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Ep. 26 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Cognitive Science

Episode 26 of John Vervaeke's series examines cognitive science as a route through the meaning crisis, contrasting neuroscience, AI, psychology, linguistics and anthropology, and warning against equiv

Key Takeaways

  • The meaning crisis is not best framed as a political problem but requires understanding the participatory nature of knowing.
  • Cognitive science is a valuable but fragmented enterprise, and its disciplines must be bridged rather than merely specialized.
  • Equivocation about the term 'mind' causes confusion, so careful tracking of concepts and their meanings is essential.
  • Scientific specialization yields precision but can deepen our alienation from ourselves if not integrated.
  • Intelligence is best understood as general problem solving across domains.

What the video covers

  • Recaps Episode 25: post-Hegelian Germany, the rise of pseudo-religious ideologies, WWI trauma, and Hitler's gnostic, Nazi-Marxist conflict leading to the Cold War.
  • Argues the meaning crisis cannot be solved politically because political framing misses the participatory dimension of knowing that Kierkegaard, Marx and Schopenhauer pointed toward.
  • Proposes studying the 'meaning machinery' scientifically, specifically through cognitive science, which the speaker presents as part of the meaning crisis itself.
  • Describes how 'mind' is an equivocal term studied at different levels: neuroscience (brain), AI (information processing and algorithms), psychology (behavior), linguistics (language) and anthropology (culture).
  • Notes each discipline uses different ontologies, vocabularies, methods and forms of evidence, which fragments our understanding of ourselves.
  • Warns that equivocation, failing to track what terms mean, produces confusion, and gives examples from ordinary language and the history of concepts.
  • Suggests that the scientific worldview, while valuable, contributes to fragmentation and to a loss of understanding of who we are.
  • Introduces the idea of general problem solving as a core feature of intelligence, to be analyzed through sequences of operations.
  • Discusses profundity as aptness and insight rather than mere truth, contrasting it with triviality and conspiracy thinking.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Recap: Post-Hegelian Germany and the Rise of Pseudo-Religious Ideologies
  2. 04:25Why Politics Misframes the Meaning Crisis
  3. 04:43Turning to Cognitive Science and the Meaning Machinery
  4. 08:00Levels of Mind: Brain, AI, Psychology, Language and Culture
  5. 20:00Fragmentation and the Problem of Equivocation
  6. 42:00Profundity, Insight and Transfer Between Domains
  7. 47:20Intelligence as General Problem Solving

Answers

Questions about this video

Why does the speaker argue the meaning crisis cannot be solved through political ideologies?

He argues that political framing misses the participatory dimension of knowing that thinkers like Kierkegaard, Marx and Schopenhauer identified, which Hegel ignored. Politics remains relevant, but framing the problem at that level is too radically mistaken.

What does the speaker mean by equivocation in the context of 'mind'?

Equivocation means falling into confusion because terms are not used consistently. 'Mind' refers to different things across neuroscience, AI, psychology, linguistics and anthropology, each with its own ontology and methods, so the term has become ambiguous.

How does the speaker suggest cognitive science should be approached?

He proposes a scientific study of the meaning-making machinery that is integrative rather than fragmented, bridging disciplines and keeping track of how concepts shift between levels of analysis, instead of only specializing further.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
[Music] you [Music] welcome back to awakening from the meaning crisis this is episode 26 last time we took a look at what's happening in Germany in the period post Hegel postmarks post Nietzsche and we took a look at the rise of the pseudo religious
00:31
Speaker A
ideologies and of the various other cultural undercurrents and threads and processes of transformation that were gathered together in Germany and then exacerbated and ignited if I'll if you'll allow me a volatile metaphor by Germany's terrific defeat in the terror
01:00
Speaker A
the that was World War one and the impact this had on Germany and how all of this all of these features that we saw at work in Germany and in the meeting crisis get spun in Hitler's autodidactic myopia into a gnostic
01:25
Speaker A
nightmare a titanic pseudo religious ideology and how the two great pseudo religious ideologies of Nazism and Marxism at least the Stalin and the Stalinist version in the Soviet Union come to Titanic blows and the Eastern Front at the Battle of Kursk and then I
01:45
Speaker A
pointed out that this and then the ideological battle political ideological battles of the Cold War and thereafter have left us deeply traumatized we place no faith in pseudo religious ideologies utopian visions to solve the meeting crisis at least many of us don't we do
02:20
Speaker A
not see ourselves as capable of the nostalgic return to religion somehow pretending that all of this history all the science can be ignored in a kind of fundamentalism and please note that I'm not equated all religion with fundamentalism instead we find ourselves
02:38
Speaker A
in the middle in between these and we're trapped we can't go back and we can't do a secular alternative to religion and yet we need something that will systematically create psycho technologies that transform consciousness cognition character and culture in a way that religions have if
03:03
Speaker A
we're going to address the meaning crisis and in fact the Metta crisis that we're confronting right now in the world today and so we're caught in this situation and we pursue either various radicalism 's and i critiqued the idea
03:26
Speaker A
that the meaning crisis should be understood or we should attempt to solve it by the clash or through the clash by means of the clash of political ideologies that that is to fundamentally miss frame it because if you remember
03:43
Speaker A
