Evolutionary epistemology versus faith and justified true belief

Evolutionary epistemology versus faith and justified true belief: ― Does science work and can we know the truth? William P. Hall President Kororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters Assoc. , Inc. - http: //kororoit. org william-hall@bigpond. com http: //www. orgs-evolution-knowledge. net Atheists Society Lecture: 12 August 2014 Access my research papers from Google Citations

Introduction Epistemology is a lot more important than a subject for philosophical debate Humanity faces a range of existential risks, e. g. , – Anthropogenic global warming & climate change – – Peak oil / minerals Global scale catastrophe 2 Rising sea levels Global crop failures (e. g. , potato famines) Exotic disease pandemics (e. g. , ebola) 1851 -scale electromagnetic storms Meteor strike How do we know this? What should we do about them: How do we know what we think we know? Who do we trust? Does science provide truth? Or a suitable basis for rational action?

Faith and belief do not provide effective answers!

9/11 & horrors of the 20 th Century The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center Often suicidally committed perpetrators can be guided by one or a few charismatic leaders to commit massive outrages against initially comparatively peaceful populations – – – 4 Hitler, WWII in Europe and the Holocaust Japan's warlords and WWII in the Pacific Stalin, terrors and gulags Mao Tse Tung and the Cultural Revolution The multitude of smaller "ethnic cleansings" in the Balkans/Cambodia/Iraq/Iran/Sudan etc…

Some smaller consequences of extreme beliefs Historic – some smaller examples self-inflicted death – – – Current – 5 Joseph Kibweteere's Catholic-based Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (2000 – 800 -1000 deaths in Uganda from immolation. ). See Venter 2006. Doomsday movements in Africa: Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God) Marshall Herff Applewhite's Heaven's Gate Cult (1997 - 39 poisoned). See Zeller (2003). The euphemization of violence: The case of Heaven’s Gate”. Jim Jones "Jonestown Massacre" (1978 - 913 deaths in Guyana, mostly from suicide or murder of children (217) by parents). See Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple Suicide bombers and the Sunni-Shia conflict, murder and mayhem reported on a daily basis

How do individual people become weapons of mass destruction? Contexts: – – Psychotic leaders radiating ultimate conviction Followers’ willingness to abdicate thoughtful responsibility for own actions Big question: – – 6 Charismatic leaders who convince others they have special powers, such as the ability to heal, to speak with God directly, or know absolute truth Willingness to accept on faith (and faith alone) the word of God as proclaimed by some charismatic leader or some purported holy document What leads seemingly ordinary people to sacrifice their property and lives to follow charismatic leaders? Easier to accept and believe than to think and criticize

Cults and the primacy of true belief Con jobs performed by almost all religions and cults based on faith and belief Sola fide (by faith alone - see Wikipedia) – – God's pardon for guilty sinners is granted to and received through faith, conceived as excluding all "works, " alone. True belief is determined by faith and faith alone Some will claim confirmatory manifestations to justify true belief or one disconfirmatory case to deny the vast bulk of evidence – 7 Faith in the guru/leader Faith in the designated scriptures Far better to criticize all important claims How can we combat the Murdoch press? ?

My personal problematic “Your work is not scientific” Hall, W. P. 1973. Comparative population cytogenetics, speciation and evolution of the iguanid lizard genus Sceloporus. Ph. D Thesis, Harvard University Invited review: Hall, W. P. 2010. Chromosome variation, genomics, speciation and evolution in Sceloporus lizards. Cytogenetic and Genome Research 127 (2 -4), pp. 143 -65.

