**Ep. 30 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Relevance Realization Meets Dynamical Systems Theory — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/meaning-crisis-relevance-realization-dynamical-systems-theory/

Vervaeke's Ep. 30 argues relevance realization cannot be explained by representations, rules, or modules, and that a scientific theory of relevance is impossible due to systemic import and inductive g

## Key Takeaways

- Relevance realization cannot be explained by representations, rules, or internal modules because these presuppose relevance.
- Science depends on inductive generalization, which needs homogeneous categories with systemic import.
- Many natural categories lack essences, so a scientific theory of relevance itself is not possible.
- Relevance is best explained through dynamical, self-organizing processes tied to autopoiesis and fitness.
- Fitness should be understood as an evolving relational process, not a fixed design property.

## What the video covers

- Recaps prior episodes: relevance realization must not presuppose relevance, so representations, inference, rules, and modules cannot explain it.
- Relevance realization must be multiscale, self-organizing, and capable of self-correction and insight.
- Goals governing relevance realization must be constitutive, grounded in autopoiesis and self-preservation of the organism.
- Introduces the distinction between a theory of relevance and a theory of relevance realization.
- Science relies on inductive generalization, which requires categories with systemic import and homogeneous members.
- Drawing on Wittgenstein and Quine, many categories lack essences (necessary and sufficient conditions), limiting scientific categorization.
- Relevance is relational and context-dependent, so it cannot be a detected intrinsic property of objects.
- Proposes fitness as an evolving, dynamical relation between organism and environment rather than a fixed design feature.
- Argues for a dynamical systems account of the self-organizing evolution of cognitive-interactional fitness, linked to norms of economy and resiliency.
- Concludes relevance realization needs a dynamical-systems explanation rather than a scientific theory of relevance as such.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Recap of Previous Episodes on Relevance
2. 03:38 Constitutive Goals and Autopoiesis
3. 05:36 Theory of Relevance vs. Relevance Realization
4. 06:54 Inductive Generalization and Systemic Import
5. 10:45 Essences, Family Resemblance, and Categories
6. 17:18 Relevance as Relational, Not Intrinsic
7. 31:50 Reconceiving Fitness as Evolving Process
8. 43:50 Dynamical Systems, Economy, and Resiliency

Answers

## Questions about this video

Why can't there be a scientific theory of relevance?

Science works through inductive generalization, which requires homogeneous categories with systemic import. Many categories, such as games, lack essences (necessary and sufficient conditions), so relevance cannot be captured in such a theory. Instead, a theory of relevance realization is needed.

What role do constitutive goals play in relevance realization?

Constitutive goals are goals that are part of an autopoietic system's self-organization, such as preserving and promoting its own existence. They ground relevance realization in life itself rather than in representations of the environment.

How does Vervaeke reconceive fitness?

He treats fitness not as a fixed design feature but as an evolving, dynamical relation between organism and environment. He proposes a dynamical systems account of the self-organizing evolution of cognitive-interactional fitness.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

[Music] you [Music] welcome back to awakening from the meaning crisis this is episode 30 so last time we decided to dig into the central issue of realizing what's relevant and we are following a methodological principle of not using or

00:32

Speaker A

presupposing relevance a capacity to realize relevance in any process purported cognitive process or brain process that we're going to use to try and explain that ability I gave you a series of arguments that we can't use representations to explain relevance

00:54

Speaker A

because representations crucially presuppose it and then we took a look at some very interesting empirical evidence that really comports very well with that the issue the evidence surrounding fence ting and your ability to do to do an active demonstrative reference the

01:10

Speaker A

salience tagging just making stand out the hereness and the nowness of something we then took a look at the and we we we drew a few conclusions about the meaning that we're talking about in meaning in life right that connectedness

01:28

Speaker A

that connectedness is ultimately not generated by representations again I'm going to keep saying this I'm not denying that representations and belief and that level can't alter or transform what we find relevant we're talking about the explanation of the phenomena

01:46

Speaker A

not how it is causally affected by other aspects of cognition we then took a look at a syntactic level the computational level and saw arguments that neither inference nor rules can be used to explain the generation of relevance

02:07

Speaker A

precisely because they also presuppose it we looked at trying to deal with relevance in terms of some sort of internal module dedicated to it and that won't work it's a monkey door and relevance realization needs to be scale

02:25

Speaker A

invariant or at least multi scale Euler it has be happening simultaneously in a local and global way and that again points towards something else we noted about any theory it asked to account for the self-organization of relevance that is

02:42

Speaker A

demonstrated in the phenomena of insight so we then saw that a theory has to use explanatory ideas that point to processes that are at least in the original sense internal to their relevance realization the relevance realizing system I tried to get clear

