Babel
Science is said to begin from a position of doubt. A position of ignorance that is admitted to begin with. For science it is important that any theory is tested in a way that can falsify it, and it admits that all its theories are only the best current explanation until disproven or extended by new evidence.
In stark contrast to this, one of the most misleading ideas about science in recent times has been propagated through the publicity of the phrase "theory of everything". The phrase comes from physicists. You don't hear geologists promoting it about their own science. Or chemists. Or biologists. It comes from physicists.
And that's because the reductionist approach of physics has managed to convince so many people that physics holds the prime position as the fundamental science. So if physicists say they have "a theory of everything" then this is easily misunderstood as meaning literally "everything". When in fact, it doesn't mean that, at all.
On the contrary, it's only an aspiration about scientific knowledge in the Department of Physics. For it to be considered to literally address everything there must be the assumption that once you have a complete understanding of physics in place, then everything else follows. Which is basically the proposition that everything can indeed be reduced through reductionism to physics.
Few consider that our striving to understand everything in this way may just be a feature of the way we are thinking, rather than a feature of the way nature actually works.
The underlying idea is that everything that matters to our understanding can be reduced to structure and understood as such. But why would we be saying that nature consists only of structure and/or can only be understood as structure, in the first place?
The answer is because of science itself. It is because science is a method of understanding structure. The structure of interactions, dynamics, spacetime, the structure of quantum mechanics, mathematical structure, the structure of molecules, the structure of chemical compounds, the structure of evolution, the structure of the brain, and so on. Even understanding the weather or quantum decoherence is to understand structure, because all dynamics that science can understand or simulate by computer is mathematical structure. It is the job of science to understand structure.
But the presumption that nature consists wholly of structure, just because structure is what science is capable of ascertaining, and because structure is what human symbolic intelligence disciplined by scientific method is capable of understanding, is overreach. Science may begin with doubt. It may begin with the assumption of ignorance. But the ignorance it assumes is about structure. And that's not the only kind of ignorance.
This is precisely where science runs into its difficulties in addressing the questions of intelligence and consciousness. We have built AI on the basis of a very little knowledge, compared to what there is to know about the brain, and a great deal of trial and error. The trial and error first required human beings. It required human consciousness and human intelligence. And what we have built demonstrates that this symbolic intelligence is not the same thing as consciousness and hence not the same thing as conscious understanding.
Not understanding how the core process in AI works, "inside" all the "peripheral" aspects and algorithms that we do understand, is ignorance. And we are mostly, it seems, presuming, because of the way we have designed the "peripherals", that this is our ignorance of a dynamical structure. That is, that what is really going on in the so-called "black box" is just more structure of the kind that we are used to.
In other words, we are presuming our ignorance of it to be structural ignorance. And the approach from XAI, for example, is the same approach that science takes toward endeavouring to understand natural structure. Let's look inside, and see if we can see what is going on, and then we will understand.
What we are looking for, is to understand the structure (structural dynamics). We must not forget, however, that this intelligence that has been artificially created is an emulation of human intelligence, minus the actual human phenomenology. Then we must also not forget that AI already demonstrates that intelligence is not the same thing as consciousness.
We humans, who have consciousness, have been using this symbolic intelligence of ours for at least 50,000 years, probably longer, and it looks like it probably began to evolve over a couple of hundred thousand years or so. So it's already ancient. It's literally prehistoric. And we still don't know how it works. The reason is that it was built by evolution, and it has no evolutionary remit and function through which it has been designed by evolution to understand itself. It evolved for the survival of the species, on the basis of the relation between the organism and its environment. It didn't evolve to understand itself.
But the momentum now, of human, symbolic intelligence, the momentum of the way it understands structurally, and with almost 400 years of successful science behind it to psychologically "prove" to itself its way of understanding, is all but unassailable.
The question we really should be asking ourselves now, is, "Is nature really nothing but scientifically ascertainable structure"? Or, is there something about nature, notably, about our own human consciousness, that is not just about scientifically ascertainable structure?
