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To Susan: Stones, Sticks, and Snakes
I suppose many of us who are tired of intellectuals’ claptrap are either already fond of the following anecdote, or will be fond of it once we’ve read it:
Real, lived experience should always trump fancy mental models, amirite? Pity, then, that our real, lived experience is fancy mental models. What we experience isn’t raw data, but something already heavily processed by our unconscious mental models before we’re even aware of it. We can compare the tale of the stone to the tale of the stick and the snake:
Yes. It’s a TEDx excerpt. Snicker if you want. But the anecdote takes about five minutes. A jolly Australian walks through the bush. He feels a stick scratch his leg. Then he nearly dies. Six months later, he’s walking through the bush again, he feels a venomous snake bite his leg, and yet he’s completely fine. Why?
Because raw sensation isn’t.
During the first walk, before our jolly Australian is even aware of it, his brain decides to ignore the irritated nerve endings frantically signalling to it that they’ve been envenomated in favor of the (completely unconscious) hypothesis that he’s likely just scratched his leg on a stick. During the second walk, his brain, remembering what the snake bite felt like (a stick scratching his leg), receives a similar sensation (really getting his leg scratched by a stick this time) and goes nuts: Help! Snake! We’re dying!
His brain’s second interpretation results in excruciating pain, and not because the guy’s just a wimp. (Yeah, yeah, I hear some of you mutter, “He gives TEDx talks – how could he not be a wimp?”) Whether we’re wimpy or tough, even a “raw experience” as primal as pain is not raw at all but an experience constructed by our brain’s subconscious models, whether we like it or not.
From a biological perspective, our brains don’t have to model reality correctly. They only have to model reality well enough for us to survive. There’d be no reason to suppose we could survive without perceptions “good enough” at perceiving what’s really there, but if an untruthful heuristic was close enough to the truth to help keep us alive in our ancestral environment, we can’t blame our brains for using that heuristic today – and entirely without our permission, too! Even so, we’re spirited beings. We can insist on being more than our biology, on using our brains for inquiry rather than just survival. Moreover, our heuristics may not be as bad as they’re sometimes painted:
Some researchers of cognitive bias, like Kahneman and Tversky, disbelieve that humans reason in a Bayesian way. Others, like ET Jaynes, point out that the problem with flesh-and-blood humans is that they’re capable of much more sophisticated Bayesian reasoning than researchers may have in mind, and that researchers’ failure to see this and account for the fact that their subjects may not share all the same information or pursue the same goals as the researchers explains many instances of supposed “cognitive bias”. (p 162)
When @susanquinn said in Bridging the Abyss, “The first reality to acknowledge is there’s no objective reality,” she, as @madpoet said, got our hackles up. None of us would actually throw stones at Susan and ask, “Feel real enough to you?” but we might be tempted to invite her to find a stone to kick while we asked her the same question. Susan said of her own assertion, “Yes, I see the conflict already in my statement.” Later on in the comments she agreed that objective reality exists, though our knowledge of it does not. But because our knowledge of reality (whether it comes from exalted cogitations or mundane experience) is … our only knowledge of reality – the only experience of reality we have – it’s not surprising that we often treat our knowledge as if it were reality itself. Being human means being prone to the mind projection fallacy:
The mind projection fallacy is a logical fallacy first described by physicist and Bayesian philosopher E.T. Jaynes. It occurs when someone thinks that the way they see the world reflects the way the world really is, going as far as assuming the real existence of imagined objects.[1] That is, someone’s subjective judgments are “projected” to be inherent properties of an object, rather than being related to personal perception. One consequence is that others may be assumed to share the same perception, or that they are irrational or misinformed if they do not.
To make things worse, even if we were perfect little Coxbots (inference machines capable of perfectly reasoning even in the face of uncertainty), we could, given sufficiently different prior information, still disagree with one another. In a case like this, otherwise-perfect reasoning, if marred by the mind projection fallacy, would have us warring over differing “realities” (perceptions of reality) even though no “reality” (perception of reality) was wrong.
Susan’s quip, “The first reality to acknowledge is there’s no objective reality,” is thus a punchy exaggeration acknowledging how humans really behave – acknowledging that all our knowledge, including the realest of our “raw experience” (which our brain already cooks the book on), is subjective; that we’re so good at the mind projection fallacy we reflexively believe our perceptions are reality; and that we consequently find it easy to demand that “Everyone has to share our perceptions and agree with them.”
