Can Reality Be Perceived Directly?

 In the run-up for this past Sunday's service I have been working with a speaker on the topic of mental wellness.  This triggered a thought in the philosophical part of my brain with respect to how the mind works in terms of accessing and determining what is real in the world, and where our knowledge of what is real comes from.  Philosophers have struggled with this topic to the times before Socrates, and argued for varying interpretations of the signals we get from the world we inhabit, and what weight we should give many of them.  Clearly some forms of information we get is not reliable such as phenomena dealing with light bending when it passes from air into water, shimmering mirages in the hot desert, and many more.  Other information seems more reliable, like a rock you can hold in your hand which has weight and a temperature, among other things.  As a result of these thoughts I engaged Gemini in a conversation about how the mind works, specifically with respect to how the information available in the world in the forms of light, temperature, sound, taste, and smell get into the wet space that is our brain.  Here is a link to the conversation we had.

The topic in play here is epistemology, or the study of what we know and how we know it.  If our access to sense data, at a most basic level of acquiring knowledge of the world around us, is fundamentally flawed through a process of receiving basic information, converting it into neural impulses, and then passing these to the brain where they are used to confirm or possibly be an exception to a model the mind has previously created, have we built our mental model on shifting sand?  That is a very long sentence which is likely confusing, if not outright impossible to understand, but I think it may have merit for studying this process.  The link above breaks the processes down into understandable chunks, so I recommend you take a few minutes to read it. 

To get to the point of asking a couple of key questions to start our discussion I asked Gemini to suggest something.  I framed the information for it through a couple of discussion sessions, which I have not included here.  Rather, I though its final response was thoughtful and helpful, so I include it below.

<Gemini>  In philosophy, memory is considered one of the primary sources of justification for our knowledge. Connecting the abstract mechanics of epistemology—how we build our mental models from sensory input—to the deeply human experience of cognitive decline bridges the gap between theoretical philosophy and practical empathy.

You can definitely frame this for the group as a debate between a "hardware" failure (loss of access) and a "software" failure (the model's breakdown). Here is how you might connect those dots and present them as discussion points:

1. The Model's Breakdown (A "Software" Failure)

Our mental models rely on context to make sense of the data coming in. For someone experiencing dementia, their senses might be working perfectly—they see a face, they hear a voice—but the internal model that contextualizes that data has degraded.

• Discussion Question: If our understanding of reality is just a constructed mental model, what happens to "truth" when that model begins to degrade? When a person with dementia does not recognize a familiar face, are they living in a false reality, or simply a different, equally vivid reality built on a compromised model?

2. Loss of Access (A "Hardware" Failure)

You can compare this to the earlier idea of neural translation. Just as raw sensory data has to be translated into neural impulses to reach our consciousness, stored memories must be successfully retrieved.

• Discussion Question: Think of the difference between a deleted file on a computer and a broken computer monitor. Is memory loss a total erasure of the knowledge (the data itself is gone), or is it merely a failure of the mind's ability to access and retrieve it?

3. The Collapse of "Shared" Reality

Epistemology often relies on consensus; we agree that a rock is heavy or the sky is blue because our mental models align. As we age and our cognitive models break down, we lose the ability to participate in that shared consensus, which can lead to severe isolation and anxiety.

• Discussion Question: How much of our mental wellness depends on having our internal mental models validated by the people around us?

This direction takes the conversation from the sterile mechanics of the brain straight into the heart of human vulnerability.

What have you been reading?

 Sorry for the late posting.  This Friday, June 19, the meeting will take place at the home of Alice and Wes Cain.  If you need the address or other information please contact me directly, or you can contact Wes or Alice.  The staring time for the potluck dinner is still 6:00, with the discussion at 7:30.  Zoom is not available.

The topic of discussion is, what have you been reading?  It is my experience that folks that attend our gatherings read some very interesting stuff, and just letting people talk about what interests them in terms of authors and topics results in a very lively discussion.  I hope to be able to add a list of the titles mentioned in the comments below this post.  (Someone who attends please gather this list and post it, or send it to me and I will!)

Have a good meeting.

The Value of Marriage In Modern Society

 I ran across some statistics about the prevalence of marriage over the past 50+ years recently.  The data indicated that women were delaying getting married by some pretty substantial margins.  I wondered how many factors might be coming into play in this area, and started looking up statistics that might show how delaying traditional marriage might be related to other social factors.  