kirkegaard and Marx and Schopenhauer all in their different ways and in ways that we can criticize are nevertheless pointing to the fact that the participatory in perspective of knowing that is so crucial to responding to and loss as a meaning and regenerating
04:03
Speaker A
meaning has been ignored by Hegel so we can't do this politically it doesn't mean the politics is irrelevant but it means that framing and formulating the problem at the political level is too radically miss frame it and miss
04:21
Speaker A
formulate it and then I propose to you that instead we turn to an alternative way of trying to reformulate the problem that we try and get a scientific understanding as best we can the meaning machinery this machinery that we prospectively
04:43
Speaker A
participate within we don't just simply I'll often say meaning-making but as I'll argue we don't just we don't make meaning the way the romantics said neither we do we just receive meaning from the world the way the empiricists
04:56
Speaker A
and the Enlightenment argued right we're gonna see that it's neither one of those that's another dichotomy that we have to transcend but nevertheless let's look at this machinery the machinery of meaning realization what are the cognitive processes at work within it and I
05:18
Speaker A
propose that we do that from a scientific worldview precisely because at least from a scientific point of view precisely because we need that to complement the historical analysis and because the scientific worldview is part of the problem of the meaning crisis
05:37
Speaker A
itself so I propose we take a look at the science of cognition and that means that we take a look at cognitive science I am a cognitive scientist professionally but as I said from the very beginning of this series I'm
05:53
Speaker A
offering you a particular interpretation of how to do cognitive science not everybody in cognitive science would agree with me but I think it is viable and respectable version of cognitive science that can be argued for what is that idea is the idea that cognitive
06:09
Speaker A
science is born out of a particular way in which the scientific study of mine is unfolded and it ends as I indicated last time it's a way that has actually contributed significantly to a version of the meaning crisis that is deeply
06:26
Speaker A
personal deeply into the very guts of our minds and bodies all right and this has to do with the idea that this term has now become equivocal and we'll come back to that in a minute because we actually are talking about different
06:45
Speaker A
things or at least different levels of the reality of mind with different disciplines different disciplines that use different vocabularies different theoretical styles of argumentation different means of measuring phenomena different ways of gathering evidence so we have the brain
07:11
Speaker A
that's being talked about by the neuroscientist you know talk about patterns of neural activity using fMRI etc we talked about that and then we have a totally different level at which we're understanding intelligence the mind in terms of information processing
07:29
Speaker A
especially when we're in the project not of measuring brains but of trying to make machines that are instances of mind not just simulations but bonafide instances of right and this is the project of artificial general intelligence projects like machine
07:47
Speaker A
learning etc and of course they talk about different things they don't talk about neurons they might talk about neural networks but those aren't the same thing importantly all right they'll talk about algorithms heuristics you know all that sort of stuff very and they don't you
08:05
Speaker A
know use that from our eyes they actually make the machines and processes different ontology different methodology etc then we of course we have understanding - behavior and that's psychology and here we talk about things like working memory and problem solving
08:24
Speaker A
decision making and we and we do experimentation on human beings and statistical analysis again different ontology different theoretical vocabulary different methods of studying the phenomenon of different ways of presenting evidence right and we noted throughout that there are attempts to
08:45
Speaker A
create hybrids between the various disciplines so these are the levels of reality here and these are the disciplines here right because above this as we said we have language because of the tremendously important and special role that language plays with
09:04
Speaker A
respect to being a medium for mind and being a way of communicating mind and of course here we have linguistics and we might get psycho linguistics to try and bridge between them right but nevertheless in linguistics we're talking about things
09:23
Speaker A
like you know sentence structures and rules of transformation and we're gathering different kinds of evidence etc and then the networking of minds and brains together through language and behavior as culture and that studied by anthropology and that has a very
09:39
Speaker A
different method this really emphasizes the perspectival and the participatory so you do participant observation you write ethnographies right and of course that helps to give one of the advantages of science it helps to formulate you know and specialize people so they can
10:00
Speaker A
get much more precise analysis and so this is a good thing I'm not trying to in any way despise this but it is problematic in that it carries with it first of all it fragments us well this term mine has now become equivocal what
10:17
Speaker A
are we talking about when we're talking about our mind and and related constructs like our self so let's remember what equivocation is equivocation is when you fall into confusion precisely because you do not keep track of the meaning of your terms
10:34
Speaker A
so here's one of my favorites right so nothing is better then long life and happiness kind of something that you get in Star Trek right great and then I can say to you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than nothing
11:09
Speaker A
okay so nothing is better than long life and happiness and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than nothing there go a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than long life and happiness so you know what you should do
11:30
Speaker A