Why understanding epistemology became personally important to me (Evolutiononary biology is not a physical science) Ph. D Harvard (1973) Chromosome variation, genomics, speciation and evolution in Seceloporus lizards (cty. ) Ernest E Williams & Ernst Mayr – – Poorly received by my advisors, journals & other critics – – – 9 Referring to my draft thesis, EEW said, “I don’t like it, do it over! ” [i. e. , thesis, not the research] [Me] What’s wrong with it? [EEW] “I don’t know. ” The data was so overwhelming he and Mayr still had to pass the work In 1977 -79 while I was a post doc at Univ. Melbourne I summarised my thesis work for peer review and formal publication: – One of the largest studies of chromosome variation to then Novel theories challenging Mayr’s geographical speciation model A U. of Mich. Ph. D student who earlier assisted both in the field and lab claimed “Your work is unscientific” and re-drafted it He failed to understand the logic of my methodology and argument Was he correct? I spent most of postdoc studying history and epistemology of science – Too late for my job prospects as an evolutionary biologist

Initial learnings from history and philosophy of science (< 1980) Most philosophers seemed to live in ivory towers, away with the black swans and other figments of imagination Only two offered practical answers to my problematic (ref Maniglier on Bachelard and the concept of problematic) – Thomas Kuhn (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Historical and sociological analysis Paradigms Normal vs Revolutionary Science (Kuhn helped my understanding, but not relevant for today’s talk) – Karl Popper 10 (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1963) Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1972) Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1977 – with J. C. Eccles) The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (1994) Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem: In Defence of Interaction

The early Popper vs. the mature Popper on epistemology Popper 1959, 1963 – – – Popper (1972 – “Objective Knowledge”) biological approach – – – 11 We can’t prove if we know the truth There is no such thing as induction Deductively falsifying a theory is deterministic Correspondence theory of truth Make bold hypotheses and try to falsify them – what is left is better than what has been falsified Falsifiability demarcates science from pseudoscience Knowledge is a biological phenomenon Knowledge is solutions to problems of life All knowledge is cognitively constructed (Popper is a radical constructivist!) Falsification doesn’t work in the real world; claims can be protected by auxiliary hypotheses (All claims to know must be regarded as fallible) Three worlds ontology “Tetradic schema” / “general theory of evolution” to eliminate errors and build knowledge Many contemporary philosophers misunderstand Objective Knowledge – “Objective knowledge” = knowledge codified into/onto a physical object (DNA, printed paper, pitted CD, magnetic domains)

How do you do “science” with complex and often chaotic systems? Differences between the life and physical sciences – – Deterministic vs stochastic (≠ indeterminate) causation Physical science – Living systems Causally complex, non-linear, to some degree chaotic Can explain retrodictively but cannot predict deterministically Comparative approach – Study “natural experiments” – – Shared common ancestry controls most variables Look for correlations between possible causes and effects Cycles of speculation, criticism and testing Extend scope phylogenetically and range of effects Hall (1983) Modes of speciation and evolution in the sceloporine iguanid lizards. I. Epistemology of the comparative approach and introduction to the problem 12 Hypothetico-deductive approaches Theoretical predictions susceptible to near deterministic refutation

1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND INITIAL SPECULATIONS 3 a. COLLECT OTHER NEEDED DATA 2. SELECT APPROPRIATE NATURAL ‘EXPERIMENTS’ AND ‘CONTROLS’ TO ILLUSTRATE PROBLEM 4 a. FURTHER CROSS CORRELATION ANALYSES WITH NEW DATA 3. COLLECT DATA FROM EXPERIMENTS AND CONTROLS NO ARE CORRELATIONS FOUND ? 4. DO CROSS-CORRELATION ANALYSES OF N-DIMENSIONAL MATRICES TO IDENTIFY SIGNIFICANT PHENOMENA 5 a. REVISE AND/OR REPLACE MODEL AS INDICATED BY NEW CORRELATION ANALYSES YES 5. GENERATE MODELS THROUGH ANALOGY, INDUCTION, ETC. WHICH PROVIDE CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS FOR SIGNIFICANTLY CORRELATED PHENOMENA My answer to the problematic: How to understand complex stochastic systems scientifically? • Build, test & criticize as as many connections as possible between theory and reality 7. a. b. c. NO NO SHOULD MATRICES BE RERANKED ? YES 6 a. IS MODEL LOGIC OK? YES NO TEST ASSMPTIONS: DEMONSTRATIONS H D EXPERIMENTS SIMULATIONS OK ? 6. IS MODEL LOGIC OK? 8. a. b. c. TEST PREDICTIONS: SAME PHENOMENA OF NEW CASES OTHER PHENOMENA OF ORIGINAL CASES OTHER PHENOMENA OF OTHER CASES YES 9. TEST RECONSTRUCTIONS: DO MODELS PLAUSIBLY RECONSTRUCT CASES ACCORDING TO EVIDENCE? NO YES OK ? NO YES AND 13 10. A NATURAL PHENOMENON HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AND UNDERSTOOD, BUT THIS UNDERSTANDING SHOULD BE HELD ONLY AS LONG AS IT PROVIDES REALISTIC EXPLANATIONS OF OBSERVATIONS ABOUT NATURE YES OK ? NO

