In the introduction to his recent book, Eric Hoell writes: The Other Side of the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science1, Let’s look back at “Two Perspectives on Humanity’s World.” I discovered Hoel’s capacity for depth and nuance when I came across his excellent critique of the open letter that caused the recent battle to erupt in the field of consciousness research.
My two recent posts describe that battle and offer some explanations from the perspective of the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK). Specifically, UTOK provides clear definitions of both consciousness and mental processes. In particular, UTOK’s mind map divides mental processes into his three realms and shows that subjective conscious experience can be classified as the realm of Mind2. These posts explain that while the realm of MInd2 overlaps with the concept of consciousness, it is not the same as the broader definition of consciousness, leading to much confusion.
Let’s continue our discussion based on Hoel’s book. His first three chapters of his work help guide the reader into his two perspectives of humanity and how they have developed historically over the past several thousand years. The two perspectives are the intrinsic perspective, which is subjective and refers to an inside-out perspective, and the extrinsic perspective, which is objective and refers to an outside-in perspective. Hoel argues that the evolution of civilization coincided with the deepening of these two of his “conceptual wonders.” Early in his work, he writes:
Being able to essentially see the universe “from the outside” is an achievement of civilization. Being able to see the universe essentially “from the inside” is also an achievement of civilization. These two perspectives are the source of our greatest triumphs, including our ability to see galaxies light years away and the elegance and beauty of the stories we tell.
Scientist Galileo Galilei needed to fully understand the importance of separating the outside from the inside and crystallizing the outside perspective into science. Despite all the advances since then, it has become increasingly clear that science cannot ignore essential perspectives. Neuroscience and psychology hit an invisible wall.
The second half of Hoel’s book is a powerful commentary on those barriers and how to deal with them. This includes some of his important contributions to the mathematics of causal emergence. This work shows conclusively why causal properties cannot be reduced to the least common multiple (e.g., quantum fields), but instead emerge in higher-order aggregates.
From this, he argues that we need to think of science as a process of mapping emergent beings from an external perspective. He suggests that the maps of the emergence of causal relationships produced by science can be thought of as akin to “a large tree, each branch spanning a different spatiotemporal level.” Microphysics is at the bottom and then you move up the tree. [classical] Physics, then chemistry, then biochemistry, etc. ” Those familiar with UTOK’s knowledge tree system and the Periodic Table of Behavior will immediately recognize the significant overlap. Indeed, Hoel’s research allows us to greatly clarify the science of consciousness, its problems, and the solutions needed, especially when viewed through her UTOK lens.
To understand this, we can start by matching Hoel’s analysis of the science of consciousness and its problems with what UTOK calls the Enlightenment Gap (EG). As defined in A new synthesis for solving problems in psychology: Addressing the enlightenment gapFive, EG describes the “scientific enlightenment of placing the mind in its proper relation to matter (i.e. the mind-body problem) and the joint problems that arose in the wake of scientific knowledge in its relation to social and subjective knowledge systems.” The downstream consequences of this gap in our knowledge give rise to problems in psychology and a chaotic, fragmented and pluralistic state of knowledge more generally. ”
To fully understand what EG is saying, we need to introduce two important terms in philosophy: epistemology and ontology. Epistemology refers to how we know and how we justify what we know, whereas ontology refers to the things in the world we are trying to explain, or more broadly the theory of reality .
The first problem that EG emphasizes, that of putting mind in relation to matter, is an ontological problem. This is because it refers to the difficulty of saying exactly what mind is like with respect to matter. His second issue that EG emphasizes refers to epistemology, which concerns how we know things about the world. Science is an external, objective epistemology as opposed to a subjective process of knowing. This distinction between external and internal perspective provides the framework for Hoel’s book.
consciousness essentials
With this distinction in mind, we seek to approach, from a UTOK perspective, the core questions driving the struggle in the science of consciousness. What we are seeing is that the science of consciousness, like psychology before it, is confused about both ontology and epistemology. At high levels of abstraction, it is surprisingly easy to confuse ontology and epistemology.
In fact, Hoell’s book, while good overall, confuses the ontological and epistemological aspects of EG and the related problems facing the science of consciousness. This confusion is evident from the beginning on the cover of Hoel’s book.
It says this: “Throughout history, his two perspectives on the world have fought in our minds: one is the ‘external’ perspective of physics and mechanics, the other is the ‘extrinsic’ perspective of emotions, thoughts, and ideas. It is an “internal” perspective. These perspectives were unprecedented. Reconciled. It’s like existing in a different dimension of reality. ”
I hope you understand what I mean here. The “external versus internal” distinction is essentially epistemological. In contrast, “mechanisms” and “feelings, thoughts, ideas” are ontological in nature. They refer to things in the world and how it works. Notice that these are yoked together in this first sentence. That’s a potentially fatal outcome for confusion.
in new synthesis, I demonstrate conclusively that there has been a massive confusion in science between external epistemological positions and reductive mechanistic ontological positions. This is a big problem because the two can be easily separated if you know how. For example, UTOK accepts the scientific external position, defined as a behavioral position, but avoids reductive, mechanistic, and materialist ontology.
What does this mean for the science of consciousness, at least according to UTOK? And how should we resolve this problem? In the previous two posts I made about this battle, broadly speaking We have shown that consciousness (i.e., functional awareness and responsiveness) needs to be distinguished from the concept of Mind2 (subjective conscious experience in animals with brains). This is an ontological distinction.
In addition to mapping important ontological differences, UTOK provides a clear set of tools to reveal very clear epistemological differences between objective natural scientific knowledge vectors and subjective spiritual knowledge vectors. We also provide frames. This is the difference between Tree of Knowledge System by UTOK and iQuad Coin.
The ToK system frames our outside-in, external epistemological view of scientific knowledge. However, this is not a reductive, mechanistic view. Rather, as Hoel suggests, scientific knowledge can be framed as a branching tree that maps the emergent properties of causal relationships across levels and dimensions of complexity.
In contrast, iQuad Coin frames the internal perspective of the human subject in the world. iQuad Coin begins with a unique and specific human being qualitatively experiencing a moment in time. Note that this epistemology is completely opposite to the epistemology of science.
To confirm this, tell scientists that you have an idea about the world that is subjective, qualitative, and specific to your perspective, and that it relates to something in the world in a reliable and valid way. Tell them you’re not sure if they do. They probably won’t recommend submitting the idea to the best scientific journals.
The beauty of iQuad Coin is that it starts with a subjective mind, then provides a network of associative adjacent identities, and finally can be combined seamlessly with external scientific perspectives. Combining trees and coins means that UTOK is ontologically structured to effectively bridge intrinsic and extrinsic epistemological advantages. In other words, it accomplishes what the cover of Hoel’s book says has never been possible.
In a recent post, I showed how the UTOK knowledge system shares some strong similarities with the way Descartes explained things in his writings. principles of philosophy (1644). This shows the relationship between the tree and the coin.
The bottom line is that, from UTOK’s perspective, what is happening in the science of consciousness is the same thing that caused the crisis in psychology over 100 years ago. Natural science has confused and conflated external action epistemology with reductive mechanical materialist ontology, and we have not been able to effectively separate the two.
This failure led to the formation of what Hoel calls an “invisible wall.” These are the walls that UTOK diagnoses as the walls of EG, first boxing in the field of psychology and now boxing in the field of science of consciousness. These walls of confusion hold us captive until we can diagnose them and crawl out of the long shadow cast by EG and into the light of a new day of our understanding. It will continue to generate unproductive conflict.