I felt that the amount of text I generated on this topic was more than I wanted to burden my readers with here in the blog space, so I created a Google Doc.  Here is the link.  In the doc you should find the conversation I had with my favorite AI, and links to the sources of the statistics we/it brought to bear on this topic.  Marriage in a traditional sense, for couples wanting to pool resources to raise children, for example.  Commitments between senior couples that Live Apart Together as a way to be together without disrupting trusts, bequests, and other forms of previous family arrangements?  Same sex marriages and how they impact child rearing?  What impact has the advent of the internet made and to endless examples of marriage and the behavior of married couples on our own sense of marriage? And there are many more perspectives on this topic.

Big Questions covered marriage in the early 2000's and it evoked a lively discussion with the attendees at that time.  I recall that it was centered more on traditional concepts of marriage.  A lot has changed legally since then, and US society has also substantially changed.

Gemini Suggested this as the opening question for our discussion:  If the internet has given us a front-row seat to every imaginable way to live and love, has it made traditional marriage an obsolete, rigid technology—or does it make a stable, exclusive marriage even more rare and valuable?

Please contact me if you have any issues with accessing the Google Doc.

The Problem of Personal Identity

 Perhaps you have heard the observation that, since our bodies are continuously changing as we live and breathe, with sloughing off of skin cells, the retirement of blood cells and their replacement, hair growth, and the like, the person we were 10 years ago is gone in all essential matters today.  The food we have eaten over these past years has provided the molecular basis of the substitution of older materials in our bodies with new materials.  We heal by regrowing damaged tissues, our joints and organs get replaced, and in so many other ways.  We might call this physical evolution process the Body Theory of Personal Identity.

Another way to look at this change process is by comparing a person's interests and recognition of themselves.  Our attitudes change, our sense of self shifts moment to moment so that we become a new person continuously.  This is called the Illusion Theory which says that to think that we stay the same is the illusion.  In fact, we continuously change.

A third perspective states that we are the same person as long as we have a continuous memory of our past, and possess a set of overlapping memories.  When memories are gone, we are no longer the same person we were.  Those of us dealing with our elders with dementia feel this loss of continuity deeply and may consider the loss of memory to be a way of saying that our loved one is not who they once were, that their identity has been lost.  I've read stories dealing with dementia where the author describes the person with memory loss as dying twice, once mentally and the second time physically when the body can no longer function.  It sounds like Rousseau and the mind/body problem he so famously summarized with "I think, therefore I am."  When we can no longer think, we are not.

The last perspective is one a bit more sacred, as it addresses the living self through identity with a soul.  This theory posits that we are our soul in a very literal sense.  Same soul = same person.  It would seem that the changes discussed above are considered to be ephemeral to the central identity of our soul, which forms our being and is unchanging.  The problem is that the soul is non-physical and eternal, and exists associated with but separate from the bodies we inhabit.  Various religions suggest that the soul is put into our bodies by some force that we cannot see or measure, and that upon death the soul rejoins the larger pool of souls from which it came (heaven is one model, the over-soul in Eastern religions is another).  Philosophers are not fond of mystical identities like this, since there is no way of measuring or identifying a "soul" in any meaningful way.

This idea that everything changes constantly is an ancient theme.  Heraclitus famously observed that it is not possible to step into the same river twice, as the water is in constant motion.  The philosopher William James talks about our constantly changing consciousness.  David Hume, the Scottish philosopher whose picture is at the top of this page that I took in Edinburgh, wrote that it was not possible to observe a permanent self. 

If all this great philosophy concludes that we all are in a constant state of flux, and the world around us is continuously changing, how can we hold onto an idea of our personal identity?

Convince Me We are not Living in Purgatory?

The May 1 Big Questions will be hosted by Wes and Alice Cain at their home (or should I say farm?) in Stanwood.  If you need the address or directions, please contact them directly.  The starting time is still 6:00 and will include the potluck dinner, followed by the discussion at 7:30.  Judy and I are traveling that day and cannot be back in time to host.  Please note that the meeting will not be on Zoom that evening.

Wes has chosen the topic, which is summarized in the title above.  He provided a synopsis of his topic, and I have copied it below.  

<Wes>  At a March Big Questions, someone suggested the topic: Convince me we are not living in purgatory.

Definition of purgatory according to Merriam-Webster:  

1: an intermediate state after death for expiatory purification, specifically: a place or state of punishment wherein, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, the souls of those who die in God's grace may make satisfaction for past sins and so become fit for heaven.  

2: a place or state of temporary suffering or misery

First Question: Are we living in purgatory? 

<Gemini>  Sometimes, the "purgatory" feeling is just a byproduct of modern life. The repetitive nature of a 9-to-5 job, the endless scrolling on social media, and the feeling of waiting for "real life" to start can make Tuesday afternoon feel like an eternal middle ground.

