Spoiler Alert: Probably not, very probably not!
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This boasting far exceeds even Donald Trump's bragging! The World Transformation Movement (WTM) is far too full of loud-mouthed hype to classify as a scientific movement. Self-praise is no recommendation. |
The previous parts of this series can be found here:
The thesis proposed by WTM guru Jeremy Griffith, a thesis I have begun to criticize in the previous parts of this series, is this: That the human predicament with all its personal and social aggravations is down to a clash between inherited instincts and the conscious mind.
I very much beg to differ with this analysis: As I've proposed in the previous parts of this series I find that the human predicament is grounded in the very physics of conscious cognition: Viz: That the private first-person perspective of the conscious mind means that it is not party to the experience of the second or third persons and therefore can only to infer, but not feel, the experiences of other minds. Consequently, reacting acceptably to other centers of conscious cognition presents both an epistemic and a moral challenge to the conscious individual ....Viz: The epistemic challenge of correctly inferring the experience of other minds and the moral challenge of rightly reacting to those inferences.
Human instincts and motives are then layered on top of the basic physical fault line between individual minds, but I see no necessary clash between human instincts and the conscious mind. The repertoire of human instincts such as seeking social recognition and status, sexual motives, fear, joy, anger, aggression, hunger, love, the search for meaning, the search for coherence etc. etc. are all part of the human survival suite of goals, a suite which doesn't necessarily clash with the conscious mind, but rather works in partnership with it; Viz: it is these motives which constitute the interest suite of human life, a suite which motivates the intellect to work out the means and methods of achieving the goals of the whole person. Without the goal-seeking motivations provided by this suite conscious cognition would lose the spark, energy and purpose which drives it. Instincts, then, are a very necessary aspect of the conscious mind. The problems of the human predicament come about when there is a conflict of interest between individual centers of human cognition. But the fact is the relative isolation of those centers is built into the very physics and biology of life.
In the following interview with Craig Conway, Jeremy Griffith fleshes out his thesis in more detail whereupon I will correspondingly criticize his thesis in more detail. Craig clearly thinks Jeremy's thesis makes sense; he then asks a question......
CRAIG CONWAY: Yes, that makes sense Jeremy, so what happened though when this animal became conscious and its whole life turned into a psychologically distressed mess?
JEREMY GRIFFITH: Well, the easiest way to see what happened is to imagine the predicament faced by an animal whose life had always been controlled by its instincts suddenly developing a conscious mind, because if we do that we will very quickly see how that animal would develop a psychologically troubled competitive and aggressive condition like we suffer from. So let’s imagine a stork: we’ll call him Adam. Each Summer, Adam instinctually migrates North with the other storks around the coast of Africa to Europe to breed, as some varieties of storks do. Since he has no conscious mind Adam Stork doesn’t think about or question his behaviour, he just follows what his instincts tell him to do. But what if we give Adam a large brain capable of conscious thought? He will start to think for himself, but many of his new ideas will not be consistent with his instincts. For instance, while migrating North with the other storks Adam notices an island full of apple trees. He then makes a conscious decision to divert from his migratory path and explore the island. It’s his first grand experiment in self-management.
MY COMMENT: Firstly, it seems likely to me that those animals who share with us a very similar neural basis for their minds also have consciousness, although what they are conscious about will likely considerably differ both in quality and quantity to ourselves: In fact, it is likely that the consciousness of human beings, with their relatively large brains, will qualitatively and quantitatively far exceed that of many animals. From this it follows that consciousness isn't an all or nothing affair but comes in degrees and in different qualities; it doesn't suddenly switch on when a cognitive threshold is reached.
In the above scenario Jeremy is asking us to imagine a case where a migration journey is neurally hardwired into the mind of a stork. Presumably at one time this journey was a vital part of its survival strategy and was a solution to both breeding and feeding. But it seems that changing environmental conditions have brought about better potential solutions that the stork, if the stork had sufficient intelligence to work out those solutions, could have employed. In the above scenario Jeremy imagines that the intelligence of the stork has developed to the level where it is able grasp a more efficient survival solution. What Jeremy has not told us is that the overriding urges servicing the need to survive such as an urge to feed, breed and conserve energy are instincts which are still very much in place. Therefore, in my view to characterize the human predicament as a conflict between instinct and intelligence is a misrepresentation.
