Q: You have been talking about too many things. What exactly are you driving at?
A: I believe there is a huge error in the way we comprehend reality. The ‘hard problem of consciousness’ is a faultline caused by this error. I am attempting to explain the nature of this error starting from reliable facts of science.
Q: The idea of mistaken perception has been around for ages. ‘Maya’ in Indian philosophy is an example. What is new in your thinking?
A: Linking this error in perception to the evolutionary history of our species. The need to talk about a transcendental truth arose because ‘knowing’ shrunk to exclude everything other than the meta-cognitive knower’s point of view.
Q: What is this ‘error’? We comprehend reality in dual terms as matter and mind. Is this a mistake?
A: Matter and mind are descriptive categories invented by the ‘knower’. Duality is an appearance, a very useful artefact of evolution, not a fundamental fact about existence.
Q: You mean duality is an illusion? Are we mistaken in perceiving reality in dual terms?
A: Dualism is natural for the present stage of evolution. Dual perception in itself is not an error. Failing to realize the reason for dual perception is the real mistake. Matter and mind are representations of nature-in-itself, best suited for our times. ‘Knower’ sees rest of nature as ‘other’ for a reason.
Q: What is the reason for such division?
A: Separating ‘knower’ from the known was essential for objective knowing. We went through this in our discussion about knowledge. It was a precarious move, but a risk worth taking.
Q: Why do you think it was risky to separate ‘knower’ from the known? Wasn’t it part of the natural process of evolution?
A: True, it is evolution and entirely natural. That doesn’t mean no risk. Childbirth is a natural process but could pose serious risk to both mother and child under certain circumstances.
Q: I am confused. The ability to know objectively was hugely beneficial to mankind. What is the risk you are referring to?
A: ‘I’, the ‘knower’, must work tirelessly to de-mystify the unknowable. ‘I’ was born with this mission and there was no choice. Unknowability had to be covered up at any cost to keep myself alive. ‘Knowing’ was an act of self-preservation in that sense. Reliable knowledge was beneficial for survival, but the wall of representations slowly became a defence mechanism against knowledge-less pure experience. ‘Knower’ was terrified of the ‘unknowable’ and couldn’t figure out its true relationship with nature-in-itself. It took refuge behind the impenetrable fortress of representations, cutting off roots and isolating itself.
Q: Why did ‘knower’ evolve if the process was risky?
A: Why did life evolve? Why are there laws of physics and why is human mind able to figure out these relationships? All these questions are interlinked and point to a fundamental truth about nature-in-itself. Let us begin by asking why is human mind able to comprehend patterns in the universe.
Comprehensibility puzzle
Q: Why are we able to know anything at all in the first place?
A: Comprehensibility appears puzzling from knower’s point of view. Man is a complex lump of matter. Why is the human brain able to fathom the mysteries of nature? It turns out to be an inevitable consequence of evolution when ‘knower’ and its long history is understood as a natural process.
Q: What has comprehensibility got to do with evolution?
A: We discussed ‘knower’ and its evolutionary history and concluded how ‘I’, the self-concept in human speech, represents the ‘knower’.
Q: I got it, but your idea of the ‘knower’ black box is only an explanatory mechanism. Why is the ‘knower’ able of generate reliable knowledge about the universe? That is the mystery.
A: Let us re-cap what we concluded from the discussion about nature of reality in relation to knower’s evolution. Universe existed as an ‘unknowable whole’ before meta-cognition began emerging some 200,000 years ago.
Q: Yes, we also went through the troubling relationship between ‘knower’ and its source. I can understand why the ‘knower’ must keep trying. But the question is how is it able to come up with reliable knowledge.
Creative Evolution
A: Let us find out. Remember, we have to use metaphors whenever the discussion involves ‘unknowable’, remaining fully aware of the inadequacies of language to describe nature-in-itself.
Q: Right. We are into the realm of speculation, attempting to figure out the nature of unknowable based on what we know.
A: I won’t call it speculation. Metaphors are the legitimate means of describing the unknowable.
Q: Ok, let us move on. Why are there patterns in nature and why is human brain able to comprehend them?
