4. Knower and the Known

Q: What exactly is the ‘knower’? How does it generate objective knowledge? 

A: Defining ‘knower’ as a black box is an attempt to stick to physicalism without explaining away phenomenal consciousness. Mind evolving from matter is often presented as an option, but it is an explanatory dead-end. ‘Knower’ hypothesis is an attempt to bypass the ‘mind-from-matter’ miracle without leaving physicalist territory. 

Q: But the ‘knower’ black box too needs an origin story. It must have emerged from matter. Where else could it come from? 

A: ‘Knower’ will eventually have an entirely natural explanation. Please be patient. Let us treat it as a mere explanatory mechanism, a black box with well-defined input and output, for now. Sensory signals goes into this black box and objective knowledge comes out. 

Q: How is this better than claiming ‘mind evolved from matter’? 

A: ‘Mind’ is an extremely slippery concept, impossible to pinpoint because it is supposed to be many things at the same time. It help us to experience, know, and make decisions. Its reality is fiercely debated even after 3000+ years of philosophizing. ‘Knower’ on the other hand, is well-defined in terms of input and output. It is a fact that we take inputs from the environment through sensory apparatus and produce reliable knowledge. ‘Knower’ is a black box model for the generation of objective knowledge. No physicalist can deny the reality of ‘knower’ because that will contradict the possibility of objective knowledge itself. 

Q: So you are stripping down mind to its undeniable minimum and re-naming it ‘knower’? 

A: Yes. I am suggesting the common sense approach of breaking down a difficult problem into parts and begin by dealing with the easier part. What is meant by ‘mind’ is much more complex than ‘knower’, but let us get to the bottom of the more tractable ‘knower’ before talking about minds.  

Q: That sounds reasonable. Get a better grasp on the process of objective knowing before moving onto harder problems! How do you propose to investigate this black box?

‘Knower’ in evolution

A: Adopt an objective approach and observe ‘knowing’ from outside. Start by treating ‘knowing’ as a property of humans. What do we know about ‘knowledge-capable’ humans? How did man acquire this property? 

Q: Humans evolved from simpler life through natural selection. Evolution of life is well-understood, thanks to the great Charles Darwin and other evolutionary biologists.

A: Humans evolved from simpler life over a period of hundreds of million years. Did our ancestors possess mind-like properties a million years ago? Remember we are using the term ‘mind’ in a restricted sense meaning ‘the property enabling humans to generate objective knowledge’. 

Q: Objective knowledge is a very recent phenomenon in evolution. Only humans are capable of subject-independent knowledge as far as we know.

A: Right. Science requires objectivity, a unique way of looking at nature. Humans are fairly good at it but other life forms are not. So, it is safe to say man is the only animal capable of objectivity.

Q: I will tend to agree with you though we have no way of knowing for sure. 

A: All evidence indicates this is the case. History of our own species shows an increasing trend of objectivity. Science has made significant progress only in the past 300 years. Our ancestors 10,000 years ago did not have a well-developed objective faculty compared to modern humans. 

Q: But man evolved from earlier life forms. There must be an evolutionary history for objectivity and ‘knower’.

A: Exactly. We should ask: how did man develop this ability? It did not evolve through natural selection because time was too short for natural selection to work. Where did it come from? Did it make a sudden appearance, miraculously bestowing the property of ‘knowing’ to a complex lump of organic matter? 

Q: Mental activity did not begin 10,000 years ago. Our ancestors must have had a mind of their own. Even animals have mental activity of some sort.

A: There is a progressive development of mental activity in evolution but it crosses the threshold of objectivity only in humans. Animals have subjective mental activity. How about plants? Hydrocarbon molecules? These are interesting questions and we don’t have answers yet. 

Q: But we can be more certain about relatively recent events.

A: Animals do have mental activity which appears entirely subjective. Man is capable of both subjective and objective mental activity. Let us go back to the question: where did the ‘knower’ or ‘objective mind’ come from?

Q: Wait…Isn’t it more important to ask where the subjective mind came from? It was around even before objective mind.

A: It is a much harder question. Let us stick to the more approachable question of objective mind. Remember ‘mind’ itself is a slippery customer. We take its reality seriously only because scientific knowledge is real and must have a source, a specific type of mental activity.  

Q: But how is your effort better than emergence theories? Mind could have emerged from matter gradually over millions of years.