JEREMY GRIFFITH: But when Adam’s instincts realise he has strayed off course they are going to criticise his deprogrammed behaviour and dogmatically try to pull him back on his instinctive flight path, aren’t they! In effect, they are going to condemn him as being bad. Imagine the turmoil Adam will experience; he can’t go back to simply following his instincts. His instinctive orientations to the migratory flight path were acquired over thousands of generations of natural selection but those orientations are not understandings, and since his conscious mind requires understanding, which it can only get through experimentation, inevitably a war will break out with his instincts.
Ideally at this point Adam’s conscious mind would sit down and explain to his instincts why he’s defying them. He would explain that the gene-based, natural selection process only gives species instinctive orientations to the world, whereas his nerve-based, conscious mind, which is able to make sense of cause and effect, needs understanding of the world to operate. But Adam doesn’t have this self-understanding. He’s only just begun his search for knowledge. In fact, he’s not even aware of what the problem actually is. He’s simply started to feel that he’s bad, even evil.
MY COMMENT: As I have already suggested humans have a large suite of instincts motivating them: Let me list them more fully:
e.g. feeding, breeding, sexual interest, seeking social status and recognition, seeking community, anger, seeking safety and security, seeking comfort and warmth, seeking meaning and purpose, curiosity, seeking understanding, artistic endeavor and above all an instinctual sense of what is and what is not just and moral.
None of these motivations can be labeled as bad or evil per se and as far as I'm aware none has a necessary conflict with the conscious mind: The conscious mind has a valuable partnership with these instincts in as far as the intelligence of that mind is able to find ways in which the goals behind these potentially life enhancing drives might efficiently be achieved. So, Jeremy's picture of a war between mind and instincts does not come over as true to life. Even anger, which we might see as potentially troublesome has its upsides: For example, many people who face the tragic consequence of social injustices do not have to explode with an incoherent burst of anger but instead we often see them channeling their emotion of anger by dissipating it into constructive channels of endeavor as they seek to right the injustices in society and thus better society thereby. But what about egocentricity? Well, we will come to that next.....
Where the angst and predicaments arise is when human beings are unable to fulfill these primary instinctual motivations, especially so because life is full of zero-sum games and therefore inter human-interests conflict and egos clash. But again, like other instincts ego is not a bad motivator per se: We all have a sense of dignity and worth and have a right to protect that sense of self-worth when it is challenged with a threat of belittlement or even extinction. Naturally enough each centre of conscious cognition seeks to enhance itself and its experience of life - nothing wrong with that in itself. But the zero-sum games of life mean that the interests of individual centres of conscious cognition have the potential to collide and conflict. So, the primary potential source of conflict isn't between one's instincts and one's mind but between individual centres of conscious cognition. Ego isn't the problem; the problem is egocentricity: that is when a particular human ego seeks solutions to his life experience by enhancing his experience regardless of and at the expense of the egos of other human beings; in short, egocentrics are people who ignore their super-ego.
CRAIG: Okay, so what you’re saying is a war has broken out between his conscious mind and his instincts, which he can’t explain, and it’s left him feeling bad or that he is bad in some way, or even evil. So what happened then?
MY COMMENT: Well, Craig if you had the nous, you'd understand that there is no necessary clash between instinct and the conscious mind but there is a potentiality for a clash between the interests of individual conscious minds, a potentiality that results of the experiential isolation of the first-person perspective. This isolation is imprinted on the very substance of which we are composed. I refer to it as a potential clash of interests because self-denial in favour of others (which is what morality is all about) should in theory kick in at this point. Human beings have a choice on this score; they can either give deference to the inferred feelings and experiences of their fellows or put the priority entirely on the self, the ego and become egocentric. Which is it to be? I must also point out that compounding the challenge of self-denial are the epistemic difficulties of being able to correctly extrapolate into other minds.