<Wes>  I don’t think this addresses the intent of the statement, which I took to be our political situation, including the ICE raids and No Kings protests, and the general awfulness of the world.

Back to the initial statement: Convince me we are not living in purgatory.

<Gemini>  It’s a valid question. If you look at a news feed for more than five minutes, the "waiting room for the afterlife" theory starts to look like a pretty reasonable explanation for the chaos.

However, if this were strictly purgatory—a place designed for static endurance and purification—the "architects" made some pretty significant clerical errors. Here is the case for Earth being a much more interesting (if messier) reality:

1. The Glitch of Sensory Joy

Purgatory is usually depicted as a grey, monotonous middle ground. It’s "lukewarm." Earth, however, is a place of extreme sensory peak-and-valley.

• The Argument: A place designed solely for soul-scrubbing wouldn't include the smell of rain on hot pavement, the specific endorphin rush of a perfect high-five, or the existence of mangoes. These things are "unnecessary" for purification—they are purely, redundantly wonderful.

2. Agency vs. Endurance

In the classic concept of purgatory, you are a passive participant. You are there to undergo something until you’re ready for the next level.

• The Reality: On Earth, we have the annoying but beautiful burden of agency. We don't just wait for the world to happen to us; we actively tilt the axis. People build libraries, rescue stray dogs, and invent ways to harness the sun. If this were a waiting room, we’d be getting in a lot of trouble for rearranging the furniture.

3. The "Bad News" Bias

We are biologically wired to notice the "terrible things" because, evolutionarily speaking, the person who noticed the tiger survived longer than the person who noticed the pretty flower.

• The Perspective: Disaster is an event; peace is a state of being. You don't see headlines that say "4 Billion People Had a Decent Tuesday," but it happened. The fact that we are even capable of being "convinced" otherwise suggests we have a baseline expectation for goodness that purgatory wouldn't bother providing.

4. Innovation and Progress

Purgatory is a circle; Earth is (mostly) a messy upward spiral.

• The Evidence: We’ve eradicated diseases, lowered global poverty rates significantly over the last century, and figured out how to put a camera on Mars. In a true purgatory, the "tech tree" would be locked. We’d be stuck with the same problems forever, but we keep solving old ones—even if we're remarkably talented at inventing brand-new ones to replace them.

The world is undeniably heavy right now, but purgatory is a place where nothing changes. Earth is a place where everything is constantly, sometimes violently, becoming something else. That capacity for change is exactly why it's worth sticking around to see what we do next.

What’s one "unnecessarily good" thing you’ve encountered lately that definitely wouldn't be on the menu in a grey waiting room?

The Importance of Maintaining Friendships

 Psychology tells us that the loneliest part of growing old isn’t being alone, but realizing that some friendships disappear as soon as you stop nurturing them, and understanding that they were never based on mutual care, but on your willingness to do all the emotional work

I don't think I've done the same topic twice in a row before, but the discussion we held last time was powerful due to the perspectives shared, and was meaningful for me.  The quote above comes from an article on the topic of friendship that focuses on the work that friendship requires, and how aging can affect who we are friends with, and how it takes work to make it all come together.  Here is a link to the article.   (I apologize that this link takes you to an article that is absolutely filled with Ads.  Please ignore the distractive Ads and stick to the text.  That is where the real information exists.)  As I read the article my mind flashed to people who I had considered to be friends in the past, but who may have slipped into my past today due to either inactivity, indifference or my negligence in failing to reach out and share what is going on in my life.  Being friends requires work, according to the authors, and the work is what makes having friends rewarding.  What is the work being done?  Read the article to find out.

Anyone who has had a medical appointment in the past few years has been quizzed by their primary care physicians and others about how connected each of us is to the people in our lives.  Connection to people is a key to mental and emotional health, if not actual survival, and special connections with people we consider to be friends is especially important.   The social groups we participate in affect our sense of belonging more than we can appreciate.  Social scientists study these interactions and report on their importance.  As we age it becomes even more important.  

Our group at Big Questions is a crucible where friendships are formed and nurtured.  We come together to provide the mutual support we all need in our lives.  Come, friend, and participate in a life-affirming activity.

What are the qualities you value in a friend?

In our modern world we meet lots of people whom we get to know at an imperfect and sometimes superficial way.  Some of these people make it to the Friend Level, which involves us knowing more about them, having more contact with them, and so on.  What do people you call Friend have in common with you, and with each other?

April 3, 6:00 Potluck, 7:30 Discussion