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Consilience: Difference between revisions
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In support of his own case, Wilson refers at some length to the chimerical nature of consciousness (taking {{author|Daniel Dennett}}’s not uncontroversial account more or less as read). But there is a direct analogy here: Dennett’s model of {{tag|consciousness}} stands in the same relation to the material brain as Wilson’s consilience stands to the physical universe. Dennett says consciousness is an illusion; a trick of the mind, if you like, and rather wilfully double-parks the difficult question “a trick on ''whom''?”. | In support of his own case, Wilson refers at some length to the chimerical nature of consciousness (taking {{author|Daniel Dennett}}’s not uncontroversial account more or less as read). But there is a direct analogy here: Dennett’s model of {{tag|consciousness}} stands in the same relation to the material brain as Wilson’s consilience stands to the physical universe. Dennett says consciousness is an illusion; a trick of the mind, if you like, and rather wilfully double-parks the difficult question “a trick on ''whom''?”. | ||
But by extension, could not consilience ''also'' be a trick of the mind? Things ''look'' like they’re ordered, consistent and universal ''because that’s how we’re wired to see them''. Our evolutionary development (fully contingent and path-dependent, as even Wilson would agree) has built a sensory apparatus which filters the information in the world in a way which is ever-more effective. That’s the clever trick of evolutionary development. If it is of adaptive benefit to apprehend “the world” as a consistent, coherent whole, then as long as that coherent whole accounts effectively for our physiologically meaningful experiences, then its relation to “the truth” is really beside the point. | But by extension, could not consilience ''also'' be a trick of the mind? Things ''look'' like they’re ordered, consistent and universal ''because that’s how we’re wired to see them''. Our evolutionary development (fully contingent and [[path-dependent]], as even Wilson would agree) has built a sensory apparatus which filters the information in the world in a way which is ever-more effective. That’s the clever trick of evolutionary development. If it is of adaptive benefit to apprehend “the world” as a consistent, coherent whole, then as long as that coherent whole accounts effectively for our physiologically meaningful experiences, then its relation to “the truth” is really beside the point. | ||
When I run to catch a {{tag|cricket}} ball on the boundary no part of my brain solves differential equations to catch it (I don’t have nearly enough information to do that), and no immutable, unseen cosmic machine calculates those equations to plot its trajectory, either. Our mathematical model is a clever proxy, and we shouldn’t be blinded by its elegance or apparent accuracy (though, in point of fact, ''practically'' it isn’t that accurate) into assuming it somehow reveals an ineffable truth. This isn’t a new or especially controversial objection, by the way: this was one of {{author|David Hume}}’s main insights in {{bookreview|A Treatise on Human Nature}}. As a matter of logic, there must be alternate ways of describing the same phenomena, and if you allow yourself to implement different rules to solve the puzzle, the set of alternative coherent solutions is infinite. | When I run to catch a {{tag|cricket}} ball on the boundary no part of my brain solves differential equations to catch it (I don’t have nearly enough information to do that), and no immutable, unseen cosmic machine calculates those equations to plot its trajectory, either. Our mathematical model is a clever proxy, and we shouldn’t be blinded by its elegance or apparent accuracy (though, in point of fact, ''practically'' it isn’t that accurate) into assuming it somehow reveals an ineffable truth. This isn’t a new or especially controversial objection, by the way: this was one of {{author|David Hume}}’s main insights in {{bookreview|A Treatise on Human Nature}}. As a matter of logic, there must be alternate ways of describing the same phenomena, and if you allow yourself to implement different rules to solve the puzzle, the set of alternative coherent solutions is infinite. | ||