Philosophy

Goldilocks retold

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Once upon a time Goldilocks chanced upon a baby bear’s bowl of porridge that was just right for the eating.  Sometime later, scientists took a fresh look at the fact of a universe that happened to be just right for the emergence of life, and recognised that the necessary fine tuning of the manifold preconditions, the ‘physical constants’, seems more like a contrivance than a coincidence – a conspiracy of coincidences – so named the ‘Goldilocks enigma’ because there is no settled evidence for it beginning other than by chance.  But what if both scenarios are true: chance and non-chance – the evidence for the co-existence of chance and non-chance possibilities being everywhere in the world that surrounds us?  Then perhaps the enigma is actually a paradox which reflects the true state of existence – something we cannot reduce to our logical truths by which we demarcate the facts as either right or wrong, true or false, possible or impossible.  Paradoxically, there is more to the fact of existence than the prerequisite of an explanation that requires itself to be logical.  And it is logic, not truth, that requires the facts to be logical.  Perhaps our belief in logic is holding us back – believing that logic gives us exclusive access to the ultimate truth – a truth to withstand all contradiction.

Perhaps paradox is nearer to ‘the truth’ than the logic that demands its resolution.  So let’s begin with three truisms: ‘the universe’ is vast, ‘everything’ and ‘contains’ life.  Given the scale and scope of it all, together with the potential diversity of planetary environments, then the right conditions for life on more than one of these planets becomes a loaded possibility.  And though we see life as a novel possibility, it is explained as an effect of causes that subsist within existing boundaries of possibility.  Yet the effect causes profound changes.  It looks like non-living causes determine the mix of possible preconditions, but, ultimately, it is the potential for life that sets the limits.  Furthermore, that potential remains a defiant mystery, regardless of how much we learn about the preconditions for life on earth, or indeed the preconditions for different types of life on different kinds of planet.  Moreover, no amount of causal analysis explains how effects ratchet up the course of change, beginning in the observable differences between cause and effect.  Indeed the paradox at the heart of existence is the pre-existence of its possibilities, despite their probable absence in certain forms at certain times – subsequently to ‘emerge’ in the times and events an observer chances upon, in the form of co-incidence called ‘reality’.

Mike Laidler

Horizons

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Whatever else we can know about the beginnings and becomings of the universe, we know it hosts, in us, a reality quite unlike the nature we can find by looking to a universe without – that reality being the fact of our awareness. It is as if the universe has evolved to incorporate something extra, through us, which we know to be real enough simply because we are aware of the fact of awareness in existence – a fact that now seems to exist in addition to everything else. And if that fact only seems to be the case, then the fact of that seeming is still enough to make the case.

Mike Laidler

The God of fact

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Belief is our consolation in the face of uncertainty.  It is nice to believe that the truth is out there and that the facts can move us along towards its realisation, yet the path is long and tortuous and fraught with uncertainties, and dogma can easily intervene with the answer that requires us to look no further.   It is in the realms of dogma that belief comes face to face with disbelief; and though it might seem that disbelief has freed itself from a particular delusion, the disbelief upholds nothing more than an alternative belief about an issue that continues to test our understanding – a fact that passes unnoticed by those who continue to believe otherwise.  The resultant disgregation of beliefs occurs because ‘the truth’ remains the most unbelievable uncertainty of all – a bastion of contradictions accommodating panjandrums of belief – only it is the dogma of professing to have possession of the definitive facts that prevents us from knowing it.

  • We are given to believe things when we do not know, we take to know things when we don’t see the belief.
  • We like to believe that the truth is out there, but it remains a belief, and we can know it only as our version of truth, based upon what we are prepared to believe.
  • If disbelief is a form of belief, then we can’t disbelieve in belief, despite believing otherwise.
  • There is more of dogma than fact in the belief that truth will rid us of contradiction.
  • Dogma exchanges the realistic anxiety of uncertainty for an unrealistic illusion of certainty.

