Kurt Gödel, Vacuous Paradoxes and Self-Reference

Kurt Gödel once wrote that

“[o]ur logical intuitions (i.e., intuitions concerning such notions as: truth, concept, being, class, etc.) are self-contradictory”.

And Gödel didn’t have any problems at all with self-reference either. He also wrote the following:

“Contrary to appearances, such a proposition involves no faulty circularity, for it only asserts that a certain well-defined formula … is unprovable. Only subsequently (and so to speak by chance) does it turn out that this formula is precisely the one by which the proposition itself was expressed.”

In the following it will be argued that it’s not simply a question of what Gödel called “faulty circularity”. Perhaps it’s also about whether anything at all can be affixed to (or said of ) such sentences as “This statement” or “This statement is not provable”. More specifically, if the words (or clause!) “This statement” are semantically and metaphysically empty, then perhaps we don’t even need to worry about Gödel’s faulty circularity.

For example, the problem is that the sentence

This statement is not provable.

is impeccable in terms of logic alone. (Or so the usual — often implicit — position seems to be.) Thus semantics and certainly metaphysics are irrelevant here. That is, the words “This statement” make a perfectly acceptable “word string” in terms of logic. That means that there’s no problem at all with affixing the suffix/predicate “is not provable” to it. So here this means that logic is completely independent of semantics and/or metaphysics — and that’s despite the use of language-language expression! But if the sentence “This statement is not provable” (or “All Cretans are liars”, for that matter) is used only to display purely “logical facts” (i.e, facts about paradox or self-contradiction), then why use natural-language expressions in the first place?

It may be this logical focus (i.e., the divorce from natural-language expressions) which help create the paradoxes and self-contradictions in the first place.

Despite that logical independence, Gödel also moved beyond mathematics, logic and even metamathematics (into philosophy) when he stated that

“our logical intuitions (i.e., intuitions concerning such notions as: truth, concept, being, class, etc.) are self-contradictory”.

All this is vaguely equivalent to Bertrand Russell’s attempt (in the early 20th century) to find what he called the “logical form” (a term which Russell first used in 1914) of faulty natural-language expressions (or, more importantly, statements). Thus logicians and philosophers (at that time at least) were actually finding the logical form of natural-language — and also philosophical - expressions such as “The King of France is bald”. But those “hidden” logical forms were simply the end product of a long process of a logical — and indeed philosophical — scraping away of everything that is contextual, semantic and metaphysical.

Let’s put all that another way.

Think now in terms of Gödel numbers.

We can assign a number to the words “This statement”. Then we can assign another number to the words (or predicate) “is not provable”. And once we have those numbers (or those arithmetical particles) assigned, then we can play all sorts of games with them.

However, the sentence “This statement is not provable” is a natural-language expression. That’s the case no matter what logical games we can play with it. And if we’re using a natural-language expression, then we must abide by the realities (or facts) of natural language — even if those realities (or facts) are far from being determinate, rule-bound or immune to philosophical dispute.

Thus we can now turn the sentence “This statement is not true” into the purely symbolic

¬p

Yet even here we’d need to clarify what the symbols p and ¬ mean in a natural language. So, in this case at least, can such symbols really be (as it’s often put about logical symbols) “drained of all meaning”?

Self-Reference

Gödel offered us his own self-referential formula. Or, more accurately and relevantly to this piece, we have this natural-language sentence:

A certain number, x, is not provable.

(The statement above doesn’t stop being a natural-language expression simply because it includes the variable x and the word “provable”.)

In some cases at least, Gödel showed us that the (Gödel) number x within a formula will happen to represent that very formula itself. Gödel himself said that “this formula is precisely the one by which the proposition itself was expressed”.

So if the symbol (or number) x represents the entire formula, then don’t we really have the following? -

A certain number, x (x = A certain number x, is not provable), is not provable.

In other words, what’s in the parenthesis above is actually a part of the whole sentence  — a necessary part of the whole sentence. To put that another way. The entire sentence has itself embedded within itself (as the symbol/number x) like a Russian doll within a Russian doll. Except, of course, one Russian doll must be smaller than the other; whereas x must be exactly the same as the sentence in which it is embedded. Yet surely this creates an infinite regress. That is, if

i) The x in the statement “A certain number, x, is not provable”

itself refers to the statement “A certain number, x, is not provable”, then don’t we have this? -

ii) A certain number, x… (x = A certain number, x… ((x = A certain number, x… (((x = A certain number, x… ((((x = A certain number, x… ((((( x = A certain number, x… ((((((… ad infinitum…)))))) is not provable.

