This was a fascinating and insightful essay. I wonder if the coherence horizon has implications for the nature of reality. Neither consciousness nor language are capable of really encapsulating it; at the same time, literally false traditions can be functionally true. Which then is the deeper truth? Logos or mythos? Or is that the wrong way to think about the question - better perhaps to think of both being true in their own sense, with a larger, more unified and mature conception of truth found in their unity or superposition?
Feb 16, 2023·edited Feb 16, 2023Liked by Helen Dale, Lorenzo Warby
Some food for thought:
The problem of infinite regress in the philosophy of mind is due to missing an independent direction for arranging events. We know we are doing this when we use words such as "emergentism". As an example the one dimensional representation of the letter O might be: .___._.___ .___.___ ._.___. This is not the same as an "O". If we stack the five sets of dots the letter O "emerges" in two dimensions. Certainly we can compute with a one dimensional representation of an O but we cannot have the real O unless we use at least two dimensions.
There is at least one dimension missing from the usual attempts at an ontology of consciousness: time. The extended present moment is not specious. It exists in all of us and allows whole morphemes to be present.
The standard argument against the "specious" present is that the future cannot be present now but that only applies to the future and present of events occurring at the same place. If time exists as a direction for arranging events then it is feasible that future and present events could be co-existent at another place. Several authors have spotted that four dimensional pseudo-euclidean geometry permits observation points that could host connections between events at different times but the idea has never gained traction.
The religious significance of these musings is that the reality of being human might be largely geometrical, where time is an existent direction for arranging events (how much could you know at any instant if this were not the case?). Perhaps the Buddhists are right: considering processes to be important might be a delusion because they are no more than a support for the bodily machine that hosts our consciousness. Gaming others would then be absurd behaviour by the ignorant.
"As we are story-loving beings inclined to connect intentions directly with outcomes, it can be hard for us to keep clear that what is structured in a way that has an effect may not be intended (consciously or otherwise) to have that effect."
You have touched on something very interesting here. I could never figure out what other people always seemed to somehow effortlessly know - which is the intentions behind an action. Since I could never be certain of my own intentions, I never knew how other people could be certain of their own intentions, not to mind other people's. And yet what people intend is such a common, but to me mysterious, subject of conversation, that I had to conclude that I must suffer from some sort of "intention" equivalent of colour blindness.
In particular, I have never known what to make of the idea that harm caused can be mitigated by the fact that a person had good intentions.
Enjoyed this in a head-exploding kind of way (if that makes sense).
This was a fascinating and insightful essay. I wonder if the coherence horizon has implications for the nature of reality. Neither consciousness nor language are capable of really encapsulating it; at the same time, literally false traditions can be functionally true. Which then is the deeper truth? Logos or mythos? Or is that the wrong way to think about the question - better perhaps to think of both being true in their own sense, with a larger, more unified and mature conception of truth found in their unity or superposition?
Some food for thought:
The problem of infinite regress in the philosophy of mind is due to missing an independent direction for arranging events. We know we are doing this when we use words such as "emergentism". As an example the one dimensional representation of the letter O might be: .___._.___ .___.___ ._.___. This is not the same as an "O". If we stack the five sets of dots the letter O "emerges" in two dimensions. Certainly we can compute with a one dimensional representation of an O but we cannot have the real O unless we use at least two dimensions.
There is at least one dimension missing from the usual attempts at an ontology of consciousness: time. The extended present moment is not specious. It exists in all of us and allows whole morphemes to be present.
The standard argument against the "specious" present is that the future cannot be present now but that only applies to the future and present of events occurring at the same place. If time exists as a direction for arranging events then it is feasible that future and present events could be co-existent at another place. Several authors have spotted that four dimensional pseudo-euclidean geometry permits observation points that could host connections between events at different times but the idea has never gained traction.
The religious significance of these musings is that the reality of being human might be largely geometrical, where time is an existent direction for arranging events (how much could you know at any instant if this were not the case?). Perhaps the Buddhists are right: considering processes to be important might be a delusion because they are no more than a support for the bodily machine that hosts our consciousness. Gaming others would then be absurd behaviour by the ignorant.
Then again...
"As we are story-loving beings inclined to connect intentions directly with outcomes, it can be hard for us to keep clear that what is structured in a way that has an effect may not be intended (consciously or otherwise) to have that effect."
You have touched on something very interesting here. I could never figure out what other people always seemed to somehow effortlessly know - which is the intentions behind an action. Since I could never be certain of my own intentions, I never knew how other people could be certain of their own intentions, not to mind other people's. And yet what people intend is such a common, but to me mysterious, subject of conversation, that I had to conclude that I must suffer from some sort of "intention" equivalent of colour blindness.
In particular, I have never known what to make of the idea that harm caused can be mitigated by the fact that a person had good intentions.