Evolutionary epistemology versus faith and justified true belief:

― Does science work and can we know the truth?

William P. Hall

PresidentKororoit Institute Proponents and Supporters Assoc., Inc. - http://kororoit.org

william-hall@bigpond.comhttp://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net

Atheists Society Lecture: 12 August 2014

Access my research papers from Google Citations

Introduction

Epistemology is a lot more important than a subject for philosophical debate

Humanity faces a range of existential risks, e.g.,– Anthropogenic global warming & climate change

Rising sea levels Global crop failures (e.g., potato famines) Exotic disease pandemics (e.g., ebola)

– Peak oil / minerals– Global scale catastrophe

1851-scale electromagnetic storms Meteor strike

How do we know this? What should we do about them: How do we know what we think we know?

Who do we trust? Does science provide truth? Or a suitable basis for rational action?2

Faith and belief do not provide effective

answers!

9/11 & horrors of the 20th Century

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center Often suicidally committed perpetrators

can be guided by one or a few charismatic leaders to commit massive outrages against initially comparatively peaceful populations– Hitler, WWII in Europe and the Holocaust– Japan's warlords and WWII in the Pacific– Stalin, terrors and gulags– Mao Tse Tung and the Cultural Revolution– The multitude of smaller "ethnic cleansings" in the

Balkans/Cambodia/Iraq/Iran/Sudan etc…

4

Some smaller consequences of extreme beliefs

Historic – some smaller examples self-inflicted death– Joseph Kibweteere's Catholic-based Movement for the

Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (2000 – 800-1000 deaths in Uganda from immolation.). See Venter 2006. Doomsday movements in Africa: Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God)

– Marshall Herff Applewhite's Heaven's Gate Cult (1997 - 39 poisoned). See Zeller (2003). The euphemization of violence: The case of Heaven’s Gate”.

– Jim Jones "Jonestown Massacre" (1978 - 913 deaths in Guyana, mostly from suicide or murder of children (217) by parents). See Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple

Current– Suicide bombers and the Sunni-Shia conflict, murder and

mayhem reported on a daily basis5

How do individual people become weapons of mass destruction? 

Contexts:– Psychotic leaders radiating ultimate conviction– Followers’ willingness to abdicate thoughtful

responsibility for own actions Charismatic leaders who convince others they have special

powers, such as the ability to heal, to speak with God directly, or know absolute truth

Willingness to accept on faith (and faith alone) the word of God as proclaimed by some charismatic leader or some purported holy document

Big question: – What leads seemingly ordinary people to sacrifice their

property and lives to follow charismatic leaders?– Easier to accept and believe than to think and

criticize6

Cults and the primacy of true belief

Con jobs performed by almost all religions and cults based on faith and belief

Sola fide (by faith alone - see Wikipedia)– God's pardon for guilty sinners is granted to and

received through faith, conceived as excluding all "works," alone.

– True belief is determined by faith and faith alone Faith in the guru/leader Faith in the designated scriptures

Some will claim confirmatory manifestations to justify true belief or one disconfirmatory case to deny the vast bulk of evidence– Far better to criticize all important claims

How can we combat the Murdoch press??7

My personal problematic

“Your work is not scientific”

Hall, W.P. 1973. Comparative population cytogenetics, speciation and evolution of the iguanid lizard genus Sceloporus. PhD Thesis, Harvard University

Invited review:Hall, W.P. 2010.

Chromosome variation, genomics, speciation and evolution in Sceloporus lizards. Cytogenetic and Genome Research 127 (2-4), pp. 143-65.