Or it is simply this?

A certain number, x (x = a certain number), is not provable.

Now take this simpler statement:

This statement is not provable.

Again, is Gödel’s position about the whole formula (i.e., “This statement is not provable”) or is about the embedded sentence/clause (i.e., “This statement”)? It may seem that the whole sentence/formula is about itself. Therefore Gödel’s position applies to the whole of the sentence “This statement is not provable”, not simply to the embedded clause “This statement”.

The Metalanguage

On a similar theme, is the whole statement

i) This statement is false.

part of a metalanguage simply because the words/predicate “is false” is affixed to the words “This statement”? (One can ask here why “This statement” is a statement at all — see the section ‘Empty Paradoxes’ later.) Or is the longer sentence

ii) The statement “This statement is false” is false/true.

part of a metalanguage? Thus if everything is within within the same sentence (as in example i)), then how can it really be an example of a metalanguage (or a case of “language about language”)?

On the other hand, perhaps only the suffix/predicate “is false” is metalinguistic.

Take Alfred Tarski’s object-language/meta-language distinction. In this case, the meta-language is completely separated from the object-language. Yet in i) above we seemingly have both the object-language and the meta-language within the very same sentence (i.e., or sometimes within the same quotation marks). That certainly breaks Tarski’s own golden rule.

Of course that may simply be a question of grammatical layout. That is, perhaps

i) This statement is false.

is simply shorthand for the following:

ia) The statement “This statement is false” is true/false.

In many other self-referential or Gödelian statements the predicate/suffix “is provable” often occurs. That suffix/predicate hints at the possibility that all the proofs of mathematical systems — and the statements within them — must come from metalanguages. That is, they must exist outside the systems.

However, it’s not that proof exists outside the system. 

Statements within a system have be proved or are provable. So it’s the suffix/predicate “… is provable” that’s outside the system, not the proofs themselves. And that may simply be because the words “is provable” are from a natural language. That is, they’re not themselves mathematical or logical symbols. That said, all logical and mathematical symbols have a natural-language expression. So a further two questions can now be asked:

1) Do natural-language expressions of mathematical/logical symbols and symbolic statements/equations truly capture the whole logical/mathematical import of those symbols and statements/equations? 

2) Do these natural-language expressions add something (problematic) to those logical/mathematical symbols and statements/equations?

The Cretan Liar and the Barber Paradox

The Cretan liar paradox also provides us with a perfect example of self-reference.

In 1869 Thomas Fowler expressed the Cretan liar paradox as follows:

“Epimenides the Cretan says that ‘All the Cretans are liars’, but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar.”

The upshot is this.

Epimenides stated: “All Cretans are liars”. He was a Cretan. Therefore he was a liar. That means that his statement “All Cretans are liars” must be a lie (or false).

Put differently. All the above means that if what Epimenides says is true (i.e., that all Cretans lie), then it must be false because he’s a Cretan and all Cretans are liars. That is, if a Cretan (as one of the set Cretan Liars) says that “All Cretans are liars”, then that statement must be false.

Furthermore, if the statement “All Cretans are liars” is itself a lie (i.e., false), then that must mean that at least some Cretans must tell the truth. So is this particular Cretan (i.e., Epimenides) one of those Cretans who tells the truth? After all, the statement “All Cretans are liars” doesn’t need to translate into “No Cretans are liars” simply because Epimenides himself may be an exception. It may simply have been that some Cretans are liars. So was the Cretan who made this statement himself a liar or a truth-teller? If he’s a truth-teller, then it may be the case that all Cretans are liars… But he is a Cretan himself!

The Cretan liar paradox also highlights a problem which runs through this piece. That problem is one of the application of logic to natural-language statements or expressions. Or, inversely, the problem occurs when the logical form of natural-language statements/expression is (as it it used to be put) “discovered”. (This was mentioned in the introduction.) If these things are done, then they often throw up paradoxes or self-contradictions.

Basically, one possibility is that the statement

“All Cretans are liars.”

should really be

“Except for myself, all Cretans are liars.”

That is, the above is a more natural and less problematic natural-language expression of the words “All Cretans are liars”.

