Paul David Adkin's Blog, page 20
June 22, 2019
Becoming and Purposiveness
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Ours is a nihilistic world: What our civilisation lacks and needs is a common, human purpose. But purposiveness only makes sense when combined with the process of becoming. The purpose is not found in what is, but rather meaningfulness is rooted in the act of becoming; or, in other words, in making real that which will come to be. Becoming is a natural purposiveness, embedded in the evolutionary nature of things. Counter-purposiveness is, therefore, located in the static and the contrary idea that the good lies in the actual state of what is.
Nevertheless, if we consider evolution from the standpoint of the evolution of ideas, it is immediately clear how important to becoming is the idea of learning. Progress has to be a building on that which came before. Memory is essential and preservation is a necessary agent for facilitating memory on a vast cultural scale. The static is a counter-purposive state, but preservation is not. Quite the contrary, preservation is replete with purpose, and in fact it gives fuel to purposeful being.
Opposed to the positive element of preservation then, we have the negative counter-purpose of eradication.
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By observing evolutionary processes, we see how becoming is embedded in the biological nature of organisms. Likewise, if we look at the cosmological evolution of the Universe through the mathematical prism of Cosmological Fine Tuning, then we also see a process of purposive becoming take place. In both cases, there is a continual insistence on trial and error and the learning that occurs through it. If the Rare Earth scenario is correct, then, in cosmological terms, the complexity of creating life through trial and error is immense, and the probabilities of success, even in the great enormity of this Universe, are miniscule. Despite this, a steady process of becoming has been able to produce an organism capable of understanding the amazing complexity involved in the process of its own evolution, and this has to be regarded as an incredible achievement born from the natural, reflexive process of becoming itself.
Whether there was, from the beginning, a natural purposiveness in this or not; whether evolution is an accidental process or not – authentic, universal purposiveness can be derived from observation of the process and, whether this is an anthropocentric perception or not, the moral implications still hold true. Once becoming is recognised as the moral nature of things, then a moral path forward is opened for us. The past is only significant in terms of what needs to be learned in order to go forward. There is no purpose in the past except what it tells us about where we have come from and, hence, what becoming is.
The requirements of the moral laws of purposiveness derive their inspiration, not from the past or the creator, but from the future. If the essence is becoming, then humanity and all human cultures must ask themselves what we can become. Or even: What must we become? Morality needs to be orientated towards the future: Always.
Nothing is written: The moral law is part of becoming and must always be adjusted to future looking purposiveness.
Moral laws can never, therefore, be inviolable. Quite the contrary: We should expect them to evolve. Evolution is essential in becoming, and the role of preservation is needed for the learning to be able to push progress forward.
Of course becoming and progress also make demands on us, but true purposiveness is a liberating kind of duty, with a heavy enough anchor to keep the dynamic process from exploding into anarchy.
June 21, 2019
Good and Evil = Purposiveness and Counter-purposiveness
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When we elevate problems up to the “Human” level, the question of “what should be done” is immediately purified and made simpler. The problem of humanity is not humanity per se, but rather the self-interestedness of the non-humanity that infects the simplicity and clouds the perspective of our progressive-thinking, sapiens nature in favour of egotistical accumulations and wealth.
For instance, from a “Human” perspective, the problem of good versus evil can be seen more clearly if we change the terms to purposiveness instead of good, and counter-purposiveness in the place of evil.
In order to properly see human purposiveness, we must examine the absolute of the final end: What is the final end of humanity in the Universe?
A purposive resolution of this question would firstly have to take humanity’s special qualities into consideration (i.e. our sapiens qualities, that make us capable of understanding that we have purposes), and then imagine how this special quality can be meaningful and enriching for the place we inhabit, which is, ultimately, the Universe itself.
(Here we lift humanity to the level of all sapiens entities, at the same time elevating our home to the Universe, and reality to that of the possible rather than the actual.)
