make
some difference to it that's when it
goes from being just sort of true good
and beautiful to being a source of
meaning for you in your life
is the meaning crisis a new thing or has
it always been with us is it part of the
human condition in general that's an
excellent question and part of the
argument I made in Awakening for the
meeting crisis is there's two aspects to
it
one is that there are perennial problems
perennial threats to meaning
and in that sense human beings are are
always vulnerable to despair you know
the Book of Ecclesiastes is it's all
vanity it's all meaningless
but there's also historical forces that
have made those perennial problems
more pertinent more pressing uh more
difficult for people to deal with and so
the meaning crisis is actually the
intersection of perennial problems
finding existing existence absurd
experiencing existential anxiety feeling
alienated and then pressing historical
factors which have to do with the loss
of the resources the tip that human
beings have typically crossed
historically and cross-culturally made
use of in order to address these
perennial problems
is there something potentially deeper
than just
a lack of meaning
uh that speaks to the the fact that
we're vulnerable to despair you know
Ernest Becker talked about the in his
book denial of death about the fear of
death and being an important motivator
in our life as William James said death
is the warm at the core of the human
condition is it possible that this kind
of
search for meaning
is uh
coupled or can be seen from the
perspective of trying to escape the
reality the thought of One's Own
mortality
yeah Becker and the terror management
theory that have come out of it now
there's been some good work
um around sort of providing empirical
support for that claim
um some of the work not so good uh so so
which aspects do you find convincing can
you still man that case and then can you
argue against it so what aspects I find
convincing is that Human Being Human
infinitude Being finite uh being
inherently limited is uh very
problematic for us
[Laughter]
given the extensive use of the word
problematic I like that you use that
word to describe one's own mortality
it's problematic because people sort of
on Twitter use the word problematic when
they disagree with somebody but this to
me seems to be the ultimate problematic
aspect of the human condition is that we
die and it ends I think I'm not just
agreeing with you but I'm trying to I'm
trying to get you to consider that your
mortality is not an event in the future
it's a state you're in right now
that's what I'm trying to get that's
what I'm trying to shift
um so your mortality is just a we talk
about something that causes mortality
fatal
yes but what we what we actually mean is
it's full of fate and I don't mean in
you know in the sense of things are
pre-written what I mean is this sense of
the universe doesn't care about your
personal narrative you can just have met
the person that is going to be the love
of your life it's the culmination of
your whole project for happiness and you
step into the street and a truck hits
you and you die
that's mortality mortality isn't just
some far-flung event it's that every
moment
we are subject to fate in that way so
you can think of lots of little deaths
you experience whenever
all the projects and the plans you make
come up against the fact that the
Universe can just roll over them
the death
is the indifference of nature of the
universe to your to your existence and
so in that sense it is always here with
us yeah but you're vulnerable in so many
ways other than just the ending of your
biological life
um because it's interesting if you rate
what people fear most death is not
number one they often put public
speaking as number one yeah because the
death of status or reputation can also
be a profound loss for for human beings
and drive them into despair
so as the terror management folks would
say as Ernest Becker would say that you
know a self-report on a survey is not an
accurate way to capture what is actually
at the core of the motivation of a human
being sure that we could be terrified of
death and we've from childhood since we
realized
the the absurdity of the fact that the
right ends we've learned to really
try to forget about it try to construct
illusions that um that allow us to
escape momentarily or for prolonged
periods of time the the realization that
we die okay so first I took it seriously
but now I want to say why there's some
empirical work that makes me want to
reconsider it so Terror management
theory is you do things like you give
people a list of words to read and you
and in those words in that in those
lists are words associated with death
cough and funeral and then you see what
happens to people and generally they
start to become more rigid in their
thinking they tend to identify with
their world view they lose cognitive
flexibility
that's if you present it to them in that
third person perspective but if you get
them to go in the first first person
perspective and imagine that they're
dying and that the people that they care
about are there with them
they don't show those responses in fact
they show us an increase in cognitive
flexibility and increase in openness see
so I'm trying to say we might be putting
the cart before the horse it might not
be death per se but the kind of meaning
that is present or absent in depth
there's the crucial thing for us by the
way to push back I don't think he took
it seriously I don't think you'd truly
Steel Man the case because uh you're
saying that death is always present with
us yes but isn't there a case to be made
that it is one of the major motivators
Nietzsche Will To Power Freud wanting to
have sex with your mother uh all the