Why understanding epistemology became personally important to me

(Evolutiononary biology is not a physical science) PhD Harvard (1973)

Chromosome variation, genomics, speciation and evolution in Seceloporus lizards (cty.) Ernest E Williams & Ernst Mayr

– One of the largest studies of chromosome variation to then– Novel theories challenging Mayr’s geographical speciation model

Poorly received by my advisors, journals & other critics– Referring to my draft thesis, EEW said, “I don’t like it, do it over! ”

[i.e., the thesis, not the research]– [Me] What’s wrong with it? [EEW] “I don’t know.”– The data was so overwhelming he and Mayr still had to pass the work

In 1977-79 while I was a post doc at Univ. Melbourne I summarised my thesis work for peer review and formal publication:

– A U. of Mich. PhD student who earlier assisted both in the field and lab claimed “Your work is unscientific” and re-drafted it

– He failed to understand the logic of my methodology and argument– Was he correct?

I spent most of postdoc studying history and epistemology of science

– Too late for my job prospects as an evolutionary biologist

9

Initial learnings from history and philosophy of science (< 1980)

Most philosophers seemed to live in ivory towers, away with the black swans and other figments of imagination

Only two offered practical answers to my problematic (ref Maniglier on Bachelard and the concept of problematic)– Thomas Kuhn (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Historical and sociological analysis Paradigms Normal vs Revolutionary Science(Kuhn helped my understanding, but not relevant for today’s talk)

– Karl Popper (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1963) Conjectures and Refutations: the Growth of

ScientificKnowledge

(1972) Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1977 – with J.C. Eccles) The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for

Interactionism (1994) Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem: In

Defence ofInteraction

10

Popper 1959, 1963– We can’t prove if we know the truth– There is no such thing as induction– Deductively falsifying a theory is deterministic– Correspondence theory of truth– Make bold hypotheses and try to falsify them –

what is left is better than what has been falsified– Falsifiability demarcates science from pseudoscience

Popper (1972 – “Objective Knowledge”) biological approach– Knowledge is a biological phenomenon– Knowledge is solutions to problems of life– All knowledge is cognitively constructed (Popper is a radical

constructivist!)– Falsification doesn’t work in the real world; claims can be protected by

auxiliary hypotheses (All claims to know must be regarded as fallible)

– Three worlds ontology– “Tetradic schema” / “general theory of evolution” to eliminate errors

and build knowledge Many contemporary philosophers misunderstand Objective

Knowledge– “Objective knowledge” = knowledge codified into/onto a

physical object (DNA, printed paper, pitted CD, magnetic domains)

The early Popper vs. the mature Popperon epistemology

11

How do you do “science” with complex and often chaotic systems?

Differences between the life and physical sciences– Deterministic vs stochastic (≠ indeterminate) causation– Physical science

Hypothetico-deductive approaches Theoretical predictions susceptible to near deterministic refutation

– Living systems Causally complex, non-linear, to some degree chaotic Can explain retrodictively but cannot predict deterministically

Comparative approach– Study “natural experiments”

Shared common ancestry controls most variables Look for correlations between possible causes and effects

– Cycles of speculation, criticism and testing Extend scope phylogenetically and range of effects

– Hall (1983) Modes of speciation and evolution in the sceloporine iguanid lizards. I. Epistemology of the comparative approach and introduction to the problem

12

1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND INITIAL SPECULATIONS

2. SELECT APPROPRIATE NATURAL ‘EXPERIMENTS’ AND ‘CONTROLS’ TO ILLUSTRATE PROBLEM

3. COLLECT DATA FROM EXPERIMENTS AND CONTROLS

4. DO CROSS-CORRELATION ANALYSES OF N-DIMENSIONALMATRICES TO IDENTIFY SIGNIFICANT PHENOMENA

5. GENERATE MODELS THROUGH ANALOGY, INDUCTION, ETC. WHICH PROVIDE CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS FORSIGNIFICANTLY CORRELATED PHENOMENA

ARECORRELATIONS

FOUND?

6. IS MODEL LOGIC

OK?

SHOULDMATRICES BE RE-

RANKED ?

6a. ISMODEL LOGIC

OK?