Seen as the purposive entity that we as sapiens creatures are, therefore, our purposive thesis should be: The final end of humanity in the Universe has to be the fulfilling of humanity’s role (as sapiens entities) in the Universe, as an integral part of the Universe’s Being.
The counter-purposiveness antithesis would be: The final end of humanity lies outside the Universe. In this way we immediately see the negative force of the transcendental reasoning of the spiritual as a distraction away from authentic purposiveness.
Seen from this point-of-view, our anti-human view of history has been a steady process of counter-purposiveness.
As Kant said: “it is only as a moral being that man can be a final end of creation.” Only man/humanity as a moral being with purposiveness regarding its place and role in the Universe can be a final end of creation.
When separated into groups, humanity becomes contemptible – only as humanity itself, as a whole, or as individuals or groups working for the purposiveness of that whole, can humans ever be regarded as admirable.
When considering God, we would all do well to keep in mind that the deity was created by reason, and reason tells us that while the idea that reason created God is reasonable, the idea that God created reason is less reasonable.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement
June 17, 2019
The Cause of Possibility: (Possibility versus Actuality)
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Perhaps the most distinctive feature of human reasoning is our capacity to see beyond the actual and perceive possibility.
Possibility is what makes us moral animals and throws us unavoidably into the divisive areas of good and evil and right and wrong. It is through our capacity for seeing possibilities that our tremendous creativity is allowed to bloom. Nevertheless, human society itself is responsible for much repression of possibility and civilisation itself tries to mould actuality into its own image at the price of possibility.
For the most part in contemporary society, that which ought to happen is constantly thwarted by actuality. Thus, poverty ought to be eradicated but actuality seems to turn the idea into some idealistic fantasy; war should be a thing of the past, but actuality makes it eradication impossible; we ought to have eliminated many more diseases and found cures for countless other simple ailments, and yet actuality engenders more new viruses year after year; we should have become more human and less nationalistic, but actuality makes a norm of the nationalistic spirit …
Possibility is constantly being strangled by actuality, and we are gasping in a choking planet. If there is a cause that we should now be defending above all others, it is the Cause of Possibility. Once that is empowered, all the rest of the causes, all the “ought to be” things in the world, will fall into place.
May 29, 2019
Our Specialness
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Sapiens life-forms, gifted with the ability to be conscious of and understand the physical mechanics of the world around them, are, most likely, a very rare part of the enormous cosmos we inhabit. Despite the vastness of the Universe, the stability required to produce ecosystems capable of harbouring organisms is extremely scarce.
This Rare Earth Hypothesis was put forward by the geologist and palaeontologist, Peter ward and the astronomer and astrobiologist, Donald Brownlee in their book Rare Earth. Their thesis is an argument against the Drake Equation that was championed by Carl Sagan and was a favourite of Fox Mulder in the X-Files.
The Drake Equation is more or less based on probabilities suggested by the simple vastness of space and fails to take into consideration neither the enormous inhospitableness of that space, nor the tendency for organised systems to fail or fall into mutually destructive relationships with each other. The Drake equation was most definitely an exaggeration, while the Rare Earth Hypothesis points to the Anthropic principles put forward by Barrow and Tipler and other champions of Cosmological Fine Tuning. It suggests the probability that the complex variety of life-forms on Earth may be unique in the Universe. In other words, we may very well be alone here.
Unique or not: we are special and rare, and immensely important for the qualitative existence of the Universe. Once we embrace this condition of uniqueness, ideas of fulfilment and purposiveness are radically augmented and changed as well. If we are the best there is, we should act accordingly and try to make sure we always act correctly, according to our noble status.
Our specialness implies purposiveness, and points toward meaningful life-philosophies. Likewise, it indicates that our negative feelings of alienation and absurdity are fostered by a lack of connection with the authentic purposiveness implied by our uniqueness in the cosmos. The truth is here, but we cannot see it because what we are, is buried in what we are. Our partnership with the Universe, established through Being, that puts us in a privileged position of importance within the cosmos, has not only deep philosophical significance, it also cries out for a drastic re-thinking of our attitudes to politics, economics, society and the very reasons we have for doing anything.