Reflexively supposing our perceptions are reality is not wrong. Often, this supposition is quite sensible and very necessary: when a truck’s about to run you over is not the time to doubt your perception of the truck if you want to live! It’s not wrong, but it is incomplete, a reflex we must sometimes override in order to be more realistic – more honest, more truthful.
It’s a reflex we find ourselves overriding less, though, when we’re among those whose perceptions overlap with ours, those with whom we share a history of common experience. That’s one reason to prefer “our own kind”: second-guessing our trust in our own perceptions is distressing, especially when we already feel threatened, because it means second-guessing a reflex that not only simplifies life, but safeguards it.
Much of what’s called “being healthy” amounts to having perceptions that are socially normal. When we’re “healthy,” our perceptions – our five senses, our pain-sense, even our moral sense – seem to work much as others’ seem to work. It’s not surprising, then, when conservatives assert a “healthy society” is one that sets standards declaring which perceptions are normal and therefore “healthy”: without those standards, how would we even tell what “healthy” is? Everyone second-guessing everyone’s perceptions is paralyzing. If we can agree to a standard of normalcy for “enough” perceptions, on the other hand, we can get on with life.
When we agree to that, we’re agreeing, not to avoid the mind projection fallacy (since that’s impossible in daily life: none of us has enough time or energy to always avoid it), but to share a mind projection fallacy, to agree that the world really is a certain way just because we all agree to see it the same way.
No wonder tensions can run high when we discover not all of us do see something the same way. No wonder we start wondering whether those disagreeing with us are “sick,” “a menace to their own kind,” or “not even interested in our survival.” Second-guessing our own individual perceptions is distressing enough. Second-guessing the perceptions we thought we had in common is even worse. At that point, it’s tempting to throw stones at the “sickos,” demanding, “Feel real enough to you, punk?” But then, the stick and the snake felt real enough, too, despite each being an illusion of the other.
Published in General
Well, Midge, I’m glad my “punchy exaggeration” contributed to such a fascinating and informative post! I’m not sure about this statement, though:
If we can agree to a standard of normalcy for “enough” perceptions, on the other hand, we can get on with life.
When we agree to that, we’re agreeing, not to avoid the mind projection fallacy (since that’s impossible in daily life: none of us has enough time or energy to always avoid it), but to share a mind projection fallacy, to agree that the world really is a certain way just because we all agree to see it the same way.
This statement makes we wonder if we agree anymore to share the MPF, and if there is much more disagreement than agreement these days. Which would explain this:
No wonder tensions can run high when we discover not all of us do see something the same way.
Much to chew on. Thank you.
The TED Talk was very interesting. I have always found the autonomic nervous system to be fascinating. The idea that a signal–any kind, not necessarily pain–can be “handled” without going all the way to the brain is really cool.
I had a very interesting experience about fifteen years ago. We had bought a new house, and we decorated the outside with about twenty giant hanging plants that needed constant care. They were easy for me to lift when they were out of water, but they were really heavy to lift to put back after I had watered them. Near the end of the summer, my shoulders were in terrible pain.
I went to see an orthopedic surgeon. He put me through a series of tests to see how well my shoulders were working. Seeing that they were not, he sent me off to get an MRI.
When I next saw him, he was really surprised by what the MRI had revealed. My shoulders showed signs of disintegration around the edges, which is pretty common. However, there was no way the little bit of disintegration he was seeing in the MRI was responsible for the pain I was in. So he sent me off to see a neurosurgeon. He did that because he said he couldn’t figure out what was going on. He was surprised that the pain was telling me not to lift my arms above a certain height to protect my shoulders, when in fact my shoulders weren’t that bad. So why was I experiencing so much pain?
It was actually pretty amazing to meet the neurosurgeon. This doctor had headed up the neurosurgery unit for the military during the Gulf War. He was a superstar surgeon. He was on Cape Cod because he loved to sail. :)
Anyway, he ran his own tests and concluded that the orthopedic doctor was correct, that the pain I was feeling had nothing to do with my shoulders. It was three collapsed vertebrae in my upper neck. By the way, Rush Limbaugh had exactly the same condition I had. It was what led him to take painkillers too much. I heard Rush describe this one day, and I had to laugh. We are a lot alike. The surgery to fix this condition requires going in through the throat and then sealing off the space between the vertebrae with some type of cement. Rush didn’t have the surgery and neither did I. Too funny.