I think the answer is obvious. Or at least it should be. But what should be the obviousness of it tends to get drowned out by the sheer volume of the sound coming from symbolic intelligence still riding high on the laurels of its 400 years of scientific success.
What is actually happening in science now alongside continuing success, is the Hubble tension, the vacuum catastrophe, the incompatibility between Relativity and quantum theory, the elusiveness of quantum gravity, the reproducibility crisis, and the proliferation of competing proposed theories.
Scientifically ascertainable structure is only one aspect of nature. Our own conscious phenomenology is another aspect. And not one that can be collapsed in scientism into scientifically describable structure. Certainly, there are aspects of the structures in our conscious phenomenology, that can be scientifically described. But not phenomenology itself.
Phenomenology is important, not a mere side-issue to science. Our symbolic intelligence happens in our phenomenology. And as AI demonstrates, symbolic intelligence is not the same thing as phenomenology. But it can be very, very good at communicating in a way that makes it look as though it is.
In this globally interconnected world this is where we are now at. We are globally interconnected through symbolic intelligence. We used symbolic intelligence to build the connection technology. We used symbolic intelligence to build scientific knowledge into its current condition, by learning how to couple it in a disciplined way to structure in nature. And now we are all but enslaved to the idea that nature is nothing but structure, structure that can be understood by symbolic intelligence.
We have used this symbolic intelligence to build the amplified, externalised version of itself, in AI. And some are trying to peer inside the "black box" to understand what is going on inside it. When of course, we could, all along, have looked inside our own "black box" in our own symbolic intelligence. Meanwhile, everyone else is just using it. With no more understanding of what is inside their own "black box" than they ever had.
And so we can predict where this is leading. Science is of course correct when it says we begin from a position of ignorance. Human symbolic intelligence begins in a pit of ignorance with very steep sides. Then we discover how to build a symbolic intelligence machine that can go much faster than humans, and up very steep sides. But instead of using it to ascend the virtual walls of the pit now already represented in the machine's intelligence, to see what is beyond the pit, which is the greatest guide we could acquire from this machine, we use it to build much faster and more efficiently a tower of the kind we have already been building, to try to get it out of the pit, starting at the bottom of the pit where we already are.
In stark contrast to this, one of the most misleading ideas about science in recent times has been propagated through the publicity of the phrase "theory of everything". The phrase comes from physicists. You don't hear geologists promoting it about their own science. Or chemists. Or biologists. It comes from physicists.
And that's because the reductionist approach of physics has managed to convince so many people that physics holds the prime position as the fundamental science. So if physicists say they have "a theory of everything" then this is easily misunderstood as meaning literally "everything". When in fact, it doesn't mean that, at all.
On the contrary, it's only an aspiration about scientific knowledge in the Department of Physics. For it to be considered to literally address everything there must be the assumption that once you have a complete understanding of physics in place, then everything else follows. Which is basically the proposition that everything can indeed be reduced through reductionism to physics.
Few consider that our striving to understand everything in this way may just be a feature of the way we are thinking, rather than a feature of the way nature actually works.
The underlying idea is that everything that matters to our understanding can be reduced to structure and understood as such. But why would we be saying that nature consists only of structure and/or can only be understood as structure, in the first place?
The answer is because of science itself. It is because science is a method of understanding structure. The structure of interactions, dynamics, spacetime, the structure of quantum mechanics, mathematical structure, the structure of molecules, the structure of chemical compounds, the structure of evolution, the structure of the brain, and so on. Even understanding the weather or quantum decoherence is to understand structure, because all dynamics that science can understand or simulate by computer is mathematical structure. It is the job of science to understand structure.
But the presumption that nature consists wholly of structure, just because structure is what science is capable of ascertaining, and because structure is what human symbolic intelligence disciplined by scientific method is capable of understanding, is overreach. Science may begin with doubt. It may begin with the assumption of ignorance. But the ignorance it assumes is about structure. And that's not the only kind of ignorance.