However, the universal quantifier “all” ( or ∀ in logic) is somewhat negated by the proceeding clause “Except for myself”. This also has the consequence that it is no longer paradoxical or self-contradictory.

This all hinges on the quantifier “all” and the problems (or difficulties) self-reference throw up. In logic, it’s often agreed that quantifiers nearly always have a restricted range (or domain) which is determined by specific contexts. So does the word “all” in “All Cretans are liars” have a restricted range? Is the speaker of the words “All Cretans are liars” that very restriction (or exception) himself? If we take the word “all” literally, then he can’t be. However, if we take the word “all” contextually or as a quantifier with a restricted range, then he may well be that very exception. After all, in natural-language terms (therefore in terms of context), many people would be happy to accept that when a person says that “All people are evil” (or says that “All people are nice”), then he may well be exempting himself from that statement. Indeed if someone were to say (out loud) that “All people always remain silent”, then (by definition) he must be an exception to his own universal statement.

So what about the Barber paradox?

This paradox isn’t about a single self-referential statement. That is, it can only be established through a chain of arguments. It is self-referential, however, in that it deals with the question of whether the barber does or doesn’t shave himself. Nonetheless, it’s not about a self-referential statement (or sentence) — as in the Liar paradox.

Of course the Barber paradox can be (partly) summed up in a single sentence. For example:

“I shave everyone who doesn’t shave themselves.”

Despite that, the paradox is still not a self-referential sentence like “I am lying at this very moment”. It’s about a self-referential situation (as it were); though, unlike the Lair paradox, it isn’t about a single sentence referring to itself (or a person referring to what he himself is currently saying). Thus the Barber paradox is about a possible (or impossible) state of affairs; not about a self-referential statement.

Empty Paradoxes and Semantic Content

Many logicians have argued that (semantic) content isn’t required when it comes to self-referential statements like “This statement is false”. Yet specifically in reference to the Liar paradox, one logician wrote:

“[The Liar paradox] led to the collapse of logicism and indirectly to Gödel’s incompleteness results (i.e., that in a formal system like Zermelo-Frankel set theory you can derive (G(F) = ‘This sentence cannot be proved in F’.)”

Gödel’s “This sentence cannot be proved in F” isn’t like the Liar paradox — at least it’s not precisely the same.

Put it this way. The following

Statement S in system A is true though it can’t be proven to be true in A.

isn’t like a single sentence which refers to itself. The above states that a statement (or mathematical truth) within a system is true even though it can’t be proven within that system. This means that Gödel’s “S in x” is true — just not proven to be true within the system to which it belongs. The problem with the Liar paradox, on the other hand, is that it can’t be established if it’s true or false (or if it’s both) at all.

Now take the following:

(A) The sentence A is false.

Isn’t it the case that statement A has no semantic content? Perhaps it’s not a genuine statement (or proposition) at all. Nonetheless, since many logicians and philosophers don’t take this view, let’s take it as they take it — as being a genuine (if paradoxical) statement.

The first thing to say is that it’s self-referential. Again, just like the Liar paradox, it’s about itself. (Here’s a list of other self-referential paradoxes.)

We have the sentence “(A) The sentence A is false”, which includes the symbol A. And A stands for the sentence it is in or the words which surround it. That means that a symbol (i.e. A) within a sentence refers to the sentence which it is in. Thus we have this again:

The sentence A… (A = The sentence A… ((A = The Sentence A… (((A = The sentence A… ((((A = The sentence A… ((((( A = The sentence A… ((((((… ad infinitum…)))))) is false.

Now what, precisely, is true or false? Sentence A is true or false. What does sentence A say about itself? It says that it’s “false” — and that’s it. It doesn’t say its subject-term (or phrase) is false: it says that the whole sentence is false.

So if we take out the A from the original statement “The sentence A is false”, then what do we have left? This:

The sentence… is false.

Since A only refers to the sentence itself, then why can’t we take A out? And if we do that, then what are we left with? It’s already been said that “The sentence A is false” is without content: so it’s even more the case that “The sentence… is false” is without content.

This can be boiled down even more.

We’ve already removed the A: now we can also remove the words “is false”. After all, the predicate “is false” must be applicable to something else. So what is the “is false” (in “The sentence A”) applicable to? That’s right, the “is false” suffix/predicate/clause is applicable to “The sentence”! So the two words “The sentence” are meant to be either false. Yet how can the two words “The sentence” be either true or false when they say precisely nothing?