you should eat nope a peanut butter jelly sandwich and then commit suicide now that's ridiculous and that's the whole point not this should not convince you to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to end commit suicide it's designed to convince you of
11:53
Speaker A
the the ridiculousness of this argument now why is the argument ridiculous because I'm used the argument hinges on the this right and that because I'm using the same term it sounds like I can make the inference but of course
12:13
Speaker A
although I'm using the same word I'm not meaning the same thing this means no thing from the set of things that makes life worth living is better than long life and happiness this means no thing from this set of things you should eat
12:26
Speaker A
and those are not equivalent sets there's not equivalent reference that you don't keep track of what your words mean that's why we I'm always so careful to try and give you like the meaning of things in the history of the meaning of
12:39
Speaker A
a term if you don't get sensitive to the meaning of terms you'll fall into equivocation which is a disastrous way to try and reason about anything okay so what's the point of that well the term mind isn't univocal they can be what am
13:02
Speaker A
I talking about am I talking about this am I talking about this am I talking about this am I talking about this am I talking mother my time about how this and this I'm I talk about this don't
13:11
Speaker A
know and the degree to which I'm equivocal without realizing it is the degree to which my thinking about my mind and therefore mice self is ridiculous if you aren't clear about what this word means how you're using this concept you will be
13:34
Speaker A
bullshitting yourself through equivocation I also pointed out that one of the consequences of this is fragmentation what do I mean by that well there's a couple is an ignorant in this and again I'm not I am not disparaging these Sciences
13:59
Speaker A
I love these Sciences I've got education in them and I value them that is not what is happening here but one of the things that is missing that we are ignorant of in this model is this these various levels of reality causally
14:17
Speaker A
impact and constrain each other in very important ways these individual disciplines don't capture that that's why there's this constant temptation and need to create the hybrids like psycho linguistics so how are we going to study therefore the relationship between the
14:43
Speaker A
levels we have to get the disciplines to hybridize or beyond that to talk to each other to integrate together in some fashion if we're going to deal with that ignorance and that has to be an astute practice we can't just we can't just
15:01
Speaker A
integrate by equivocating no integration through equivocation because that's just bullshitting so what we have to do is we have to have a philosophically astute integration we need philosophy precisely because philosophy is the discipline that has us take conceptual care to try
15:23
Speaker A
and articulate the meaning of our terms to try and bridge that because that what philosophy does it tries to bridge between these different vocabularies these different ontology --zz the different methodologies that's what philosophy does philosophy isn't about sitting around in cafes smoking
15:42
Speaker A
cigarettes and saying vaguely obscure things now the discipline that tries to come up with a philosophically astute integration between these disciplines so that we can avoid equivocation and deal with fragmentation and overcome the ignorance of the causal relationship
16:10
Speaker A
between the levels that's cognitive science that's what cognitive science is that's what people mean when they say cognitive science is an interdisciplinary science now I hope you see that cognitive science is already directly confronting and addressing one of the ways in which the
16:43
Speaker A
meaning crisis is inhabiting us in terms of the way the scientific world view again I'm not denigrating it but the way in which the scientific worldview is fragmenting us and causing us to fall into ignorance about who and what we are
16:57
Speaker A
and to equivocate and [ __ ] ourselves about who and what we are cognitive science is placed to address that by its very nature and of course it is the science that is going to talk about this meaning generation process because all
17:18
Speaker A
of these are about that in some important way they're all about how mind makes sense now I want to argue that there are different ways in which you can understand how you practice cognitive science how you try and create these
17:46
Speaker A
bridges between the disciplines I'm gonna and I'm not presenting them in a neutral fashion and telling you that right from the beginning I think one of these ways is the best way a way nevertheless in which people use this
18:00
Speaker A
term and they'll often not capitalize it and they'll PluralEyes that they'll talk about the cognitive sciences and then all that is is just generic nominalism cognitive science or the cognitive sciences is just a name for the genius that each one of these disciplines
18:23
Speaker A
belong to anthropology is one of the cognitive sciences machine learning is one of the cognitive sciences neuroscience is one of the cognitive sciences generic nominalism it's useless given the concerns I've articulated for you it's not going to address the
18:40
Speaker A
equivocation it is not going to address the fragmentation it is not going to give us any purchase on addressing the ignorance between the different levels of reality so I believe we should although this is often used this way
18:53
Speaker A
well we should reject this at least as the sole meaning of what cognitive science is doing right the next thing people do is they will have this term sort of cognitive science and they understand it as is it as a kind of
19:17
Speaker A
interdisciplinary eclecticism when I do like I'm you know to do cognitive sciences but let's say I'll be one of I'll being a member of one of the core disciplines let's say I'm a neuroscientist and what I do is I'm a
19:38
Speaker A
neuroscientist but I I read a bit about psychology or perhaps linguistics and then I pick some ideas that are interesting from the other disciplines and you know when I use them and sometimes I I'll tell some of my
19:53
Speaker A