The Anthropic Principle demands a return to humanist principles and a revolutionary upheaval of the system that nurtures and governs our global civilisation today.
May 10, 2019
The Science of Necessity
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In our previous pots (Intelligence and Being and Natural Purpose is born from Necessity)we made necessity a force; a physical law of nature. But, how can that be?
Within metaphysics there is the Necessitarian Theory which puts forward the idea that the “Laws of Nature are the principles which govern the natural phenomena of the world”. But this was more of a nomic debate between must and is , and a questioning of free will which is certainly not where we want to go. Necessity is also implied, if not stated, in much of the debate on final causes and purposiveness in biology, and, again, championed by theologians, but that is not where we want to go either.
A surprising upholder of final causes and purposiveness as a driving force in biological design was Kant. For him, mechanistic materialism was not enough to explain biology. Nature needs more than just an understanding of its laws to explain it.
But to avoid the philosophical pitfall of tripping over into theology when unravelling metaphysical ideas, perhaps the best way to tackle this would be through an examination of the information used by systems – mechanical or biological – in order to drive themselves. Traditionally we have called much of this information laws: But how do these laws happen? Why must systems act in a certain way? Doesn’t this obligation imply necessity?
If atoms in water must solidify at 0ºC, and must agitate and become gaseous at 100ºC there is a certain force of necessity involved. Once we have established that all natural-laws contain the element of necessity, we see that necessity is everywhere, running throughout the very fabric of the entire universe, on the cosmic and the sub-atomic levels. Things happen because they must; because necessity demands it.
Science thinks it understands phenomena when it has been able to understand its laws, or, in our terminology, when it has understood its necessity – although knowing that something happens necessarily is not the same as knowing why it happens. It is in this field of trying to understand why, that those who ask the question are drawn into the problematic area of teleology and final causes.
Or perhaps not … The answer to the question of why organised systems come about may have nothing to do with final causes – the finality in each law may be just the singularity of each separate law. Initially, the necessary function of each law may simply be that it works. Nevertheless, once a system becomes complex, it needs the individual elements that make it up to all work in a necessary way.
Could we say that physical laws, and therefore needs, evolve as the system evolves? Structurally there is really nothing static in the Universe, everything is changing or inter-changing. Everything is dynamic, evolving into systems that seem in macro-cosmological terms to be stable.
It is this dynamism that eventually produces, in at least one tiny speck of the Universe, conditions for life. With the emergence of organisms, complexity takes on a whole new form. Really there are three stages of complexity in the Universe: (i) the mechanical stage of organising matter; (ii) the organic stage of evolving life forms; and (iii) the perceptive and idealistic stages in the evolving of minds.
In each stage there are laws or needs which deal with: a) lack; b) the problems of the maintenance and preservation of the system; and c) the needs for adapting, changing and progressing through creativity. The interesting thing here is that at all three stages the systems are liable to fall into internecine relationships with themselves. There seems to be an effort to regulate itself and find equilibriums and conditions which are self-regulatory, but the overall rule seems to be that this is impossible, at least in an absolute sense. While systems seem to strive for regularity and permanence, any absolute permanence seems to be impossible. All systems must eventually collapse, even though this seems to be the opposite of the intentions of the needs.
But, if the intentions are real, then the Universe is imbued with purpose; with a struggle; with the need to overcome its own internecine tendencies and evolve into regularity and permanence or at least to keep moving in that direction through the progressive evolutionary forces of adapting, changing and creating.
Looked at in this way, the final cause is in the process and is embedded in progress and becoming geared towards permanence.
https://wordpress.com/post/pauladkin.wordpress.com/3120
https://wordpress.com/post/pauladkin.wordpress.com/3117
Internet Enciclopedia of Philosophy www.iep.utm.edu/lawofnat
See Stanley N. Salthe, DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION; COMPLEXITY AND CHANGE IN BIOLOGY, p. 270
The Science of Necessity (Part One)
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In our previous posts (Intelligence and Being and Natural Purpose is born from Necessity)we made necessity a force; a physical law of nature. But, how can that be?
