Unmaking Sense

Episode 3.20: The order we find in the world is chosen to match what we are predisposed to look for.

Ramsey Theory tells us that when we have a sufficient amount of information and complexity, we can always find some patterns in it. Those patterns reflect our predispositions and needs. But to force the world to match those patterns we have to throw away lots of information. Deterministic views of the world arise from this selectivity. When we manipulate the world using partial information we are essentially doing something we don’t understand. We may have no choice, being creatures with limited intelligence and observational capacity, but we shouldn’t be surprised if unwelcome and unexpected consequences arise.

Episode 3.19: Tidy and untidy world and minds.

We need to simplify the world - to tidy it up - in order to understand and manage it, but the resulting tidiness comes at the cost of rejecting all the uniqueness we find in nature. One person’s tidiness can be another’s untidiness; what matters is how we make sense of things and whether there are better ways to do so.

Episode 3.18: Changing human behaviour.

What are the ultimate, irreducible things that lead to the ways we behave? Discover those motivators and changing human behaviour becomes a more tractable problem.

Episode 3.17: David Hume on causality and determinism.

Hume pointed out that there is no strictly rational basis for our belief in causality, and there is similarly no rational basis for our belief in determinism. Determinism is the simplest, most convenient, but least verifiable of ways of understanding the world. It is just an intellectual convenience based solely upon our inability to conceive of anything different.

Episode 3.16: Authority and how it changes; dissent in forcing revision of prevailing views.

Those responsible for maintaining the authority of an established position in any discipline may well reject new ideas simply because they do not understand them sufficiently well, just as they may reject them out of self interest or self preservation. Either way, those with new ideas must until persuaded that they are wrong prosecute them to the limits of their ability. That is the only way established positions ever change.

Episode 3.15: The ambiguity of authority and how truth is used to control and limit freedom.

We need authorities because we cannot all be experts on everything. But authority can easily turn into bullying control by using its proclaimed monopoly on truth to decide who is “in” and who is “out”, who is right and who is wrong.

Episode 3.14: Truth, reason and knowledge and the Procrustean ways we make experience fit them.

We begin by inventing truth, reason and knowledge as tools to make sense of the world but end up by turning them into instruments of torture.

Episode 3.13: Truth as the best we can do right now. Legitimate authority and illegitimate bullying.

We always have to decide what we think is true, and legitimate authority based upon evolving social practice helps us in those decisions. But legitimate authority easily transforms into suffocating authority and illegitimate bullying which compromise our right and ability to decide for ourselves. We change our view of truth depending on what seems most likely to work whether we acknowledge it or not, and so we should. We don’t make the truth by believing it, but belief is the only way to access what is true. The changes we make to our collective and personal beliefs govern how our understanding evolves.

Episode 3.12: Truth as time-dependent and changeable as required by circumstance and experience.

Truth is too important to be limited to instantaneous atemporal facticity. It emerges and changes with time as we challenge, analyse, modify, reject and reaffirm our methods, understanding and priorities. Understanding the place- and time-dependence of truths helps to bring us together in co-operation to the benefit of the biosphere.

Episode 3.11: Theology as the apotheosis of social ontology, a making visible of a group mind.

What we project upon God and treat as originating from God is the group mind that we share, the sets of goods and values we endorse, and an expression of our desire to universalise them.