The Structure of Experience
FEST log
Entry #003
March 22, 2024
Getting a first taste
The previous two entries presented an extremely condensed version of the way natural science has been conducted for the last four centuries. We are now ready to introduce a first experiment for a science of mind, using only the mind.
Here "ready" is relative. Let us remember that we have made many shortcuts to get to a point where we can begin experimenting. Even so, it seems like a good idea to start quickly if only for a first taste of what a "science of mind" could be. Afterwards, we can retrace our steps where needed.
One term that we will need from now on is the word "empirical". This term was used quite freely in entry #000, our maniFESTo, where there was not much room to define our terms. Let's look at it now.
The meaning of "empirical"
When scientists perform experiments, they are sometimes testing theories that predict the outcomes of those experiments. At other times they are just exploring new areas of study, perhaps finding phenomena that were not yet discovered before, and for which no theories have been developed yet. In both cases, once theories are put forward, no matter how tentative at first, further experimentation can test those theories. This in turn can lead to refine those theories. We called this "the ratchet of science" in entry #001.
The process of testing a theory requires reproducible experimental agreement by different scientists and in different places. Once a close agreement has been obtained between theory and experiments, such a theory is considered to be objectively true, up to a point, namely within the accuracy of experiment and theory. Technically speaking, within the combined error bars of both theory and experiment.
As noted already in entry #000, objectivity is shorthand for a two-step process: first individual scientists use their own subjective minds to study matter, after which they collectively reach intersubjective convergence within a community of peers. It is this agreement that becomes the foundation for writing textbooks telling the next generation of scientists that a certain theory has been empirically confirmed.
The word empirical is derived from the Greek word εμπειρια, empeiria, which meant "experience." So for a theory to be empirically verified literally means that the combined experience of a community of peers has confirmed the validity of that theory.
Using experience to study experience
We are looking for an empirical science to study the mind, which literally means a science that uses experience to study the mind. So what better place to plunge in right away than to use experience to study . . . experience? We already gave a hint of what that could look like at the end of the previous entry, but let us start at square one.
Now that we know that the term "empirical" implies confirmation by experience, the next question is how broad to take the term experience. Sometimes "empirical" is used to allow only sense experience, directly or with the help of material instruments, such as a telescope which amplifies our ability to observe light.
Included in such definitions are direct generalizations to radio telescopes or X ray telescopes, or even neutrino telescopes. The idea here is that human beings in principle could have "eyes" that would be sensitive to "light" in the form of electromagnetic radiation at longer or shorter wavelengths, or even sensitive to different types of radiation, such as neutrino beams. Most recently even gravitational wave detectors have joined the astronomers' toolbox.
Now the question arises of how to generalize the notion of sense experience when studying the mind. Our goal is to, first, introduce and build up a science of mind, and second, to then unify science of matter and science of mind, in order to reach a Fully Empirical Science of Technology, one of the readings of FEST in entry #000. In order to make science fully inclusive in this way, here and below we need to broaden the term "empirical" in order to make it fully inclusive as well.
Specifically, our research will include three qualitatively different ways to use experience to build up empirically tested bodies of knowledge. All three use the mind: The first uses the mind to study material objects; the second uses the mind to study virtual objects; the third uses the mind to study the mind itself.
Three types of empirical knowledge
First, there are the empirical studies in natural science, starting with physics, and including more complex fields such as chemistry and biology, which are at least partly built upon physics. These studies are all in the end based on experience obtained by human beings, using material tools to study matter.
Second, there is mathematics. It is often said that math is built upon pure logic, but of course math is designed, carried out, and handed over to future generations by mathematicians. Like natural science, the way math operates is ultimately based on the experience of the practitioners.
Third, there is the possibility of a science of mind, which is what we are now focusing on. As I have argued, a true science of mind should be just as empirical as natural science is, each in its own domain. We will get a first taste of this toward the end of this entry.
Finally, whether we want to call mathematics empirical or not is really a matter of definition. Once the axioms are decided, one might argue that in principle everything is determined, simply by laws of logic, with no role anymore for approximate insight, as in the stages of development of physics. But what about the process of deciding upon the axioms? And what about alternative ways of doing mathematics, such as Brouwer's intuitionism? We will later come back to this question when we discuss the possible role that mathematics might come to play in a science of mind.
Back to the idea of "experience"
Having done the groundwork, and having specified the terms that we will be using, let us return to the notion of "experience". In practice, human experience is what provides scientists with "room" to make observations, develop theories and do everything else that scientists do in setting up and improving bodies of scientific knowledge.
This is somewhat similar to what space and time provide. Space provides room for objects to exist in, and time is what allows them to move. Philosophers sometimes call space and time the condition of possibility for motion to occur.
Would it make sense to call experience, or the field of experience if we can make sense of such a concept, the condition of possibility for scientists to do science, whether in terms of experiments, theories, or any other aspect of what working scientists do?