different explanations of what is truly
motivating us human beings isn't there a
strong case you've made that this death
thing
is a really damn good
um if not anything a tool to motivate
the behavior of humans I'm not saying
that the avoidance of death is not
significant for human beings but I'm
proposing to you that human beings have
a capacity for considering certain
deaths meaningful and certain deaths
meaningless and people and we have lots
of evidence that people are are willing
to sacrifice their biological existence
for a death they consider meaningful are
you personally afraid of your death do
you think about it as a as somebody
who produces a lot of ideas records them
writes them down is a deep thinker
admire thinker and as the years go on
become more and more admired
does does it scare you that the ride
ends
um no I mean you have to talk to me in
all my levels I'm a biological organism
so something's thrown at my head I'll
docked and things like that
but if you're asking me do
I long to live forever no in the
Buddhist tradition there are practices
that are designed to make you aware of
simultaneously the horror of mortality
and the horror of immortality
the thought of living forever
is actually horrific to me
are those the only two options like
um
when you're sitting with a loved one
or watching a movie you just really love
or a book you really love you don't want
it to end
you don't necessarily always flip it to
the other aspect the the complete
opposite of the thought experiment what
happens if the book lasts forever
there's got to be a middle ground like
the snooze button sure you don't want to
sleep forever but maybe press the snooze
button and get an extra 15 minutes
so there's surely some kind of balance
that that fear seems to be
a source of an intense appreciation of
the moment in part
I mean that's what the stoics talked
about sort of the to meditate on wants
mortality sure seems to be a nice
wake-up call to
that life is uh full of moments that are
beautiful and then you don't get an
infinite number of them
right and the stoic response was not the
project of trying to extend the duration
of your life but to deepen those moments
so they become as satisfying as possible
so that when death comes it does not
strike you as any kind of Calamity does
that project ring true for your own
personal feelings
I think so do you think about your
mortality I used to I don't so much
anymore
um
part of it as I'm older and your
temporal Horizon flips
somewhere in your 30s or 40s you don't
live from your birth you live towards
your death that's such a beautiful
phrase the temporal Horizon flips that's
so true
that's so true at what point is that
that the the point before which the the
world of opportunity and possibility is
infinite before you yeah it's like Peter
Pan there's all these golden
possibilities and you fly around between
them yes very much and then when it
flips you start to look for a different
model uh well Socratic the stoic model
of Buddhism has also influenced me which
is more about weight
when I look at my desires
I seem to have two meta Desires in
addition to satisfying a particular
desire I want whatever satisfies my
desire to be real
and whatever is satisfying my desire to
not cause internal conflict but bring
something like peace of mind and so I'm
more and more move towards how can I
live such that those two meta desires
are a constant frame within which I'm
trying to satisfy my specific desires
what do you think happens after we die I
think mind and life go away completely
when we die and
I think that's actually
significantly important for the kind of
beings that we are
um we are the kinds of beings that can
come to that awareness and then we have
a responsibility
to decide how we're going to comport
ourselves towards it
on what that means the Mind goes away
like when
you're playing music and the last
instrument is put down the song is over
doesn't mean the song wasn't beautiful
doesn't mean the song wasn't complex
doesn't mean the song like didn't add to
the value of the universe in its
existence but it came to an end is there
some aspect in which some part of Mind
was there before the human
and remains after something like pan
psychism or is it too much for us
limited cognitive beings to understand
something like parent psychism I take it
seriously I don't think it's a
ridiculous proposal but I think it has
insoluble problems that make me doubt it
um
any idea that the mind is some kind of
ultimately immaterial substance also has
for me just
devastating problems those are the two
kinds of framework that people usually
propose
in order to support some kind of idea of
immortality I find both very problematic
the fact that we participate in
distributed cognition that most of our
problem solving is not done as
individuals but in groups this is
something I work on I've published on
that I think that's important
but most of the people who do work on
systems of distributed cognition think
that while there's such a thing as
collective intelligence
there's no good evidence that there's
Collective Consciousness in fact it's
often called Zombie Agency for that
reason
um and so while I think it's very clear
that no one person runs an airline
and there's a collective intelligence
that solves that problem I do not think
that collective intelligence supports
any kind of consciousness
and so therefore I don't think the fact
that I participate which I regularly and
reliably do in distributed cognition
gives me any reason to believe that that
participation grounds some kind of
consciousness
okay there's so many things to mention
there first of all distributed cognition
maybe that's a synonym for collective
intelligence so that means a bunch of
humans
individually are able to think have