linguists or psychological friends some of the things I'm doing in neuroscience and some of those ideas might interest them and of course that's good and people are free to do this and the model for this right is you know kind of look
20:07
Speaker A
I mean this as an analogy you know what we have an interfaith dialogue see the whole point about interfaith dialogue is you know the Christians and the Buddhists talk and you know I find something interesting the sama Buddhists
20:23
Speaker A
and Christianity and the Christians to find something interesting me and we talk but we're not trying to Brad eclis transform each other there's no sense in which there's going to be a really significant transfer a transformative transfer of insight between us and we're
20:42
Speaker A
certainly not trying to make something above and beyond Buddhism than Christianity it's not like after we do the interfaith dialogue we're gonna have come up with a new religion now I use that metaphor precisely because I think it's helpful
20:56
Speaker A
right for understanding now the goal of interfaith dialogue is to you know enhance mutual understanding and build tolerance and respect reduce violence and these are all noble endeavors so I'm not I'm not disparaging this but notice the problem here notice it's not really
21:16
Speaker A
capturing why people feel so strongly you know drawn towards creating things like psycho linguistics that bridge between them the different disciplines see the problem with this is it's both it's neither too weak or too strong this can very quickly just become there's no
21:33
Speaker A
significant bridging between the disciplines there's some interest there's some creation of mutual respect but it's not the case that we're really capturing significant theoretically important relationship between the different levels by having strong in transformative insights passing between the disciplines right so this will tend
21:59
Speaker A
to degenerate or people will realize they need something stronger they will realize that there is something to these attempt to create the linking disciplines and that's the third and I think therefore best vision of cognitive science that's the vision of cognitive
22:20
Speaker A
sciences synoptic integration synoptic integration is not saying that all the disciplines are saying the same thing it's not saying that but it's not simple eclecticism of well they're all sayings different things but let's get them all to be friendly and like each other and
22:39
Speaker A
they can have some sort of peripheral influence on each other synoptic integration is saying no we need to build something right between the disciplines that addresses the equivocation deals with the fragmentation and fills in the ignorance tells us about how the levels are all
23:00
Speaker A
are actually causally interacting and constraining each other that's synoptic integration so what you want to do right is you need to say they're not saying the same thing but they're not just saying different things either you have to create this bridging vocabulary that
23:25
Speaker A
integrates across the disciplines now that's a tricky thing to do but we've talked a long time ago about the fact that our brains actually since the upper paleolithic transition we've been training them and developing them and enculturated them to get very good at
23:55
Speaker A
bridging between domains even the word bridge exemplifies what I'm referring to namely metaphor we use metaphor as a way of bridging between domains I am not about to make the argument that science is metaphor that is not what's happening
24:11
Speaker A
here okay but I'm trying to use metaphor as a way of saying that there is already a cognitive ability in us that we can exact and make use of in cognitive science look look at how a metaphor works okay if I say to you but and Sam
24:28
Speaker A
as a human being if I say to you Sam is a pig right notice what you have to do in order to make this work so it looks like I'm creating an identity claim Sam is a pig but of course what makes it a
24:43
Speaker A
metaphor is it's not an identity claim I can't use this as a way of telling you that Sam has pink skin and he lives on a farm and he's gonna be eaten by other human beings someday okay that's not
24:54
Speaker A
what I need I mean something like he's gluttonous or he's you know sexually selfish or something like that right so notice what I have to do I have to keep the two different while also saying how they're importantly the same now why am
25:12
Speaker A
i doing that because that difference right that difference gets me outside of myself here's my framing of Sam and the difference gets me outside of my framing of Sam and I look through this I look through if you'll allow me
25:26
Speaker A
you know the framing of something as a pig and I used this to look and see something in Sam away in which they're identical so I stepped back through the difference but I step I look through into the identity and I see thing
25:45
Speaker A
in Sam through my Pig lenses if you'll allow the metaphor and I allow it allows me to see and understand Sam in a different way it alters what I consider salient in Sam it restructures and so metaphor has this duality about it and
26:06
Speaker A
what you want to do is you want to you want to create a metaphor that balances these in an appropriate way when a metaphor when a metaphor balances these these what these two well we talk about a metaphor being apt so notice if I make
26:27
Speaker A
the identity relation too strong if I emphasize this side too much and I say bees are Hornets you don't think oh wow what a great metaphor that is that's such a wonderful metaphor in fact that's a really crappy metaphor right this
26:46
Speaker A
doesn't give me enough distance I can't step back enough and have an insight into this this provokes no insight there's no insightful transformation of my understanding of bees this is too close but if I if I emphasize the
27:01
Speaker A
difference too much something like you know arguments or chairs well you know arguments of chairs because they're both human-made structures and we use them on a day-to-day basis and this is a very crappy metaphor precisely because you know the difference is too great I've
27:23
Speaker A
stepped back so much if you'll allow me I'm losing sight of this and it's not clear it's vague how what am I supposed to see about arguments through this distant lens of chairs apt is when I get an appropriate balance of that so what