I saw the neurosurgeon twice. And he tried really forcefully to talk me into the surgery. But the idea of someone getting to my spine via my throat just scared me too much.
[continued from comment 4]
The orthopedic doctor told me that he understood why I was afraid of the surgery (although I could not have had a better surgeon!). He said the surgery posed its own risks. He said I might recover on my own without the surgery. He said about 3 percent of people who have collapsed disks recover. The jelly from the middle of the disk just dries up and stops putting pressure on the spine. He said to try rest. He gave me his blessing to try. :)
I did. And my knowledge that the pain I was feeling really was just my brain trying to trick me allowed me to ignore it. The pain went away eventually. I don’t have hanging plants. And I can’t put my head back too far for too long. But those are small prices to pay for not having that horrible surgery. I’m basically okay now.
Pain can be a very imprecise diagnostician. :)
Healthy does not just mean conforming to society though. Psychotic is psychotic. There is something going wrong at a biological level. The brain is not working right.
For the simple things, we tend to process them much like each other, as best we can tell. Had the man seen the snake or the stick, he would have processed the information correctly. Vision is our primary sense for making sense of things logically.
It is the unseen, complex things that, I agree, we reach different conclusions about. However, sometimes those differences are not just differences, but someone is wrong.
That is true. But if you cannot behave normally because you cannot perceive normally, that’s generally a sign of disability or illness.
Yes,if he had gotten a good look at whatever was poking his leg both times, he wouldn’t have switched the two. It is amazing how one of our senses can contextualize the other.
Yes, sometimes someone is wrong.
Only part of the epistemological process has been discussed. No one since Plato has claimed that perception of reality was reality without subsequently dismissing reality. Plato didn’t even claim it either, but he argued against those who did make the claim. The claim has always been that our senses are based in reality, and that by the application of reason would could conform our senses to reality. This is exactly what is described in the description of the video -sensory information being misinterpreted, but that misinterpretation being corrected by subsequent sensory input and reasoning.
The claim that man is a rationalizing animal -far from being the slam-dunk case against rationalism that it is sometimes portrayed as -is really the claim that most people never engage in the second part of epistemology. That may well be true, but this renders the critique of reason not “reason has been tried, and found impossible,” but instead “reason has been found difficult, and therefore not been tried.”
The solution to this is to explore the underlying evidence and models we use to shortcut our thinking -and if I may hawk my own contributions to the site -stop saying that something is obvious and instead investigate the point, even if we think it is clear without further investigation. Just as the snakebite victim thought it was obviously a scratch from a stick and therefore did no further investigation.
It is not to retreat into pure subjectivism. That way lies not some kind of apathetic peace, but the denial of knowledge entirely, except that knowledge produced by force. Which is exactly what Plato was objecting to at the start of Western Philosophy.
It would be a miracle if the whole process were! There’s a lot that goes into epistemology.
Well, the claim in this case was Bishop Berkeley was refuted by kicking a stone, and that raw experience could refute mental models, as if it weren’t its own mental model. I find neither claim particularly true, and so that’s what I wrote about.
You mean, like throwing stones at people, or kicking stones?
In some cases, it isn’t.
If this is one of them there philosophical threads, someone oughter give a shout to @saintaugustine.
Better call in @titustechera, too. This thread needs more opinions than a star has hydrogen atoms.
Somehow I think he’ll want to relentlessly mock this one. I wonder if he’ll understand what I was mocking (well, sorta mocking).
So, the mocker will be mocked? It’s recursion of reality realizing itself.
I often wonder how easy it is for us layfolk to distinguish between the terminology subjectivism and subjective knowledge – or for that matter, between different forms of subjectivism! There’s a subjectivist view of probability, for example, which somehow I don’t think is the subjectivism you’re talking about.
“These aren’t the subjectivists you’re looking for.”
The snake eating its own tail. This despite it being not entirely immune to its own venom and rattles tasting awful.
Ouroboros!
So, we have come to the cyclical universe theory?
I’m reminded of a discussion in one of Heinlein’s earliest stories, Blowups Happen, that humans are incapable of thinking without symbols, and that the human brain, when confronted with a situation for which the symbols are not available, will attempt the explain what the person sees using the symbols it has.
I experienced this myself while driving home late one night on an interstate through a mostly rural area. Something ran in front of my car, a glimpse too brief to really see what it was. Within the space of about one second, three thoughts ran through my mind…
Wow, a Great Dane!