03:04

Speaker A

about how not to misunderstand that what I meant was the goals of the the goals that govern relevance realization initially have to be constitutive goals they cannot be goals built upon representing the environment in a particular way instead they have to be

03:21

Speaker A

the constitutive goals that are part of an autopoietic system a system that is self organized because it has the goal of preserving and protecting and promoting its own self organization that draws deep connections between relevance realization and life and relevance

03:38

Speaker A

realization and being an autopoietic thing and of course as I've already mentioned right relevance realization processes have to be multiscale later they have to be self-organizing and they have to be capable of developmental self transcendence self correction insight

03:57

Speaker A

etc we noted along the way right about how this links up with an argument about how the propositional depends on the procedural which then depends on the prospective 'el which then depends is grounded in the participatory but we hit

04:18

Speaker A

a roadblock when I want to now zero in on I had been treating them as identical but I'm going to then make a very important theoretical distinction between a theory of relevance and a theory of relevance realization because

04:34

Speaker A

what I want to argue is that there cannot be a theory of relevance at least a scientific theory of relevance and since we're playing in the arena of science scientific explanations I'm not going to keep doing that qualification I'm just

04:50

Speaker A

going to say there cannot be a theory of relevance scientific theory of relevance why not well this has to do with an issue that was originally brought up by chappie and Kukla in an article a commentary and behavioral brain sciences

05:07

Speaker A

in Dan Chevy and I have published work together we're collaborating right now on a work on telepresence I recommend you to take a look at the work of Dan Jaffe but they made a point and I think this point is it's very well taken it's

05:27

Speaker A

a point that goes back to Jas mill but you can also see an updated version of it in the work of the important philosopher on philosopher of science wilfred Quine so this has to do with how science works now of course the

05:47

Speaker A

philosophy of science tackles all kinds of controversial claims about what is science and how science works but I take it that one thing that is agreed upon in science is that science works through inductive generalization or it tries to

06:04

Speaker A

generate inductive generalizations what I mean by that science you study a bunch of things here and then you make predictions and claims that that will be the case for all of that type of thing so you know here I study a bunch of you

06:26

Speaker A

know he's a hunk of gold here's a hunk of gold here's a hunk of gold I come up with a write a set of features or properties does that generalize to all the instances of gold and if it does

06:37

Speaker A

then I come up with an inductive generalization I want to get the broadest possible inductive generalizations that I can if that's how science works it's trying to give us a powerful way of loudly predicting the world it's doing

06:56

Speaker A

other things very importantly it's also trying to give us a way of explaining the world I'm not claiming this is I've tried to make it clear this is not meant to be an exhaustive account of science it's meant to point to a central

07:09

Speaker A

practice within science but a constitutive practice nevertheless if you can't generate inductive generalizations in your purported endeavor then you don't have a science this is why pseudoscience is like astrology fail but cisely because they cannot do inductive generalizations okay

07:27

Speaker A

you say okay great so what jeaious know pointed out is that means that we need what's called systemic import and this is so relevant to what we were talking about last time in fact even using the word import is is

07:44

Speaker A

really relevant what that means is science has to form categories because that's what I'm trying to do right I'm gathering a bunch of things and saying they belong they're the same type of thing they're all instances of gold they all belong to

08:02

Speaker A

the category of gold science has to form categories that support powerful meaning as broad as possible inductive generalizations to be able to do that is to have systematic import now what does what do I need think about reverse

08:29

Speaker A

engineering this in order if you have reliable you know that's what powerful means reliable and broad inductive generalizations in order to have those what do I need to be the case here well I need I neither to be important

08:43

Speaker A

properties for the that category one thing is I need the categories to be the category members to importantly be homogeneous there's a sense in which all the members of the category have to share properties that's that's me indicating they're all

09:11

Speaker A

sharing properties all right and it's because they share properties that I can make the inductive generalization that other instances will also have those important properties that's exactly what I need because if the members are heterogeneous there's no set of

09:33

Speaker A

properties I can then expand in the generalization they have to be homogeneous now this gets us towards something very important right this gets us towards a bad idea from Quine because there's a lot of discussion of about this word right now in the culture and I

09:50

Speaker A

think the discussion sort of is too polarized and this has to go again with an issue made by Vic and Stein but I want to put Vic and Stein and Quine together on this very important modern philosopher because Vic and Stein and

10:15

Speaker A

this is what some of the critics of our sense say right because if you remember according to Aristotle and we talked about this when we talked about eros tall an essence is a set of necessary and sufficient conditions and what Vic