27:42
Speaker A
I'm looking for I'm writing cognitive science is I'm looking for theoretical constructs proposed theoretical entities that get this apt balance that allow me to keep the differences between the disciplines but you know but also see from and through those distances
28:03
Speaker A
relevant identities that allow me right to look from neuroscience into artificial intelligence in an insightful way or look from I step back from right behavior in psychology I go I step into linguistics and then I look at psychology I keep that distance I don't
28:28
Speaker A
identify them but I also try and see ah but what is that what can I see in psychology through the lens and linguistics now of course the thing about cognitive science is it's not trying to create single aptness right it's not trying to
28:44
Speaker A
create a one this is one way I've just bridged between two domains cognitive science is trying to create constructs that are multi apt that bridge between multiple domains multiple disciplines and that multi aptness is really important so I'm trying to create
29:07
Speaker A
constructs with multi aptness they get this balance between identity and difference that affords and provokes insightful transformation of the theorizing from one discipline to another and I start to create an overarching integration now this brings up an important idea but well what's
29:40
Speaker A
constraining me how do I know like what's how do I judge if I'm doing this well or badly well this has to do I think with this notion that is very much the notion that we use when we're considering how to
30:04
Speaker A
create new constructs new ideas theoretical entities that will bridge the between domains create lines of inquiry this is plausibility now there's two meanings to this word one is just a synonym for high probability and that's not the one I
30:21
Speaker A
mean there's a dis there's a different meaning originally really brought to the fore by Russia's work but a lot of other people there's work being done now some good work in psychology being done on plausibility I'm doing some work with
30:40
Speaker A
Leonardo Ferrara Jensen Kim on plausibility and this other sense of possibility isn't a synonym for high probability it's a it's it's a synonym not for rational but for reasonable the sense making good sense and of course man that's so relevant to us right
30:57
Speaker A
making good sense deserving to be taken seriously right this is what plausible means it it's reasonable it makes good sense it should be taken seriously and when we look at sort of ideas that we're using to make sense of the world and
31:21
Speaker A
again this is building on a lot of people's work I can't refer to them all all the people I'm trying to draw together of course people make judgments of plausibility all over the place and they [ __ ] themselves in this in all kinds
31:31
Speaker A
of ways I'll talk about that so I'm talking about here not a descriptive theory of what people do when they're saying something's plausible I'm talking about a normative theory about what do they do when they're doing it well what
31:45
Speaker A
are they doing when they're doing it well so part of the argument is this people of course really like ideas that are multi apt right here's my idea my thesis my proposal some model whatever kind of construct I'm using and it's
32:02
Speaker A
multi act in that you know I can I can use it and it can bridge to this domain and this time I can go into these many different domains I can do this insightful connecting and transfer I think this is a much better wave this
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Speaker A
notion of multi aptness right and being able to go into many different domains and help us find formulate and solve problems I think this is a much better understanding of what scientists are trying to invoke when they say a theory
32:32
Speaker A
is elegant right then just talking about simplicity precisely because of the way we have no canonical way of trying to work out what scientists are meaning when they talk about simplicity whereas it's clear that they do seek constructs
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Speaker A
to do this now here's a problem is that good enough is that is that good enough to make a construct plausible no see the problem with that is if it's just on its own right we're we're we're lacking
33:02
Speaker A
something we're lacking another thing that we want and this is a point actually made by rusher and it comes out in some of the psychology of plausibility you see we also want that these constructs are produced in a
33:16
Speaker A
certain way not just that this is how they're used but this is how they're produced right this is their forward orientation this is their backward orientation we want a construct that has been produced by many convergent right independent lines of Investigation now
33:35
Speaker A
let me show you just a concrete example of this right and you can see it even in young kids you prefer information that right integrates think about integration across multiple senses right so you prefer information that is not not just
33:54
Speaker A
something you can see but also you can simultaneously here that's why seeing and hearing me right now is better than just seeing me or just hearing me now why is that the case well you see if if I'm getting all of my
34:10
Speaker A
information just through one channel there's a very good chance that this thing is being produced by bias by distortion in that channel but if I'm getting the same thing produced by from multiple independent channels right there's a very good chance that is not
34:31
Speaker A
being produced by the bias or distortion in any one of these there's a chance that there's a very good chance that they're relative that the the relative biases and distortions cancel each other out so by doing convergence I get bias
34:48
Speaker A
reduction and man does that matter it for overcoming the way in which we [ __ ] ourselves with salience so convergence gives me biased reduction what rest shark alls trustworthiness now trustworthiness isn't truth it's not certainty this by the way is why science
35:09
Speaker A