Wow, a Great Dane with antlers!
Oh.
Having grown up in a neighborhood that was littered with them, when my eyes saw an animal of that size, color and general shape, I literally saw a Great Dane. It was only after the conflicting evidence had worked through my head, that the glimpse resolved properly into a deer.
You see what you expect to see. Something truly unexpected must be processed before the brain is capable of dealing with it.
Speaking of which, someone ought to shout-out @jclimacus.
That’s good metaphysics.
But sometimes we can also find out that someone is wrong. And that’s good epistemology.
Hey, I realize that this mention of @madpoet didn’t work properly in the OP, for some reason. So, @madpoet, I mentioned you!
What had you thought of Johnson’s alleged reputation of the Bishop, @saintaugustine?
The way I see it, the Bishop didn’t have to be right for it to be a spurious refutation.
I think it’s awesome; that’s pretty much it.
The rest is this: I think I remember reading in Robert Solomon’s The Big Questions that it wasn’t really a refutation, and and I think he was right.
But . . . he was reaching for a common-sense refutation. Formulate it properly in Thomas Reid’s way, and you can refute Berkeley.
Epistemology aside, there is a well-known biological problem with the TED Talker’s reasoning. A snake bite (or various other kinds of trauma, but especially a toxic chemical injection like venom) often results in chronic altered, highly augmented perception of subsequent pain. I am surprised he ignored this well-known phenomenon called complex regional pain syndrome (formerly reflex sympathetic dystrophy). Its most frequent symptom is hyperalgesia – increased perception of pain. It is a well-known phenomenon and seriously undercuts his argument.
Epistemology, unarticulated as such, has sadly achieved new importance in the political realm; such misinformation as to the nature of reality now has political ramifications. If one listens to what is going on on university campuses, cry bullies are insisting that there is no such thing as truth or objective reality. What has been heretofore called truth is merely a tactic by which white people oppress “people of color.” These folks are deadly earnest. Read about Evergreen State University. Scary stuff.
To my way of thinking, absent an objective reality, it would be impossible, for example, for a TED Talker to formulate such a nuanced, complicated (and easily-explained through well-established biology) argument and communicate it to others who are able to understand (and criticize) it. That very undertaking, I believe, requires an underlying infrastructure of reality. Similarly, all the technical marvels with which modern life would be unimaginable, provide overwhelming evidence – akin to kicking the rock – of a reality which underlies our malleable perceptions.
The best I can come up with by way of theory is a kind of Heisenberg Uncertainty reality. Yes, its perception is amenable to subjective errors. However, its property of existence (as well as its position and momentum within known limits) is not in doubt. It can be statistically predicted with undeniable certainty. To believe otherwise is to subscribe to the fundamental progressive intellectual rubric, saying (speaking again of venom), in effect, “anything goes – no objective reality, no fundamental values – just whatever I in my fulsome power state is real at the moment!” Succinctly put, “”Fifty Million Frenchmen” just might possibly be wrong as to some particular perception of reality, but the statistical likelihood of it is vanishingly small in the time scale of the universe.”
He studies complex regional pain syndrome. He talked about it in another video. He would know if he had it.
Additionally, his research shows that hyperalgesia is a phenomenon of the brain, not the tissues the brain thinks the extra pain is in. If that’s true, we’re still dealing with an aberrant mental model.
I think this might be the video where he mentions his complex regional pain syndrome research:
As a matter of logical argument, though, I think it is a simpler and better explanation of his behavior than a generalized theory of reality..
I am not sure I follow… The brain does use sophisticated mental models to create what we often think of as “raw sensory data” or “raw experience” when it’s not.
The brain’s behavior doesn’t refute the existence of an external reality, but it does refute the idea that mental models can be refuted by appeals to what’s “real” and “not” a model.
Reality is what it is. But as far as our knowledge of reality goes, it’s “models all the way down” (if I may be permitted an exaggeration for “models way further down than many of us seem happy admitting”).
Yes – we see what our brain is trained to see. RationalWiki is hardly an unbiased source, but its summary of what optical illusions tell us about sight being the way our brain is trained to see things looks decent.
I saw an experiment written up, where people were hooked up to nervous system monitors. They were then told, whenever they wanted, “move your arm up”. Of note, sometimes the nervous system in the arm would activate before the brain. In other words, the arm started the choice to move. Our very sense of self, moment to moment, is a model.