To recap. It’s being argued here that the statement

(A) The sentence A is false.

is a pseudo-statement with no semantic content. Another way in which the same thing can more or less be said is to say that it’s malignly self-referential. Or, more correctly, that truth can’t be applied self-referentially (as Tarski argued) — especially when the statement has no content in the first place. Indeed it’s self-referential precisely because it has no content.

So what about a sentence which has a sentence embedded within itself which does have content? Take this example from Tarski:

(S) The sentence “Snow is white” is true iff p.

Now that’s not really a single sentence (or statement) at all. It is in fact two sentences. We have the embedded sentence 'Snow is white' as well whole sentence “This sentence ‘Snow is white’ is true iff p”. Thus it isn’t self-referential. The meta-language “The sentence ‘Snow is white’ is true iff p” is being applied to the object-language’s 'Snow is white'. The statement 'Snow is white' clearly has content and the whole sentence “The sentence ‘Snow is white’ is true iff p” isn’t self-referential either because there’s both a meta-sentence and an object-sentence.

Despite all that, logicians defend the sentence “The sentence A is false” for two main reasons:

i) The words “is false” are an acceptable English predicate.

ii) The whole sentence is grammatically “unassailable”.

Is it grammatically unassailable? I don’t think it’s either logically or philosophically unassailable (or acceptable). And now the grammar can be rejected too.

Again, the argument is that we can grammatically assert the sentence “The statement A” and grammatically apply the words “is false” to it. But that depends on what’s meant by “we can grammatically assert the sentence”. Can we? Grammar, unlike logic, is largely about what is acceptable to say in order to make sense (or communicate) in certain contexts. Now “This sentence” (or “This sentence A is false”) isn’t grammatically acceptable for precisely the reasons given. (It’s roughly equivalent to saying “I walk down” or “This is”  — and no teacher of English grammar would accept this locution without the speaker or writer also supplying some sentential or semantic context.)

So we can conclude by saying that this is why the philosophy of logic is over and above pure (or formal) logic.

Donald Hoffman's Philosophy of Consciousness and Reality: Conscious Realism

i) A Little Context: Hoffman on Religion, Spiritualism and Mysticism

ii) Conscious Realism

iii) Conscious Realism and Fundamentality

iv) Consciousness

v) Conscious Agents

vi) Interfaces and Icons

vii) First-Person Science and the Copenhagen Interpretation

A Little Context: Hoffman on Religion, Spiritualism and Mysticism

ZDoggMD interviewing and reacting to the words of Donald Hoffman.

This introduction deals with the context of — and what might have motivated — Professor Donald Hoffman’s philosophical position of consciousness realism. Admittedly, it’s usually commentators on — and interviewers of — Hoffman who’re very keen to stress the religious, spiritual and mystical aspects of his philosophy. However, Hoffman himself does so in various places.

So in order to place Professor Donald Hoffman’s conscious realism in some kind of context, it may be wise to look at what can be taken to be his non-philosophical and non-scientific motivations.

From what he writes himself, and from the many comments he’s made on spirituality, mysticism and religion (as well as the time he has given to people like Deepak Chopra, etc.), it seems that there are many non-philosophical and non-scientific motivations behind Hoffman’s conscious realism. This, of course, isn’t to claim that Hoffman doesn’t provide arguments and scientific data for his speculative philosophy. Nonetheless, this context may help us understand what it is Hoffman is attempting to do.

The bottom line is that there’s much that Hoffman states which seems to be tailor-made for those who have religious, spiritual and mystical (i.e., non-scientific and non-philosophical) views of what “reality” truly is. For example, take these words from Hoffman:

“According to conscious realism, you are not just one conscious agent, but a complex heterarchy of interacting conscious agents, which can be called your instantiation (Bennett et al. 1989 give a mathematical treatment).”

Clearly Hoffman is advancing some kind of “holistic” interconnectedness vibe (for want of a more suitable word) here.

Having said that, the fact that New Agers, etc. are now gobbling up Hoffman’s words and theories doesn’t automatically make them false or unscientific. This would be an example of relying on guilt by association. However, it does give people grounds for varying degrees of suspicion or scepticism.