Space and Time as the arena for a science of matter
In the initial stages of developing a science of matter, Newton needed to introduce an arena for Newtonian mechanics to take place in. He did so by introducing the notions of absolute space and absolute time, two rigid forms of scaffolding of nothingness: empty space and empty time.
That seemed reasonable for more than two centuries. But a bit more than a hundred years ago, Einstein showed that spacetime is not at all rigid and absolute, but rather a much more dynamic medium that allows phenomena like gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of emptiness in spacetime.
Experience as the arena for a science of mind
Could "experience", like absolute space and time, also turn out to be far more interesting than the way used in traditional "empirical science"? Let's find out, by designing some simple experiments to study the nature of experience. We will do this in two steps. First we will introduce a bit of theory, and then we will design experiments to test that theory.
The theory will be sketchy, and will almost certainly be wrong in its details. But we need to start somewhere, and when we experimentally test that simple theory, then after each test we can find hints to improve the theory, so that it becomes less wrong. When it becomes less and less wrong to the point of fitting with what experiments tell us, we theorists have done our job.
To build a theory, it is useful to start with a working hypothesis, the concept on which all of science rests, as we saw in entry #000.
Looking for a working hypothesis
At the end of the previous entry, we noticed how every typical experience has a subject pole and an object pole. I see something. I grab something. In both cases there is an active element, a self, that engages with something or someone else, through an action. It could be a more passive action of observation like seeing, or a more active form like grabbing something.
At first we thought that all three, the experiencer that is experiencing what is experienced, in short the -er, -ing, and -ed components of any typical experience, might be like atoms that make up a molecule. But on second thought, we realized that the situation could be more complicated. Perhaps the -er and -ed parts could be like two inseparable parts of experience, like the two ends of a stick, here the central -ing in which both arise.
It is time to take a scientific approach, in which we construct a specific working hypothesis. Let us assume that there are simpler building blocks that together constitute experiences. Our whole world of experience seems to be built up out of experiences, but perhaps experiences are not the most primitive elements. In that case we would expect that each experience is built up out of those more primitive elements in some way, to be determined. Let this be our first working hypothesis, WH for short:
WH 1: there are primitive elements underlying experience
To make this more concrete, we will call upon a second working hypothesis: one form of a primitive element, upon which all experiences are based, can be called appearance. Here "appearance" means that something appears. Within a single experience the -er appears, the -ing appears, the -ed appears. All three "make their appearance", as the saying goes. They are elements of experience that appear, so let's call them appearances.
And just as we loosely used the expression "field of experience" for the stage on which experiences take place as well as the experiences themselves, we can also create an expression "field of appearance" for the stage on which appearances appear, together with the appearances themselves.
There may well be other candidates, besides appearances, and they may look very different, but I prefer to start with a single concrete example.
WH 2: appearances are primitives for any form of experience
We can now make a plan of action, in terms of experiments to design and carry out. I will list them here briefly, as experiments with the different topics that they investigate:
experiment 1): the nature of matter as experience
experiment 2): the nature of experience as appearance
experiment 3): the nature of appearance as appearances
experiment 4): the presence of appearance
It may take us a while to carry out each of those experiments, and to start taking stock of what we can learn from them. For the remainder of this entry, we start with an initial look at how to conduct the first experiment.
Experiment 1): the nature of matter as experience
Find a comfortable place to relax, perhaps first while sitting on a chair at home, but later you could also go to a quiet park, or wherever there are few distractions. Then take a few minutes to look around, so that you can "take in" what you see around you. Notice the way you experience the room, or the landscape.
You may see a stone. Notice how you normally view it as a chunk of matter. Now try to see the stone as an experience. Just as you can shift your awareness from a painting of an apple to the paint with which it has been painted, you can shift your awareness of a stone to an awareness of your mind that has "painted" the stone as a high-quality 3D full sensory experience.
Or to use another analogy, imagine that you are watching a commercial. It may not be very interesting, but if you were a specialist in commercials, perhaps someone who makes commercials for a living, you would notice many aspects of how the commercial was designed and put together, aspects that most people wouldn't notice.
Similarly try to watch the material world in the way it is presented in our awareness like a commercial. There are things all around you, including your own body, and while you watch all that, you can become aware of how everything is presented as experiences that you have learned to interpret as material objects.
Actually performing experiment 1)
The idea is simple, as a theoretical conclusion. To make this into a true experiment, it would be good to spend a few minutes at a time watching particular objects, or a whole scene filled with objects. You can also focus on sounds, rather than images, or on the totality of all sense impressions that you receive.
As always, performing these experiments together with friends will be a good idea. Apart from it being more fun, it will expose each of you to a larger variety of outcomes. This in turn will give you the opportunity to see clearer what kind of patterns may be more universal and which may be more particular to individual experimenters. And of course, the more diverse your group of friends will be, the more likely it is that what you first thought to be universal may not be so when you include more diversity!
In the next entry we will analyze some possible outcomes of this experiment, to see what we can learn from them, before moving on to the next three experiments in that and subsequent entries.
– Piet Hut