Scientific thinking in the 20 th Century (skipped for today) See extra slides

Evolutionary epistemology ― A biologically-based theory of the growth of scientific knowledge

Philosophy, “knowledge”, and “truth” A-priori assumptions – – A claim to know may truly correspond to reality, but… Truth (or falsity) in the real world cannot be proved – 16 There is a “real world” with law-like behaviours The physics of reality causes individual existences There are no essences beyond the reality of our existences Solipsistic approaches are self-defeating – Knowledge of the world is not identical to the real world Cognition is in the world - it does not mirror it

Knowledge is constructed Impossible to know whether a claim is true or not Problems – – Vision does not form an image of external reality The brain does not perceive reality, it constructs a model – – 17 “Problem of Induction” - any number of confirmations does not prove the next test will not be a refutation (e. g. , Gettier) The biological impossibility to know if a claim to know is true – Perception and cognition are consequences of propagating action potentials in a neural network. Action potentials stimulated by physical perturbations to neurons Perception lags reality (see added slides) Clock, via Wikimedia

Popper’s probable sources for his biological approach to epistemology Charles Darwin (1859) On the Origin of Species Konrad Lorenz – 1973 Nobel Prize (animal cognition and knowledge) Donald T. Campbell cognitive scientist concerned with knowledge growth – – Popper’s acknowledgements, e. g. , – – 18 (1960) Blind Variation and Selective Retention…. (paper) (1974) Evolutionary Epistemology (chapter) (1972) Knowledge is solutions to problems of life (1974) “The main task of theory of knowledge is to understand it as continuous with animal knowledge; and … its discontinuity – if any – from animal knowledge” [p 1161, “Replies to my Critics” in The Philosophy of Karl Popper]

Karl Popper's first big idea from Objective Knowledge: “three worlds” ontology Cybernetic self-regulation Cognition Consciousness Tacit knowledge Encode/Reproduce World 2 Tes t ic ic lo g ed ed fe rr ri sc Energy flow Thermodynamics Physics Chemistry Biochemistry In ain l ro nt Co tr ns Co be / Pr e/ lat World 3 t ser ve gu e/ bl Organismic/personal/situational/ subjective/tacit knowledge in world 2 emerges from interactions with world 1 “life” Ob Re a En World of mental or psychological states and processes, subjective experiences, memory of history 19 Genetic heredity Recorded thought Computer memory Logical artifacts Explicit knowledge Recall/Decode/Instruct De “living knowledge” “codified knowledge” The world of “objective” knowledge Produced / evaluated by world 2 processes World 1 Existence/Reality

“Epistemic cut” concept clarifies validity and relationships of Popper’s three worlds Popper did not physically justify his ontological proposal Howard Pattee 1995 “Artificial life needs a real epistemology” – An “epistemic cut” (also known as “Heisenberg cut”) refers to strict ontological separation in both physical and philosophical senses between: Knowledge of reality from reality itself, e. g. , description from construction, simulation from realization, mind from brain [or cognition from physical system]. Selective evolution began with a descriptionconstruction cut. . The highly evolved cognitive epistemology of physics requires an epistemic cut between reversible dynamic laws and the irreversible process of measuring [or describing]…. – – 20 Different concept from “epistemic gap” separating “phenomenological knowledge” from “physical knowledge” No evidence Pattee or Popper ever cited the other One epistemic cut separates the blind physics of world 1 from the cybernetic self-regulation, cognition, and living memory of world 2 A second epistemic cut separates the self-regulating dynamics of living entities from the knowledge encoded in books, computer memories and DNAs and RNAs See Pattee (2012) Laws, Language and Life. Biosemiotics vol. 7

