Q: There is friction between emerging meta-cognitive faculty and rest of nature but why should it be a problem? ‘Knower’ is an evolutionary adaptation like vision and I should have control over this function. I can decide to keep my eyes shut whenever I choose. Why can’t I order my ‘knower’ function to stay quiet in the same manner?
A: It is not easy because ‘I’ am the ‘knower’. Self-control is hard work.
Q: What do you mean? How can I be the ‘knower’?
A: Let us find out. What exactly is the self-concept, ‘I’, represent?
Q: My personhood, my individuality…
A: What exactly is it? Where do you find the ‘I’ if you look for it? There is the physical body made of matter. In addition, there must be a black box ‘knower’ to account for objective knowledge. What else is there in the self-concept?
Q: Body and mind together defines my individuality.
A: We should dig deeper. Remember, we agreed to stick with the physicalist position for this enquiry because it is the only way to view reality unambiguously and come to mutual agreement.
Q: Your ‘modified physicalist model’ for man includes the material body evolved through natural selection and a black box ‘knower’ to account for objective knowledge. Why do you assume the self-concept can be contained within this model?
A: Well, what else is there? Remember our core assumption. Physicalism is the only viable path to reliable answers. The knower was introduced because it is essential to maintain consistency in physicalism. The self-concept, ‘I’, can be shown to be the ‘knower’ itself.
Q: How can it be? ‘Knower’, by definition, is limited to generating objective knowledge. ‘I’ am not just a knowledge generator!
A: Let us explore the self-concept. I perceive myself as something separate from surroundings. There is a ‘me’ and a ‘non-me’. I have my body, thoughts and feelings. I use my mind to interact with external world. I experience joy and frustrations. I use my intelligence to make decisions… It appears I am actually a conglomeration of many entities.
Q: Exactly. ‘I’ am much more than the ‘knower’!
A: What is this ‘I’ that talks about my body, my mind, my reason and my happiness? Isn’t it the ‘knower’ assuming control over the conglomeration that I am?
Q: ‘I’ represent my inner self, the focal point of my whole being.
A: But what exactly is it? The words you use to describe ‘I’ are ambiguous.
Q: Hmm… Are you suggesting ‘I’, as explained, is an illusion?
A: No. We have the experience of a unified whole. The sense of unity and control is real otherwise life as a human person will be impossible.
Q: True, but I can’t see why you equate ‘I’ with the ‘knower’.
A: Let us find out. I perceive great divisions in the living world. Both plants and animals have ‘life’ but something differentiate animals from plants. It is called ‘consciousness’. Animals are conscious but plants are not. Similarly, ‘self-awareness’ or ‘meta-cognition’ separates man from other animals. Meta-cognitive man is able to generate objective knowledge from experience. The function responsible for knowledge generation was named ‘knower’…
Q: Where is the ‘I’ in all these?
A: Let us use an analogy. How is an algebraic problem with many unknowns solved? We begin with a statement such as ‘let x be the first variable’. This technique was not invented by the Arabs. It is the default method of problem solving in the universe! The ‘knower’ function, at the infancy of self-awareness, differentiated itself from the surrounding by declaring ‘let I be myself’. The ‘knower’ had to have a name before it could begin its work of naming everything around.
Q: ‘I’ is the knower’s representation of itself? But you said earlier I am much more than the ‘knower’?
A: I do not know my real nature. ‘I’ tend to forget the knower is only a part of the conglomeration that I truly am.
Q: Why? What prevents me from knowing my real nature?
A: ‘Knower’ is a recent addition to the conglomeration but it has the loudest voice. It is the howling infant of my totality. It has taken control because it alone has the power to ‘know’.
Q: We mistakenly identify ourselves with our ego, but in reality, we are one with the rest of nature?
A: That is one way of looking at the puzzle of individuality. Selfhood arose because the knower function claimed the rest of the conglomeration as its possession. My body, my mind, my intellect etc. ‘I’ will dissolve without such centralized control.
Q: This false identification with ‘knower’ is a mistake?
A: ‘Knower’ arose to extract objective knowledge out of a purely subjective state of existence and help us survive better. It could do that job only by introducing a barrier between itself and rest of nature and assuming control. The mistake lies in our failure to work out the relationship between ‘knower’ and its source.
