Science and the Dawn Chorus
Many people like birdsong. There comes a point where birdsong becomes profoundly beautiful in the deepest metaphysical way. How is this possible? It becomes possible when you are looking down from human intelligence onto the natural struggle for survival of those species, but you are also looking down through human evolutionary intelligence itself, from above it. And of course, that's outside the scientific register.
The symbolic intelligence in human beings all around you will tell you that the birds are the evolutionary remnants of dinosaurs, and that all they are doing is defending their territory, and sometimes calling for a mate. It is not that this is untrue in its own register, but you can see that this is not all it is, as direct phenomenology. When it comes to birdsong, when it comes to the dawn chorus, so many people can already see beyond the structures of understanding of symbolic intelligence in its scientific register. Symbolic intelligence in human beings - which arose perhaps around 70,000 years ago - understands only a tiny part, a tiny aspect, of material existence. And not surprisingly, because as yet, science as a whole doesn't even understand the nature of symbolic intelligence. It knows it's neural, and by copying limited aspects of the brain, in a constrained way, it has created artificial intelligence, which is devoid of consciousness. And symbolic intelligence in human beings only understands, it is estimated, about 3% of that artificial imitation of itself. So what chance has symbolic intelligence in human beings of understanding consciousness?
Of course humans can understand consciousness. But not through their symbolic intelligence. It's not that kind of understanding. There are plenty of "theories of consciousness" around, purporting to understand it, which are structures of understanding in symbolic intelligence, but then, you can build a straw man image of anything in symbolic intelligence, and understand the image you have built. But consciousness itself is not something you can build a straw man image of with any fidelity. As soon as you build the symbolic image, in symbolic intelligence, whether in science or philosophy, or even just in human, evolutionary, symbolic thought, you have lost fidelity. When humans do truly "understand" consciousness, they are not doing so through their symbolic intelligence.
Scientific knowledge as it is, is the current culmination of evolving, human symbolic intelligence. But it's not the completion of it. Scientific knowledge doesn't get completed by filling in "missing data". Data is just the most decohered part of our existence and intelligence. More decohered than stable matter itself. Nothing is "missing" from science except the understanding of what science actually is and what it is doing. There is no "missing data" as such, because there was nothing separate there, no data separate from human intelligence, to begin with. When science does come to understand what it actually is and what it is doing, then it will know how to bring about completion in as yet untamed, or unstabilised natural phenomena.
Even when science is complete, it will still be science. It won't be a mishmash of haphazard collapsed registers of understanding, with "consciousness particles", and so forth. So many people have been misled by register collapse of all kinds, the misuse of scientific terms, the misrepresentation of science, and the empty promise that any kind of science-fiction you can imagine can also become science fact. None of that is what science is. Science is science because it is science and follows scientific method. It is constrained by nature herself. The material world will never become free imagination. And the details of the future of science is not in the minds of prophets.
The maturing of science will be to understand nature better, as a whole, but not by trying to jump out of the scientific register and conflating science with other registers. Like the register in which we hear the beauty of the bird song. But it will have to come to understand better what science is, and what it is doing, in a way that embraces the understanding of the intelligence doing the science. The same intelligence in which we hear the bird song. And in that, it will come to understand the nature and significance of what comes to completion in nature, in a new way.
The symbolic intelligence in human beings all around you will tell you that the birds are the evolutionary remnants of dinosaurs, and that all they are doing is defending their territory, and sometimes calling for a mate. It is not that this is untrue in its own register, but you can see that this is not all it is, as direct phenomenology. When it comes to birdsong, when it comes to the dawn chorus, so many people can already see beyond the structures of understanding of symbolic intelligence in its scientific register. Symbolic intelligence in human beings - which arose perhaps around 70,000 years ago - understands only a tiny part, a tiny aspect, of material existence. And not surprisingly, because as yet, science as a whole doesn't even understand the nature of symbolic intelligence. It knows it's neural, and by copying limited aspects of the brain, in a constrained way, it has created artificial intelligence, which is devoid of consciousness. And symbolic intelligence in human beings only understands, it is estimated, about 3% of that artificial imitation of itself. So what chance has symbolic intelligence in human beings of understanding consciousness?
Of course humans can understand consciousness. But not through their symbolic intelligence. It's not that kind of understanding. There are plenty of "theories of consciousness" around, purporting to understand it, which are structures of understanding in symbolic intelligence, but then, you can build a straw man image of anything in symbolic intelligence, and understand the image you have built. But consciousness itself is not something you can build a straw man image of with any fidelity. As soon as you build the symbolic image, in symbolic intelligence, whether in science or philosophy, or even just in human, evolutionary, symbolic thought, you have lost fidelity. When humans do truly "understand" consciousness, they are not doing so through their symbolic intelligence.
Scientific knowledge as it is, is the current culmination of evolving, human symbolic intelligence. But it's not the completion of it. Scientific knowledge doesn't get completed by filling in "missing data". Data is just the most decohered part of our existence and intelligence. More decohered than stable matter itself. Nothing is "missing" from science except the understanding of what science actually is and what it is doing. There is no "missing data" as such, because there was nothing separate there, no data separate from human intelligence, to begin with. When science does come to understand what it actually is and what it is doing, then it will know how to bring about completion in as yet untamed, or unstabilised natural phenomena.
Even when science is complete, it will still be science. It won't be a mishmash of haphazard collapsed registers of understanding, with "consciousness particles", and so forth. So many people have been misled by register collapse of all kinds, the misuse of scientific terms, the misrepresentation of science, and the empty promise that any kind of science-fiction you can imagine can also become science fact. None of that is what science is. Science is science because it is science and follows scientific method. It is constrained by nature herself. The material world will never become free imagination. And the details of the future of science is not in the minds of prophets.
The maturing of science will be to understand nature better, as a whole, but not by trying to jump out of the scientific register and conflating science with other registers. Like the register in which we hear the beauty of the bird song. But it will have to come to understand better what science is, and what it is doing, in a way that embraces the understanding of the intelligence doing the science. The same intelligence in which we hear the bird song. And in that, it will come to understand the nature and significance of what comes to completion in nature, in a new way.