A: Emergence leads to many unsolvable problems, for example, the hard problem of consciousness. Let us see if there is another way out of this mind-matter conundrum.

Q:  I can’t see how your ‘knower’ function (even though well defined in terms of input/output relationship) make things easy. Ultimately it has to be ‘mind from matter’ or supernatural intervention!      

A: Let us find out. Our black box ‘knower’ or ‘objective mind’ must have had an evolutionary history. It could not have made a sudden appearance with humans.

Q: Yes. I hate the idea of stuff appearing suddenly out of nowhere! 

What exactly do we mean by ‘knowing’?

A: Let us pause for a moment to deal with another important question. What exactly do we mean by ‘knowledge’?

Q: Knowledge is the ‘awareness of patterns’ in nature.

A: That partially describes objective knowledge as in science. Was there knowledge before objective mind emerged? Did dinosaurs know anything? How about your dog?

Q: Hmm… animals seem to have knowledge but obviously a different kind than our knowledge.

A: The key word here is ‘awareness’. Objective knowledge is the awareness of patterns. But knowledge is possible without awareness. Let us use the terms ‘cognition’ and ‘meta-cognition’. Cognition is the perception of patterns and relationship between patterns in nature. Meta-cognition is the awareness of such patterns and relationships in perception. Animal knowledge is simple cognition. Science is a type of meta-cognition.

Origin of meta-cognition

Q: Okay… cognition was around for millions of years. Natural selection could be an adequate explanation for the evolution of cognitive functions. Seeing, hearing, mental computation and decision-making functions evolved because of survival benefits. How about meta-cognition? 

A: Meta-cognition is a hard problem for natural selection to explain. It seems to have developed too fast. While cognition has a history of hundreds of million years, meta-cognition burst into the scene in a couple of hundred thousand years at most.

Q: Do you think meta-cognition was a development of the organism’s subjectivity?

A: That appears the most logical conclusion but the speed with which this development occurred is puzzling.

Q: But why was there subjectivity in the first place? What role does it play in cognition?

A: Natural selection can explain evolution of cognitive functions but not subjectivity. Why did cognition evolve with a subjective dimension? For example, why is touching a hot object associated with feeling pain? Moving away from hot objects has survival value. But why should a mechanical action such as moving away be associated with subjective experience of pain? Natural selection would have worked perfectly well without subjectivity. There is no reason why evolution equipped us with subjective experience.

Evolution of subjectivity remains a mystery because we don’t understand how it could have been selected and fine-tuned over millions of years. A terrified animal running away from fire will lose the evolutionary race to its cousin who runs with a calm undisturbed ‘mind’. But somehow subjectivity evolved and remained a ‘spandrel’ for millions of years. 

Q: What is a spandrel?

A: Spandrel is a characteristic that is not a direct result of adaptive selection. It evolves as a by-product of the evolution of some other characteristic.

Q: You mean subjectivity could have evolved as a byproduct of other adaptations?

A: I don’t like the idea, but this is one way to explain why subjectivity evolved.

Q: What is wrong with the ‘spandrel’ assumption?   

A: It doesn’t explain why subjectivity was preserved for hundreds of million years. It should have been weeded out long before. There is no foresight in evolution to preserve subjectivity for future use.

Q: Why can’t awareness or meta-cognition too be thought of as a spandrel?

A: That would revolt against our search of meaning and purpose. But I agree it can’t be ruled out. However, I will go there only after exhausting all other possibilities. Let us leave it there and focus on the history of meta-cognition and how it led to objectivity and science.

Q: Well, we are leaving too many loose ends… Hopefully it all ties up at the end!

A thought experiment

A: Trust me! The key is early human history. Unfortunately, we cannot travel back in time to figure out how our remote ancestors experienced nature. Let us do a thought experiment. Think of any familiar object, for example, the clay pot on my desk.

Q: What about your clay pot? How is it going to be useful?

A: Let us unravel the layers of knowledge accumulated over centuries. What is left in a clay pot if we erase all knowledge about clay pots? Remember this is a thought experiment. I can relax on my chair and go through the process.

Q: Well, let me try. First of all, it has a name, shape, color, texture and also a function. I can describe the clay pot’s properties and history in a couple of sentences.