It can be said that much of what Hoffman says is also closely connected to “mysticism”. That’s not my own word, Hoffman himself uses it a few times. (He does so usually in interviews and seminars, rather than in his academic papers.) Despite that, Hoffman does (at least at times) distance himself from such things. He does so primary by saying that his position

“give[s] a mathematically precise theory of conscious experiences, conscious agents, and their dynamics, and then make empirically testable predictions”.

So Hoffman’s rejoinder may be that he’s certainly not doing religion, spiritualism or mysticism because of the scientific nature of his theories. Yet it can still be argued that the very least Hoffman should say is that he’s not only doing religion, spiritualism or mysticism.

Now let’s ignore whether or not there are genuinely scientific aspects to conscious realism (there obviously are!) and put forward the fact that Hoffman’s science is used to advance positions (at least in part) which already existed long before — and independently of — all science. (He concedes as much here.) That, of course, doesn’t mean that the two independent magisteria of science and religion/spirituality/mysticism can’t be squared. Indeed I believe that Hoffman himself is attempting to square them.

Finally, the term “magisteria” has just been used. This is Stephen Jay Gould’s term and it’s been quoted by Hoffman himself. However, it can be argued that since Hoffman is attempting to literally fuse (or unite) these two magisteria (i.e., science and religion), then that must surely go against what Gould himself had in mind — i.e., his stress on the mutual independence of science and religion.

(See this video in which Hoffman presents himself as offering a midway position between theism/deism and atheism. Later in the same video, Hoffman concedes that he’s “giving religious people something that will be positive to them”. And here Hoffman argues that all the scientific cases against the existence of God fail. Finally, in this interview Hoffman says that the relationship between science and spirituality is “very deep”. More specifically, Hoffman states that “many of the spiritual traditions have been telling us for centuries, even millennia, that spacetime is not fundamental but there’s a deeper reality outside of spacetime”. Of course Hoffman will be keen to stress than none of these positions make him either a religious person or a theist/deist. So does Hoffman have his cake and eat it too?)

Conscious Realism

The prime thesis of Donald Hoffman’s conscious realism (CR) is very radical. In Hoffman’s own words:

“Conscious realism asserts that the objective world, i.e., the world whose existence does not depend on the perceptions of a particular observer, consists entirely of conscious agents.”

Of course the word “radical” doesn’t mean “false”, “incorrect” or even “misguided”. Indeed Hoffman himself acknowledges (as well as plays upon) the fact that CR seems incredible.

To get the obvious out of the way. It’s clear that the realism in conscious realism applies to consciousness or to what Hoffman calls “conscious agents”. That is, Hoffman is realist about consciousness (or about the contents of consciousness).

It is the final clause of the quote above (“consists entirely of conscious agents”) which is peculiar to Hoffman. On the other hand, the preceding statement about “the objective world” (i.e., the world whose existence does not depend on the perceptions of a particular observer”) has of course be well played out in philosophy for over the two millennia.

To rush ahead of myself, that “objective world” does indeed exist. The point is that it’s not what “we” take it to be. So what should we take the objective world to be? According to Hoffman, the objective world “is a world of conscious agents”. It’s “not a world of unconscious particles and fields”. So since particles and fields have just be mentioned, what does Hoffman take them to be? He takes them to be “icons in the [multimodal user interface] of conscious agents”. Thus particles and fields are “not themselves fundamental denizens of the objective world”.

The end result of Hoffman’s philosophy is that consciousness must be taken to be “fundamental”.

Conscious Realism and Fundamentality

Firstly, Hoffman says that

“[b]rains do not create consciousness; consciousness creates brains as dramatically simplified icons for a realm far more complex, a realm of interacting conscious agents.”

One may ask here how can it be that some non-material reality or thing can create anything? However, if Hoffman believes that “consciousness is fundamental”, then one can suppose that the answer is embedded in that position.

So conscious realism has it that “conscious experience [is] ontologically fundamental”. Thus, if that’s the case, conscious experience simply can’t arise from anything else. Or as Hoffman himself puts it:

“If experiences are ontologically fundamental, then the question simply does not arise of what screen they are painted on or what stuff they are made of.”

More specifically, Hoffman compares consciousness to space-time and leptons. That is:

“If space-time and leptons are taken to be ontologically fundamental, as some physicalists do, then the question simply does not arise of what screen space-time is painted on or what stuff leptons are made of. To ask the question is to miss the point that these entities are taken to be ontologically fundamental. Something fundamental does not need to be displayed on, or made of, anything else; if it did, it would not be fundamental.”