10:30

Speaker A

and Stein pointed out and remember we did this with the example of again that many of many of our categories don't have essences there is no set of necessary and sufficient conditions that will pick out all and only games there's

10:43

Speaker A

no set of necessary and sufficient conditions that will pick out all in only tables so many of our categories don't have essences that was the constraints point now Vic and Fenton I don't think you could ever pin him to

10:56

Speaker A

the claim that no categories have essences and that's what some people I think have concluded that no categories have essence essences everything is this nominal description but that's not right because of course non-controversial II for example triangles have essences that's why

11:16

Speaker A

Aristotle thought many things did right you know if it has three straight sides right three angles it's enclosed it's a triangle those that's an essence to a triangle now that's mathematical here's what Quine argued at least I think this is an

11:34

Speaker A

interpretation of coin that is philosophically defensible science these are the things like triangle these are deductive essences these are the essences that we can deduce but what science discovers are inductive generalizations and if they're powerful enough science gives us the essence of

11:54

Speaker A

something the essence of gold is the set of properties that will apply to all instances of gold all in only instances of gold that homogeneous set that can generalize is what an inductive essence is now what that means is we shouldn't a

12:24

Speaker A

couple of ways of talking in the media shouldn't or the general culture should should not be so uncritically accepted right essentialism isn't bad for things that have essences why would it be essentialism is the is the mistake of

12:43

Speaker A

treating a category as as if it has an essence it is a mistake for things like games and tables precisely because they don't have an essence it is not a mistake for things like gold because gold has an essence inductively or

13:07

Speaker A

triangle because triangles have a deductive essence that trick it's it is too simplistic to say everything has an essence or everything doesn't have an essence now it cuts both ways it cuts both ways right there are many things

13:22

Speaker A

that don't have essences that's what's right about the critique of a sense but it is wrong to conclude that there is nuttin it's wrong to say that they can Stein argument point it is not an argument because it's not a deductive

13:36

Speaker A

argument that concludes that there are no essence its it only points that many categories don't have essences so that means it is possible to do a science when we do what when we categorize things in such a way that we get this

13:55

Speaker A

because if we get this then we have the essential properties of the thing now the reverse is the case that's what I mean by cuts both ways we can't have a scientific explanation of everything we can't have a scientific explanation of

14:15

Speaker A

everything if the category is not homogeneous if it does not support powerful inductive generalizations if it does not have an inductive essence we cannot have a science about it it doesn't mean those things don't exist it means we cannot scientifically

14:31

Speaker A

investigate them so for example I can't have a science of white things now are there things that are white of course there are this blackboard is white this pen at least part of it is white this part right this piece of paper is white

14:55

Speaker A

to say there are white things in this room is to say something true notice that there are truths that are stable but the category I am using this is Jas Mills example white things does not support any inductive generalizations

15:11

Speaker A

other than the thing is white now don't give me what we can have a theory about light and whiteness we're not talking about a theory about light we're talking about a theory about white things knowing that this is white what does it

15:26

Speaker A

tell me right so I study this white thing okay what do I learn about it other than own nothing other than its white is there any other important No Wow no uh-uh well you they're both flat but this is

15:44

Speaker A

vertical this is horizontal you see it doesn't generalize it doesn't generalize so it is correct to say that there are many categories that we form for which we could not generate a scientific theory or explanation precisely because those categories are

16:11

Speaker A

not homogeneous they don't have in essence now notice what that doesn't mean the fact that I can't have a scientific theory of it does not mean that white things are made out of ghosts or dead elves or ectoplasmic goo it

16:24

Speaker A

licenses no metaphysical weirdness it just says that category functions in the sense that I can make true statements about its membership but it does not function insofar as it supports right through systematic import powerful inductive generalizations what else do I

16:47

Speaker A

need well let's compare right the white things as jazz mill dental horses it's a and we depend on the fact that horses seem to have an essence now whether or not they ultimately like do some sort of species levels something

17:14

Speaker A

you know really argued about in biology and I'm not trying to be negligent of that but I'm also not going to try and resolve that what did Mel mean by his example of a horse well what do you

17:25

Speaker A

meant by if I learn a lot about this horse right it will generalize to other horses it will generalize so horses are in really important ways from a genius that's why we can have veterinary medicine and things like that I can

17:43

Speaker A

learn about it in terms of horses that have already been studied and it will generalize well to horses that have not themselves yet been studied that's fine what else and this is a I don't mean this to be a pun I need the category

17:58

Speaker A

membership to be stable so that doesn't mean to be horses and stables right what's like what's in the category the kind of things that are in the category should be stable it shouldn't be constantly shifting or changing because