Within metaphysics there is the Necessitarian Theory which puts forward the idea that the “Laws of Nature are the principles which govern the natural phenomena of the world”. But this was more of a nomic debate between must and is , and a questioning of free will which is certainly not where we want to go. Necessity is also implied, if not stated, in much of the debate on final causes and purposiveness in biology, and, again, championed by theologians, but that is not where we want to go either.
A surprising upholder of final causes and purposiveness as a driving force in biological design was Kant. For him, mechanistic materialism was not enough to explain biology. Nature needs more than just an understanding of its laws to explain it.
But to avoid the philosophical pitfall of tripping over into theology when unravelling metaphysical ideas, perhaps the best way to tackle this would be through an examination of the information used by systems – mechanical or biological – in order to drive themselves. Traditionally we have called much of this information laws: But how do these laws happen? Why must systems act in a certain way? Doesn’t this obligation imply necessity?
If atoms in water must solidify at 0ºC, and must agitate and become gaseous at 100ºC there is a certain force of necessity involved. Once we have established that all natural-laws contain the element of necessity, we see that necessity is everywhere, running throughout the very fabric of the entire universe, on the cosmic and the sub-atomic levels. Things happen because they must; because necessity demands it.
Science thinks it understands phenomena when it has been able to understand its laws, or, in our terminology, when it has understood its necessity – although knowing that something happens necessarily is not the same as knowing why it happens. It is in this field of trying to understand why, that those who ask the question are drawn into the problematic area of teleology and final causes.
Or perhaps not … The answer to the question of why organised systems come about may have nothing to do with final causes – the finality in each law may be just the singularity of each separate law. Initially, the necessary function of each law may simply be that it works. Nevertheless, once a system becomes complex, it needs the individual elements that make it up to all work in a necessary way.
Could we say that physical laws, and therefore needs, evolve as the system evolves. Structurally there is really nothing static in the Universe, everything is changing or inter-changing. Everything is dynamic, evolving into systems that seem in macro-cosmological terms to be stable.
It is this dynamism that eventually produces, in at least one tiny speck of the Universe, conditions for life. With the emergence of organisms, complexity takes on a whole new form. Really there are three stages of complexity in the Universe: (i) the mechanical stage of organising matter; (ii) the organic stage of evolving life forms; and (iii) the perceptive and idealistic stages in the evolving of minds.
In each stage there are laws or needs which deal with: a) lack; b) the problems of the maintenance and preservation of the system; and c) the needs for adapting, changing and progressing through creativity. The interesting thing here is that at all three stages the systems are liable to fall into internecine relationships with themselves. There seems to be an effort to regulate itself and find equilibriums and conditions which are self-regulatory, but the overall rule seems to be that this is impossible, at least in an absolute sense. While systems seem to strive for regularity and permanence, any absolute permanence seems to be impossible. All systems must eventually collapse, even though this seems to be the opposite of the intentions of the needs.
But, if the intentions are real, then the Universe is imbued with purpose; with a struggle; with the need to overcome its own internecine tendencies and evolve into regularity and permanence or at least to keep moving in that direction through the progressive evolutionary forces of adapting, changing and creating.
Looked at in this way, the final cause is in the process and is embedded in progress and becoming geared towards permanence.
https://wordpress.com/post/pauladkin.wordpress.com/3120
https://wordpress.com/post/pauladkin.wordpress.com/3117
Internet Enciclopedia of Philosophy www.iep.utm.edu/lawofnat
See Stanley N. Salthe, DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION; COMPLEXITY AND CHANGE IN BIOLOGY, p. 270
May 4, 2019
Intelligence and Being
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For there to be Being there needs to be a perceiving subject that can acknowledge existence through its discernment of it, or self-consciousness in the subject so that it exists because it knows itself and is aware of itself. These knowing and/or perceiving requisites for Being make intelligence a necessary element of Being.