cognitive machines
and uh are somehow able to interact the
process of dialogue as you talk about to
um morph different ideas together like
this ideal landscape together
is so interesting to think about okay
well you do have these fascinating
distributed cognition systems
but Consciousness does not
propagate in the same way as
intelligence yeah but
isn't there a case if we just look at
intelligence if we look at us humans as
a collection of smaller organisms yes
which we are and and so there's like a
hierarchy
um of organisms tiny ones work together
to form
tiny Villages that you can then start to
see as individual organisms that are
then also forming bigger Villages and
interacting different ways and function
becomes more and more complex and
eventually we get to us humans to where
we start to think well we're an
individual but really we're not there's
billions of organisms inside us are both
domestic and foreign
so uh isn't that building up
consciousnesses like turtles all the way
up to us our Consciousness why does it
have to stop us humans are we the only
like is this the face transition when it
becomes a zombie-like giant hierarchical
village that first like ah there's like
a singing Angels and it's Consciousness
is born in just us humans
do bacteria have Consciousness uh not
bacteria but maybe you could say
bacteria does but like the interesting
complicated organisms that are within us
have Consciousness I think it's proper
to argue and I have that like a
paramecium or bacteria has a kind of
agency and even a kind of intelligence
uh kind of sense making ability but I do
not think that we can attribute
Consciousness at least what we mean by
Consciousness this kind of
self-awareness this ability to
introspect
etc etc
to bacteria now the reason why
distributed cognition doesn't have
Consciousness I think it's a little bit
more tricky
um and I think there's no reason in
principle why there couldn't be a
Consciousness for distributed cognition
collective intelligence
in fact many you know philosophers would
agree with me on that point I think it's
more an issue of certain empirical facts
bandwidth uh density of connection speed
of information transfer Etc
it's conceivable that if we got some
horrible frankenstinian neural link and
we link to our brains and we had the
right density and Dynamics and bandwidth
and speed that a group Consciousness
could take shape I don't have any
argument in principle against that I'm
just saying those those contingent facts
do not yet exist and therefore it is
implausible that Consciousness exists at
the level of collective intelligence so
you talk about Consciousness quite a bit
so let's step back and try to sneak up
to a definition
what is consciousness for me there are
two aspects to answering that question
one is what's the nature of
Consciousness how does something like
consciousness easiest in an otherwise
apparently non-conscious universe and
then there's a function question which
is equally important which is what does
Consciousness do
the first one is obviously you know
problematic for most people like yeah
Consciousness seems to be so different
from the rest of the non-conscious
universe but I put it to you that the
function question is also very hard
because you are clearly capable
a very sophisticated
intelligent Behavior without
Consciousness you are turning the noises
coming out of my face hole into ideas in
your mind and you have no conscious
awareness of how that process is
occurring
so why do we have Consciousness at all
now here's the thing there's an extra
question you need to ask should we
answer attempt to answer those questions
separately or should we attempt to
answer them in an integrated fashion
I make the case that you actually have
to answer them in an integrated fashion
what Consciousness does
and what it is
we should be able to give it a unified
answer to both of those can you
try to elucidate the difference between
what Consciousness is and what it does
both of which are Mysteries as you say
State versus action
can you try to explain the difference
that's interesting that that's useful
that's important to understand so that's
putting me in a bit of a difficult
position because I actually argue that
trying to answer them separately is
ultimately incoherent
but what I can point to are many
published articles in which only one of
these problems is addressed and the
other is left unaddressed so people will
try and explain what qualia are how they
potentially emerge without saying what
do they do what problems do they helped
to solve how do they make the organism
more adaptive and then you'll have other
people who say oh no this is what the
function of Consciousness is but I don't
know I can't tell you I can't solve the
hard problem I don't know how qualia
exists so what I'm saying is many people
treat these problems separately although
I think that's ultimately an incoherent
way to approach the problem
so the hard problem is focusing on the
what it is yes so the qualia that the it
feels like something to experience a
thing that's what Consciousness is and
does is more about the functional
usefulness of the thing yes yes to to
the whole beautiful mix of cognition and
just function in everyday life okay
uh you've also said that you can do very
intelligent things
without Consciousness yes
clearly is that obvious to you yes
I don't know what I'm doing to access my
memory
it just comes up
and it comes up really intelligently
but the mechanisms that create
Consciousness could be deeply
interlinked with whatever is doing the
memory access that's doing the oh I
think so in cognition yes yes so I guess
what I'm trying to say in this will uh
probably sneak up to this question a few
times which is whether we can build