Popper’s second big idea: "tetradic schema“ / "evolutionary theory of knowledge" / "general theory of evolution" Pn a real-world problem faced by a living entity TS a tentative solution/theory. Tentative solutions are varied through serial/parallel iteration EE a test or process of error elimination Pn+1 changed problem as faced by an entity incorporating a surviving solution The whole process is iterated 21 Popper (1972), pp. 241 -244 TSs may be embodied in W 2 “structure” in the individual entity, or TSs may be expressed in words as hypotheses in W 3, subject to objective criticism; or as genetic codes in DNA, subject to natural selection Objective expression and criticism lets our theories die in our stead Through cyclic iteration, sources of errors are found and eliminated Tested solutions/theories become more reliable, i. e. , approach reality Surviving TSs are the source of all knowledge!

USAF Col. John Boyd's OODA Loop process wins dogfights and military conflicts 22 Achieving strategic power depends critically on learning more, better and faster, and reducing decision cycle times compared to competitors. See Osinga (2005) Science, strategy and war: the strategic theory of John Boyd - http: //tinyurl. com/26 eqduv

Popper's General Theory of Evolution + John Boyd Pn On TS 1 TS 2 • • • TSm O 24 D EE Self criticism A Environmental criticism /filter Reality trumps belief EE Pn+1 = Observation of reality; O = Making sense and orienting to observations with solutions to be tested; D = Selection of a solution or making a “decision” A = Application of decision or "Action" on reality EE = Elimination of errors Self-criticism eliminates bad ideas before action The real world is a filter that penalizes/eliminates entities that act on mistaken decisions or errors (i. e. , Darwinian selection operates or Reality trumps belief )

Science as a social processes formalizing and managing knowledge to make it reliable Vines, R. , Hall, W. P. 2011. Exploring the foundations of organizational knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 3. Hall, W. P. , Nousala, S. 2010. What is the value of peer review – some sociotechnical considerations. Second International Symposium on Peer Reviewing, ISPR 2010 June 29 th - July 2 nd, 2010 – Orlando, Florida, USA

Vines & Hall (2011) – Building personal and explicit knowledge from real-world experience Knowledge exists at several levels of organization – – – 26 Personal tacit (W 2) Personal explicit (W 3) Organizational common (W 3) Organizational Formal (W 3) Formal integrated in organizational structure/dynamics (W 2)

Vines & Hall (2011) Turning individual knowledge into reliable and trustworthy organizational knowledge 27

Hall & Nousala (2010) - Constructing formal knowledge 28

Hall & Nousala (2010) - Growing and formalizing scientific, scholarly and technical knowledge Building the Body of Formal Scientific Knowledge involves cycles of knowledge building and criticism in four hierarchical levels of cognitive organization: Existential Reality (W 1) 1. Personal (“I”): observe (W 2) orient TTs (W 1) EE (iterate) … or … (articulate & share) (W 2 & W 3) 2. Collaboration Group (“We”) : assimilate (W 2) articulate express (W 3) EE (W 1) (iterate) … or … (submit) 3. SST Discipline Members (“Them” – mostly via W 3): peer review (EE) (reject/revise) … or … (publish) 4. Knowledge Society: use … or … evolve/retract 29 Maintain, extend, test society’s Body of Formal Knowledge through use

Hall (unpub) - Creating & managing formal knowledge 30

Take Home • • All claims to know are fallible Don’t accept what you are told or read uncritically Consider sources • • Gurus have vested interests Science works pretty well Test important claims where you can Hall, W. P. 2011. Physical basis for the emergence of autopoiesis, cognition and knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 2: 1 -63. Vines, R. , Hall, W. P. 2011. Exploring the foundations of organizational knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 3.