Belief is bigger than religion.  We don’t need religions in order to believe in God,  except that shared beliefs give people an increased feeling of being right.  The same is true of atheism, despite its focus on a form of disbelief; and the fact that atheism is no antidote to religion is evident in the influence of Buddhism as a renowned atheist religion.   In fact, belief is the common denominator in all things we profess to know, and despite all the shared dialogue we continue to perceive the truth as a dichotomy between right and wrong, which we then resolve to our own personal and cultural satisfaction in terms of what we happen to believe, aided by the facts we recruit to our cause.   Meanwhile science holds on to its own belief that the facts will tell us what to know and show us the way – as if factual knowledge is sufficient to do away with belief.

  • Whereas an ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’, we have nowhere to look in the absence of a frame of reference in what to believe?
  • We can’t avoid belief by not believing in it.
  • Belief sustains the image of factual certainty that the fact cannot supply.
  • Belief is the God we worship in the name of fact.
  • Knowing that we know is more a fact of belief than knowledge.

Mike Laidler

Leadership and Democracy

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We use the vote to tell our governments what we think, but how do we know what to think?  Does making a decision on the basis of the available evidence mean that our reasoning is balanced for us by that evidence?  And can we mean what we say or do if the brain makes us do it under the influence of its inputs?  In fact, are we just being carried along on a tide of influences that appear to us as our opinions?  Is this why our choices get skewed by the facts that happen to grab our attention or the past experiences that bias our views?  Then what does this say about voting in democracies that are meant to operate on the balance of public opinion?  Are we any better when it comes to collective decision-making?

Can a consensus of opinions draw us nearer to the truth?  When confronted with an irresolvable dilemma it might seem reasonable for an individual to commit the choice to the toss of a coin.  However, we don’t want to commit to chance important choices on matters of national policy, so we might listen to the debates and take note of the opinion polls giving us a statistical insight into the balance of public opinion?  But can we really claim to know the collective mind?  Can we rely upon the statistics to give us the facts?  Can democratic opinion resolve a dilemma in any event?  Is the opinion of the masses any less fickle than the singular decision of a dominating leader?

Does democracy enshrine the sovereignty of the majority over ‘the right thing to do’?  Ironically, our dilemmas appear to be most acute when we give ourselves an either/ or predicament.  So what can the statistics reveal about issues that split a population down the middle?  Suppose there are millions of coins in a bag of national treasures and they happen to tumble out at random.  They would tend towards a balance of 50/50, heads and tails, with the trend towards this balance increasing as the number of coins increases – the reason being that the coins don’t know what they are doing.  So when our mass choices at elections and referenda tend towards such a balance of opinions, might this not mean that the statistics are indeed telling us something about ourselves – that the balance of collective opinion is no better than chance?

Mike Laidler

True colours

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Understanding the world we live in is not a matter for science alone, because science remains embedded in the psychology and philosophy framing our understandings. Nor is nature being exclusively scientific and mathematical in accommodating our unscientific theories. And even our best theories can be found to dissolve into unknowns that are surrounded by beliefs and misunderstandings. Indeed an appropriate understanding might entail foregoing our aspirations to ‘certain knowledge’ as the epitome of truth – and the reason is simple, for our theories cannot capture a cosmos that is bigger than us by concentrating on an abstract, lifeless, insensate version of nature as the real fact of it.

Then what of reality? The fact that reality now contains the medium of perception and understanding shows that things have changed radically from the anaemic truth we look to and seek to promote as its objective explanation. In fact, matters of truth and reality become relevant only in the presence of an inquiring mind. So we begin by knowing that we live in a medium that is more than the material facts that know nothing, but then we pretend to demote that subjective reality in order to discover a greater truth about its origin in a nature that is devoid – in a reductive truth that we imagine might explain for us the fact of subjective existence, as if that truth could ever exist apart from the imagination.

So what can we understand about the extent of a universe that apparently expands to exceed itself in the evolution of appearances and understanding? Where might we begin? What can we prioritise as the factual basis for an explanation of existence? We like to think that we can begin at the beginning, but explanation is a secondary truth and the notion of ‘beginnings’ is as much of a psychological threshold. And whereas we learn from experience that a new beginning marks a change from what was, explanation tries to identify its own origins with the thing explained, as if there is no difference – as if explanation begins and ends with the facts referenced, as if it is the facts that have explained things to us. However, we learn from the fallibilities of our explanations that there is an unavoidable difference, that explanation marks a new beginning in a nature that has no cause to explain things to itself.