A: Yes. It is called a ‘pot’ and it is made from a material called ‘clay’ by a skilled artisan. Clay is a mixture of ‘silica’, ‘alumina’ and ‘magnesia’. I use the clay pot to store water…. lot of words indicating relationships at multiple levels, accumulated over a long time. Let us travel back in time, peeling off layers upon layers of this accumulated knowledge. Forget the name, structure and history of clay pots. We are staring at a nameless, unfamiliar object.

Q: Is this some kind of meditation?

A: Call it whatever you want. Even ordinary objects appear mysterious when we peel off layers of accumulated ‘knowledge’. 

Q: How can we form mental image of an object if we let go all knowledge?

A: That is the important question. We have multiple layers of descriptions for every object: names, physical properties, chemical composition, molecular structure etc., accumulated over centuries. Let us go back in time and ask what exactly is an object without descriptions. Familiar objects fade into strange, shadowy impressions as we peel off layer upon layers of knowledge. This is exactly how nature appeared to our ancestors at the dawn of awareness.

Q: What is the use of this exercise? Past is past and human species has made huge progress from humble beginnings. Objectivity grew out of the more primitive subjective way of seeing nature. What is the benefit of going back to see the world through the eyes of caveman? 

A: We are not going back to caves but trying to understand how objectivity grew out of subjectivity. The ‘primitive, subjective way of seeing nature’ was experiential. How could it give birth to the knower, which has now come to view the essential quality of experience itself with deep suspicion? Such distrust and denial, I believe, is the root cause of much of our civilizational maladies. We need to figure out the origins of objectivity to understand ourselves better.

Q: I still think you are making things unnecessarily complicated. Animals do have intelligence and solve simple problems of survival. Humans are better by miles because we have larger brains. The transition from largely subjective animal life to largely objective human life was an entirely natural process.

A: It was a natural process. Animals as ‘largely subjective’ is a mis-characterization. Animals are not capable of objective view point.

Q: How are you so sure animals are not capable of objectivity?

A: Of course, objectivity did not begin as a sudden, discontinuous process. We could think of it as a natural development spanning thousands of years, eventually crossing a critical threshold in early humans. It is analogous to silicon transistor switch turning ON. The process appears continuous on logarithmic scale but almost a discontinuous jump on linear scale. Apes probably had some degree of objectivity but seen in the linear time of evolutionary development, apes and humans are as distinct in their objectivity as the OFF and ON states of a silicon switch. For practical purposes we could assume objectivity began with humans.

Fear and estrangement

Q: Well, let us get back to the main theme, emergence of meta-cognition in humans.

A: As seen from our thought experiment with the clay pot, familiar objects dissolve into shadowy impressions when the layers of accumulated knowledge are peeled off. This is how earliest humans encountered their environment. The world remained a dreamy, mysterious and terrifying continuum for millennia. 

Q: Why terrifying?

A: The mental function ‘knower’ emerged to ‘grasp’ things. Its sole purpose was to enhance survivability through ‘objective knowing’. Nature was an enemy to be conquered. Early man had to puzzle over the strangeness of nature for centuries, terrified of the hazy unknowability of nameless stuff all around. Self-awareness was liberating and burdensome at the same time.

Q: Well, the knower did conquer unknowability to a large extent!

A: Yes. Every conquest made the knower more confident and inquisitive man marched forward fearlessly. That is the history of science. But what was the mechanism of such triumphs? How did the knower, this new function of hither to subjective mind, conquer the unknowability of nature?

Q: Knowledge acquisition happened over a long period of time as with the clay pot.

Names as objective knowledge

A: Let us ask what was the very first layer, the most elementary form of objective knowledge? 

Q: Earliest knowledge must be related to an object’s use. Man must have learned some objects could be used for practical purposes, for example, a pointed stone could dig holes in the ground or kill pray.

A: That cannot be called ‘knowledge’ unless the user has the technique to describe such use to another person. Sometimes even animals use stones, for example, to break nuts. It cannot be called (objective) knowledge.

Q: Well, then what is the first layer of objective knowledge?

A: Language, the invention of names to represent objects.

Q: I don’t understand why names qualify as objective knowledge.

A: Names are identifying labels for specific class of objects. All members of the language group recognize this ‘label to object’ correlation. Names cover up the unknowability of things as they really are, translating ungraspable mysteries into useful objective entities.

Q: Okay, names can be thought of as subject independent knowledge in that sense. But why do you say names cover up the unknowability of things?