18:16

Speaker A

if this and this was appointment of me a long time ago by Plato if what's in here is constantly shifting now I don't mean the particular members I mean what kind of thing is in here is constantly shifting right then of course I can't do

18:30

Speaker A

inductive generalizations because I will get into equivocation I will give get into a quick a tion so that where gravity originally met having to do with drawing down into the grave as we mentioned it had to do with sort of a

18:51

Speaker A

important seriousness and then right but now we use that term to describe a physical mode of attraction and interaction and if if I don't notice the change in what goes in to my categorizations I'm not making a good

19:07

Speaker A

inductive generalization I'm engaged in equivocation and as I've tried to show you equivocation right is a we make invalid often ridiculous arguments so it needs to be stable we need the properties of the objects to in some sense be intrinsic or at least

19:30

Speaker A

internal inherent this also comes from an argument by John Searle many objects have properties that are not intrinsic to the object but come from the objects relationship to us for example because and there are attributed properties so a clear example so a

19:55

Speaker A

non-controversial example is something being money now here's again is money real well a lot of my life is bent around money so in that sense it seems to be real but does anything intrinsically possess the property of being money if I take out some coin a

20:11

Speaker A

piece of paper is it intrinsically money no it's only money because we all attribute it as being money we all treat it as money and that's what make it makes it money if we all decide to not treat it as money it ceases to exist as

20:25

Speaker A

money we can't do that with gold notice what I'm saying we we could all decide that gold is no longer valuable no longer analogous to money but we can't all decide that not the gold no longer possesses its mass atomic number we

20:38

Speaker A

can't do that all right now the thing you have to remember is that many things that we think are intrinsic are actually attributed this being a bottle is attributed because what it means to call it a bottle is the way it is relating to

20:57

Speaker A

me and my usage of it if there had never been human beings and this popped into existence because of some quantum event near a black hole or something it isn't a bottle it's an object with a particular mass a particular structure

21:10

Speaker A

but it's not a bottle because being a bottle is something that it gets in its relationship to me now again did I just show you that everything's an illusion no again the fact that there are many things that are genuinely relational

21:26

Speaker A

genuinely attribute it doesn't mean that right I've shown you that everything's false I've just shown you that you can't do science unless the members of your property or homogeneous stable intrinsic or at least inherent because that's what you need to

21:44

Speaker A

have powerful inductive generalization okay let's see something that fails this all of these tests things that happen on Tuesday okay events that happened on Tuesday Tuesday events okay are there events that happen on Tuesday yeah and if there's even events that can

22:20

Speaker A

happen on multiple Tuesday's we categorize things in terms of the days we categorize events in terms of the days now are all the events on a Tuesday homogeneous no are all the vets on Tuesdays many different Tuesday's homogeneous no they're very they're very

22:37

Speaker A

very different in widely varying is it stable the things that happen on Tuesdays it's it's same of a Tuesday no that's Groundhog Day or some kind of horrible Nietzsche and hell okay and what about Tuesday nests being Tuesday

22:51

Speaker A

is that inherent I mean is there Tuesday in the room when it's Tuesday I mean it can't be because there was a time when there we didn't even have calendars right notice how hard it is to realize that there's no for Tuesday news so you

23:11

Speaker A

know we you know can I make two statements last Tuesday I went to a movie is it true yes can I do a science of events that happen on Tuesday no I can't because it doesn't satisfy these criteria does that

23:29

Speaker A

mean that Tuesday is made out of right ectoplasmic goo tuesday events actually take place in a different government on no does it none of that none of that okay you have to be careful on and this is what we learn from Vic and Stein have

24:00

Speaker A

to be very careful about how the grammar of our thought how we're regulating our cognition now what I want to try and show you is that relevance does not have systematic import relevance relevant events are like Tuesday events here let

24:28

Speaker A

me show you the things that I find relevant other than me finding them relevant what do they share in common I might find this pen relevant I might find my knee relevant I might find this air relevant I might find right the fact

24:47

Speaker A

that it's a particular day in may relevant do you see what I'm showing you the class of things we find relevant is not homogeneous other than we find in them relevant there is nothing that they share it's exactly like the class of

25:03

Speaker A

white things what about stable so when I find something relevant do I always find it relevant this is relevant to me now will it forever be relevant to me I will care care oh it is relevant no things are not

25:21

Speaker A

stable e relevant relevant one minute irrelevant the next you may say oh there's things that are always relevant to you always alright don't know very hard to find them and it's what if maybe maybe oxygen maybe but that's only relevant to me if

