Reminds me of another essay (I think it was on sub stack) arguing that consciousness is actually a fragmentary thing, coming from little idea/neuron loops that aren't necessary continuous with one another. For the life of me I cannot recall the essay (I really need to save things on sub stack)
I tend to be some sort of mathematical realist--if the model describes the data well enough, then whatever phenomena the data is from really IS the model instantiated in some sense. In that frame, I think that the idea of the essay is testable in the near future, with neuroscience progress. If we can somehow pinpoint ideas in neuronal data, then we collect a bunch of data on their dynamics. if they're modeled well by population dynamics/modern mathematical models for ecosystems and evolution and such, than I'd be willing to buy that they are an instantiation of life.
Maybe this would be possible now from a psych point of view. Get a ton of people, and have them keep track of their ideas as they pop into their heads, etc. But I think that this channel would be too lossy to really perform the experiment.
Anyways, may have totally lost the point here since this is very grounded in materialism and I very much like the romantic interpretation, but these are the ideas that came to life(?) in my head reading the essay and your response
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I like that reading essays like this can send our thoughts spiralling into so many different directions.
"I think that the idea of the essay is testable in the near future, with neuroscience progress. If we can somehow pinpoint ideas in neuronal data, then we collect a bunch of data on their dynamics. if they're modeled well by population dynamics/modern mathematical models for ecosystems and evolution and such, than I'd be willing to buy that they are an instantiation of life."
This is an interesting idea. I think it's possible that something like this could be tested in the way you suggest, but there is one possible barrier (assuming I'm reading you right) - what if the non-material world is so separate from the 'idea-world' that ideas can't be detected through use of instruments that measure neuronal signals? It would be like trying to measure the movements of my car by measuring the movements of my cat - both exist, but they're totally separate things, unrelated to one another. Sometimes the cat might enter the car, but that doesn't change the way the car functions in any way.
While I suppose that's possible, it's hard for me to imagine that neuronal spiking/voltage data is so lossy a substrate that we couldn't one day understand how they give rise to (or provide the environment for, per the essay) ideas. Even if human neurons and ideas are as different in structure as a cat and a car, if the cat is sometimes in the car I would hope that through careful analysis of the data you could pick up that the cat is not traveling 60 mph on it's own 4 feet. (and therefore infer the movement of the car)
That may have been over-straining the metaphor. In other words, perhaps the challenge is enormously difficult, but I would hope that sometime in the future our neuroscience and data analysis would become sophisticated enough to pick up the higher structure in the data that is the "ideas".
Some evidence for this: neuroscience as a field has been able to distinguish some higher order features of neuronal activity, such as visual neurons that encode "edges" in visual data, and neuronal circuits in flies that encode sense of direction. While these are certainly lower level features than ideas in the sense of the essay, these discoveries at least give me hope that the problem is not intractable. Someday I hope the field will be able to identify very high order, complex features like ideas from the lower order activity of neurons. From there (probably requiring very precise real time information on large swaths of a brain), the experiment I proposed could be possible.
If, however, it turns out that understanding the world of ideas from neuronal data is impossible, I will be very sad about my future career--Im about to enter graduate school for biophysics, probably specializing in neurophysics. It would be a shame if the most interesting work (in my opinion) in the field turned out to be a wash. But I'd like to emphasize that I very much appreciate the romantic perspective on these ideas! It's just not the primary way my brain thinks about these things (or perhaps I haven't cultivated the right environment for romantic ideas to flourish!)
Actually I think that's a great way to extend the metaphor! For your sake I hope you're right - and honestly, you probably are. I do think ideas are, by nature, tied to the functioning of the human mind in some inseparable way. Even if we accept the possibility of a separate idea-realm (or something like that), everything we know about ideas suggests that they interact with our world exclusively through our minds. To our knowledge, no other animals have ideas the way we do.
I struggle to think Romantically myself - I suspect most of us do. We're not raised to think this way, it requires conscious cultivation.
Initially I was put off by Bacon's idea that my big ideas were not really my own...a selfish part me wanted all the credit. But, by the end of the essay, and more so your essay, the idea had endeared itself to me. The idea that I was part of something bigger than myself. A culmination of thoughts and ideas over time that had found the right place to come alive. I've often heard people talk about their ideas like they were their children "it's my baby" and the need to nurture then as so. Thinking on how the right connection of people over time need to come together for a particular child to be born, sounds much like Bacon's thoughts on how ideas are "born". Is there anything more connected to life than birth. Perhaps he is on to something?
Thanks for sharing! I like the connection you make between ideas and children. To expand on that a bit, we (individually and collectively) try to 'nurture' our ideas as if they were our children, but maybe ideas also have an innate 'temperament', something predetermined that we have no control over.
At some point we have to accept that our ideas are no longer ours - they have to 'leave the nest'.
I think there's something to that. Myths work like that - knowing the stories consciously is one thing, but the effects they have on the unconscious is far more significant.