machines that are conscious uh
or machines that are intelligent human
level intelligence or Beyond without
building the Consciousness I mean
ultimately that's one of the ways to
understand what Consciousness is is to
is to build the thing we can we can
either sort of from the Chomsky way try
to construct models like he thinks about
language in this way try to construct
models and theories of how the thing
works or we can just build the damn
thing exactly and that's a
methodological principle
in cognitive science in fact one of the
things that uh sort of distinguishes
cognitive science from other disciplines
dealing with the nature of cognition in
the mind is that cognitive science takes
the design stance it asks well could we
build a machine that would not only
simulate it but serve as a bona fide
explanation of the phenomena
do you find any efforts in cognitive
science compelling in this direction
in terms of how far we are there's
there's uh on the computational side of
things
something called cognitive modeling
there's all these kinds of packages that
you can construct simplified models of
how the brain does things and see if
complex behaviors emerge uh do you find
any efforts in cognitive or what efforts
in cognitive science do you find most uh
inspiring and productive I think the
project of trying to create AGI
artificial general intelligence is where
I place My Hope of artificial
intelligence being of scientific
significance this is independent of
technological socioeconomic significance
which is already well well established
but
being able to say because of the work in
AI we now have a good theory of
cognition intelligence perhaps
Consciousness I think that's where I
place my bets is in the current
Endeavors around
artificial general intelligence and so
tackling that problem head on which is
now
become Central at least to a group of
cognitive scientists is I think what
needs to be done
and when you think about AGI do you
think about systems that have
consciousness
let's go back to what I think is at the
core of your general intelligence
so right now compared to even our best
machines you are a general Problem
Solver you can solve a wide variety of
problems in a wide variety of domains
and some of our best machines have a
little bit of transfer they can learn
this game and play a few other
well-designed rule-bound games but they
couldn't learn how to swim writer
Etc things like that
and so what's interesting is
what seems to come up this is some of my
published work and all these different
domains of cognition
across all these different problem types
is a central problem
and since we do have good sort of
psychometric evidence that we do have
some general ability that's a
significant component of our
intelligence
I made an argument as to what I think
that General ability is
and so
it's happening right now
the amount of information in this room
that you could actually pay attention to
is combinatory explosive
the amount of information you have in
your memory long-term memory and all the
ways you could combine it
combinatorial explosive
the number of possibilities you can
consider also combinatory explosive the
sequences of behavior you can generate
also combinatorial explosive and yet
somehow
you're zeroing in the right memories are
coming up the right possibilities are
opening up the right sequences of
behavior you're paying attention to the
right thing not infallibly so
but so much so that you reliably find
obvious what you should interact with in
order to solve the problem at hand
that's an ability that is still not
well understood within AGI
so filtering out the gigantic waterfall
of data right it's almost like a Zen
Cohen what makes you intelligent
is your ability to ignore so much
information and do it in such a way that
is somewhere between arbitrary guessing
and algorithmic search
and to a fault sometimes of course that
you based on the models you construct
you forget
you uh ignore things that you should
probably not ignore and that hopefully
we can Circle back to it Lux is related
to the meaning issue because the very
processes that make us adaptively
intelligent make us perennially
susceptible to self-deceptive
self-destructive Behavior because of the
way we Mis frame the environment in
fundamental ways
so to you
meaning is also
connected to ideas of wisdom and truth
and how we interpret and understand and
interact intellectually with the
environment yes so what is wisdom why do
we long for it how do we and where do we
find it what is it intelligence is what
you use to solve your problems because I
was just describing
rationality is how you use your
intelligence to overcome the problems of
self-deception that emerge when you're
trying to solve your problems so it's
that matter problem
and then the issue is do you have just
one kind of knowing I think you have
multiple ways of knowing and therefore
you have multiple rationalities
and so wisdom is to coordinate those
rationalities so that they are optimally
constraining and affording each other
so in that way wisdom is rationally
self-transcending rationality
right so life
is the kind of process where you jump
from rationality to rationality and uh
pick up a village of rationalities along
the way that then turns into wisdom yes
if properly coordinated you mentioned
framing yes so
what is framing is it a set of
assumptions you bring to the table in
how you see the world how you reason
about the world yeah how how you
understand the world so it depends what
you mean by assumptions if it by
assumption you mean a proposition
representational or rule I think that's
much more Downstream from relevance
realization I think relevance
realization refers to
um
again constraints on how you are paying
attention and so