25:51

Speaker A

I want to keep living a person who commits suicide and some people commit suicide this way they suffocate themselves to death because that was more important to them than oxygen it's not stable it's relevant and here's where I think we'll get into some

26:16

Speaker A

difficulties I suppose with some people but it's relevant like internal or intrinsic to the object is there a way of like oh like if there never been human beings or sentient beings it would it could this have relevance doesn't

26:33

Speaker A

seem that that's at all a plausible intuition relevance always seems to be relevant to some one or some thing and that of course I think is going to be bound up that relevance ultimately has to be relevant to and autopoietic thing

26:53

Speaker A

only things that have needs only things that are self organized because so that they have the constitutive goal of preserving their self organization that's what it is to need I need food because I am self organized to preserve

27:07

Speaker A

my own self organization which means I need food food literally matters to me literally matters to me it's hard to see how things could be relevant unless they were in relationship to an autopoietic thing relevance is not something for

27:29

Speaker A

which we can have a scientific theory I want you to notice what's come along the way relevance is not intrinsic to something there can be no essence to relevance nothing is essentially relevant that's the whole point about talking

27:55

Speaker A

about the problem of essentialism and relevance is not stable it's constantly changing ok so what do we do well first of all we add to our theory so a set of criteria we need for a good theory our

28:24

Speaker A

theory of relevance realization can't be a theory of relevance detection I've given you a sustained argument for that it is not this is not how relevance works relevance realizes it shouldn't it's not that it's not this has relevance and I detect its relevance now

28:49

Speaker A

you might say well maybe relevance realization is just projective I'm gonna reply to that too I think that's also inadequate in order to see how it's inadequate and in order to get out of the bind we seem to be getting in I want

29:05

Speaker A

to open up the distinction between relevant a theory of relevance and a theory relevance realization with an analogy and it's going to turn out to be a very I hope helpful analogy and this will also I think to help us to see why

29:23

Speaker A

relevance is not something we merely project on the world this is why I have a sustained criticism against both the empiricist we just detect it and the Romantics we just project it so let's get into that what's the analogy that will help

29:40

Speaker A

develop me a develop an argument to show why we needed to merely detect it morally merely project it and get us out of the barn that we can't have a theory of relevance okay notice a very important and I think this is one of the

29:57

Speaker A

central insights of Darwin right and we talked about Darwin when we talked about Aristotle and dynamical systems so if you need to please go back and look again at video six like I don't want to repeat all those arguments right now we

30:09

Speaker A

built them so that we can use them now see before Darwin's time the people studying the natural world were often clergymen Darwin himself was thinking about going into clergy and that's because people thought if they studied the natural

30:27

Speaker A

world they could understand right the essence of how things were designed because if we could get at the essence of how things were designed how things were sort of fitted to their environment then of course that would give us some

30:48

Speaker A

deep insight into the mind of God that's why clergymen are you know collecting species and doing all this but I think one of the insights and it's not given enough attention in the analysis of the brilliance of Darwin's theory is to

31:08

Speaker A

realize that things don't have an essential design there is no essential design so consider the notion of evolutionary fitness now there's a problem there's there's a technical definition of fitness which means the capacity to survive long enough in order

31:32

Speaker A

to be capable of reproduction that right will allow that gene pool or species all of these are kind of controversial terms to to propagate and and exist so if we want to use that technology ssin of fitness then I need or I'll be talking

31:50

Speaker A

about fitness and what I mean by fitted missus what is it about the organism that makes it fit what is it about the organism that allows it to survive long enough to reproduce okay and what I want to argue is there's no essential design

32:05

Speaker A

on Fitness some things are fitted in this sense precisely because they are big some because they are small some because they are hard because they saw some because they're long lived some because the short lived some because they proliferate greatly

32:21

Speaker A

others because they take care of of a few young right some are fast some are slow some are singular cellular some are multi like nothing nothing because the answer for that of course is deep and profound because the environment is so

32:38

Speaker A

complex and differentiated and dynamically changing that Nicias ways in which you can fit into the environment in order to right promote your survival autopoietic are varied and changing see this is Darwin's insight there is no essence to design there is no essence to

33:00

Speaker A

fitted miss if you try and come up with a theory of how organisms have their design I'm using this in quotation marks in terms of trying to determine or derive it from the essence of design you are doomed because it doesn't exist that

33:25

Speaker A

that's but what what Darwin realizes he didn't need such a theory he needed a theory about how what's relevant in this biological sense but a theory about how an organism is fitted how it is constantly being designed redefined by a

33:51

Speaker A

dynamic process see fitted Ness is always redefining itself reconstituting itself it is a something that is constantly within a process of self-organization because there is no essence there is no final design on fitted news fitted myths has to