Q: Such division was necessary and unavoidable in human evolution?
A: Yes. Objective knowing involves segregation. The knower arose to ‘de-mystify’ nature. It covers up unknowability and generate knowledge, layer by layer. Names, linguistic patterns, material properties, chemical structure, particle physics and quantum mechanics are knowledge so generated over centuries since the inception of meta-cognition.
Q: And there is an inherent tension in the relationship between knower and rest of nature because knower was born with the mission of covering up the unknowability of pre-metaconscious subjective existence?
A: Exactly. Knower distrusts and fear subjectivity and strives to explain it in terms of ‘things’. ‘Things’ are artefacts of convenience, creation of the knower. The world of things is constructed on a platform of subjective existence. This is the true implication of an evolutionary world view.
Q: I want to get back to ‘I’ being the same as ‘knower’. Does that mean we can never live in harmony with nature? Man will forever fight and eventually destroy his source?
A: Man can reconcile with nature only by accepting his uniqueness. This is the great mystery of human condition. We are strangers in this world. The ‘knower’ is unlike anything else in the universe. We are connected to biosphere by accidents of evolution but our link to the rest of life is merely skin deep.
Q: That is a strange way to put it! Theory of evolution teach us we are connected with every living thing on earth. We share a common ancestor. You claim it is all fiction?
A: We are same but different. In fact this is how human beings have always thought about outside world. The gulf separating us from rest of life was always visible but it was explained away as an illusion to be politically correct.
Q: Are you saying we are different from rest of nature and it should be accepted as a fact for peaceful co-existence?
A: Our sense of separation is not an illusion. It is the reflection of a fundamental truth about human existence. No point in pretending otherwise and forcing ourselves to integrate with natural world. We have to recognize our uniqueness and find our rightful place in the universe.
Q: We share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees. Doesn’t that mean we are close cousins?
A: It is a scientific fact but means very little to us. ‘Man’ of evolutionary biology is different from ‘I’ and ‘you’ inhabiting the world. The core of human identity rests on genetic differences, not similarities. We pay lip service to ‘evolution of life starting 3.5 billion years ago’, but our behaviour indicate most of us are actually creationists, believing the world only began with our grandparents. Why are we so insensitive to the destruction of natural environment? Why are we careless about depletion of natural resources and the life of future generations?
Q: Well, people can have all kinds of beliefs but scientific facts doesn’t stop being facts for that reason.
A: Science of man should be a complete package. It should explain everything, including human behaviour. If we are 99% chimpanzee and an inseparable part of nature, why don’t we behave like one? Greed, capitalism, exploitation by multinational corporations etc. are often blamed for distorting our natural behaviour, but multinational corporations are run by human beings like us after all.
Q: What is man’s relationship with nature?
A: Man is a product of evolution and inseparably connected with all life. But we lack the ‘subjective unity of being’ common to rest of nature. Meta-cognitive knower is the self-appointed leader of the conglomeration that we are, and its domination has no precedent in the history of life. We should recognize and acknowledge this difference. That alone will lead us to live in harmony with nature.
Q: I am beginning to see your point but it is a complex proposition. I don’t know how it will tie up with everything else we said so far.
A: It all adds up beautifully. We began by recognizing physicalism as the only reasonable place to start our enquiry. But uncompromising physicalism leads us to conclude mind/consciousness etc. are mere appearances, without a reality of their own. That would lead to doubting the reality of objective knowledge itself. How could knowledge be real if minds are unreal? Knowledge somehow oozing out of matter is unacceptable.
Thus, we are led to hypothesize a ‘knower’, a black box with the lone function of generating objective knowledge from sensory inputs. We also conclude this new function in humans evolved from pre-existing subjectivity.
The ‘knower’ has a troubling relationship with its source because it was born to rebel against and conquer the unknowability in nature. It saw the state of subjective existence as the other. Knower gradually took control of the complex organism that we are, and named itself ‘I’. It’s collection of objective facts grew at a massive rate in the last 300 years. Such progress has reached a tipping point in recent decades with aggressive denial of the reality of phenomenal consciousness.
Q: That is a lot to chew on. Let me re-organize my thoughts!
Mind, Evolution and Meaning 