THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT SQUARED
The Scenarios in this book are not fiction. They are a form of hypothetical reasoning that philosophers call a “thought experiment”. A thought experiment is a methodology for exploring the possible consequences of a given set of circumstances. They employ logic, rather than empirical observation, to challenge established “common sense” modes of thinking to demonstrate that such thinking is absurd. The term “thought experiment” has been in use since the nineteenth century, but obviously people have been doing them (without calling them that) since the earliest days of inductive reasoning. The whole of mathematics is a giant network of thought experiments, and they are the principal methodology by which physics advances.
Consider the most famous experiment in the history of physics: Galileo demonstrated that objects fall under gravity at the same rate irrespective of their mass. He did this by dropping objects of different masses from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa.81 However, Galileo did not conduct this experiment out of random curiosity. He did it as a demonstration to his sceptical colleagues because he already knew the outcome. He worked this out in a thought experiment. Galileo reasoned that if heavy objects fell faster than light ones, as had been supposed since the time of Aristotle, then two such objects attached to each other as they fell would result in the heavy one dragging the light one faster, and the light one slowing down the heavy one. This would imply that they would fall at a rate in between their two individual rates of descent. However, attached together they form a body of greater mass than the two individually, so they should fall faster. Thus, the common sense view led to an impossible inconsistency.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the most famous theory in physics, is also a product of a thought experiment. It started with an empirical observation: measuring the speed of light from twin orbiting stars, physicists realised that light travelled at a constant speed irrespective of the relative motion of the point of propagation. This caused physicists to put everything they knew about space and time onto the scrapheap, and work out a whole new structure. Einstein’s book Relativity was his attempt to explain the theory to non-physicists. [That would include me.] He explains much of the theory by a series of thought experiments using a hypothetical train moving along an embankment. He thereby demonstrated that events that are simultaneous relative to the embankment would not be simultaneous relative to the train. So, space and time could not be regarded as fixed and independent.
Mathematics is a network of thought experiments that is ultimately rooted in empirical observation. John von Neumann, the mathematician who originated game theory, is one of the few brave enough to admit that mathematics has an empirical origin. “It is very hard for any mathematician to believe that mathematics is a purely empirical science or that all mathematical ideas originate in empirical subjects.”82 Mathematicians tend to get lost in their world of thought experiment and lose touch with the real one.
Let us consider the most basic statement of mathematics “2+2=4” – that cliché of the irreducible, irrefutable truth. Most of us learn this before we can even read, and yet it is surprisingly difficult to prove, in part because it is irreducible. Wittgenstein attempts to reduce it to logic in the Tractatus, and I am not going to pretend that my understanding of his proof is beyond doubt. So how then do we know this simple fact? The human who first figured out how to count was perhaps the most influential human that ever lived, yet we have no clue as to his/her identity. But we can speculate as to what happened in the mind of the first human who ever figured out that two plus two was equal to four. Let us call him Abdul because he probably lived in the Middle East somewhere – perhaps prehistoric Babylon. It was probable that Abdul noticed that if we put two apples in one hand and two apples in the other, then we have four apples in total, and this was also the case with oranges. Initially, Abdul might have found it strange that apples and oranges have this thing in common, but then he started to think about this in his imagination. He started to imagine two apples in each hand, and then he pictured each apple individually morphing into an orange. Once he realised this, he could imagine the apples morphing into anything he so chose, including palm trees or camels; and once he had realised this, he could imagine them morphing into a completely abstract object. He could take the statement “two apples plus two apples equals four apples” and leave out the word “apples”. True arithmetic was born of fruit and pure imagination.
If mathematics and physics are rooted in a combination of empirical observation and pure imagination, is it possible that the problems that psychologists try to resolve can be treated in the same way? What I am attempting to do is to reduce the cause of a human action to an atomic level. I am doing this by a combination of empirical observation and imagination. It isn’t possible to do scientifically for a host of reasons, among them finding any human who has only one emotion, or concluding with any certainty whether a human is tactically manipulating their behaviour. I therefore follow Abdul in constructing it hypothetically in my imagination. If arithmetic can have such a humble origin, perhaps understanding human nature – the most complex problem that we have – can have a humble solution.
The Scenarios in this book are thought experiments of an unusual kind: they are thought experiments about thoughts – a thought experiment squared. This is something that a physicist or mathematician never has to bother with. Firstly, I have to construct a hypothetical mind in which a concept of an emotion has been corrupted by manipulated behaviour; and secondly, I have to determine how such a hypothetical mind would rationally determine a course of action. To do this, I have to construct a second thought experiment inside the hypothetical mind that was the product of the first thought experiment.83 This is a technique to enable you to understand non-understanding, which is not an intellectual process but a form of engineered empathy. If we can construct an atom of non-understanding, then we can create molecules of non-understanding, and what I am suggesting is that these molecules of non-understanding are the key to understanding human nature.