34:17

Speaker A

constantly be redesigning itself in a self-organizing fashion so it can constantly pick up on the way a in which the world is constantly varying and dynamically changing there is no essence to fit in this but I don't need a theory of fitness all I need is a

34:38

Speaker A

theory of how fitted Mis is constantly being realized in a self-organizing fashion that's exactly what the theory of evolution is do you remember there's a feedback cycle in reproduction there's a virtual engine selection variation and that virtual engine constantly shapes

35:10

Speaker A

regulates how the reproductive cycle feeds back onto itself and there is no and of course this is why some religious people get very angry about this process but notice this is exactly what we need right there's no intelligent designer to

35:29

Speaker A

this this is a process that is completely self-organizing the fitted nosov organisms constantly evolves out of and is constantly evolving towards other instances of fitted nystagmus has no essence it is not a stable phenomena I should not try and give a definition

35:50

Speaker A

or a theory of fitness what I have is a theory of the evolution of fitted nests and again even when I say that you have to you're tempted to think what bird a key means is there was no fitted miss

36:04

Speaker A

and then there was evolution and it resulted in fitness that is not what we're Vicki saying where Vicki is saying fitted nests and the evolution of fitted miss the same thing so what Darwin proposed of course it was

36:29

Speaker A

the first dynamical Systems theory of how fitted nests evolves so that Fitness is ongoing that's the theory of evolution by natural selection now that tells us something that we need first of all this is a self-organizing process it

36:46

Speaker A

is non homunculus it can generate intelligence without itself being an intelligent process it's doing a lot of what we need it's doing a lot of what we need here's the analogy I want to propose to you let's make relevance

37:09

Speaker A

analogous to biological fitness in fact let's call relevance cognitive interactional what I mean by that both in your cognition and how that cognition is expressing itself in problem-solving cognitive interactional fitness and I don't need a theory of this what I need

37:34

Speaker A

is a theory of how this evolves okay how it evolves what if my ability to formulate problems form categories pick up on conveyance make inferences all the stuff what about that ability because what I'm doing what am i what do I need I need something

38:06

Speaker A

that constrains the search space that constrains how I pay attention I need systematic constraints and what are they doing the systematic constraints have to regulate a feedback loop well what's the feedback loop the feedback loop is my sensory motor

38:23

Speaker A

feedback loop right I'm sensing but I'm also acting and my acting is integral to my sensing and my sensing is integral to my moving and so my moving and my sensing are doing this a sensorimotor loop right I interact with the world and

38:42

Speaker A

then that changes how I sense it and then I enter so there's a sensory motor loop what if what if there is a virtual engine broadly construed that is regulating that sensory motor loop so that it is constantly evolving it's

39:03

Speaker A

cognitive interactional fitted 'no stew its environment it doesn't have to come to any final a essential way of framing the environment but what it's constantly doing is evolving its fitted miss its cognitive not just its biological fitness although I'm going to argue as

39:24

Speaker A

many people do that there's an important continuity between those two it's constantly evolving it's cognitive fitted 'no stew the environment then what i need is not a theory of relevance i need a theory of relevance realization how relevance is becoming effective

39:44

Speaker A

right how it is altering shaping the sensorimotor loop I need a dynamical system for the self-organizing evolution of cognitive interactional fitted miss and if I could come up with that then I would have an account of relevance realization that was non

40:06

Speaker A

homunculus we'd be consonant and continuous with of how the organ the embodied organ you know the embodied brain the vault that is responsible for intelligence itself evolved it would plug in very nicely to what we need well what do we need well

40:35

Speaker A

we need a set of properties if you remember we need a set of properties that are subs semantics sub syntactic that ultimately have to ground out in right establishing the agent arena participation they have to be right the processes have to be

41:09

Speaker A

self-organizing they have to be multi scale they have to originally be ground out in autopoietic on autopoietic system well what kind of properties are we talking about then well we're talking about and this again is too deeply analogous to the Darwinian picture we're

41:43

Speaker A

talking about bio economical properties and what do I mean by that think again of your biology as economic this is again part of Darwin's great insight now you know don't be confused here when a lot of times when people

42:06

Speaker A

hear economic they hear financial economy that's not what an economy is an economy is a self-organization a self-organizing system that is constantly dealing with the distribution of goods and services the the allocation and use of resources often in order to

42:30

Speaker A

further maintain and develop that economy so your body is a bio economy you have valuable resources of time metabolic energy processing power think about how we say we pay attention by the way processing power and you write what