for me talking about framing is talking
about
this process you're doing right now of
salience landscaping
what's Salient to you
and how is what Salient constantly
shifting in a sort of a dynamic tapestry
and how are you
shaping yourself
to the way that salience Landscaping is
aspectualizing the world shaping it into
aspects for interaction for me that is a
much more primordial process than any
sort of a beliefs we have and here's why
if we mean by beliefs you know a
representational proposition
then we're in this very problematic
position
because then we're trying to say that
propositions are ultimately responsible
for How We Do relevance realization
and that's problematic because
representations presuppose relevance
realization
so I represent this as a cup
the number of properties it actually has
and that I even have epistemic access to
is combinatory explosive I select from
those a subset
and how they are relevant to each other
insofar as they are relevant for me this
doesn't have to be a cup it could be
using it as a hat I could use it to
stand for the letter v
all kinds of different things I could
say this was the 10th billion object
made in North America
right representations presuppose
relevance realization they are right
they are therefore dependent on it which
means relevance realization isn't bound
to our representational structures it
can be influenced by them but they are
ultimately dependent on relevance
realization let's define stuff relevance
realization yes what are the inputs and
the outputs of this thing what is it
what are we talking about
what we're talking about is how you are
doing something very analogous to
evolution
so if you think about that adaptivity
isn't in the organism or in the
environment but in a dynamical relation
and then what does evolution do it
creates variation and then it puts
selective pressure and what that does is
that changes the niche constructions
that are available to a species it
changes the morphology
you also have a loop it's your sensory
motor Loop and what's constantly
happening is there are processes within
you that are opening up variation and
also processes that are putting
selection on it and you're constantly
evolving that sensory motor Loop so your
you might call your cognitive fittedness
which is how you're framing the world is
constantly evolving and changing I can
give you two clear examples of that one
right the autonomic nervous system
parasympathetic and sympathetic the
sympathetic system is biased to trying
to interpret as much of reality as
threat or opportunity the
parasympathetic is right is biased to
trying to interpret as much of the
environment as safe and relaxing and
they are constantly doing opponent
processing there's no little man in you
calculating your level of arousal
there's this Dynamic coupling opponent
processing between them that is
constantly evolving your arousal
similarly your attention you have the
default mode Network task Network the
default mode network is putting pressure
on you right now to mind wander to go
off to drift right and then the task
Focus network is selecting out of those
possibilities the ones that will survive
and go into and so you're constantly
evolving your attention Okay so there's
a natural selection of ideas that a
bunch of systems within you are
generating and then you use the natural
selection what is the selector the the
object that you're interacting with the
glass relevance realization once again
you just describe how it happens yes you
didn't describe what the hell it is so
what's the goal what are we talking
about so relevance realization is how
you interact with things in the world to
make sense of you just make sense of why
they matter what they mean to you to
your life yes and notice the language
you just use you're starting to use the
meaning in life language right they're
bad that's good okay that's good so what
that what what does that evolution of
your sensory motor Loop do it it
gives you and here I'll use the term for
Marlo Ponte it gives you an optimal grip
on the world
so let's use your visual attention again
okay here's an object
how close should I be to it
is there a right what you want to do
with it exactly exactly
so you have to evolve your sensory motor
Loop in order to get the optimal grip
that actually creates the affordance of
you getting to a goal that you're trying
to get to yeah but you're describing
physical goals
of manipulating objects but is so this
applies
the task the process of relevance
realization is not just about getting a
glass of water and taking a drink no
it's about
Falling in Love yeah of course what else
is there well there's uh there's there's
obviously between those two options I
can show you how you're optimally
gripping in an abstract cognitive domain
okay so a mammal goes by and most people
will say there's a dog
now why don't they say they might but
typically you know probabilistically
they'll say there's a dog they could say
there's a German Shepherd there's a
mammal there's a living organism there's
a police dog why that why there why do
they stop Eleanor Rush called these
basic level well what you find is that's
an optimal grip because it's it's
getting you the best overall balance
between similarity within your category
and difference between the other
categories it's allowing you to properly
fit to that object insofar as you're
setting yourself up to well I'm getting
so as many of the similarities and
differences I can on balance because
they're in a trade-off relationship that
I need in order to probably interact
with this mammal
that's optimal grip not right it's at
the level of your categorization
you evolve these
models of the world around you
and on top of them you do stuff like you
build representations like you said yes