Hoffman also offers us something which I take to be (almost) a non sequitur. Firstly he says that “[e]very scientific theory must take something as fundamental”. Then he says that “no theory explains everything”.

One consequence of Hoffman seeing “conscious experiences” as being fundamental is that

“they are not existentially dependent on the brain, or any other physical system”.

All this means that the philosopher David Chalmers’ well-known question

“Why does a physical x give rise to experience y?”

is misplaced. That’s simply because that physical x doesn’t give rise to experience y: experience y is fundamental. And if it’s fundamental, then how can anything at all give rise to it? This chimes if with the position of most/all panpsychists in that they too believe that experience/consciousness is fundamental. Thus experience can’t emerge from anything nor can anything give rise to experience. The difficulty here, however, is that Hoffman distances his conscious realism from panpsychism.

Consciousness

Hoffman states that consciousness

“is not a latecomer in the evolutionary history of the universe, arising from complex interactions of unconscious matter and fields”.

Instead:

“Consciousness is first; matter and fields depend on it for their very existence.”

There are two (perhaps) kneejerk readings of this position. 1) That it is idealist. 2) That it is panpsychist.

Hoffman’s multi-dimensional user interface (MUI) position appears to be a new version of idealism because it states that consciousness is (as already stated) fundamental. More strongly and in tune with idealism, Hoffman claims that “matter and fields depend on [consciousness] for their very existence”. Alternatively, “[c]onsciousness is first”.

However, Hoffman doesn’t exactly reject “matter” (as many/all old-style idealists did). Instead he believes that “matter is derivative” — it’s “among the symbols constructed by conscious agents”. The question is whether or not this 21st century way of putting things extracts Hoffman from being a basic idealist. After all, Bishop Berkeley accepted matter; though he believed that matter is a question of our “sense impressions” or “ideas”. Hoffman, on the other hand, sees his “icons” (not sense impressions or ideas) as stand-ins for “objective reality”.

Conscious Agents

A symbolic representation of “conscious agents”, by Donald Hoffman.

The most difficult part of Hoffman’s conscious realism to understand is his notion of conscious agents and what part they play in his overall philosophy.

Hoffman’s position on conscious agents is the most radical aspect of an already radical philosophy. So let Hoffman himself explain things. He writes:

“According to conscious realism, when I see a table, I interact with a system, or systems, of conscious agents, and represent that interaction in my conscious experience as a table icon.”

Now that — at least on its own — hardly makes sense. For a start, what does it mean to “interact with a system, or systems, of conscious agents”? (As stated earlier, we’ll need to elaborate of what a conscious agent is first.) And what does it mean to “represent that interaction in my conscious experience as a table icon”?

Hoffman doesn’t answer these questions — at least not in the section just quoted. Instead he offers some more seemingly bizarre philosophy when he writes:

“Admittedly, the table gives me little insight into those conscious agents and their dynamics.”

Again, what does Hoffman mean by “conscious agents” and what does the statement “the table gives me little insight into those conscious agents and their dynamics” mean? Instead, Hoffman quickly moves on and tells us that the

“table is a dumbed-down icon, adapted to my needs as a member of a species in a particular niche, but not necessarily adapted to give me insight into the true nature of the objective world that triggers my construction of the table icon”.

It is then that Hoffman appears to answer these questions. Firstly, he writes:

“When, however, I see you, I again interact with a conscious agent, or a system of conscious agents. And here my icons give deeper insight into the objective world: they convey that I am, in fact, interacting with a conscious agent, namely you.”

So, at least in this instance, a conscious agent is a person or a fellow human being. (It can be seen here that Hoffman stretches his term “conscious agent” wider than that.) The first statement of the quote above (i.e., “When, however, I see you, I again interact with a conscious agent, or a system of conscious agents”) is fairly innocuous. However, the second statement (i.e., “… here my icons give deeper insight into the objective world: they convey that I am, in fact, interacting with a conscious agent, namely you”) is a little harder to make sense of.

Does Hoffman mean that by “interacting” with other conscious agents we get a “deeper insight” into the table or “objective world” than we would do by simply interacting with the table (or the objective world) itself? Well, he must do. That’s because Hoffman believes that the table is just an “icon” and objective reality isn’t what we think it is. Conscious agents, on the other hand, aren’t icons. What’s more, it is we (as conscious agents) who constitute objective reality. Thus if we want to know about this table, we must do so through our interactions with other conscious agents, not directly by observing the table itself.