8. TEST PREDICTIONS: a. SAME PHENOMENA OF NEW CASES b. OTHER PHENOMENA OF ORIGINAL CASES c. OTHER PHENOMENA OF OTHER CASES

3a. COLLECT OTHERNEEDED DATA

4a. FURTHER CROSSCORRELATION ANALYSESWITH NEW DATA

5a. REVISE AND/OR REPLACEMODEL AS INDICATED BYNEW CORRELATIONANALYSES

9. TEST RECONSTRUCTIONS: DO MODELS PLAUSIBLY

RECONSTRUCT CASESACCORDING TO EVIDENCE?

7. TEST ASSMPTIONS: a. DEMONSTRATIONS b. H D EXPERIMENTS c. SIMULATIONS

OK?

OK?

OK?

AND

10. A NATURAL PHENOMENON HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AND UNDERSTOOD,BUT THIS UNDERSTANDING SHOULD BE HELD ONLY AS LONG AS ITPROVIDES REALISTIC EXPLANATIONS OF OBSERVATIONS ABOUT NATURE

NO

NO

NO

NO

NOYES

YES

YESYES

YES

YES

YES

NONO

My answer to the problematic:How to understand complex stochastic systems scientifically?• Build, test &

criticize asas many connections aspossible betweentheory andreality

13

Scientific thinking in the 20th Century

(skipped for today)See extra slides

Evolutionary epistemology

―A biologically-based theory of the growth of scientific

knowledge

Philosophy, “knowledge”, and “truth”

A-priori assumptions– There is a “real world” with law-like behaviours– The physics of reality causes individual

existences– There are no essences beyond the reality of our

existences– Solipsistic approaches are self-defeating

A claim to know may truly correspond to reality, but… Truth (or falsity) in the real world cannot be proved– Knowledge of the world is not identical to

the real world– Cognition is in the world - it does not

mirror it16

Problems– “Problem of Induction” - any number

of confirmations does not prove the next test will not be a refutation (e.g., Gettier)

– The biological impossibility to know if a claim to know is true

Vision does not form an image of external reality

The brain does not perceive reality, it constructs a model– Perception and cognition are

consequences of propagating action potentials in a neural network.

– Action potentials stimulated by physical perturbations to neurons

– Perception lags reality (see added slides)

Knowledge is constructedImpossible to know whether a claim is true or

not

17 Clock, via Wikimedia

Popper’s probable sources for his biological approach to epistemology

18

Charles Darwin (1859) On the Origin of Species Konrad Lorenz – 1973 Nobel Prize (animal

cognition and knowledge) Donald T. Campbell cognitive scientist concerned

with knowledge growth– (1960) Blind Variation and Selective Retention…. (paper)– (1974) Evolutionary Epistemology (chapter)

Popper’s acknowledgements, e.g.,– (1972) Knowledge is solutions to problems of life– (1974) “The main task of the theory of knowledge

is to understand it as continuous with animal knowledge; and … its discontinuity – if any – from animal knowledge” [p 1161, “Replies to my Critics” in The Philosophy of Karl Popper]

Karl Popper's first big idea from Objective Knowledge:

“three worlds” ontology

19

Energy flowThermodynamics

PhysicsChemistry

Biochemistry

Cyberneticself-regulation

CognitionConsciousness

Tacit knowledge

Genetic heredityRecorded thoughtComputer memoryLogical artifacts

Explicit knowledgeEncode/Reproduce

Recall/Decode/Instruct

Enable/C

onstrain

Reg

ulate/Control In

ferr

ed lo

gic

Des

crib

e/Pr

edict

Test

Observe

World 1

Existence/Reality

World 2

World of mental orpsychological states and processes, subjective experiences, memory of history

Organismic/personal/situational/ subjective/tacit knowledge in world 2 emerges from interactions with world 1

World 3

The world of “objective” knowledge

Produced / evaluated byworld 2 processes

“living knowledge

”

“codified knowledge

”

“life”

“Epistemic cut” concept clarifies validity and relationships of Popper’s three worlds

Popper did not physically justify his ontological proposal Howard Pattee 1995 “Artificial life needs a real epistemology”

– An “epistemic cut” (also known as “Heisenberg cut”) refers to strict ontological separation in both physical and philosophical senses between:Knowledge of reality from reality itself, e.g., description from construction, simulation from realization, mind from brain [or cognition from physical system]. Selective evolution began with a description-construction cut.... The highly evolved cognitive epistemology of physics requires an epistemic cut between reversible dynamic laws and the irreversible process of measuring [or describing]….

