Meaning Crisis and Cognitive Science
We watched episode 26 of the meaning crisis together. Some things I enjoyed (not a summary)
- metaphors bring salience to the point being made
- sam is a pig – a good metaphor (he’s obviously not a pig but it gives salience to an element of him.
- bees are wasps – concepts are too close to be a metaphor – meaningless
- chairs are arguments – concpets are too far to be a metaphor – meaningless
- metaphors bring ‘meaning’
- a construct is useful when many different sources converge and it has large plausibility & applicability
- the opposite is ‘far-fetched’: low convergence but high ‘applicability’ to everything – conspiracy theory – connecting dots that aren’t there
- but also opposite: high convergence but zero applicability – trivial or even academic (something we assume Vervaeke doesn’t want to happen to his excellent work)
- meaning isn’t something we seek or make, it’s something we cultivate
- intelligence is akin to problem solving (high intellignce would be a general problem solver)
- problem solving is the ability to recognise the difference between the initial state and the goal state and find a path through towards it
- there are multiple paths (an explosive potential beyond the possibility of the mind to think through each option)
- But there’s also many problems at any given time
- the path is constrained / restricted by certain options (you don’t burn your house to cook the pizza but it is one way to cook it)
- A general problem solver needs to continue to solve multiple problems not just one (survival) at the expensive of cotinuing as a general problem solver
- thus: ‘sequence of operations in the search space between the initial state and the goal state and preserving me as a general problem solver’.
- Problem solving is therefore the same as strategy (Mintzberg’s definition: a pattern in a sequence of decisions’)
- many links here to ‘greatness cannot be planned’ – to be written up soon – that there are stepping stone towards a soltuion which we may not know… and the next step cannot be known until we complete the first. Also: our stepping stones may be picked up by others and take them onto the ultimate solution. E.g. computer couldn’t be invented without the existence of the radio but nobody invented the radio with a view to inventing computers, hence the stepping stones.