42:53

Speaker A

what what you do as an auto poetic thing is you are organized such that the distribution of those resources so the constitutive gold it will serve other goals of course but it serves the constitutive goal of preserving the

43:11

Speaker A

Bioeconomy itself and the thing about economies right of course is their self organizing economic properties are right your bio they're part of they come out of their biology right they're not semantic or syntactic properties now we use semantic and syntactic terms to talk

43:30

Speaker A

about them blah blah blah let's not keep making the confusion okay they are multi scale C economies work locally and globally simultaneously bottom-up top-down so Bonnell economic properties are great and that's good because that that comports well with the analogy

43:49

Speaker A

because Darwin's theory is ultimately a bio economic theory so can we think about what kind of norms are at work in a bio economy okay so here right where we're dealing with norms ultimately of truth right here we're dealing probably

44:14

Speaker A

with norms of validity at least formal validity in some way when we're here we're not dealing with these kinds of logical semantics norms economies are governed by logistical norms or at least regulated by logistical norms I want to

44:34

Speaker A

try and use the word governing for selective constraints and generating for enabling constraints I apologize if I sometimes flip economies are regulated by logistical norms Logistics is the study of the proper disposition and use of your resources so if you're doing a

44:51

Speaker A

logistical analysis for the military you're trying to figure out I have my limited resources and food and you know ammo and personnel and time and space how can I best use them to achieve the goals I need to achieve so what are

45:06

Speaker A

logistical norms well logistical norms are things like efficiency right and resiliency efficiency and resiliency now resiliency it will we'll talk about more in each detail a way of thinking about these is resiliency is basically long term broadly applying efficiency but instead

45:32

Speaker A

of using efficiency and efficiency which is confusing we'll talk about efficiency and resiliency so what if that's right let's go step by step is very right what if relevance realization is this ongoing evolution of our cognitive interactional fitted Ness that there is

45:56

Speaker A

some virtual engine that is regulating the sensory motor loop and it's regulating it by regulating the Bioeconomy and it's regulating the Bioeconomy in terms of logistical norms like efficiency and resilience okay now all of this of course right can be

46:16

Speaker A

described scientifically mathematically etc because of course darwin's theory is a scientific theory right we we can do calculations on these things etc one more time the fact that I use science to talk about it does not mean that it is

46:33

Speaker A

that it exemplifies propositional properties my properties of my theory and the properties that my theory is about are not the same thing what kind of relationship how do we put this notion of self-organization in this notion of the logistical norms governing

46:50

Speaker A

the Bioeconomy together okay so one way of doing this is to think about a multi scalar way in which your bio economy is organized to function a multi scalar way many scales of analysis there's a way in which your bio economy is organized to

47:11

Speaker A

function ok let's take your autonomic nervous system as an example this is not exhaustive in fact my point is you will find this strategy this design at many levels of analysis in your biology I'm only using this as

47:33

Speaker A

an example so your autonomous nervous system okay so this is that you're nervous this is your part of your nervous system that is responsible for your level of arousal right that doesn't mean sexual arousal the Ruhr also means

47:50

Speaker A

how and notice how this is logistical how much your metabolic resources are being converted into the possibility of action interaction so you have a very low level of arousal when you're falling asleep you have a very high level

48:03

Speaker A

overall so when you're running away from a tiger okay now think about this you need your level of a ramp there is no final perfect design on your level of arousal there is nothing you should there's there isn't a level that you

48:23

Speaker A

should always shoot for you shouldn't maximize your level of arousal but always ah that's not good I'm never gonna sleep I'm never gonna heal right if I'm just like always okay that's it going to sleep that's not good and the

48:38

Speaker A

Canadian solution well I'll always have a middling level of arousal that's not good either because I can't fall asleep and I can't run away from the tiger so what what is your autonomic nervous system - well your autonomic nervous

48:55

Speaker A

system is divided into two components right there is your sympathetic and your parasympathetic so yes your sympathetic system is right it's designed it's really biased it's designed towards interpreting the world in a way it's biased notice what I said

49:24

Speaker A

remember the things that make us adaptive also make us susceptible to self-deception it's biased all right because right you can't can look at all of the evidence it's biased into looking for an interpreting evidence that I mean evidence non anthropomorphic lis that

49:40

Speaker A

should you should raise your level of arousal you're sympathetic your parasympathetic system is bias the other way right these are both heuristic ways of processing they work in terms of biasing the processing of data okay so the parasympathetic system is constantly

50:04

Speaker A

trying to find evidence that you should reduce your level of arousal so they're opposed in their goal but here's the thing they are also interdependent in their function all right so the sympathetic nervous system is always trying to arouse you

