Difficult for the human mind to understand itself
My thesis is that it is hard to understand the human mind because
1. The human mind, or any conscious mind, is very complex.
2. The human mind isn't that precise in its thinking.
3. Our tools are inadequate. English is noted for having a very large number of words. Although the
number is large in comparison to what the human mind can handle, it is not large compared to what is
needed to understand complex ideas. Understanding the human mind is one of those complex ideas
which boggles the mind of any creature whose vocabulary is imprecise.
The question has been asked, "Is the human mind smart enough to understand how the human mind
works?" The question, IMHO, should be, "Is the human mind smart enough to understand the human
mind using the vocabulary of everyday conversation?" To that last question, I believe that the answer is
no.
The solution to this problem is what I have been calling "multi-level thinking". To some extent, multi-level
thinking is the act of breaking down word definitions into what they mean in different contexts and to
different parts of the mind. It might be called "a new kind of thinking" in that it attempts to remove much
of the fuzziness of human 'logic'.
Let me apply this to the word "determinism." (note also the problems with the word "belief")
First, solar eclipses used to be random events and now they are deterministic. Quantum activity also
used to be random and now Gerard 't Hooft has shown it to be deterministic.
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604008
In a practical sense I can draw a line at many levels of distinction.
Determinate means any of the following depending on context, the speaker and the listener:
1. Things that I, myself can predict.
2. Things that my wife can predict about me.
3. Things that my friends can predict about me.
4. Things which would shock me if I met my long-lost identical twin which was raised separately but who
nevertheless acts so much like me as to be "disturbing." This makes me realize that I am being run by a
more deterministic universe than I had formerly believed.
5. Things that our human society, including our machines, can predict.
6. Things that are NOT unpredictable historically. Def: Unpredictable things are those things which
appear for a time to be unpredictable like the solar eclipse at one point in history and quantum
phenomenon at another point from 1929 to 2005. Now we have entered another period of history where
we know everything to be deterministic again.
7. But 6 is wrong to most people because they have not "heard that things are predictable again" or 6 is
wrong to people because they refuse to believe that everything is predictable. Perhaps they note the
oscillations and they are waiting for indeterminism to "come back in scientific style".
8. To complicate things further it has been observed that humans tend to believe what their instincts tell
them to and use their rational mind to justify their beliefs. I dare say we all know that there are humans
who are so dedicated to their beliefs that they will 'blow themselves up'.
To illustrate this point, take the reaction of two mathematicians to the declaration by 't Hooft that
quantum phenomenon are deterministic.
"As enticing as 't Hooft's theory may be to physicists, it has an unexpected and potentially frightful
consequence for the rest of us. Mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen, both at Princeton
University, say that any deterministic theory underlying quantum mechanics robs us of our free will."
(New Scientist, 04MAY06) www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19025504.000
Notice the use of emotional terms "frightful" and "robs us" as if the universe has given us free will and
now it is frightening us by "robbing it back" from us. The mathematicians seem to have an initial
negative reaction to their 'free will' having become only a fantasy again.
Every once in awhile the notion of "random number generators" comes up. There are pseudo random
number generators which spew out numbers which are too random to meet the criterion above that "1. I,
myself can predict." But I know that "Things such as computers" could predict the sequence of pseudo
random numbers. Then there are the reference to 'real' random number generators. These, I suppose,
are random number generators whose numerical sequences are caused by deterministic things but no
human or computer can yet determine what they are. As a result, they are 'real' now but presumably
won't be 'real' in the future when quantum supercomputers can predict the positions of quarks and the
spins of electrons.
Next
Mainstream and Formal Epistemology By Vincent F. Hendricks addresses the question of knowledge
My thesis is that it is hard to understand the human mind because
1. The human mind, or any conscious mind, is very complex.
2. The human mind isn't that precise in its thinking.
3. Our tools are inadequate. English is noted for having a very large number of words. Although the
number is large in comparison to what the human mind can handle, it is not large compared to what is
needed to understand complex ideas. Understanding the human mind is one of those complex ideas
which boggles the mind of any creature whose vocabulary is imprecise.
The question has been asked, "Is the human mind smart enough to understand how the human mind
works?" The question, IMHO, should be, "Is the human mind smart enough to understand the human
mind using the vocabulary of everyday conversation?" To that last question, I believe that the answer is
no.
The solution to this problem is what I have been calling "multi-level thinking". To some extent, multi-level
thinking is the act of breaking down word definitions into what they mean in different contexts and to
different parts of the mind. It might be called "a new kind of thinking" in that it attempts to remove much
of the fuzziness of human 'logic'.
Let me apply this to the word "determinism." (note also the problems with the word "belief")
First, solar eclipses used to be random events and now they are deterministic. Quantum activity also
used to be random and now Gerard 't Hooft has shown it to be deterministic.
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604008
In a practical sense I can draw a line at many levels of distinction.
Determinate means any of the following depending on context, the speaker and the listener:
1. Things that I, myself can predict.
2. Things that my wife can predict about me.
3. Things that my friends can predict about me.
4. Things which would shock me if I met my long-lost identical twin which was raised separately but who
nevertheless acts so much like me as to be "disturbing." This makes me realize that I am being run by a
more deterministic universe than I had formerly believed.
5. Things that our human society, including our machines, can predict.
6. Things that are NOT unpredictable historically. Def: Unpredictable things are those things which
appear for a time to be unpredictable like the solar eclipse at one point in history and quantum
phenomenon at another point from 1929 to 2005. Now we have entered another period of history where
we know everything to be deterministic again.
7. But 6 is wrong to most people because they have not "heard that things are predictable again" or 6 is
wrong to people because they refuse to believe that everything is predictable. Perhaps they note the
oscillations and they are waiting for indeterminism to "come back in scientific style".
8. To complicate things further it has been observed that humans tend to believe what their instincts tell
them to and use their rational mind to justify their beliefs. I dare say we all know that there are humans
who are so dedicated to their beliefs that they will 'blow themselves up'.
To illustrate this point, take the reaction of two mathematicians to the declaration by 't Hooft that
quantum phenomenon are deterministic.
"As enticing as 't Hooft's theory may be to physicists, it has an unexpected and potentially frightful
consequence for the rest of us. Mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen, both at Princeton
University, say that any deterministic theory underlying quantum mechanics robs us of our free will."
(New Scientist, 04MAY06) www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19025504.000
Notice the use of emotional terms "frightful" and "robs us" as if the universe has given us free will and
now it is frightening us by "robbing it back" from us. The mathematicians seem to have an initial
negative reaction to their 'free will' having become only a fantasy again.
Every once in awhile the notion of "random number generators" comes up. There are pseudo random
number generators which spew out numbers which are too random to meet the criterion above that "1. I,
myself can predict." But I know that "Things such as computers" could predict the sequence of pseudo
random numbers. Then there are the reference to 'real' random number generators. These, I suppose,
are random number generators whose numerical sequences are caused by deterministic things but no
human or computer can yet determine what they are. As a result, they are 'real' now but presumably
won't be 'real' in the future when quantum supercomputers can predict the positions of quarks and the
spins of electrons.
Next
Mainstream and Formal Epistemology By Vincent F. Hendricks addresses the question of knowledge
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