Modeling The World: Part III
After looking at the hypothetical-predictive and historical-legal models of the world, it would seem that we should stop there. This is because these models of the world are eminently reasonable; they correspond to our experience and there is no aspect of our experience that cannot be brutalised into submission by one of these models until it fits nicely.
That said, some aspects of our experience have proven rather resistant to brutalisation, and in some cases have given as good as they got. I tend to lump them together, for the purposes of discussion and not out of personal belief or bias, into a single model which I call the aesthetic-religious model. The key point of this kind of model is that it looks at the world and fills in the blanks.
"What blanks?" the skeptic from another model's perspective would ask. "After all, we can either research the blank till it is not blank anymore, or we can dig into our experience until we fill it in."
The problem with that, of course, is that it would involve extrapolation or interpolation; in other words, whatever we fill the blanks with, it must be something we already know something about. This leaves little space for pure intuition, inspiration or invention. The third kind of model supplies all three; such a model shows the world as we would instinctively want it to be — in terms of meaning, structure, and belief.
The aforementioned skeptic will scoff. To such a person, intuition is only subconscious correlation of known material, inspiration is the same but with religious taint, and invention is the creative engineering outcome of interpolation/extrapolation. But the fact is that everything we say is 'subconscious' or 'religious' or 'creative' has no known basis in either model. We are asked to assume that they do, but we cannot prove it under the terms of either model.
Look at art, music, religion and dozens of other disciplines and ideas which spring from the human psyche. There have been multitudinous attempts to relate them to brain function, neurobiology, genetic tendency, social behaviour, economic reward, mathematical strange attractors and other chunks of the other two models. Yet the attempt to relate and correlate without actual proof of complete relationship is egregiously flawed.
For a start, it assumes that either of the first two models is already a successful model. Hence it must be true that the third model is redundant. Since the third model does not aim to predict, interpolate or extrapolate from 'known fact', it must be inferior since it cannot be tested in that way. And if you test it by human 'feeling' then it must be an artifact of neurochemistry. And so on. In other words, the third model is constantly being derided and denigrated simply because it isn't susceptible to the kind of proving or testing associated with the first two.
The second problem is that this aesthetic-religious kind of model is not consistent. If it were consistent, it would be a subset of one of the other models. But true creativity, inspiration, or intuition can only be justified in terms of the other two models retrospectively. You cannot use the other two models to 'make' creativity, inspiration or intuition — by their own definition, you cannot predict such things, and if they were predictable or patternable, they'd not be what they are.
The third problem is one used by many skeptics; it isn't really a problem, it's more of an ad hominem attack. It follows this line, more or less: "What has your aesthetic-religious model done for mankind? In fact, it seems to have made matters worse, or not improved things at best." That's a silly argument. It isn't particularly scientific or historical, since it all boils down to human behaviour. The human history of warfare shows the first two models at their worst. It is hard to say whether religion or art makes the human experience feel better, but it seems to work.
In the long run, for better or worse, we look at the world through these three lenses. They are all incomplete despite having strong advantages of their own. It is perhaps better to use all three in different proportions to see how we can make the world a better place. And if that sounds weak, consider what happens if we were to stick to only one model and follow it headlong to its obvious denouement.
That said, some aspects of our experience have proven rather resistant to brutalisation, and in some cases have given as good as they got. I tend to lump them together, for the purposes of discussion and not out of personal belief or bias, into a single model which I call the aesthetic-religious model. The key point of this kind of model is that it looks at the world and fills in the blanks.
"What blanks?" the skeptic from another model's perspective would ask. "After all, we can either research the blank till it is not blank anymore, or we can dig into our experience until we fill it in."
The problem with that, of course, is that it would involve extrapolation or interpolation; in other words, whatever we fill the blanks with, it must be something we already know something about. This leaves little space for pure intuition, inspiration or invention. The third kind of model supplies all three; such a model shows the world as we would instinctively want it to be — in terms of meaning, structure, and belief.
The aforementioned skeptic will scoff. To such a person, intuition is only subconscious correlation of known material, inspiration is the same but with religious taint, and invention is the creative engineering outcome of interpolation/extrapolation. But the fact is that everything we say is 'subconscious' or 'religious' or 'creative' has no known basis in either model. We are asked to assume that they do, but we cannot prove it under the terms of either model.
Look at art, music, religion and dozens of other disciplines and ideas which spring from the human psyche. There have been multitudinous attempts to relate them to brain function, neurobiology, genetic tendency, social behaviour, economic reward, mathematical strange attractors and other chunks of the other two models. Yet the attempt to relate and correlate without actual proof of complete relationship is egregiously flawed.
For a start, it assumes that either of the first two models is already a successful model. Hence it must be true that the third model is redundant. Since the third model does not aim to predict, interpolate or extrapolate from 'known fact', it must be inferior since it cannot be tested in that way. And if you test it by human 'feeling' then it must be an artifact of neurochemistry. And so on. In other words, the third model is constantly being derided and denigrated simply because it isn't susceptible to the kind of proving or testing associated with the first two.
The second problem is that this aesthetic-religious kind of model is not consistent. If it were consistent, it would be a subset of one of the other models. But true creativity, inspiration, or intuition can only be justified in terms of the other two models retrospectively. You cannot use the other two models to 'make' creativity, inspiration or intuition — by their own definition, you cannot predict such things, and if they were predictable or patternable, they'd not be what they are.
The third problem is one used by many skeptics; it isn't really a problem, it's more of an ad hominem attack. It follows this line, more or less: "What has your aesthetic-religious model done for mankind? In fact, it seems to have made matters worse, or not improved things at best." That's a silly argument. It isn't particularly scientific or historical, since it all boils down to human behaviour. The human history of warfare shows the first two models at their worst. It is hard to say whether religion or art makes the human experience feel better, but it seems to work.
In the long run, for better or worse, we look at the world through these three lenses. They are all incomplete despite having strong advantages of their own. It is perhaps better to use all three in different proportions to see how we can make the world a better place. And if that sounds weak, consider what happens if we were to stick to only one model and follow it headlong to its obvious denouement.
Labels: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Philosophy, Religion
etched with acid at 8:25:00 am
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