JEREMY: Well, tragically, while searching for understanding, we can see that three things are unavoidably going to happen. Adam is going to defensively retaliate against the implied criticism from his instincts; he is going to desperately seek out any reinforcement he can find to relieve himself of the negative feelings; and he is going to try to deny the criticism and block it out of his mind. He has become angry, egocentric and alienated— which is the psychologically upset state we call the human condition, because it was us humans who developed a conscious mind and became psychologically upset. (And ‘upset’ is the right word for our condition because while we are not ‘evil’ or ‘bad’, we are definitely psychologically upset from having to participate in humanity’s heroic search for knowledge. ‘Corrupted’ and ‘fallen’ have been used to describe our condition, but they have negative connotations that we can now appreciate are undeserved, so ‘upset’ is a better word.) So Adam’s intellect or ‘ego’ (ego being just another word for the intellect since the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘ego’ as ‘the conscious thinking self’ (5th edn, 1964)) became ‘centred’ or focused on the need to justify itself—Adam became ego-centric, selfishly preoccupied aggressively competing for opportunities to prove he is good and not bad, to validate his worth, to get a ‘win’; to essentially eke out any positive reinforcement that would bring him some relief from his criticising instincts. He unavoidably became self-preoccupied or selfish, and aggressive and competitive.
So our selfish, competitive and aggressive behaviour is not due to savage instincts but to a psychologically upset state or condition. Basically suffering psychological upset was the price we conscious humans had to pay for our heroic search for understanding. In the words from the song The Impossible Dream from the musical the Man of La Mancha, we had to be prepared to ‘march into hell for a heavenly cause’ (lyrics by Joe Darion, 1965). We had to lose ourselves to find ourselves; we had to suffer becoming angry, egocentric and alienated until we found sufficient knowledge to explain ourselves.
MY COMMENT: That diagnosis of the human predicament is far from the truth. As I keep saying the existential angst of the human condition comes not from a clash between instinct and the conscious mind; after all, as we have seen our instinctual motivations, if properly served, are life enhancing and the conscious mind has an important role in finding ways of fulfilling those profound instinctual goals.
Summing up: The real clash at the root of the angst in the human condition has its origins in....
1. Conservation laws which mean that life is full of zero-sum games.
2. The physics of human conscious cognition which entails private first-person perspectives isolated from the first-person perspectives of other sentient beings. This privacy entails a potential clash of interest between humans who do not directly share one another's consciousness. I stress potential clash because cooperation, self-denial, compromise and the urges of moral instincts present to us choices which have the opposite potential of heading off clashes of interest between egos.
3. The epistemic problems of putting oneself into the experiential shoes of others.
Given this context our life enhancing instincts are not to be shunned or blamed for our existential angst; our conscious cognition has no necessary argument with those instincts; they are important motivating and goal seeking urges. As we have seen even anger has an upside as a justice seeking motive.
The tendency toward egocentricity is a potential outcome of the separation of conscious cognition into quasi-isolated first-person units each of which is tempted is to serve self above all: This situation has a far deeper grounding in the hardware of our cosmos than mere instinct: it is built into the very physics of living things.
I simply can't identify with the thought that any existential angst I have has its origins in a clash of instinct and intellect: Which of my instincts gives me aggravation? None that I'm aware of! Where the clash comes is when the implementation of my drives is likely to badly impact the experience and feelings of other human beings; it is then that the following language used by Jeremy (taken from the above quote) actually applies: Viz:
Adam (that is myself) is going to defensively retaliate against the implied criticism from his (moral) instincts; he is going to desperately seek out any reinforcement he can find to relieve himself of the negative feelings; and he is going to try to deny the criticism and block it out of his mind. He has become angry, egocentric and alienated— which is the psychologically upset state we call the human condition,
That correctly describes a human, like myself, a sinner sold under sin, when I know I've done a disservice to the goals of a fellow human; I am then tempted to engage in the deceptions of self-justification that Jeremy talks of. So Jeremy's description of the human condition is in some ways correct but his identification of the deep causes are wrong. Moreover, to call it an "upset state" is an understatement that makes light of a fundamental human fault line built into the very fabric of reality.