what's the salience landscape salience
meaning attention landscape
so salience is what grabs your attention
or what results from you directing your
attention so I slap my hands that
Salient it grabs your attention your
attention is drawn to it that's bottom
up but I can also say you left big toe
and now it's Salient to you because you
directed your attention towards it
that's top down and again opponent
processing going on there so whatever
stands out to you what grabs your
attention what arouses you what triggers
at least momentarily some affect towards
it that's how things are salient what
salience I would argue is is how a lot
of unconscious relevance realization
makes information relevant to
working memory
that's when it now becomes online for
direct sensory motor interaction with
the world so you think the salience
landscape
the ocean of salience extends into the
subconscious mind
I think relevance does but I think when
relevance is recursively processed
relevance realization such that it
passes through sort of this higher
filter
of working memory and has these
properties of being globally accessible
and globally broadcast then it becomes
the thing we call salience look that's
that's that's really good evidence
there's really good evidence from my
colleague at UFT University of Toronto
Lynn hasher that that's what working
memory is it's a higher order relevance
filter that's why things like chunking
will get way more information through
working memory because it's basically
making it's basically monitoring how
much relevance realization has gone into
this information usually you have to do
an additional kind of recursive
processing and that tells you by the way
when do you need Consciousness when do
you need that working memory and that
salience Landscaping it's when you're
facing situations that are highly novel
highly complex and very ill-defined that
require you to engage working memory
okay got it so relevance realization is
in part the thing that constructs that
basic level thing of a dog when you see
it when you see a dog you call it a dog
not a German Shepherd not a mammal not a
biological meat bag it's a dog
wisdom
yes so what is wisdom
if we return I I think as part of that
we got to relevance realization
and then wisdom is is a accumulation of
rationalities he described the
rationality as a kind of uh starting
from intelligence much of puzzle solving
and then rationalities like the meta
problem of puzzle solving and then what
wisdom is the Meta Meta problem of
puzzle solving yes in the sense that
um The Meta problem you have when you're
solving your puzzles is that you can
often fall into self-deception you can
misframe self-deception right right so
whereas knowledge overcomes ignorance uh
wisdom is about overcoming foolishness
if what we mean by foolishness is
self-deceptive self-destructive Behavior
which I think is a good definition of
foolishness
and so what you're doing
is you're doing this recursive relevance
realization you're using your
intelligence to improve the use of your
intelligence and then you're using your
rationality to improve the use of your
rationality that's that recursive
relevance realization I was talking
about a few minutes ago think about a
wise person
they come into highly
often messy ill-defined complex
situations usually where there's some
significant novelty and what can they do
they can zero in on what really matters
what's relevant and then they can shape
themselves salience Landscaping to
intervene most appropriately to that
situation as they have framed it that's
what we mean by a wise person and that's
how it follows out of the model I've
been presenting to you so when you see
self-deception I mean part of that
implies that it's intentional
part of the mechanism of cognition
you're the modifying what you should
know for some purpose is that is that
how you see the word self-deception no
because I belong to a group of people
that think the model of self-deception
as lying to oneself ultimately makes no
sense yeah because in order to lie to
you I have to know something you don't
and I have to depend on your commitment
to the truth in order to modify your
behavior
I don't think that's what we do to
ourselves I think and I'm going to use
it in the technical term and thank you
for making space for that earlier on I
think we can ourselves which is
a very different thing than lying
ah so what is and how do we
ourselves technically speaking
Yeah Frankfurt and this is inspired by
Frankfurt and other people's work uh
based on frankford's work on
yeah classic essay
it's a pretty good title I think it's
one of the best things he wrote he wrote
a lot of good things the title or the
essay the essay okay
title's good too it's always an
icebreaker in certain academic settings
um
so let's contrast the artist
from the liar the liar depends on your
commitment to the truth
the artist is actually trying
to make you in-depth indifferent to the
question of Truth and modify your
behavior
by making things Salient to you so that
they are catchy to you
so
you know a prototypical example of
is a commercial a television
commercial
you watch these people
at a bar getting some particular kind of
alcohol and they're gorgeous and they're
laughing and they're smiling and they're
clear-eyed
you know that's not true
and they know you know it's not true but
here's the point
you don't care
because there's gorgeous people smiling
and they're happy and that's Salient to
you and that catches your attention and
so all you know go into a bar you know
that won't happen when you drink this
alcohol you know it yeah but you buy the
product because it was made Salient to
you
now you can't lie to yourself Lex
salients can catch attention but
attention can drive salience so this is