– Different concept from “epistemic gap” separating “phenomenological knowledge” from “physical knowledge”

– No evidence Pattee or Popper ever cited the other One epistemic cut separates the blind physics of world 1 from the

cybernetic self-regulation, cognition, and living memory of world 2 A second epistemic cut separates the self-regulating dynamics of

living entities from the knowledge encoded in books, computer memories and DNAs and RNAs

See Pattee (2012) Laws, Language and Life. Biosemiotics vol. 720

Popper’s second big idea: "tetradic schema“ / "evolutionary theory of knowledge" / "general theory

of evolution"

21

Pn a real-world problem faced by a living entity

TS a tentative solution/theory.Tentative solutions are varied through serial/parallel iteration

EE a test or process of error elimination

Pn+1 changed problem as faced by an entity incorporating a surviving solution

The whole process is iterated TSs may be embodied in W2 “structure” in the individual entity, or TSs may be expressed in words as hypotheses in W3, subject to

objective criticism; or as genetic codes in DNA, subject to natural selection

Objective expression and criticism lets our theories die in our stead

Through cyclic iteration, sources of errors are found and eliminated

Tested solutions/theories become more reliable, i.e., approach reality Surviving TSs are the source of all knowledge!

Popper (1972), pp. 241-244

22

USAF Col. John Boyd's OODA Loop process wins dogfights and military conflicts

Achieving strategic power depends critically on learning more, better and faster, and reducing decision cycle times compared to competitors.

See Osinga (2005) Science, strategy and war: the strategic theory of John Boyd - http://tinyurl.com/26eqduv

24

Popper's General Theory of Evolution + John Boyd

O = Observation of reality; O = Making sense and orienting to observations with solutions to be tested; D = Selection of a solution or making a “decision”

A = Application of decision or "Action" on realityEE = Elimination of errors

Self-criticism eliminates bad ideas before action The real world is a filter that penalizes/eliminates entities that

act on mistaken decisions or errors (i.e., Darwinian selection operates or Reality trumps belief )

TS1

TS2

•••

TSm

Pn Pn+1AOn EE

EE

Selfcriticism

Environmentalcriticism /filter

Reality trumps belief

D

Science as a social processes for

formalizing and managing

knowledge to make it reliable

Vines, R., Hall, W.P. 2011. Exploring the foundations of organizational knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 3.

Hall, W.P., Nousala, S. 2010. What is the value of peer review – some sociotechnical considerations. Second International Symposium on Peer Reviewing, ISPR 2010 June 29th - July 2nd, 2010 – Orlando, Florida, USA

Vines & Hall (2011) – Building personal and explicit knowledge from real-world experience

Knowledge exists at several levels of organization– Personal tacit (W2) Personal explicit (W3)– Organizational common (W3) Organizational Formal

(W3)– Formal integrated in organizational structure/dynamics

(W2)26

Vines & Hall (2011) Turning individual knowledge into reliable and trustworthy organizational knowledge

27

Hall & Nousala (2010) - Constructing formal knowledge

28

Hall & Nousala (2010) - Growing and formalizing scientific, scholarly and technical knowledge

Building the Body of Formal Scientific Knowledge involves cycles of knowledge building and criticism in four hierarchical levels of cognitive organization:

Existential Reality (W1) 1. Personal (“I”):

observe (W2) orient TTs (W1) EE (iterate) … or … (articulate & share) (W2 & W3)

2. Collaboration Group (“We”) : assimilate (W2) articulate express (W3) EE (W1) (iterate) … or … (submit)

3. SST Discipline Members (“Them” – mostly via W3): peer review (EE) (reject/revise) … or … (publish)

4. Knowledge Society: use … or … evolve/retract Maintain, extend, test society’s Body of Formal Knowledge through use

29

Hall (unpub) - Creating & managing formal knowledge

30

Take Home

Hall, W.P. 2011. Physical basis for the emergence of autopoiesis, cognition and knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 2: 1-63.