We have invented explanation as a means of explaining things to ourselves on the pretext that the facts are in charge; and by affiliating our retrospective observations with the idea of causality, we demonstrate to ourselves that our suppositions are real, that indeed we can eliminate ourselves from the equation by being objective – by allowing the facts to speak for themselves. In fact, explanation is a myth we hold onto in the belief that the facts can ‘explain things to us’ and show us, by what they are, what can and cannot happen next.   Thereby we deceive ourselves in believing that the facts select themselves and stand alone as concepts of necessity ‘leading us’ to an explanation of existence, including ourselves, in the pre-existence of causes, or nature, or God, even to the existence of alternative forms of existence which, by comparison to everything else we know, amount to forms of non-existence.

Paradoxically, in countenancing the possibility of a comparative reality of non-existence we find ourselves there – in a mind observable as no more than a brain generating motives, purposes, reasons and desires now existing as a part of nature. But we also know these qualities are neither typical of nor fundamental to that nature; yet in thinking about ourselves as a part of a nature containing thought we catch this erstwhile nature accomplishing something new and unnatural – as we think. Thereby, it becomes self-evident, as only it can, that we occupy a reality that can be one thing and another – a reality which challenges our ideas of existence and non-existence – since it is now apparent, in the fact of their emergence, that things now exist which cannot be identified as something else, in things as they were; but neither can they be written off as ‘immaterial’.

The nature of change shows us something remarkable about the nature of nature – that the ordinary is filled with the extraordinary, which we then deem to explain in terms of things as they were, especially when there is nothing else to see. However, change cannot be adequately explained by that means – otherwise we would be concluding that things hadn’t really changed. And this debate about fact and change goes to the heart of our ability to perceive nature and ourselves, bearing in mind that self-perception is not an original part of nature as we see it.   So it should be of no surprise to us, that this tangle of explanatory deficiencies has its roots in the certainties we attach to our perceptions in the everyday.

For instance, an inquiring mind might well wonder about the true nature of sound, light and colour – is it in the reality of the unperceived, or does it depend upon a convergence of possibilities within an emergent reality of mind – in the new nature of perception? And does our qualification to know as much not come from the facts of perception known only to us? Then are we not entitled to say that perception adds something to the physical world – that perception generates the sounds and colours in life, in ‘bringing them to life’; so might it also be true to say that without this living perception such ‘things’ exist in an incomplete state of reality, in a truth ‘for sure’, which is not the whole truth? Even so, why should this realisation endow us with an absolute knowledge of the yet wider reality, in the possibility of things to come? Is it not feasible that our truths could remain subject to endless conjecture for as long as we cannot conceive of the possibility that they too exist as a part of a much bigger truth, beyond explanation in terms of things as they are now?

Mike Laidler

Seven wonders of existence

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It is little wonder, in the light of what we know, that our cause to wonder changes, indeed grows, in the light of what we come to know. It should be of no surprise then to find that official listings of the ‘Seven wonders of …’ remain inadequate despite their range. Fortunately, Wikipedia offers a suitably democratic forum for further resolution; after all, ‘a wonder’ can only belong to the mind that wonders, and cannot be prescribed by an authority that tells us what to wonder about – a point emphasised by no less of a mind than that of Albert Einstein.

