The Natural History of Truth

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ART and ORGANISM
O

• The Natural History of Truth

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Natural History is the context in which behavior
is understood

• Complementary questions are framed by DEEP
  ETHOLOGY
• Causes and consequences of behavior are both
  proximate and ultimate
• Epigenetic cascade of interacting biological and
  environmental influences

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DEEP Ethology

• Description
• Development
• Ecology
• Evolution
• Physiology

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TRUTH how do we know what to believe?

• I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the
  hearts affections and the truth of imagination
  what the imagination seizes as beauty must be
  truthwhether it existed before or not.
  (John Keats)

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TRUTH properties of beliefs

• Peoples beliefs have some measure of validity
  (external correspondences) and reliability
  (internal coherence).
• A more intelligent, adaptive person has achieved
  a higher degree of external correspondence and
  internal coherence in his or her knowledge based
  and belief structures.
• People think unintelligently to the extent to
  which they make errors in achieving external
  correspondence or internal coherence.
  
• (Sternberg 19971031)

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true understanding can only be attained through
direct experience
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WORDS

• The best things cannot be told, the second best
  are misunderstood. After that comes civilized
  conversation . . .
• --Joseph Campbell (1968)

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WORDS

• Since words are at best metaphors that stand-in
  for the things they represent, we are doomed from
  the outset.
• We can only approximate what we are speaking of

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WORDS

• As far they refer to reality, they are not
  certain
• and as far as they are certain, they do not refer
  to reality.

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With all that said about the unsayable. . .

• I will try . . . with words . . . to
• characterize TRUTH (not so hard) and
• REALITY (probably impossible)

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• TRUTH is a quality of a belief we hold in our
  heads -- It has met certain tests
• It corresponds to the world outside our heads
  with fidelity it is valid and
• It coheres or fits in with all other beliefs
  we hold with more-or-less confidence

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• To be a successful species, our beliefs dont
  have to be true they only have to represent our
  needs well enough to serve our biological fitness
  competence to survive and thrive.
• (modern science has shown that there are many
  qualities of the world we have no need to know
  about so the capacity to detect and act upon
  those qualities is weak at best and may never
  have evolved)

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TRUTH, like SCIENCE, is . . .

• . . . nothing but the expression of the
  necessary mode of working of the human mind

T.H. Huxley (1863)
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WORDS

• . . . are the instruments of thought . . .
• they form the channel along which thought flows .
  . .
• -- Aldous Huxley

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• So, words, like water carves a path . . .
• the stream that flows through our brains follows
  the contours of the landscape, but at the same
  time gradually sculpts its own stream-bed.

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Searching for truth . . .

• se hace camino al andar

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Creating the truth . . .

• We make the road by walking

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Threads of Evidence Needs met

• When needs are not met, organisms do not thrive
  or survive
• Meeting NEEDS is the basic business of life.
• Among our coping mechanisms is the physiological
  stress response . . .
• including evoked behavioral patterns.

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MEETING NEEDS

• Maslows need hierarchy
• Physiology (homeostasis, health)
• Safety (security, order, protection)
• Belonging ( sociability, acceptance, love)
• Esteem (status, prestige, acknowledgment)
• Self-Actualization (personal fulfillment)

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• There are two qualities of truth most often
  discussed by philosophers -- COHERENCE and
  CORRESPONDENCE -- there is no confidence in the
  truthfulness of a belief without both
• In fact, the interplay of these two qualities are
  sometimes regarded as the essential reciprocally
  related aspects of intelligence by psychologists
  (Sternberg)
• Our purpose today is to examine how these two
  functions are represented in the human brain and
  work together to create a sense of truth.

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TRUTH and REALITY

• Truth (the way I use it) is distinct from
  reality (of which truth is at best an
  approximation --but one good enough to service
  the needs of biological fitness.
• Authorities for that are Kant (ideas about
  noumenal and phenomenal) and von Uexkull (ideas
  about Umwelt --the unique but limited "sensory
  world of an individual or individual species)

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Whether an action is guided more by science or by
relgion, there is an urgent need that must be met

• We need confidence in our beliefs
• We call it truth and it is an amalgam of two
  ways of knowing, each critical in their own
  right
• CORRESPONDENCE (with reality)
• COHERENCE (within a web of causes and
  consequences)

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• CORRESPONDENCE
• "Knowledge is the conformity of
• the object and the intellect"
• (Averroes d.1198)
• Beauty is a harmonious relation between
• something in our nature
• and the quality of the object which delights us.
• (Blaise Pascal)
• Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
• --that is all
• Ye know on earth, and all ye
• need to know
• (Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)

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• COHERENCE
• "The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may
  be the rest of our truths."
• -- William James
• No man's knowledge here can go
• beyond his experience.
• (John Locke)
• There is an essential tension
• between tradition and innovation
• (Thomas Kuhn)