Vines, R., Hall, W.P. 2011. Exploring the foundations of organizational knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 3.

• All claims to know are fallible

• Don’t accept what you are told or read uncritically

• Consider sources• Gurus have vested

interests• Science works pretty

well• Test important claims

where you can

Scientific thinking in the 20th Century

Fundamentalism

See: American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Fundamentalism Project in the Religious Movements 1998 Homepage section on fundamentalism: http://tinyurl.com/moexo3j)

Fundamentalist sectarianism– Elect or chosen membership– Sharp group boundaries– Charismatic authoritarian leaders– Mandated behavioral requirements– Idealism as basis for personal and communal identity– Stress absolutism and inerrancy in their sources of revelation– Belief that truth is revealed and unified – Arcane so outsiders cannot understand communal truth – Members are part of a cosmic struggle – Reinterpret events in light of this cosmic struggle – Demonization of their opposition;– Selective in what parts of their tradition they stress – Attempt to overturn modern culture and its power.

34

Henry Blaskowski on Quora

The central 'faith' of science is that the world exists and is observable.   Everything else stems from that.

It is a faith in that it is indistinguishable from the "brain in a jar"/Matrix theory of life.    No, we can't prove we are not just a brain in a jar, that we are making all this up.     So, if we are in that state, science is just false.

But if the world exists, then science requires no faith, just observation [and a bit more].

35

20th Century Epistemology tries to explain the power of science to understand world

Plato’s “justified true belief”, Vienna Circle & Logical Positivism– Truth is knowable

Post WWII– Constructivism and radical constructivism

Knowledge is constructed – does not/cannot “reflect” external reality

– The historian Thomas Kuhn

– Anti-Nazi’s Michael Polanyi Karl Popper

– Popper’s “irrationalist” students Imre Lakatos P.K. Feyerabend36

Problems with Logical Positivism

Gettier’s Problems– Any number of confirmations does not prove the next test will

be a refutation

The biological impossibility to know if a claim to know is true– The brain does not perceive the world

Cognition is a consequence of propagating action potentials in a neural network.

Action potentials stimulated by physical perturbations to neurons

– Vision does not form an image of external reality Photons are not the objects reflecting them Photons striking retina are converted into neural action

potentials in primary photoreceptor cells Neurons aggregate in the retina respond to lines,

brightness, changing contrast, movements A mental construction is not identical to the external reality

37

Constructivism

Basic constructivist tenants– World is independent of human minds– “Knowledge” of the world is always a human construct– There is little point to be concerned about external reality

because you cannot know what it is Social constructivism

– Social relationships and interactions construct socially held perceptions of reality and knowledge. Truth is what people believe to be true

Radical constructivism– Knowledge cannot be transported from one mind into

another– Individual knowledge and understanding depends on

personal interpretation of experience, not what "actually" occurs.38

Major scientific advances

19th Century– Darwinian theory of natural selection– Maxwell’s equations / theory of electromagnetism

20th Century– Chromosomal/genetic theory of inheritance– Relativity– Atomic theory– Electrodynamics/unification of forces– Quantum theory– Synthetic theory of evolution– Plate tectonics

All based on theoretical speculation tested in practice Prior science largely based on natural history observations

39

Human knowledge/dominance of the world appears to grow through time

Pragmatic observation – human power over nature has grown through time

Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1960)– Key ideas

Paradigms– World views– Disciplinary matrices– Incommensurable usages of same words

Normal science Revolutions

This is constructivist historical interpretation not epistemology

40

Time-lines for constructing knowledgefrom reality

(animated slides explained by references below)

Martin, C.P., Philp, W., Hall, W.P. 2009. Temporal convergence for knowledge management. Australasian Journal of Information Systems 15(2), 133-148.