That which is will only be significant or fulfilled once it has become Being through the perceiving and knowing process of intelligence.
In our inanimate, three-dimensional cosmos in time and space, a principle of necessity has developed conditions allowing it to evolve into a universe endowed with Being.
To exist without being blessed with Being is absurd because logically non-sensical. Without Being there is no existence to any qualitative degree. Even though an object occupies an area of time and space, if it is not perceived or known in any way, it is, to all qualitative degrees, not actually there.
See our article Natural Purposiveness is born from Necessity: https://wordpress.com/post/pauladkin.wordpress.com/3117
April 27, 2019
Natural Purposiveness is Born from Necessity
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The purposiveness of nature is not a product of design, but of necessity. The Universe needs perceiving, living organisms in order to exist. It needs sapiens creatures capable of perceiving and understanding it in order for its existence to be comprehensible. The underlying fabric of everything is necessity.
Existence was born out of a need intuited by the infinite lack of the void, and the presence of need in that metaphysical equation points toward a universal purposive meaning.
In evolutionary science, need, through adaptation, determines or explains evolutionary processes – and it can also explain the process out of the inanimate universe into worlds with life. If we can admit that the first amphibian didn’t develop its lungs in a purely accidental fashion, then why should we assume that life on earth had to have been formed in a purely accidental way?
But this need is a great problem for science, because it leads to an idea of the deterministic universe, which allows room for the idea of God, which opens the door to religions, which leads to a lot of very unscientific hogwash and the negation of science.
Yet, must determinism be rejected because of this. What is God? The fact that the Universe has an a priori element in its creation doesn’t oblige us to admit the validity of scripture. Not at all. To suggest that the Universe is deterministic and that the origin of its necessary existence is necessity itself, does not have to be an invitation to pray. There may be a deistic element in saying the Universe was born from need, but, historically, deism has always be associated with atheism by religions and should not be problematic for science.
How is necessity understood by science? To what extent can science be understood by understanding necessity? Can we say that all necessity exists like oxygen exists, or like the platypus exists, waiting to be discovered through observation and analysis? Can we therefore imagine a science of necessity dedicated to the uncovering of authentic needs?
Or perhaps these questions are irrelevant: scientific validity is already subject to necessity and possibility. All causes contain a certain amount of accident, and because the accidental is buried in cause, indetermination must also be embedded in results. But is it valid to ask what the necessity is behind a cancer? Or what is the necessity involved in a hurricane? Surely it is: for only through understanding its necessity can we possibly understand why things exist.
Everything exists for a reason that includes both necessity and possibility. It is there because it could be and because it had to be given the circumstances.
This should not be confused with fatalism. If what has to be is not desirable then, if we understand that it has to come about given the current conditions, we can go about taking steps to change those conditions and avoid the otherwise imminent outcome. This is pure common sense. But in order to avoid what is inevitable we have to firstly understand what is inevitable.
April 14, 2019
THE DANGERS OF DETERMINISM
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Last week we published an article examining the positive depths of the idea of a purposeful, deterministic Universe. However, as some readers pointed out, determinism has also got its negative side, and we are going to look at that now …
It was Kant who warned us of the dangers of allowing God into the equation when tackling the notion that purposiveness exists in nature. For Kant it was quite simple: using God to explain natural science is no good for either science or theology. It produces an overlapping of boundaries and that creates uncertainty in both camps.
But: Why is this so? If we can deduce that the Universe seems to be fine-tuned towards the creation of life, what is wrong with attributing that fine-tuning to an omnipotent, eternal force like God?
Well, our first objection is that the concept of God is by no means a neutral one. It has too much semantic baggage, and those that claim ownership of that luggage are adamant about the enlightened stand-point of their perspective. Likewise, it is hard to see religions embracing cosmological arguments as a proof of the existence of God, simply because cosmological fine-tuning is not found in the Scriptures and when seen from the scientific point-of-view, the science undermines the Scriptures or renders them unimportant. If God did fine-tune the Universe, it is very doubtful that It would be the same God who is said to have communicated with us via the prophets. Once fine-tuning, or any other scientific explanation of creation is accepted, the Scriptures no longer make any sense.