likes numbers scientists like numbers not because we're fascists or because we don't appreciate the artistic beauty of bla bla bla bla we like numbers because they give us this look you can see three you can hear three you can touch three numbers afford
35:32
Speaker A
convergence and they boost trustworthiness they would help to reduce bias and remember I tried to argue that the scientific method of experimentation is a method right in which we are trying a methods of sorry the scientific method of experimentation
35:48
Speaker A
and observation our methods psycho technologies in which we're trying to reduce bias reduce the way in which we're deceiving how we're coming up with our constructs now think about this if you had just elegance that's multi aptness you can bridge to
36:07
Speaker A
many different areas and link lots of stuff together but it wasn't produced in a trustworthy manner what would you have you would have conspiracy theories that's exactly what conspiracy theories do their form of bullshitting because they are they're they're very a look if
36:25
Speaker A
you will just accept that the british royal family are lizard reptilian alien from another dimension you can explain so much of their political and social and interpersonal behavior just give me this idea just give me this and look at
36:40
Speaker A
what I can do look at all the different disparate facts I can link and integrate together I can give you the synoptic integration and you should be saying yeah but it's all [ __ ] it's [ __ ]
36:53
Speaker A
because we find this we want this so it's very salient but it's [ __ ] precisely because we've we've lost this we don't trust the construct what about the opposite so the conspiracy theory is far-fetched because it gives us lots of
37:12
Speaker A
this but very very little convergence what about this where I've got tremendous convergence certainly we'd like this and there's just there's very little insight integration what's not well if you read scientific journals you'll see people and even beyond
37:30
Speaker A
philosophical people rejecting this this is this up here this is the conspiracy theory and it's far-fetched but you know what this is this is triviality and we reject things now excuse something of being trivial as to not say it's false
37:50
Speaker A
it's to say that it has no transformative power it makes no difference it causes no insight it affords no integration so this tells me this tells us something and notice notice notice notice ways in which we can equivocate on these right between we
38:11
Speaker A
can equivocate between this right between these two so Daniel Dennett talks about this and there's a way in which one way in which we [ __ ] ourselves he calls it the deep Adeeb Adeeb Adeeb ok so people do this they'll
38:26
Speaker A
say they'll say things like love is only a four-letter word and you everybody says this and all it's very profound and you take another drink of your alcohol or whatever all right now notice what's going on here on one
38:43
Speaker A
level this is a triviality of course love is a four-letter word I've got many different independent memory it's different uses everybody is using the word love this way right love is a four-letter word right now let that level it's trivial but then it's
39:02
Speaker A
supposed to I'm supposed to equivocate between this as a word I'm equivocating between this as a word and this as a concept for a thing that I care about because love as a thing has tremendous elegance it goes into so much of my life
39:29
Speaker A
but notice what's happened here I'm not actually giving you any information or analysis about love as a thing or a concept I'm pretending to give you multi aptness when in fact all I'm doing is giving you triviality sort of triviality
39:48
Speaker A
i equivocate so i say love is just a four letter word that's [ __ ] it's [ __ ] that makes use of abuses and this is powerful ways in which we [ __ ] ourselves with these deputies
40:08
Speaker A
these things that sound deep and are not deep at all because what we're doing is equivocating right we start with something that's undeniably trivial and we and then we're equivocating with something that looks like it's elegant and multi apt and we [ __ ] ourselves
40:26
Speaker A
we do the reverse right we say something that looks like it's really multi optin really controversial is gonna change everything and then we're challenged oh no but we're great crits oh no no I never meant that I only meant this
40:43
Speaker A
trivial thing that nobody would the objective right right this is the Martin Bailey strategy right where you present and it looks radical and controversial and then when you criticize you withdraw no I was just saying this it looks like I'm doing but
41:12
Speaker A
no justice but then I pretend that I didn't actually change my position they're the same thing and that is again how we [ __ ] ourselves so notice how we can abuse this machinery and [ __ ] ourselves now the fact that we can abuse
41:28
Speaker A
it tells us how we can improve it how it's supposed to be used because if we acknowledge that these are a beaut that this is abuse that right the DPD is an abuse if we acknowledge right that the
41:43
Speaker A
Martin Bailey strategy of avoiding criticism is an abuse if we admit that we don't want far fetch it miss and for reality we can put this all together into a normative account of what good plausibility is we have high convergence
41:57
Speaker A
matched by high elegance now I'll talk a little bit later when we do some more cardio science we want something more about this in terms of relevance realization and other things but we'll come back to that but when I get a
42:14
Speaker A
balance between balance between convergence and elegance then I get something that's highly plausible I'm making a construct that is trustworthy and powerful and it's affording me getting a new pattern of intelligibility this is how I make integrative new
42:37
Speaker A
patterns of intelligibility in the world and so this is what you're trying to do in cognitive science you're always trying to create these constructs that are high in plausibility when I get something that is extremely trustworthy that is balanced with powerful multi
42:56
Speaker A
aptness then I think that's what we mean when we say something is profound it's the exact opposite of the DPD the triviality the conspiracy the martin bailey [ __ ] it's profound now being profound doesn't mean it's true being profound means it's