A: Science has been enormously successful in the past 300 years but it was not so easy in the beginning. ‘Knower’ attempted to create useful working models of reality for thousands of years without much success. A crucial breakthrough was achieved in 16th century with the re-imagination of reality as composed of two distinct substances, matter and mind.
Q: Even then, why is ‘knower’ able to find patterns and regularity in the behaviour of matter? What exactly are the laws of physics telling us about the nature of fundamental substance?
A: We could metaphorically describe the fundamental substance as mind-matter complex in continuous evolution, animated by its own creativity. Patterns and regularity in the universe are expressions this creativity.
Q: What is the need to bring in a new animating principle ‘creativity’?
A: Remember we are talking in metaphors. Juxtaposing the facts of evolution, consciousness and comprehensibility leads us to this hypothesis. Laws of science are descriptions of the creative evolution of nature-in-itself, as seen from the knower’s detached point of view.
Q: It is pure speculation. Even if we assume you are right, why is ‘knower’ aka rational mind able to understand these patterns?
A: Universe is comprehensible to human mind because ‘patterns in the universe’ and ‘mind’ are both are expressions of the same animating principle. The ‘knower’ resonates with such patterns because it is a fragment of the same pattern.
Q: Knowing is a kind of resonance! That is poetic.
A: Remember we are in the realm of metaphors. Comprehensibility of the universe may be as trivial a fact as all natural numbers are divisible by one.
Q: Are you suggesting scientific knowledge is trivial?
A: No. Comprehensibility is no more a mystery if evolution is seen as a creative process. Facts of science help us understand the creative dance of unknowable whole. Objective descriptions are useful for practical purposes, and at the same time deepens our ability to appreciate beauty and meaning in existence by figuring out our true relationship with the unknowable whole.
Q: You are implying a hidden purpose in evolution. Where did such purpose or direction come from?
A: Is there purpose in a stream running downhill to reach the sea thousands of miles away? Natural events are directional without someone planning the whole thing in advance.
Q: But why is the universe lawful? Why are there patterns and directionality in the first place if no one designed it?
A: Creative behaviour of the unknowable whole appears to us as patterns. Regularity of material interactions as well as meaning and purpose in human experience are attributable to this fundamental creative instinct.
Q: Well, why is the unknowable whole creative?
A: This is where reason leads us if we don’t abandon self-consistency of explanations and a sense of reality. Why is the universe creative? Ultimately this question is meaningless because it is like the unit number ‘1’ asking why are all natural numbers divisible by me!
The Human condition
Q: The ‘knower’ is able to find objectively describable patterns in the universe. But why does it view phenomenal consciousness with deep suspicion?
A: ‘Knower’ is uncomfortable with phenomenal consciousness because it doesn’t recognize its own evolutionary history. ‘Knower’ is handicapped by the peculiar ‘fear-estrangement’ dynamics in its relationship with nature-in-itself. ‘I’ suffer because ‘I’ am the ‘knower’.
Q: Do you see a way out?
A: The ‘knower’ was born with the mission of conquering the unknown. But this powerful conqueror is an offshoot of nature-in-itself. It is seated on enemy shoulders, waging its war against its unknowable source. This is the tragedy of human condition. Indeed there is a way out. The ‘knower’ should use the power of accumulated knowledge to figure out its own scope and limits, and learn to live in harmony with its source.
Q: We began with the ‘problem of life’ and the need to find convincing answers to meaning and purpose questions in life. Can we say creativity is the source of everything good and beautiful in the universe?
A: Creativity is beyond good-bad classification. There is nothing good or bad about planets circling the sun or the river reaching its destination. Perhaps we could say there is the ‘way of creativity’ and we should align our life with the Way. Remember we are talking in metaphorical language and the ‘way’ is not a set of instructions but a mode of living.
Q: Interesting discussion. What is preventing us from seeing reality as you described?
A: Failure to accept the centrality of evolution, including life’s subjective features. Change is the only constant in this universe. Knowing mind too is subject to evolution. Realizing this is a difficult task because ‘I’, the knower is terrified of my source, the unknowable nature-in-itself.
Mind, Evolution and Meaning 