50:38

Speaker A

this is this hand pulling up and that parasympathetic system is always trying to pull you down and as the environment changes that tug-of-war shifts around your level of arousal right the opponent processing because when you have two systems that are opposed but integrated

50:56

Speaker A

you have opponent processing the opponent processing means that your level of arousal is constantly evolving constantly evolving to fit the environment is it perfect no nothing can be I'd have to any problem-solving machine in order to be perfect would

51:17

Speaker A

have to explore the complete problem space that's combinatorial explosive it can't but what is this well you've seen this before opponent processing is a powerful way to get optimization and when we talked about optimization when we talked about play-doh you're

51:31

Speaker A

optimizing between systems that are working and different goals but are integrated in their function and that way the system constantly self organizes and it and thereby evolves it's fitted 'no student so the way we can get this I

51:53

Speaker A

would argue is by thinking about how the brain and I would I'm going to argue very importantly the embodied embedded brain uses opponent processing in a multi scalar way in order to regulate your Bioeconomy your autopoietic Bioeconomy so that it is constantly

52:24

Speaker A

optimizing your cognitive interactional fitted nurse to the environment let's think about it this way let's think if we can get a virtual engine out of efficiency and resiliency because here's the thing about them they are in an opponent relationship they pursue

52:51

Speaker A

pursuit the problem with language a it's like Nietzsche said if you were not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar right the problem with language is it makes everything sound like an agent it makes everything sound like it

53:02

Speaker A

has intentionality makes everything sound like it has intelligence and of course that's not the case so bear with me about this all right I have to speak anthropomorphic leave just because that's the way language makes me speak but right let's use a financial analogy

53:26

Speaker A

to understand the trade-off relationship between efficiency and resiliency not all economies are financial because not the the resource that's being disposed of in an economy is not necessarily money it might be time etc okay I'm using a financial analogy or at least a

53:47

Speaker A

commercial analogy perhaps as a better way of putting it in order to try and get some understanding of how these are in a tradeoff relationship so you have you have a business one of the things you might do is you might try to make your

54:06

Speaker A

business more efficient because ceteris paribus if your business is more efficient than that person's business you're going to out-compete them you're going to survive and they're going to die off obviously the analogy to evolution so what do I do what I do is I

54:23

Speaker A

try to maximize the ratio between right profit and expenditure cost how do I do that well we did it we keep thinking of it as the magical solution but we've been doing it since Ronald Reagan at least we do massive downsizing we fire

54:41

Speaker A

as many people as we can in our business and that way well we have right is we have the most profit for the least labor cost that's surely the answer right so notice what efficiency is doing notice how efficiency is a selective

55:01

Speaker A

constraint the problem is if you are cut to the bone if you reduced all the afar if you've got all the efficiencies and this is the magic word the people often invoke without forgetting that's without remembering and forgetting the

55:19

Speaker A

relationship the opponent relationship to resiliency see if I cut my business to the bone like that what happens if one person's sick nobody can pick up the slack because everyone is working to the max what happens if there's an

55:36

Speaker A

unexpected change in the environment a new threat or a new opportunity nobody can take it on because everybody is we work to the limit I'll have no resources by which I can repair restructure redesign myself I don't have any

56:04

Speaker A

precursors to new ways of organizing because there is nothing that isn't being fully used notice also if there's no slack in my system and this is now happening with the way AI is accelerating things error propagates massively and quickly if there's no

56:28

Speaker A

redundancy there's no slack in the system there's no place there's no wiggle room and error just floods the system you see if I make the system too efficient you lose resiliency I lose the capacity to differentiate restructure redesign repair accept new functions out

56:51

Speaker A

of existing functions slow down how error propagates through the system efficiency and resiliency in a tradeoff relationship now what and resiliency is trying to do is enable you to encounter new things enable you to deal with unexpected situations of

57:10

Speaker A

damage or threat or opportunity it's enabling these are in a tradeoff relationship as I gained one I learn lose the other what if I set up a virtual engine in the brain that makes use of this trade-off relationship it

57:28

Speaker A

sets up a virtual engine between the selective constraints of efficiency and the enabling constraints of resiliency and that virtual engine bio economically logistically shapes my sensory motor loop with the environment so it's constantly evolving its fitted miss we'll take a look at that possibility

57:49

Speaker A

and some suggestions on how that might be realized in the brain in the next lecture thank you very much for your time and attention [Music] you [Music] you you you

Topics: relevance realization John Vervaeke meaning crisis dynamical systems theory autopoiesis philosophy of science inductive generalization Wittgenstein family resemblance cognitive science fitness

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