what I can do I can make something
Salient by paying attention to it and
then that will tend to draw me back to
it again which and you see what happens
which means it tends to catch my
attention more so that when I go into
the store that bottle of liquor catches
my attention
and I buy it you and that's
why is that because what you're
doing is being caught up in the salience
of things
independent from whether or not that
salience is tracking reality
is it independent or is it Loosely
connected because it's not so obvious to
me when I see happy people at a bar
that I don't in part believe that
well my experience has been maybe
different logically I can understand but
maybe there's a bar out there
well it's all happy people dancing in
fact most of the bars I go to these days
in Texas is pretty lots of happy people
I think you could I mean there's
probably variation although I think it's
very the true seeking in there but let's
say the intent is at least to try and
shut off your truth seeking it might not
completely succeed but that's the intent
at times it can completely succeed
because I can give you
pretty much gibberish
and never let it motivate your behavior
there's a there's a Sim there's a
episode from the classic Simpsons not
the modern Simpsons the classic symptoms
where the there's the aliens and they're
running for office in the United States
now I'm a Canadian so this doesn't quite
work for me but right and and this
speech goes like this my fellow
Americans when I was young I dreamed of
being a baseball but we must move
forward not backward upward not forward
twirling twirling towards Freedom yeah
and people go there's a rush yeah
nothing there's nothing there and yet
it's great satire because a lot of
political speech is exactly like that
there's nothing there right well so I'm
not saying all political speech I said a
lot no but there there's a fundamental
difference between and so hilarious I
remember that episode uh there's a
fundamental difference between that
absurd sort of non-secura speech and
political speech because one of the
things is political speech is grounded
in some sense of Truth and so if that
requires you talking about alternative
facts
and weird
self-destructive oxymoronic phrases
isn't that approaching pull pure
no I think I think pure uh
like the vacuum is uh is very difficult
to uh to get to but I get the point so
what exactly is
truth
is it possible to know I think Spinoza
is right about truth that truth is only
known by its own standard which sounds
circular there's a way in which he
didn't mean that circularly and I think
this is also conversions with Plato
these are two huge influences on me
I think we only know the truth
retrospectively when we when we go
through some process of
self-transcendence when we move from a
frame
to a more encompassing frame so that we
can see the limitations and the
distortions of the earlier frame you
have this when you have a moment of
insight Insight is you doing you're you
are re-realizing what is relevant
you're going oh oh
I thought she was aggressive
and angry she's actually really afraid
I was misframing this
right and you CH you change what you
find relevant you have those aha moments
so do you think it's possible
to get a a sense of objective
reality
so
is it possible to have to get to the
ground level of what something that you
can call objective truth
or is it are we always on Shaky Ground
I think those moments of transcendence
can never get us to an absolute view
from nowhere
all right and so this is Drew Hyland's
notion of finite Transcendence we are
capable of self-transcendence and
therefore we are creatures who can
actually raise the question of Truth or
goodness or beauty because I think
they're they all share this feature
but that doesn't mean we can transcend
to a godhood to some absolute view from
nowhere that takes in all information
and organizes it in a comprehensive
whole but that doesn't mean that truth
is thereby rendered valueless
um
I I I think a better term is real
and real and illusory are comparative
terms you only know that something's an
illusion
by taking something else to be real
and so we're always in a comparative
task but that doesn't mean that we could
we can somehow jump outside of our
framing in some final Manner and say
this is how it is from a God's eye point
of view so what do you think if I may
ask
uh of somebody like iron Rand and her
philosophy of objectivism
so what are the core principles that
reality exists independently of
Consciousness and that human beings have
direct contact with reality through
sense perception so they have that you
do have that ability to know reality
there's two things knowing that there's
an independent reality is not knowing in
that independent reality those are not
the same thing yeah but I think
objectivism would probably
say that our human reason is able to
have contact with that then I would
respond and say
you have to I believe in fact ultimately
in a Conformity theory of knowing that
what that the deepest kind of knowing is
when
there's a a contact a Conformity between
the mind with the embodied mind and
reality but and here's where I guess I
push back on on Rand I would say you
have to acknowledge personal knowledge
as real knowledge because if you don't
you're going to fall preyed amino's
paradox
amino's Paradox is you know it's in
Plato right
to no P well
if I don't know P I'm going to go
looking for it but if I don't know P how
could I possibly recognize it when I
found it
I have no way of recognize it I know I
have no way of knowing that I've found
it
so I must know P but if I know P then I
don't need to learn about it I don't
need to go searching
so learning doesn't exist knowledge is
impossible
the way you break out of that Paradox is