If we corrupt the normal operation of human emotions, specific modes of corruption lead to specific rational but self-destructive outcomes, and the agent will be oblivious that this is happening. To demonstrate this, I employ creative logic – I explore what happens when logic starts with misconceptions that are in themselves the product of perceptions. Logic is a system of inference that was mostly formalised by Aristotle. An example of an Aristotelian syllogism would be:
The important thing about logic is that it is concerned with the relationship between statements, not facts. However, it permits us to draw correct inferences about facts, since, when the statements are true, they correctly reference facts. However, logic still works when one of the statements is false. For example:
. . . is still impeccably logical. I expect you are thinking that the second assumption is false, and because this is logical, that would mean that the conclusion is false too. However, there is another possible interpretation: because of some oddity in my upbringing (of which there were many), I think that “meow” is the correct name for the sound a dog makes. In this case, the second assumption is factually correct, but contains an error of language. In this case, since it is logical, the conclusion is also factually correct, but contains the same error of language.
I am concerned with rationality, which is related to logic but not quite the same thing. Whereas logic is concerned with relationships between statements, rationality is concerned with relationships between thoughts. Many thoughts can be expressed as statements, but certain thoughts are not verbalised in a human brain. However, the end goal of logic is a conclusion, which is of course a form of statement. But the end goal of rationality is generally an action, which is of course not a form of thought, but the product of a type of thought that we generally call an intention. We could therefore describe rationality as the logic of human intentions. For example:
This is clearly rational (whether the thoughts are verbalised or not). However, rationality remains rational (like logic remains logical) when one of the assumptions is false or contains an error of language; so the following is still rational:
I am exploring rationality in hypothetical minds where emotional concepts have become misunderstood. To do this I use dramatic irony – the technique dating back to the time of Sophocles where the reader or audience knows something is wrong but the protagonist does not. A famous example of dramatic irony in recent times is the movie The Truman Show, where Truman does not know he is living in a reality TV program, but the audience both knows this and also knows that Truman doesn’t know it.
When you read the Scenarios, you the reader know the protagonist is operating under a misconception but the protagonist does not know this. In this way, I can explore what happens when someone thinks rationally, but where the normal mechanism for understanding emotions and the words for emotions has been corrupted.
Models are often constructed (for example by economists or meteorologists) to permit hypothetical analysis and make predictions. Normally, these models are constructed using mathematics, computer programs and logic. However, I cannot construct a model of human rationality in this way because mathematics, computer programming language and logic all assume that the language in which they operate is consistently functional. I need to drop this assumption, since I am exploring the consequences of inconsistent language and incorrect non-verbalised concepts.
An animal emotion is a driver of an action, but because a human can conceive of its future emotions, he/she determines his/her actions based on beliefs about what causes those future emotions. These beliefs are derived from emotional behaviour that is almost certain to have been altered by some nuance of habitual tactical deception.
What I need to do now is to explore some of the philosophical problems that arise from this process of forming concepts of our own emotions.
QUALIA THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
When you experience an emotion, you do indeed have an experience. ‘Qualia’ is philosopher-speak for the internal and subjective components of sense perception. For example, if I look at a green object under a red light, the quale (which is the singular form of ‘qualia’) is the internal experience of how that looks to me. Clearly, I need to consider the nature of the qualia of emotional experience.
The philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote a paper called Quining Qualia84, which is now regarded as a classic. The verb ‘to quine’ means to deny resolutely, and seems to be a word that Dennett procured by dubious means because he would only be satisfied with a word beginning with “Q”. So Dennett is attacking the “obvious” observation that qualia are meaningful things. He does this by producing a dizzying number of contradictions or confusions to do with the way we conceive of qualia, and he manages to do this with slightly Monty Pythonesque humour. Dennett coined the term “intuition pump” to describe a thought experiment structured in a manner to find answers by an intuitive approach. I guess that Dennett would call my Scenarios intuition pumps, but I resist his term because we have not the foggiest clue what intuition is, and assuming that it is a part of our nature is as potentially confusing as thinking that “free will” or a “soul” or a “mind” is part of our nature. I rather think that intuition is a misnomer for thought processes that we cannot introspect – and there are certainly plenty of those.
One of Dennett’s thought experiments concerns two fictional coffee tasters for Maxwell House called Mr Chase and Mr Sanborn. One day, Mr Chase confesses to Mr Sanborn:
I hate to admit it, but I am not enjoying this work any more. When I came to Maxwell House six years ago, I thought Maxwell House coffee was the best-tasting coffee in the world. I was proud to have a share in the responsibility for preserving that flavour over the years. And we’ve done our job well; the coffee tastes just the same today as it tasted when I arrived. But, you know, I no longer like it! My tastes have changed. I’ve become a more sophisticate coffee drinker. I no longer like that taste at all.
Mr Sanborn was rather surprised by this remark because he was having a similar thought himself. He replied:
When I arrived here, shortly before you did, I, like you, thought Maxwell House coffee was tops in flavour. And now I, like you, really don’t care for the coffee we’re making. But my tastes haven’t changed; my . . . tasters have changed. That is, I think something has gone wrong with my taste buds or some other part of my tasteanalysing perceptual machinery. Maxwell House coffee doesn’t taste to me the way it used to taste; if only it did, I’d still love it, for I still think that taste is the best taste in coffee. Now I’m not saying we haven’t done our job well. You other tasters all agree that the taste is the same, and I must admit that on a day-to-day basis I can detect no change either. So it must be my problem alone.