It is with some bewilderment then, that I find cause to wonder about a conspicuous omission from Wikipedia’s coverage. Despite all the interest, I can find no listing for the wonders of the universe or existence? Nor can I find evidence elsewhere for the topics being addressed separately. Therefore I am moved to fill the gap with some interim suggestions, in humble recognition of the fact that this is not a task I can accomplish on my own. So I would like to get the ball rolling by making the following tentative suggestions for a provisional listing of the ‘Seven wonders of the universe’, which I see as being a subset of a bigger issue, namely, the ‘Seven wonders of existence’ – a topic which I felt a little more able to expand upon below:

Seven wonders of the universe

1. The ‘big bang’/ inflation
2. Space-time
3. Gravity/ strings/ branes
4. Stars, galaxies and black holes
5. Dark matter/ energy
6. Quantum uncertainty
7. Lawfulness/ order

Seven wonders of existence

Preamble: In compiling this list I am mindful that the notion of ‘wonders of existence’ evokes the related idea of a mystery. And in this centenary year of Einstein’s enduring masterwork, it might be fitting to defer to the master’s insight – that although wonder is the driving force of inquiry, no amount of discovery is likely to prove sufficient to do away with the need for ever more discovery, or our underlying awe of the persisting mystery of it all. Suffice it for me to add the following observation: that we cannot dispel the mystery of existence by finding out how it works, since the facts can show how it works only because it exists.

1. Energy: The universal presence, prime mover and perpetuator. The formless former. We ‘understand it’ as ‘a thing’ in transition – a beginning with no discernible beginning, the progenitor of other beginnings – the ‘sub-thing’ at the source of all things, which we associate with things as they are and then as they change again to become more than they were.

2. Matter: The form of ‘the thing’ seen as its substantive nature and explained as a conversion of energy. A locus of space and time wherein the physical earth exhibits dimensionality whilst being one thing and another in a relativistic state of reality – massive yet diminutive, solid yet filled with space, inert yet brimming with life – risen of a darkness and oblivion that is now filled with light and thought.

3. Life: The synergy of structure, function and organisation within a motility appearing as a radical change in the nature of nature – re-animating it with need, drive, motivation and purpose – adorning the material universe with properties that were hitherto absent from and alien to its character and reflecting the inexplicable fact that every living thing is made of stardust coming to life, yet it all remains as it was beneath the surface, unliving and unchanged.

4. ‘Being’: The pivot of reality. The larger character of things. An evolved state. The perceived nature of ‘reality’ manifest as a pattern of activity built upon previous patterns. We see the process of becoming in the shaping of reality; but it is not possible to predict the shape of things to come by examining the possibilities obtaining beforehand – as if the nature of dust can reveal the nature of life.

5. Awareness: Sight seeking insight. The subject of subjectivity – vacillating between awareness ‘of’ and awareness ‘in’. Being beholds itself in awareness, forming the sense of ‘I’ and locating its recognition in a source seen as giving rise to the perception, which is also the way regard is paid to an outside world. Nevertheless, there is more to awareness than its rendition as a ‘self’ contrived in the desire for its own perception; but to the extent that we obsess over ‘self-awareness’ we lose the ability to see perception as anything other than a fact owing to its object – which is, in the case of ourselves, ‘ourselves’ – in a self we feel obliged to look for as a part of a world that apparently doesn’t know it is being observed.

6. Mind: The font of meaning and belief. The differentiation of awareness into conscious thought. The purposive selector. The arbiter of the arbitrary. The agent of knowledge, deliberation and realisation known to itself as the person. Knowledge introduces the paradox of the knower choosing to know whilst deferring to the facts for an authority they do not have – as if the facts tell us what to know – a stratagem that breaks down spectacularly in the bid to know ourselves. In the same vein we try to reduce our ethical deliberations to independent matters of logic and reason, as if to put them in charge. However, the expansion of the mind (and reality) involved in getting to know suggests that our minds are adumbrated by something bigger, which doesn’t belong to the facts that remain oblivious to what is known about them.

7. Power: The capacity to be. The possibility for there to be possibilities. The ineffable isness that is simultaneously one thing and another, nothing and all things. The dynamic fulcrum of stability and change moving between nothing and something, chaos and order, cause and effect, chance and synchronisation, oblivion and knowledge. Things in existence occupy a power in being which we tend to ascribe to the process of becoming, yet in everything we know of ourselves and the rest of existence, we discover that it is all remains a mere reflection of a greater power to be – an holistic power that is at least sentient, because we are.