But what does all that mean?

Does Hoffman mean that we can find some kind of objectivity (as it were) only by discovering what’s going on in the heads (heads are icons too) of other conscious agents? Do we do this by talking to them? And if that’s the case, then what position should we take on their words and on their phenomenological experiences (which includes icons) of the aforesaid table? (See the final section on Niels Bohr and the subjective and intersubjective elements of relativity and quantum theories.)

To sum up. Steve Tolley captures the main problem with Hoffman’s conscious realism. That problem is Hoffman’s seemingly quick and easy move from scientific facts (i.e., from cognitive science, evolutionary theory and physics) to philosophical speculation. So take this expression of that philosophical jump. Tolley writes:

“Hoffman is not doing science, he constructs a solipsistic metaphysics based on illogically elevating the simple fact that our experience of something is filtered through our perceptual apparatus to the metaphysical axiom that this entails there are no public objects.”

In other words, Hoffman feels the need to move beyond what can be regarded as anti-realism to embrace what seems to be an old-style idealism (if with technical terms from cognitive science, physics and evolutionary theory). That is, from the fact that your experience of a spoon/table/tomato isn’t identical to my experience of a spoon/table/tomato, Hoffman derives the metaphysical conclusion that the spoon/table/tomato only exists in one person’s head or in many persons’ heads. Yet Hoffman fails to realise that metaphysical realists — and even naïve realitists — have never claimed that all experiences of the same spoon/table/tomato (at the same time) need to be identical. All these realisms simply argue that there’s a spoon/table/tomato which is beyond all acts of consciousness and experience. However, unlike anti-realists, naïve and metaphysical realists believe that we can get that spoon/table/tomato as it is in itself. Hoffman, on the other hand, believes that the spoon/table/tomato (as an “icon”) is entirely in our consciousnesses.

Interfaces and Icons

When we have talk of “icons”, then there’s often also talk of “interfaces”.

Is Hoffman’s notion of an interface a resurrection of the ancient philosophical notion of the “veil of perception” (or the recent science of the “hologram”)? That is, Hoffman believes that we never have access to objects as they are (to use a well-worn phrase) “in themselves”. Instead, we rely on our interfaces with the icons which stand in for (as it were) objects. Alternatively, is it that we’re to take the icons as the objects?

At least, then, Hoffman is accepting the existence of objects, etc: it’s just that we don’t get them as they are. (In that case, the icons aren’t the objects.) In philosophical terms, interfaced icons are equivalent to phenomena, not to noumena. Is Hoffman, therefore, ploughing over ancient ground with up-to-date jargon?

So what does Hoffman mean by “interface”? Let the cognitive scientist himself explain. He writes:

“So what is space-time and what are our perceptions of objects? I think a good way to think about them is that they are just a user interface. We evolved a user interface. If you’re crafting an e-mail on your computer and the icon for the e-mail is blue and rectangular and on the right corner of your screen, that doesn’t mean that the e-mail in your computer is blue and rectangular and in the right corner of your computer.”

What’s more:

“The interface is not there to resemble reality. It’s there to hide reality and to give you eye candy that lets you do what you need to do. That’s what evolution did. 3D space is our desktop. Physical objects are the eye candy. They are there not to show us the truth but to hide the truth and let us act in ways that keep us alive.”

First things first. The obvious point to make here is that “user interfaces” on a computer are consciously designed to serve a specific purpose. Now that may be a difference that doesn’t make a difference to Hoffman. (After all, some people use the word “design” to refer to the changes evolution brings about in homo sapiens and other species.) Nonetheless, are we really supposed to accept that an “icon for the email” is the same kind of thing as the icon that is a table which we experience in everyday life? Perhaps the two examples are simply similar. Or perhaps they’re merely analogous. However, reading what Hoffman actually writes can lead one to believe that the cases are indeed the same; even if one icon is on a computer and the other is an experience of an icon of a table.

Let’s unpack this a little more. Firstly we have this:

“An icon for an email which is blue and rectangular and which appears on the right-hand side of a computer screen.”

But what is this icon an icon of? It’s an icon of the wires, electrical currents, etc. which exist within the computer and which are the “subvenience base” (as it were) of the email.