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• The essential tension
• between tradition and innovation
• (your past and your future)
• (Thomas Kuhn)
• Between what is known and what might be known?
• Between what is known and what is knowable?
• To this we have to add
• Between the ways of knowing
• The conscious and the non-conscious,
• The mind and the heart
• Reason and intuition

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The essential tension

• Between the senses and understanding

• "The senses cannot think.
• The understanding cannot see."
• Immanual Kant
• Critique of Pure Reason

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• "You can only find truth with logic
• if you have already found truth without it."
• G.K Chesterton
• The Man who was Orthodox
• The heart has its reasons
• of which reason knows nothing
• Blaise Pascal
• Pensées (1670)
• What do we mean by heart? it is our
  intuition, our drawing upon the great reservoir
  of non-conscious knowledge

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Types of Consciousness

• AFFECTIVE
• More Subcortical
• Less Computational
• More Analog
• Intentions in Action
• Action to Perception
• Neuromodulator codes (Neuropeptide)

• COGNITIVE
• More Neocortical
• More Computational
• More Digital
• Intentions to Act
• Perception to Action
• Neurotransmitter Codes (Glutamate, etc)

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APOLLONIAN internal locus of control cognitive-aff
ective belief systems, low susceptibility to
hypnotic suggestions low levels of written output
of high complexity, and immediate critical
appraisal.
DIONYSIAN external locus of control affective-cogn
itive belief systems, high susceptibility to
hypnotic suggestions high levels of written
output of low complexity and suspended critical
appraisal
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LEFT HEMISPHERE Coherence creates a stable
and internally consistent belief system works
hard to save appearances (Ramachandran
1998) Probabilistic reasoning (Osherson et al
1998) Abstract object recognition (Marsolek
1999)
RIGHT HEMISPHERE Correspondence tests reality
and if damaged, confabulation runs
rampant (Ramachandran 1998) Deductive
reasoning (Osherson et al 1998) Specific object
recognition (Marsolek 1999)
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NeuroTheology

• . . . rites manage to tap into the precise
  brain mechanisms that tend to make believers
  interpret perceptions and feelings as evidence of
  God or, at least, transcendence. As long as our
  brain is wired as it is God will not go away.

Left the brain of an experienced Tibetan
meditator shows decreased activity in the
parietal lobe (on the right side) when he
meditates. Right the same person's brain during
normal activity If the right hemisphere (reality
testing) is stilled, left hemisphere functions
are disinhibited
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Affect Moral Judgment

• BA9/10 (medial frontal gyrus), BA31 (posterior
  cingulate gyrus), and BA39 (angular gyrus,
  bilateral) were significantly more active in the
  moral-personal condition than in the
  moral-impersonal and the non-moral conditions.
• Greene et al 2001

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What we know of nature is necessarily limited

• Reality is out there . . . truth is in here
• Our umwelt world of senses is limited to what
  our sense organs can detect and we have evolved
  to detect only that which is essential to
  survival to the meeting of our needs.
• One such need is for stories an understanding
  of the causes and consequences of phenomena
• A predictable world is much less stressful

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needs of scientists

• "the years of searching in the dark for a truth
  that one feels but cannot express the intense
  desire and the alterations of confidence and
  misgiving, until one breaks through to clarify
  and understanding, are only known to him who has
  himself experienced them
• --Einstein

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Beyond biological self-actualization

• Those who hunger for illumination, those who
  see, remain on the fringe. They are derided,
  they are treated as mad. But these few rare
  souls resist and are vigilant. They have an
  obscure need for spiritual life, for knowledge,
  for progress.
• (Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944)

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Doubts and certainties

• If a man shall begin in certainties, he shall end
  in doubts
• but if he will be content to begin with doubts he
  shall end in certainties.
• Francis Bacon 1605

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• All truths wait in all things,
• They neither hasten their own delivery nor
  resist it,
• They do not need the obstetric forceps of the
  surgeon.
• The insignificant is as big to me as any,
• What is less or more than a touch?
• Logic and sermons never convince,
• The damp of the night drives deeper into my
  soul.
• Only what proves itself to every man and woman
  is so,
• Only what nobody denies is so.
• --Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," 647-655.

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Science begins and ends in mystery --it is what
remains after all inquiry has been exhausted

• "The most beautiful thing we can experience is
  the mysterious. It is the source of all true art
  and science. He to whom this emotion is a
  stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and
  stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead his eyes
  are closed.
• Albert Einstein

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Miracles evoke WONDER

• "Miracles happen, not in opposition to Nature,
• but in opposition to what we know of Nature."
• --St. Augustine

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Miracles evoke WONDER

• If men called divine everything they did not
  understand, why, there would be no end of divine
  things
• --Hippocrates

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• "Our life is an appenticeship to the truth that
  around every circle another can be drawn that
  there is no end in nature, but every end is a
  beginning, and under every deep a lower deep
  opens"
• --Ralph Waldo Emerson

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