Now the confusion here is that Mr Chase and Mr Sandborn both used to like Maxwell House coffee, and now neither of them do. However, each claims a different reason for not liking it any more. On top of that, one (or both) of them could be simply wrong, and there is no way that anyone can know, including Mr Chase or Mr Sandborn.
Dennett manages to come up with an example of a contradiction or confusion for practically every type of sensory experience. “So when we look one last time at our original characterization of qualia, as ineffable, intrinsic, private, directly apprehensible properties of experience, we find that there is nothing to fill the bill.”85 From his demonstration that we cannot form meaningful concept of qualia, he concludes: “So contrary to what seems obvious at first blush, there simply are no qualia at all.”
I agree with Dennett that philosophers cannot form meaningful concepts of qualia, and yet to conclude that qualia don’t exist is to use the word ‘exist’ in a very narrow scientistic sense. The nature of sensory qualia presents us with a metaphysical problem that we might never resolve, but we can’t just deny the problem exists. Suppose someone punched Dennett and he responded by suing them; if the assailant used Dennett’s theories in their legal defence, how could he respond? Likewise, I suggest that Dennett never tries to persuade starving people that their hunger qualia don’t exist. When I introspect the neurological processes that occur during emotion, it produces a quale that most people call a feeling. I think of feeling qualia as being like a thumb smear of paint on a canvas – there, but not coherent. A phenomenon, like abstract art, doesn’t have to be coherent to be worthy of consideration.
However, I have no interest in getting into a dispute with Dennett because we are travelling down different roads. Dennett correctly argues that philosophers cannot form meaningful concepts about qualia. But I am a philosopher saying that normal people think that they can form meaningful concepts of qualia. ‘Normal people’ in this context means people who aren’t philosophers, and philosophers when they are off-duty – presumably including Dennett. I am assuming that if Dennett were to be pounced upon by a lion, he would momentarily forget to philosophise and at that point his fear would be real to him. Because concepts about qualia have an impact on what normal people do, we have to look at how their misconceptions arise and understand how this might explain the strangeness of their actions.
Since Dennett started using the taste of coffee as an example, let me continue:
Most mornings, I grind my own coffee (having similar taste in coffee to Mr Chase in later life). And I just love the smell of those freshly ground beans. Before I make my coffee, I place my nose over them and breath in deeply. Nothing is better than that smell. But then, after about twenty seconds, I can’t smell it anymore.
Now, I could assume that after twenty seconds the coffee simply ceased to smell. Perhaps the smell is made by little creatures in the coffee that get frightened of the sight of my nostrils and curl up into their shells. But wait a minute! There can’t be little creatures in there because the coffee has been thoroughly roasted and then put through my grinder. Our conception of science (that inanimate substances cannot change their properties at will) leads me to the conclusion that it isn’t that the coffee ceased to smell; rather what happened is that my coffee smellers shut down. If I put the coffee back in its jar and do other things for a couple of hours, I can smell it again.
What seems to happen then is that my coffee-smelling sensors become accustomed to the smell of coffee, and quite quickly I cease to be able to smell it. For me to assume that the coffee ceases to smell would be obtuse, and in any case I can check by asking you if you can smell it. [Yes! Yes . . . We could over-philosophise and assume you might lie, or that you are a zombie programmed by the Evil Deceiver.] So it seems clear that my smell sensors cease to operate after a brief exposure to a smell, and when this happens I assume that the coffee still smells, but this is a belief alone.
Now, the question that I really want to ask is: does this also happen to the feeling of happiness? After I have felt happy for about twenty seconds, do I become so accustomed to the feeling that I am no longer able to feel it?
When someone asks me if I am happy, I generally answer “yes” without having to verify that feeling. In this way, I am reporting a belief about a feeling, generally without actually going to the trouble of detecting a feeling. If I look for happiness qualia, I cannot be sure that there are any. So I am going to do a Mr Sandford and propose that my happiness is so overwhelming, so overpowering, that it has actually blown the neural fuses that permit me to detect the feeling. How can I question this assertion? The check that I can do with the coffee isn’t available to me: I cannot put my happiness back in its jar and see if I can feel it a couple of hours later. It is like halitosis in that nobody can sense it in themself, but it is unlike halitosis in that nobody else can sense it for you. I know that I am happy, even when I can’t detect a feeling. At such times, all I have is a belief. The metaphysics of happiness qualia might be like the metaphysics of God: if it didn’t exist, we would invent it.
The woman in Scenario C is driven by the aim to achieve love without ever knowing that she has succeeded. The aim to achieve happiness is similarly a core driver of humans. However, when we have achieved it, it is by no means certain that we will have any feeling to let us know with certainty that we have done so. How then do we actually know that we are happy? We are driven by the desire to achieve something that is entirely inenubilable. [Admit it! You are going to have to look that word up. I just did that to prove that I am as good as Daniel Dennett at finding ridiculously obscure words. My word has the added advantage of being practically unpronounceable, although I couldn’t find one beginning with a “Q”.]