So, if science explains the deterministic, fine-tuning of the Universe it cannot use the term God to describe how or what could have been involved in the process that allowed this fine-tuning to come about.
Kant’s own warning was: “We must scrupulously and modestly restrict ourselves to the term that expresses just as much as we know, and no more – namely, an end (purposiveness) of nature … For the purpose of keeping strictly within its own bounds, physics entirely ignores the question whether natural ends are ends designedly or undesignedly. To deal with that question would be to meddle in the affairs of others – namely, in what is the business of metaphysics.”
Of course, what cosmological fine-tuning implies is that yes, things seem to have been designed, or that there seems to be a design embedded in the structure of the Universe, driving it towards a certain end. Whether this end is willed or desired by the Universe is not a question that can be properly answered by science, but neither is it a pertinent question for theologians who would need to try and apply fine-tuning to the scriptures or vice-versa. That would be an absurd task.
The question here then becomes: If the implications of cosmological fine-tuning is a metaphysical question, who should deal with that metaphysics if it goes beyond the scope of theology and science?
To answer that we must consider where metaphysics came from, and we find its origins in Greek Pre-Socratic thought; the same thinkers who gave birth to philosophy and science. Through the Pre-Socratics, and metaphysics, science and philosophy are genetically tied. The first philosophers were trying to explain the essence of reality by defining the essence of nature; this is what science does through theory and experimentation, and it is also what metaphysics does through logic.
Cosmological fine-tuning is a logic-deduced concept derived from scientific data made from observations of the cosmos. It creates a metaphysical field that needs to be explored philosophically, and it implies the existence of a deterministic Universe, or an infinite Multiverse, and that suggests deep, positivistic repercussions for humanity.
Cosmological fine-tuning is a controversial subject for science, as are all deterministic ideas. Physics and mathematics might tell us that the nature of the Universe is incredibly precise and that, without this minute precision in its structure, the Universe would have been incapable of evolving as it did, but this also implies that we are the results of such an incredibly precise mechanism that the least likely explanation is that the cosmos was a beautiful accident exploding out of the Big Bang. And this makes theologists clap their hands and scientists blush.
To save themselves from the theologians, scientists have come up with an equally speculative idea that our Universe is not a real singularity and we should talk of a Multiverse made up of an infinite possibility of universes.
Quantum physics has opened the door to the realm of the speculative and allows, if not demands, very creative thinking. In a way it has pushed cosmology back into the area of philosophy again – especially towards the primal area of the Pre-Socratics. Scientists are now daring to think within the dangerous space of infinity and recently even sacred concepts like time, the Big Bang and Thermal Death have been questioned.
If philosophy is focussed on necessity, and if our necessity is rooted in the survival and permanence of the sapiens species, our humanity, then the positivism inherent in purposiveness has to be embraced, and the fine-tuned cosmos has to be interpreted as a positivistic inspiration for humanity. The Universe has allowed the conditions for life to be created and evolve into a creature that is aware enough to perceive and to try and understand the very nature of its own creator. And if we permit our own destruction, we are threatening the destruction of all perception of the Universe as well … This is philosophy as positive incentive, as a rediscovery of humanity as a vital force within the cosmos.
If we want to survive as a species and evolve as sapiens, then we must embrace concepts like permanence and progress as virtues. But permanence and progress together. Progress seen as that which will create valuable things that can endure. Endurance is what we see when we marvel at the pyramids or when we tackle the classics in literature, or stand before the great masterpieces of art and music. But the value of endurance must not be limited to conservative sentiments that lead to decadence, rather, endurance can only be guaranteed through progress as human and sapiens concept.
https://pauladkin.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/the-depth-of-determinism/
Immanuel Kant, CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT, p.209
https://pauladkin.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/the-importance-of-metaphysics/
Kant: Ibid, p. 210
April 12, 2019
Transcendental Reality – from the Big Bang to the Virtual Laboratory of Being, via Plato
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In order for reality to exist it needed to create an object/subject capable of perceiving it, but in order to do that, it had to firstly manufacture a physical space for that perceiving-subject to evolve in. This needed to be constructed in such a way that life could evolve within it.