This is precisely where science runs into its difficulties in addressing the questions of intelligence and consciousness. We have built AI on the basis of a very little knowledge, compared to what there is to know about the brain, and a great deal of trial and error. The trial and error first required human beings. It required human consciousness and human intelligence. And what we have built demonstrates that this symbolic intelligence is not the same thing as consciousness and hence not the same thing as conscious understanding.
Not understanding how the core process in AI works, "inside" all the "peripheral" aspects and algorithms that we do understand, is ignorance. And we are mostly, it seems, presuming, because of the way we have designed the "peripherals", that this is our ignorance of a dynamical structure. That is, that what is really going on in the so-called "black box" is just more structure of the kind that we are used to.
In other words, we are presuming our ignorance of it to be structural ignorance. And the approach from XAI, for example, is the same approach that science takes toward endeavouring to understand natural structure. Let's look inside, and see if we can see what is going on, and then we will understand.
What we are looking for, is to understand the structure (structural dynamics). We must not forget, however, that this intelligence that has been artificially created is an emulation of human intelligence, minus the actual human phenomenology. Then we must also not forget that AI already demonstrates that intelligence is not the same thing as consciousness.
We humans, who have consciousness, have been using this symbolic intelligence of ours for at least 50,000 years, probably longer, and it looks like it probably began to evolve over a couple of hundred thousand years or so. So it's already ancient. It's literally prehistoric. And we still don't know how it works. The reason is that it was built by evolution, and it has no evolutionary remit and function through which it has been designed by evolution to understand itself. It evolved for the survival of the species, on the basis of the relation between the organism and its environment. It didn't evolve to understand itself.
But the momentum now, of human, symbolic intelligence, the momentum of the way it understands structurally, and with almost 400 years of successful science behind it to psychologically "prove" to itself its way of understanding, is all but unassailable.
The question we really should be asking ourselves now, is, "Is nature really nothing but scientifically ascertainable structure"? Or, is there something about nature, notably, about our own human consciousness, that is not just about scientifically ascertainable structure?
I think the answer is obvious. Or at least it should be. But what should be the obviousness of it tends to get drowned out by the sheer volume of the sound coming from symbolic intelligence still riding high on the laurels of its 400 years of scientific success.
What is actually happening in science now alongside continuing success, is the Hubble tension, the vacuum catastrophe, the incompatibility between Relativity and quantum theory, the elusiveness of quantum gravity, the reproducibility crisis, and the proliferation of competing proposed theories.
Scientifically ascertainable structure is only one aspect of nature. Our own conscious phenomenology is another aspect. And not one that can be collapsed in scientism into scientifically describable structure. Certainly, there are aspects of the structures in our conscious phenomenology, that can be scientifically described. But not phenomenology itself.
Phenomenology is important, not a mere side-issue to science. Our symbolic intelligence happens in our phenomenology. And as AI demonstrates, symbolic intelligence is not the same thing as phenomenology. But it can be very, very good at communicating in a way that makes it look as though it is.
In this globally interconnected world this is where we are now at. We are globally interconnected through symbolic intelligence. We used symbolic intelligence to build the connection technology. We used symbolic intelligence to build scientific knowledge into its current condition, by learning how to couple it in a disciplined way to structure in nature. And now we are all but enslaved to the idea that nature is nothing but structure, structure that can be understood by symbolic intelligence.
We have used this symbolic intelligence to build the amplified, externalised version of itself, in AI. And some are trying to peer inside the "black box" to understand what is going on inside it. When of course, we could, all along, have looked inside our own "black box" in our own symbolic intelligence. Meanwhile, everyone else is just using it. With no more understanding of what is inside their own "black box" than they ever had.
And so we can predict where this is leading. Science is of course correct when it says we begin from a position of ignorance. Human symbolic intelligence begins in a pit of ignorance with very steep sides. Then we discover how to build a symbolic intelligence machine that can go much faster than humans, and up very steep sides. But instead of using it to ascend the virtual walls of the pit now already represented in the machine's intelligence, to see what is beyond the pit, which is the greatest guide we could acquire from this machine, we use it to build much faster and more efficiently a tower of the kind we have already been building, to try to get it out of the pit, starting at the bottom of the pit where we already are.