Mike Laidler

Being Realistic

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Who can claim that there is no such thing as truth without affirming the truth of their denial? Who can attest to the absence of meaning without upholding what they mean? Whose experiences can lay claim to the facts? Who can countenance the mind of God, or know by default that there is nothing to behold? How can we know what is ours, even of our thoughts – does it suffice to think that that our brains are doing the thinking for us? Can we see the bigger picture in its elements, by recognising the greater in the lesser or the end in its beginning? Does reality reveal to us its beginning and end in our realisations?

Mike Laidler

Words of Reason

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If there was no ambiguity about the nature of ‘the real’ there would be no need to single out or believe in the fact of it. As it happens, most of us live in a literal reality – our understandings being shaped by the words used to divine ‘the real’, with the intellect aspiring to truths couched in words of reason, echoing facts said to speak for themselves. Yet words are but foils for ‘the truth’, expounding a logic drawn from the precepts of which we explain our understandings – or is it understand our explanations? – in any case, being expressly validated as a outlook that defers to the facts, as if the facts tell us what to know. But this derived form of realism sidesteps the real task of philosophy – to expose the fictions and unseen contradictions generated by a reasoning that sees no greater truth than itself. For despite knowing that the reasons of today can turn into the regrets of tomorrow, we dutifully abandon our doubts and rationalise away problematic truths with ever more sophisticated forms of sophistry – thereby to convince ourselves that the rhetoric of reason remains our ultimate mentor – as if it is ‘the truth’ that abhors the contradictions – as if the intellectual impasse of contradiction also delimits the nature of ‘the facts’.

Mike Laidler

Points of view

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Every point of view is a microcosm of the bigger picture, which we do not see because of our focus upon the facts within our view.  Nor can all the points of view in the world add up to that bigger picture, as if they can capture it all and perceive full-on the reality that remains greater in its inexplicable power to be – as if ‘explanation’ can equate to that power in which reality perceives itself.

Mike Laidler

Knowing Belief

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Reality may be seen as a plurality of the physical and metaphysical, more especially because the ‘thinking makes it so’ – for whilst the physical world remains essentially insensible and objective the metaphysical becomes personal and subjective. This form of metaphysics is evident in the nature of thought thinking about itself: ‘I think therefore I am’ – knowledge being a state of mind discernible in the recognition of its own inferences. However, our obsession with the inference of a reality beyond inference leads us to infer that real knowledge belongs to external facts that know nothing, as if they can also explain for us the transition to a knowing universe and demonstrate that the fact of the knowing is a change of less significance than ‘the facts’, in the greater glory of their objective oblivion.

It seems, to those who care to look, that knowledge is a minefield of assumptions beginning with the mind’s inferences about itself. Not surprisingly, popular forms of factual knowledge purport to minimise the need for inference – so in knowing for sure that Paris is the capital of France we may also rest assured that other forms of factual knowledge will not lead us astray. But such knowledge masks its own deficiencies and our ignorance of a deeper truth – that all ‘knowing’ is built upon inferences fashioned into beliefs. Indeed it is belief, rather than fact, that is the patron of knowledge, actively tuning the known by turning and pitching one understanding upon and against another; and no matter whether it ends in agreement or disagreement, that end is mediated by belief because the facts can’t tell us what to know.

Belief and knowledge are more alike than we might imagine, yet we tend to believe that knowledge displaces belief, which is why the ‘knowledgeable’ are dumfounded by what others are prepared to believe in disregard of the ‘known facts’. However, the knowing adds something to those facts, and the conclusions we draw go beyond the facts, entering into the realms of belief by the fact that we are drawing conclusions, and in particular because we feel the need to do so. So whether or not we are ‘in the know’ we are all using beliefs of one sort or another to put that knowledge in perspective, and it is the perspective that determines what we are prepared to make of ‘the facts’. Of course belief and knowledge are not static, then it is a matter of belief whether we take the facts to be static – and in every discipline the basic facts are open to reinterpretation, or not, depending the beliefs upon which that discipline is founded, and by which means the discipline gains its purpose. Indeed, to know is to believe we know, but to truly know is to know we believe and that we ‘believe in order to understand’, knowing that knowledge is built upon the myths by which we ‘explain the inexplicable’.

Mike Laidler