saying no no no it is partial it is
possible to partially know something I
can know it enough that it will guide me
to recognizing it but that's not the
same as having a complete grasp of it
because I still have to search and find
what I don't yet possess in my knowledge
if we so yeah partial knowledge has to
be real knowledge right personal
knowledge is still knowledge yes
what do you think about somebody like
Donald Hoffman who thinks the reality is
an illusion so complete illusion that
we're given this uh actually really nice
definition or idea that you talked about
that there's a tension between the the
illusory and the and what is real
he says that basically we taken that and
we ran with the reel to the point where
the Reel is not at all connected to some
kind of physical reality
well I hope to talk to him at some point
we were supposed to talk at one point
and so I have to talk in his absence
um I I think that first of all I think
saying that everything in his illusion
is like saying everything is tall it
doesn't make any sense it's a
comparative term
um something you have you you you have
to say against this standard of realness
this is an illusion
and
he uses arguments like from Evolution
which are problematic to me because it's
like well
you seem to be saying that evolution is
true that it really exists and
then
some of our cognition and a perception
has access to reality math and
presumably some science has access to
reality and then what he seems to be
saying is well
a lot of your everyday experience is
illusory but that we do have some
contact with reality whereby we can make
the arguments as to why most of your
experience most of your everyday
experience is an illusion but to me
that's not a novel thing that's that's
that's Descartes that's the idea that
most of our sense experience is
untrustworthy but the math is what
connects us to reality that's how he
interpreted the copernican revolution oh
look we're all seeing the sun rise and
move over and set and it's all an
illusion but the math the math gets us
to the reality well I think he he makes
a deeper point that most of cognition is
just is evolved and operates in the
illusory world how does he know that
things like cognition and evolution
exist
I think there's an important distinction
between evolution and cognition right no
no I'm just saying that's not the point
I'm making I'm making a point that he's
claiming that there are two things that
really exist
why are they privileged
he basically says that look the process
of evolution makes sense yes right like
it makes sense that you get complex
organisms from simple organisms through
the natural selection process here's how
you get to transfer information from
generation to generation it makes sense
and then he says that there's no
requirement for the cognition to evolve
in a way that it would actually perceive
and have direct contact with the
physical reality accept that cognition
evolved in such a way that it could
perceive the truth of evolution and you
can't treat Evolution like an isolated
thing Evolution depends on darwinian
Theory genetics it depends on
understanding plate tectonics the way
the environment changes it depends on
how chromosomes are structured actually
that's an interesting question to him
where I don't know if he actually would
push back on this is how do you know
evolution is real yes
foreign
I think he would be open to the idea
that it is part of the illusion we
constructed that there's some it's it's
it's it's in some sense it is connected
to reality but we don't have a clear
picture of it I mean you that's a that's
an intellectually honest statement then
if most of our cognition yeah as
thinking beings is operating at every
level in an illusory world
then it makes sense that this other one
of the main theories of science that's
evolution
is is also a complete part of this
illusory world right but then what
happens to the premise for his argument
leading to the conclusion that cognition
is illusory I I think it makes a very
specific argument about Evolution as an
explanation of why the world is of of
our cognition operating in the loser
world but that that's just one of the
explanations I I think the deeper
question is
why do we think we have contact with
reality with physical reality it's it we
could be very well living in a virtual
world
constructed by our by our minds in a way
that makes that world
deeply interesting in some ways whether
it's somebody playing a video game or
we're trying to through the process of
distributed cognition construct more and
more complex objects like why do we have
to why why does it have to be connected
to
like physics and planets and all that
kind of stuff okay so if we're going to
say like we're now considering it as a
possibility rather than it's a
conclusion based on arguments because
the arguments again will always rely on
stipulating that there is something that
is known these are the features of
cognition cognition is capable of
Illusion that's a true statement you're
somehow in contact with the Mind why is
the mind have this privileged contact
and other aspects like my body do not so
that's but let's put that aside and now
let's just consider it now when it when
we put it that way it's not an epistemic
question anymore it's an existential
question and here's my reply to you
there's two possibilities either the
illusion is one that I cannot discover
sort of you know the The Matrix on
steroids or something there's no way no
matter what I do I can't find out that
it's an illusion
or
it's an illusion but I can find out that
it's an illusion
those are the two possibilities nothing
changes for me if those are the two
possibilities because if I could not
find possibly find out
it is irratio