Reminds me of another essay (I think it was on sub stack) arguing that consciousness is actually a fragmentary thing, coming from little idea/neuron loops that aren't necessary continuous with one another. For the life of me I cannot recall the essay (I really need to save things on sub stack)
I tend to be some sort of mathematical realist--if the model describes the data well enough, then whatever phenomena the data is from really IS the model instantiated in some sense. In that frame, I think that the idea of the essay is testable in the near future, with neuroscience progress. If we can somehow pinpoint ideas in neuronal data, then we collect a bunch of data on their dynamics. if they're modeled well by population dynamics/modern mathematical models for ecosystems and evolution and such, than I'd be willing to buy that they are an instantiation of life.
Maybe this would be possible now from a psych point of view. Get a ton of people, and have them keep track of their ideas as they pop into their heads, etc. But I think that this channel would be too lossy to really perform the experiment.
Anyways, may have totally lost the point here since this is very grounded in materialism and I very much like the romantic interpretation, but these are the ideas that came to life(?) in my head reading the essay and your response
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I like that reading essays like this can send our thoughts spiralling into so many different directions.
"I think that the idea of the essay is testable in the near future, with neuroscience progress. If we can somehow pinpoint ideas in neuronal data, then we collect a bunch of data on their dynamics. if they're modeled well by population dynamics/modern mathematical models for ecosystems and evolution and such, than I'd be willing to buy that they are an instantiation of life."
This is an interesting idea. I think it's possible that something like this could be tested in the way you suggest, but there is one possible barrier (assuming I'm reading you right) - what if the non-material world is so separate from the 'idea-world' that ideas can't be detected through use of instruments that measure neuronal signals? It would be like trying to measure the movements of my car by measuring the movements of my cat - both exist, but they're totally separate things, unrelated to one another. Sometimes the cat might enter the car, but that doesn't change the way the car functions in any way.
While I suppose that's possible, it's hard for me to imagine that neuronal spiking/voltage data is so lossy a substrate that we couldn't one day understand how they give rise to (or provide the environment for, per the essay) ideas. Even if human neurons and ideas are as different in structure as a cat and a car, if the cat is sometimes in the car I would hope that through careful analysis of the data you could pick up that the cat is not traveling 60 mph on it's own 4 feet. (and therefore infer the movement of the car)
That may have been over-straining the metaphor. In other words, perhaps the challenge is enormously difficult, but I would hope that sometime in the future our neuroscience and data analysis would become sophisticated enough to pick up the higher structure in the data that is the "ideas".
Some evidence for this: neuroscience as a field has been able to distinguish some higher order features of neuronal activity, such as visual neurons that encode "edges" in visual data, and neuronal circuits in flies that encode sense of direction. While these are certainly lower level features than ideas in the sense of the essay, these discoveries at least give me hope that the problem is not intractable. Someday I hope the field will be able to identify very high order, complex features like ideas from the lower order activity of neurons. From there (probably requiring very precise real time information on large swaths of a brain), the experiment I proposed could be possible.
If, however, it turns out that understanding the world of ideas from neuronal data is impossible, I will be very sad about my future career--Im about to enter graduate school for biophysics, probably specializing in neurophysics. It would be a shame if the most interesting work (in my opinion) in the field turned out to be a wash. But I'd like to emphasize that I very much appreciate the romantic perspective on these ideas! It's just not the primary way my brain thinks about these things (or perhaps I haven't cultivated the right environment for romantic ideas to flourish!)
Actually I think that's a great way to extend the metaphor! For your sake I hope you're right - and honestly, you probably are. I do think ideas are, by nature, tied to the functioning of the human mind in some inseparable way. Even if we accept the possibility of a separate idea-realm (or something like that), everything we know about ideas suggests that they interact with our world exclusively through our minds. To our knowledge, no other animals have ideas the way we do.
I struggle to think Romantically myself - I suspect most of us do. We're not raised to think this way, it requires conscious cultivation.
Initially I was put off by Bacon's idea that my big ideas were not really my own...a selfish part me wanted all the credit. But, by the end of the essay, and more so your essay, the idea had endeared itself to me. The idea that I was part of something bigger than myself. A culmination of thoughts and ideas over time that had found the right place to come alive. I've often heard people talk about their ideas like they were their children "it's my baby" and the need to nurture then as so. Thinking on how the right connection of people over time need to come together for a particular child to be born, sounds much like Bacon's thoughts on how ideas are "born". Is there anything more connected to life than birth. Perhaps he is on to something?
Thanks for sharing! I like the connection you make between ideas and children. To expand on that a bit, we (individually and collectively) try to 'nurture' our ideas as if they were our children, but maybe ideas also have an innate 'temperament', something predetermined that we have no control over.
At some point we have to accept that our ideas are no longer ours - they have to 'leave the nest'.
Pound said something similar: Culture is what's left over after you forgot what you tried to learn.
I think there's something to that. Myths work like that - knowing the stories consciously is one thing, but the effects they have on the unconscious is far more significant.