Scientific thinking in the 20 th Century

Fundamentalism See: American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Fundamentalism Project in the Religious Movements 1998 Homepage section on fundamentalism: http: //tinyurl. com/moexo 3 j) Fundamentalist sectarianism – – – 34 – Elect or chosen membership Sharp group boundaries Charismatic authoritarian leaders Mandated behavioral requirements Idealism as basis for personal and communal identity Stress absolutism and inerrancy in their sources of revelation Belief that truth is revealed and unified Arcane so outsiders cannot understand communal truth Members are part of a cosmic struggle Reinterpret events in light of this cosmic struggle Demonization of their opposition; Selective in what parts of their tradition they stress Attempt to overturn modern culture and its power.

Henry Blaskowski on Quora The central 'faith' of science is that the world exists and is observable. Everything else stems from that. It is a faith in that it is indistinguishable from the "brain in a jar"/Matrix theory of life. No, we can't prove we are not just a brain in a jar, that we are making all this up. So, if we are in that state, science is just false. But if the world exists, then science requires no faith, just observation [and a bit more]. 35

20 th Century Epistemology tries to explain the power of science to understand world Plato’s “justified true belief”, Vienna Circle & Logical Positivism – Truth is knowable – Constructivism and radical constructivism Post WWII – The historian – Michael Polanyi Karl Popper’s “irrationalist” students 36 Thomas Kuhn Anti-Nazi’s – Knowledge is constructed – does not/cannot “reflect” external reality Imre Lakatos P. K. Feyerabend

Problems with Logical Positivism Gettier’s Problems – Any number of confirmations does not prove the next test will be a refutation The biological impossibility to know if a claim to know is true – The brain does not perceive the world – Vision does not form an image of external reality 37 Cognition is a consequence of propagating action potentials in a neural network. Action potentials stimulated by physical perturbations to neurons Photons are not the objects reflecting them Photons striking retina are converted into neural action potentials in primary photoreceptor cells Neurons aggregate in the retina respond to lines, brightness, changing contrast, movements A mental construction is not identical to the external reality

Constructivism Basic constructivist tenants – – – Social constructivism – Social relationships and interactions construct socially held perceptions of reality and knowledge. Truth is what people believe to be true Radical constructivism – – 38 World is independent of human minds “Knowledge” of the world is always a human construct There is little point to be concerned about external reality because you cannot know what it is Knowledge cannot be transported from one mind into another Individual knowledge and understanding depends on personal interpretation of experience, not what "actually" occurs.

Major scientific advances 19 th Century – – 20 th Century – – – – 39 Darwinian theory of natural selection Maxwell’s equations / theory of electromagnetism Chromosomal/genetic theory of inheritance Relativity Atomic theory Electrodynamics/unification of forces Quantum theory Synthetic theory of evolution Plate tectonics All based on theoretical speculation tested in practice Prior science largely based on natural history observations

Human knowledge/dominance of the world appears to grow through time Pragmatic observation – human power over nature has grown through time Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1960) – Key ideas 40 Paradigms – World views – Disciplinary matrices – Incommensurable usages of same words Normal science Revolutions This is constructivist historical interpretation not epistemology

Time-lines for constructing knowledge from reality (animated slides explained by references below) Martin, C. P. , Philp, W. , Hall, W. P. 2009. Temporal convergence for knowledge management. Australasian Journal of Information Systems 15(2), 133 -148. Hall, W. P. , Else, S. , Martin, C. , Philp, W. 2011. Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1 -28. (OASIS Seminar Presentation, Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, 27 July 2007)

Information transformations in the living entity through time Living system World 2 Cell Multicellular organism Social organisation State Classification World 1 Memory of history Semantic processing to form knowledge Observations (data) Meaning Predict, propose Perturbations Related information Slide 42 An "attractor basin" Intelligence Hall, W. P. , Else, S. , Martin, C. , Philp, W. 2011. Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1 -28. (OASIS Seminar Presentation, Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, 27 July 2007)

Another view World 2 World 1 Medium/ Environment Autopoietic system Observation Memory World State 1 Classification Perturbation Transduction e g d le now k d ie if d o C World 3 Iterate Time Synthesis Evaluation Processing Paradigm (may include W 3) Observed internal changes Decision Assemble Response World State 2 Effect Internal changes Effect action Slide 43

Time-based cognitive processes in observing the world to reach a goal Based on Boyd’s OODA Loop

From the paper

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