The problem is analogous to our relationship with our computers. If we can imagine things from the computer’s point of view … well, from the perspective of an AI computer that would be capable of having a point of view …For that AI consciousness, reality is out of the box that the physical universe is contained in.
Nevertheless, something in that same out-of-the-box reality is responsible for programming the operating system that allows the AI to exist, be conscious of its existence, and even be capable of understanding its own condition as an artificial form of reality created in order to understand the real. Even though that reality is outside of the box and hence alien to the AI’s own immediate environment.
A question arises from this: Could an artificial intelligence ever come to really understand that which it’s been designed to do without being able to leave the box and experience the authentically real for itself?
In fact, this dilemma seems to be a moot point, having been made irrelevant by the fact that an intelligent computer does have access to input from outside. Actually, the imagined world of the Cyberentity would be mostly formed by its perception of the information that it could gather from the Internet, which would be information about the other reality, outside of the box, that is our world.
So, here the analogy breaks down, or does it? Here, perhaps, Plato was right. Everything that exists in the physical world has been created from information uploaded into it from the pre-physical or transcendentally Real dimension.
Thus, we also have the Biblical “God created the Universe in his own image” …
Or perhaps not … Could our physical reality have been a different kind of computer to the ones we are accustomed to be using?
Imagine that we want to build a device that could actually teach us about ourselves by clearly revealing to ourselves what we are from a purely objective stand-point. Our main aim therefore, would be to fabricate something which would provide an objective perception of us and, at the same time, be able to communicate its impartial perception of us to us, in a language that we are capable of understanding.
It might be considered that the best way to do this would be not to invent a super-AI observer of us, who could teach us, like a Messiah (we already know how flawed that process is), but rather to fabricate a virtual, but distorted image of a civilisation, that we could observe from a safe and impartially-perfect distance. If the civilisation were flawed we could learn from its mistakes, if it were perfect and Utopian, we would have a model to learn how to improve our own societies from.
In order to make this didactic universe, we would need to programme an environment capable of evolving in its own original way, but in a direction in which the creation of perception, consciousness, self-consciousness and curiosity were all possible. At the same time, the process would need to be monitored by us, so that, the internal language of the organisms evolving in the process can be learned and understood by us. Only if we allow a language of evolution that’s alien to our own, and therefore objective because distorted image of ourselves will the experiment provide scientifically important results (a mirror-image of ourselves would not give us the distance needed to truly learn from our observations of it). Only if we are constantly monitoring the language in order to understand its idiosyncrasies will we be able to draw purposeful conclusions and enjoy a meaningful experience from the experiment.
The fact that it is conceivable that we, or an Artificial Intelligence, could be capable of conducting such an experiment, opens a mind-boggling window into the question of reality. In fact, the very existence of virtual-reality questions the nature of our own perceived-world in exactly the same way that Plato did. We are not only capable of imagining the creation of a virtual universe, the purpose of which would be to understand our own being, we could also very well be the results of such a fabrication by an entity outside of our own box.
It also tells us that consciousness of the virtual does not have to be a nightmarish experience, like the one depicted in the Matrix films, but rather it provides a purposeful meaning for our existence in terms of the entire multiverse – in and out of the box experience of Reality. If the scenario we have imagined here is correct, and we are the virtual creations of the universe, then it means that we are the objects that the universe learns from, which turns us into the didactic material that the universe absorbs.
And the moral lesson this teaches, is that the essence of the universe is moulded by our example and that is a tremendous responsibility.
Yet, if this is so, what needs to be done?
Perhaps the best way to solve this question will be to create our own virtual-universe laboratory … and by doing so extend reality further into the infinite regressions of the multiverse. Infinity is a reality, but it is found not in expansion but in regression.