What’s more, icons — being icons — are mere “eye candy”. That is, Hoffman believes that icons don’t “resemble reality”. Instead, they “let us do what we need to do”. And we can do what we need to do without these icons resembling reality or by their “show[ing] us the truth”. In fact they “hide the truth”. Now why would icons do that? Hoffman believes that they do so in order to “keep us alive” (or at least the icons outside of computers keep us alive).

The words “eye candy” don’t help because they imply (at least to me) that icons (even if we accept this term) have absolutely nothing to do with what Hoffman calls “reality”. Thus our icon of a table has absolutely nothing in common with whatever underpins (if that’s the right word) our experience of a table; just as an icon on a computer has nothing in common with the innards of a computer. This, again, raises the simple question:

Can what is true about an icon for an email on a computer screen easily and smoothly pass over to the icon we experience and which we take to be a table?

Again, are these examples similar or merely analogical? If they’re dissimilar in any way, then we’d need to know how they’re dissimilar. We’d also need to know if these dissimilarities had any heavyweight philosophical consequences.

Firstly, we know what’s “behind” the icon on a computer — Hoffman has told us about what’s behind it and we can happily agree with him. So what’s behind the icon/s of, say, a table? And whatever it is that’s behind the icon/s of a table, does it have anything in common with our icon/s?

As stated, Hoffman answers this question by arguing that the icon of a table has absolutely nothing in common with what’s behind it. (In his own words, it is “utterly different”.) Or to use Hoffman’s next example of a red tomato, he writes:

“When I open my eyes and I have a conscious experience that I describe as a red tomato one meter away, I’m interacting with something, but that something is not a red tomato and it is not in space and time. It’s something utterly different.”

So if it is not a red tomato and “it is not in space and time”, then what is it? One’s first temptation is to say that it’s a Kantian noumenon. After all, Kant’s noumena were also meant to be outside space and time. However, elsewhere Hoffman rejects (Kantian) noumena because he claims that they aren’t scientific in nature.

First-person Science and the Copenhagen Interpretation

Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli.

Apart from the technicalities and technical terms of Hoffman’s philosophy, he also takes a very radical position in what can be called the philosophy of science. Basically, Hoffman rejects what he calls “third-person science”. It’s partly because of this that he also rejects “physical objects”. Hoffman says that

“you can look at this physical object and I can look at the same physical object and we can both make measurements on it and then compare”.

Hoffman rejects this fact (or this ideal) because he believes that “there are no public physical objects”. Essentially, what’s being compared is what goes on in my head with what goes on in other people’s heads. As a consequence of that, Hoffman believes that “[s]cientists will also have to give up the idea of third-person science” and opt for “first-person science”.

Much of what Hoffman says can therefore be traced back (as he does himself) to Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. For example, take these words from Hoffman:

“What one gives up in this framework of thinking is the belief that physical objects and their properties exist independently of the conscious agents that perceive them.”

We can easily do some word substitutions here to arrive at the following:

What one gives up in this framework of thinking is the belief that physical objects and their properties exist independently of the experiments and observations that give rise to them.

The problem is that the quantum physicists of the 1920s were talking about the quantum realm, not the realm of “medium-sized dry goods” (as J.L. Austin once put it). However, that’s a difference that doesn’t make a difference to Hoffman. That is, Hoffman believes that what has been said about the objects, events and items of the quantum realm can also be said about “classical” objects (such as his own table and red tomato).

And, more specifically, perhaps Niels Bohr’s take on Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity (among other things) have also influenced Hoffman. That is, is Hoffman is stressing his own equivalent of the scientific emphasis on “intersubjective” communication, observation and experiment?

Nonetheless, Bohr did note the problem with over-stressing what he called the “subjective element”. Or at least he did so when it came to Einstein’s theories of relativity. For example, Bohr said that “we have come a long way from the classical ideal of objective descriptions”. And Bohr made roughly the same point elsewhere when he said that “every physical process may be said to have objective and subjective features”. He continued:

“Admittedly, even in our future encounters with reality we shall have to distinguish between the objective and the subjective side, to make a division between the two. But the location of the separation may depend on the way things are looked at; to a certain extent it can be chosen at will.”

To put all that in more basic terms. It’s clear that Bohr’s position (or positions) could never be deemed to be entirely subjectivist. Indeed isn’t that obvious? Though, as we’ve seen, there is indeed an element of subjectivism (or experientialism) in Bohr’s statements.