43:16
Speaker A
very reasonable and it should be taken very seriously I'm going to now try and exemplify this with you I should mention before I go that this idea of the balance between this and this I got this from Elijah milligrams
43:39
Speaker A
really really brilliant work on practical induction practical induction is not induction about how you change a belief practical induction is how you change your desires how you change what you care for it's deeply relevant to that Socratic project of having a
43:53
Speaker A
rationality of what you care about ok so what I want to do is first I'll draw this together in this definition ok so cognitive science right it's the discipline that it's trying to bring about synaptic integration and I'm going
44:23
Speaker A
to say it's trying to bring about profound synoptic integration it's trying to create these constructs that bridge don't reduce bridge between the disciplines profound synoptic integration profound synoptic integration that addresses equivocation publication fragmentation and ignorance the ignorance of the causal relationship
45:11
Speaker A
between the levels of reality that we designate by the term line that's what cognitive science is trying to do and of course as I've tried to show you throughout it is deeply relevant to the meaning crisis because it deals with
45:29
Speaker A
this issue of fragmentation the confusion we have about ourselves how we're sort of pulled apart it deals with as you've just seen the the the meaning-making machinery and it deals with again as you've just seen our propensity for bullshitting ourselves
45:46
Speaker A
and deceiving ourselves now what I want to do is I want to do the cognitive science of meaning making again I'm not totally happy with this room because it it sounds too romantic in my ears right I'd also want to say meaning seeking but
46:13
Speaker A
that that that's that sounds - that sounds - empiricist in my ears like meanings just out there to be seen and experienced right so I'm gonna try a new metaphor because it also goes with something else I've been saying from the
46:35
Speaker A
beginning and this is inspired by the way we talked about the cultivation of wisdom it has expired it's inspired by Heidegger's use of this metaphor meaning cultivation because what I'm gonna try and argue and I've been also you've seen
46:50
Speaker A
this in the history is meaning isn't something we are imposing willfully on the world that's a mistake from our history meaning isn't something we just find in the world that's to ignore the Scientific Revolution meaning is something between us and the world like
47:06
Speaker A
the way you cultivate a plant you're doing stuff with the plant but you're also allowing the plant to unfold your cult your cultivating with the world meaning between you and the world so as much as possible I'm going
47:21
Speaker A
to try and switch this I will fall into habit because this is the language that we inherited from the the cognitive revolution and psychology about talking about meaning making and making sense and where the emphasis is on us making
47:37
Speaker A
even though am I gonna I'm gonna show you the third-generation cog science is much more talking this way than the romantic notion that we impose or make meaning or we simply sense it or find it in the world okay I want to start doing
47:55
Speaker A
the cognitive science of this I want to take a look at right the science of cognition and I want to try and exemplify what I showed you what I argued for I want to try and exemplify synoptic integration and the creation of
48:15
Speaker A
a plausible construct so the faculty in us that is supposed to be our core cognitive capacity or core capacity for meaning cultivation and being able to adaptively respond to the world and this goes all the way back right to the Greek
48:43
Speaker A
heritage this is the notion of intelligence intelligence is the capacity that makes you a cognitive agent at least an agent whose cognition is working with meaning as opposed to a living thing right that is in some sense like a plant responding maybe in a very
49:07
Speaker A
sophisticated fashion but it's just responding in this complex fashion to its environment intelligence means you are in some sense a cognitive agent okay so what is it that we should how should we frame this we're gonna try and get a
49:38
Speaker A
purchase on this right so a good way of trying to understand this is the way we try to test for intelligence is being a general problem solver and this goes back both within the psychometric to people like banan's simon who are trying
50:02
Speaker A
to measure intelligence and people like newell and simon to different people whether way that are trying to create artificial intelligence make the intelligence artifice artificial intelligence artefactual intelligence right not fake intelligence right both of them point to this idea that when
50:24
Speaker A
we're trying to measure or make intelligence we're trying to measure you as a general problem solver or we're trying to make a machine that is a general problem solver now what does that mean okay so here's a machine
50:37
Speaker A
that's not a general problem solver this is good for solving this problem holding water and we've talked about this in such a way that I can use it it solves a bunch of other problems maybe but not very many
50:50
Speaker A
not very many it's very limited in its problem-solving capacity right now unlike that cup you are capable of solving a wide variety of problems in a wide variety of domains you are a general problem solver you can worry
51:15
Speaker A
about God and how to get a drink how to go swimming right how to build a houseboat the number of domains in which you can operate is vast and within each one of those domains there are many different kinds of problems you can
51:30
Speaker A
solve you are a general problem solver and that's why when we measure intelligence we give you a wide variety of different kinds of tests to see if you can solve a wide variety of problems across multiple domains that's how I
51:43
Speaker A
test to see if you're a general problem solver and what Newell and Simon were exactly trying to make they in fact called it we can't use this term now because it now means global positioning but they called it
51:55
Speaker A