A: Think about the relationship between infant knower and the world around. How did our ancestors react to their environment before the invention of languages? 

Q: They probably spent most of their time in the safety of caves like animals.

A: It was alright when we were part of the animal kingdom. Emergence of self-awareness broke the primeval bond between man and rest of nature. ‘Mildly self-aware’ animal had to find a new way of reacting to its environment, different from his ‘un-aware’ animal cousins. 

Q: You mean self-awareness made our ancestors less well adapted to nature?

A: Yes. We still haven’t figured out how to repair that damage. We will come back to this question later. Let us continue with the story of this great estrangement.

Q: How did man respond to the challenge?

A: Like a child beginning to speak, early man must have spent generations baffled by the nature of things. They must have asked ‘what is it?’, ‘what is it?’, ‘what is it?’ a million times. There was no one to answer. Man had to find answers to his own questions, painstakingly, over centuries.

Knower vs. the ‘thing-in-itself’

Q: But knower itself emerged from subjectivity in nature. Why couldn’t it be at ease with its source? 

A: Knower was born with a unique mission: to know (objectively), which is essentially covering up the unknowability of ‘things-in-themselves’ by generating representations. Fear and distrust were the natural response between infant knower and the rest of nature.

Q: What do you mean by ‘things-in-themselves’? 

A: Things are representations. A name, a relationship between parts etc. ‘Thing-in-itself’ is what we get by peeling off all representations. It is how things existed before meta-conscious man evolved.

Q: Hm…’things-in-itself’ is what you get by transcending the observer/observed separation?

A: Yes. The importance of this concept will become clear later when we discuss the spectrum of knowledge. Now let us get back to the knower and its relationship with rest of nature. The knower evolved as a survival aid just like vision or hearing. But unlike the eye or the ear, knower is sandwiched between two incompatible demands, conquering the unknowability of nature and maintaining peace with its source, the unrepresentable subjectivity in nature.

Q: It sounds profound but I am thoroughly confused! I can understand the ‘demand to conquer the unknowability of nature’ as you put it, but why is there an issue with maintaining peace with its source? The eye doesn’t rebel against the rest of body. Why should the knower have a problem?

A: The eye is uncomfortable with absolute darkness. So is the knower with unknowability. It views unexplored nature as an enemy to be conquered. 

Q: Are you suggesting scientific exploration is driven by fear?

A: Fear and estrangement are built into the knowing process. 

Suppose a strange glowing blob suddenly appears in the town square one fine morning. No one has a clue as to where it came from or what it is made of. It was found being there in the morning, a glowing mass of strange material. Town authorities will call for law enforcement to keep people away, and scientists will be called to study the blob. Perhaps after weeks of careful observation and numerous tests, the head scientist will announce it is most likely a Harmless Blob of Translucent Material, possibly of extra-terrestrial origin. More study will be needed to reach a conclusion about its composition, in the meanwhile public are prohibited from going near it. The mysterious blob will be cordoned off and a label placed to name it ‘HBTM-13042023’, the number being the date it first appeared. The threat of the unknown is temporarily quenched by giving it a name.

Q: I see what you mean. ‘Naming’ is the first level of defense, until the observer gains enough confidence to look deeper, to go beyond the name and produce another layer of knowledge. Perhaps subsequent investigations will reveal HBTM-13042023 is made of two sub groups, TM-13a and TM-13b in the ratio 2:3!

More than labels

A: Yes, this is how the knower responded to nature and built-up layers upon layers of objective knowledge. It was an extremely slow process at the beginning, perhaps the first layer took hundreds of thousand years. This process gained acceleration only in the past ~5000 years, with unprecedented growth of knowledge at ever increasing rate. Fear recedes but estrangement deepens with every new layer added.

Q: Are you saying scientific knowledge consists of such labels?

A: Labels at multiple levels. Names, more names indicating relationships between parts, and labels representing patterns of interaction between parts.

Q: That is hard to accept. Science is not just labels. Scientific knowledge is telling us something fundamental about the nature of reality.

A: I agree. There are beautiful patterns of interaction between ‘things’ and we are able to comprehend such patterns. Science is telling us something fundamental about the nature of reality. What exactly is it telling? Why are there patterns and how is the ‘knower’ able to find them? These are important questions but we should find out more about the ‘knower’ before exploring the nature of fundamental reality revealed through science.