Hall, W.P., Else, S., Martin, C., Philp, W. 2011. Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1-28. (OASIS Seminar Presentation, Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, 27 July 2007)

Slide 42

Information transformations in the living entity through time

World 1

Living systemCell

Multicellular organismSocial organisation

State

Perturbations

Observations(data)

Classification

Meaning

An "attractor basin"

Related information

Memory of history

Semantic processing to form knowledge

Predict, proposeIntelligence

World 2

Hall, W.P., Else, S., Martin, C., Philp, W. 2011. Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1-28.(OASIS Seminar Presentation, Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, 27 July 2007)

Slide 43

Processing Paradigm(may include W3)

Another view

Decision

Medium/Environment Autopoietic system

World State 1

Perturbation Transduction

Observation MemoryClassification

Evaluation

Synthesis

AssembleResponse

Internal changes

Effect action

Effect

Time

World State 2

IterateObserved internal changes

World 1 World 2

Codified knowledge

World 3

Time-based cognitive processes in

observing the world to reach a goal

Based on Boyd’s OODA Loop

From the paper

immutable past

the world

t1

t1 – time of observation

t2

t2 – orientation & sensemakingt4 – effect action

temporal convergence

calendar time

“now” as itinexorablyprogresses through

time

intendedfuture

××

×

divergent

divergent

divergent futures

×stochastic

future

convergent futuretemporal d

ivergence

OODA

t4

t3 – planning & decision

t3

Anticipating and controllingthe future from now

Animated slide Click to advance

immutable past

the world

t1

t2

temporal convergence

calendar time

intendedfuture

××

×

divergent futures

divergent futures

divergent futures

×stochastic

future

convergent futuretemporal d

ivergence

OODA

t4

t3

Perceivable world

Cognitive edge

journey thus far

chart: received and constructed world view that remains extant and authoritative for a single OODA cycle.

perceivable world: the world that the entity can observe at t1 in relationship to the chart. This is the external reality (W1) the entity can observe and understand in W2 (i.e., within its "cognitive edge"

journey thus far: the memory of history at t2 as constructed in W2. Memories tend to focus on prospective and retrospective associations with events (event-relative time) and can also be chronological in nature (calendar time)

chart

“now” as itinexorablyprogresses through

time

recent past: recent sensory data in calendar time concerning the perceivable world at t1 (i.e., observations) the entity can project forward to construct a concept of the present situation (i.e., at t3), or some future situation. Recent past is constructed in W2 based on what existed in W1 leading up to t1.

recentpast

Present: calendar time: when an action is executed.• perceived present: the entity's

constructed understanding in W2 of its situation in the world at time t3;

• actual present: the entity's instantaneous situation in W1 at time t4.

perceived present

Proximal future: the entity's anticipated future situation in the world (W2) at t4 as a consequence of its actions at t1+j, where j is a time-step unit—typically on completing the next OODA cycle. This anticipation is based on observed recent past, perceived present and forecasting of the future up to t4.

OODA

t1+j

proximalfuture

Intended future: the entity's intended goal or situation in the world farther in the future (at tgs, where gs is a goal-state and tgs is the moment when that goal is realised). Intentions are not necessarily time specific but are always associated with an event or goal-state (i.e., the arrival of a set point in calendar time can also be considered to be an event).

tgs

• convergent future: the entity’s mapping of the proximal future against an intended future in which tgs can be specified. t1 and t1+j can also be mapped to tgs and then tgs+1 forecasted in the form of some subsequent goal.• divergent future: a world state where the entity’s actions in the proximal future (t1+j) failed to achieve the world state of the intended future at tgs.Animated slide

Click to advance