the GPS the general problem solver the first project to make artificial intelligence not just computational machines but artificial intelligence was the right this project of trying to make the general problem solver okay so you're a general problem solver okay
52:11
Speaker A
great that makes sense right now what I need to do is a couple things to be I got to be very careful here all right and because people get very of course this is well we'll come back to that this is
52:26
Speaker A
such a a politically Laden term precisely because we we aren't clear about what we're talking about we're equivocating all over the place and we're ignorant of how this term is applied to different levels of reality and yet nevertheless we will shut
52:48
Speaker A
ourselves by finding it salient and rushing into speech and action without the clarity that is needed we'll see for example that this is not a synonym for being rational being intelligent and what you ultimately should care about is
53:07
Speaker A
not how intelligent you are but how rational you can become so let's take care here we're meaning some capacity you have for solving your problems in learning and so we want to keep intelligence separate from knowledge of course having knowledge enables you to
53:31
Speaker A
do things right and in that sense in a broad sense of adaptivity it makes you more adaptive to your environment you can do lots of things even if those things are make claims that other people value for their truth but if you if you
53:47
Speaker A
think of the if you make these synonymous then you can't use this to explain this you can't say the reason why susan was able to acquire such knowledge is we she's intelligence because if intelligent means possessing knowledge then you all you're saying is Susan
54:05
Speaker A
possesses knowledge because Susan possesses knowledge which is non explanatory right so what we want to ask is what is it to solve a problem don't focus on the product having the answer getting the knowledge I focus on the
54:27
Speaker A
process that process and this is going to be a hallmark we've talked about this before the hallmark of rationality is valuing the process not just being fixated on the product especially the belief the conclusion right so what we
54:43
Speaker A
got to analyze the process what is it to solve a problem and this is where the work of Newell and Simon was just so deeply influential it's been influential in psychology computer science economics it's just seminal and important work
54:59
Speaker A
now as I first try to describe it to you it's going to strike you as you know somewhat trivial but let's go let's go very carefully on what we're going to do right we're going to try and analyze a
55:15
Speaker A
problem down into four basic features and we'll end today's episode with that and at that point it won't seem like we've got that profound construct that we're looking for and then I'll need you to wait to next time
55:32
Speaker A
but Newell and Simon basically said what what is it to have a problem a problem is when there's a difference between the state you're in which they called your initial state and the state you want to be and this is your goal state so I have
55:46
Speaker A
a problem when there's a significant difference between those for example I'm thirsty right and I don't want to be thirsty since those aren't the same thing I things have to change in the world and in me but the difference
55:59
Speaker A
between the initial state and the goal state to go away so part of what I have to do when I solve a problem is the system has to be able to represent will have to come back to how we're going to
56:09
Speaker A
use that term the initial state and the goal state and then the our actions operations I can perform that will change the state I'm initially into some other state so for example part of the problem I had was I'm over
56:23
Speaker A
here and the glasses over here so one of the things I can do one of the things I can do is I can walk towards the glass right the cop right of course another thing I can do is I can raise my hand
56:33
Speaker A
now you say well don't raise your hand that's stupid well wait there's going to become a point though when I do need to raise my hand so I'm gonna need that operation okay so I think you're starting to see
56:44
Speaker A
things and then what I do is from here perhaps I can do two other operations right from a trim here maybe three from here maybe only one and so on and so forth right I'm not gonna draw it all
57:04
Speaker A
out right so so far I've got right three things that I'm analyzing a problem-solving I'm analyzing problem solving in two initial State a goal state and operators that can transform one state into another state there's one other thing I have I have what are
57:29
Speaker A
called path constraints you see I'm a general problem solver I don't want to find just any solution one of the ways I can make lunch for myself is to burn down my house it will cook my food that
57:48
Speaker A
is not a good solution not because it doesn't achieve the goal I want in this situation of cooking my food but it really reduces me as a general problem solver I don't want to solve this problem to the detriment of my ability
58:02
Speaker A
to solve multiple other problems or I will lose my intelligence I will lose my capacity as a general problem solver so what I have to do is the following solving a problem is this it's to have a sequence of operations a sequence of
58:20
Speaker A
operations that will transform the initial state into the goal state while obeying the power constraints preserving me as a general problem solver that's what it is to solve a problem and this this is called the problem space or sometimes called
58:40
Speaker A
the search space now what this analysis does for you is it explicate s-- the problem space and this is where all of the powerful insight of new orleans simon's work comes out because once we start to pay attention to properties of
59:02
Speaker A
this search space we can see how profound this idea actually turns out to be and that's what we'll do in our next session together thank you very much for your time and attention [Music] you you
Topics:meaning crisiscognitive scienceJohn Vervaekeequivocationphilosophy of mindartificial intelligenceneuroscienceparticipatory knowingpseudo-religious ideologygeneral problem solving

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