Jeremy goes on to continue to construct this straw man that our existential angst is because our instincts are rebelling against the search for knowledge. No way!... it is the very search for knowledge that is driven by our deepest instincts such as curiosity and the search for meaning and purpose. There is no way in which my heroic search and thirst for knowledge is being labeled by my instincts as bad or evil: That is simply not true. What does trouble my conscience and is liable to be labeled as bad or evil is if in life's zero-sum games, I short-change my fellow humans in favour of self. In spite of Jeremy's straw man depiction, just who is labelling the heroic search for knowledge as bad and evil? No one I know. But the label "corrupted and fallen" is appropriate to my frequent failure to give the first-person experience of fellow humans a rightful place in my life.
CRAIG: Wow Jeremy, I mean this is just fascinating. So Adam Stork—we humans—developed a conscious mind and unavoidably started warring with our instincts, an upsetting war which could only end when we could explain and understand why we had to defy our instincts, which is the understanding that you have just supplied, yes?
MY COMMENT: *shakes head*
JEREMY: Exactly, remember Adam Stork became defensively angry, egocentric and alienated because he couldn’t explain why he was defying his instincts, so now that we can explain why, those defensive behaviours are no longer needed and can end! That’s basically all there is to explain, that is the biological explanation of the human condition that so explains us that, as Professor Prosen said, it brings about ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’!
CRAIG: This is such a simple story but so far-reaching in its ramifications—I mean it is world-changing is what it is, because it truly enables ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’! I mean that is just wonderful.
MY COMMENT: Simple story? Rather, it is simply false! Once again: I'm personally unaware of my intellect being at odds with any of my instincts, least of all the heroic search for knowledge, meaning and purpose: Both intellect and instinct are life enhancing and especially so if they work cooperatively in tandem. But the temptation to serve exclusively within the purview of my first-person perspective is the only "instinct", if "instinct" it can called, that has the potential to open a door to a troubled world of angst, ambivalence and denial. Yes, I'd agree that the explanation of the human condition is biological, but Jeremy has nailed the wrong biological explanation. Moreover, because the perceptive fault-line between those centers of biological sentience is so fundamental to the fabric of reality the WTM's superficial analysis that the solution to the human predicament lies in the psychological rehabilitation of the human race falls woefully short of the mark.
Well, I don't suppose I can expect too much insight and critical analysis from Craig who seems to be utterly blown away by the presence and guru status of Jeremy Griffith and Harry Prosen both of whom clearly fail to see where the real challenge of the human predicament lies; namely, in good old fashioned "sin", the word with the "I" in the middle.
***
There is also one another source of human vexation which I really need to mention: That is the unfilled targets of our instinctive ambitions. If we are thwarted in our aims, this can be a great source of frustration and unhappiness. However, this is often related to the clash of human interests; viz: Selfishness, when it proceeds against a background of zero-sum games, leads to the goals and aspirations of many being at odds with one another and consequently in the subsequent scramble many dreams remain unfulfilled.
ADDENDUM 13/02
I've been trying think of cases where there is a clash between instinct and intellect. Possible cases:
1. Eating habits: When there is a surfeit of food such as we find in rich industrial societies the instinct to eat as much as possible while the going is good - which is appropriate when food is much scarcer - can impact health badly; that's even though our intellects understand this health impact.
2. Large anonymous industrial societies which are very much a product of human intellectual work may cut across human instincts which prefer smaller intimate tribes and communities close to the natural order of things. cf The Romantics. This instinct, if instinct it is, of tribal/group/class/community identification and its potential for inter-community competitiveness may be bound up with the factional human violence which we see so much of.
***
....to be continued.
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