Illusions We All Operate Under

In this episode, David talks about various illusions, or conceptual frameworks, that everyone operates under, both consciously and unconsciously, including sensory experiences, religious beliefs, nationalism, moral rules, adherence to laws, and the use of money.

Pragmatic ethics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_ethics

Richard Dawkins quote:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4416-we-are-all-atheists-about-most-of-the-gods-that

Blank slate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa

Evolutionary psychology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

Direct and indirect realism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism

Transcript

Illusions We All Operate Under

 Welcome to the Reasoned Intuitions podcast. My name is David Tonner, and I discuss personal ideas on moral issues in modern society and try to come up with improved ways of thinking and behaving, in the hopes of becoming a better person and causing the least amount of harm. As a disclaimer, I'd like to state that I am not an expert in either philosophy, psychology, or anything else, for that matter.

My opinions and positions are provisional and open to change with new information or an improved understanding of the issues I discuss. My intent is not to provide definitive rules or to tell anyone how they should live their life. I merely want to share my ideas and insights, in the hopes that they can be inspirational or in some way helpful.

I employ pragmatic ethics and try to reason from as broad and objective a perspective as possible. Some of my basic assumptions are that unchosen suffering is bad, and we should strive to minimize it. Joy is the most pleasurable sensation, and thus we should strive to maximize it. Empathy is universal, with some exceptions, and it should be the starting point of any good ethical system. 

Intro

Hello and welcome to the Reasoned Intuitions podcast. I'm your host, David Tonner, and today, I want to talk about something that I've already touched on a bit in one of my previous episodes, the one titled Red Pill or Blue Pill. In that episode, I discussed the various subjective experiences that humans have and compared them to what objective reality might be like—a reality devoid of experiences that not only optimize our survival but make life worth living.

Today, I want to delve a bit deeper into this concept. If you remember, in the Red Pill Blue Pill episode, I pointed out that I personally don't hold some beliefs that are quite common among many people, including the belief in a creator, which usually exists within a religious context, as well as the belief in free will, or agency.

I also mentioned that, while I don't hold these beliefs myself, most of the illusions people operate under are present for me as well. I spent many years thinking of myself as somewhat different, more rational and levelheaded than those people who believe in illusory notions, as if by shedding those ideas, I was somehow better than everyone else.

At some point, however, it occurred to me that this is not only a false perspective, but it's a detrimental one, to myself and others. I once read a quote by the famous biologist and atheist advocate, Richard Dawkins, where he said something along the lines of “we are both atheist. I just believe in one less god than you do.”

I'm going to modify that quote and say that, we all operate under a variety of nested illusions; I just happen to hold a few less. My point is that I was fooling myself by thinking that I was somehow much more rational than everybody else. I still operate under a variety of illusions that serve me, and I shouldn't want to be rid of them.

Conceptual frameworks

Allow me to explain: I think it might be more constructive to refer to these illusions as conceptual frameworks, or perhaps filters. Imagine people walking around with a number of different filters in front of their eyes. You could extend that analogy to encompass our entire experiential apparatus, by which I mean our five basic senses, as well as consciousness—whatever that may be—which is where our sensory inputs are integrated and turned into a complete experience of subjective reality. Essentially, we all have a number of different filters imposed upon our senses, and these filters act as a kind of translation software between objective reality and the way our minds make sense of it.

Some of these filters, or conceptual frameworks, are fundamental to all of us, and we all share them. I'll start by talking about those, before mentioning filters that most of us take for granted, though many do reject them. I'll compare filters that are held more tightly and therefore are much more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to let go, as well as filters that we choose to use, not because we believe them to be objectively real, but because they make life navigable. They permit us to exist within society in a manner that benefits our successful integration into that society, steers us clear of conflict with each other, and ultimately affords us membership within a group.

Some of these filters are minimal and apply only to each one of us individually. In other words, they are personal and private. Examples include beliefs you hold about yourself, but also your belief about reality, which is known as ontology. Other frameworks are greater in scope and involve a small group of people, such as a family, a community, a club, or church, et cetera.

These groups usually have rituals and symbols that bind them together and form distinctions from other groups. This is where “othering” comes from: the idea that your group is good, whereas anyone outside of it is not. Still other frameworks have much greater breadth of application, and they are shared among large numbers of people—up to several billion at a time, such as nationalities and religions. The greater the scope of a conceptual framework, the more official and “true” it becomes. Additionally, the more official it is, the greater the ramifications for not adhering to it or contravening its rules.

Before I go much further, I should state that in my opinion, our goal in life shouldn't be to remove or strip ourselves of these illusions, filters, or conceptual frameworks. Ideally, we would steer clear of those that are harmful, both to ourselves and others, but many frameworks that we operate under are beneficial, even critical, and this goes back to what I mentioned in the Red Pill Blue Pill episode, about how most of us would not benefit from understanding or experiencing objective reality. 

To the best of my understanding, humans are the only living organisms that operate under conceptual frameworks, because we are the only form of life that is able to reflect upon its own experience. Other animals relate to their surroundings and sensory experiences on an instinctual, non-reflective level.

A facet of human consciousness is the fact that we conceptualize. Everything we reflect upon, whether actively or passively, immediately becomes conceptualized. Nothing that we observe, and no thought that arises simply exists on its own, as if in a vacuum. Everything is categorized and placed into a box, so to speak. For example, when an animal seeks to find a safe and warm hole in which to conceal itself, or if it constructs some kind of shelter, that's all that is—a shelter. A rabbit doesn't spend time reflecting on the meaning of its burrow; it seeks, builds, and hides. Humans, on the other hand, look at a house not as a mere shelter, but rather as a home; we create the mental category, or conceptual framework of “home”. This is much more than simply a place to hide from danger or inclement weather. Home is a place of safety, comfort; home also represents family, belonging, an investment.

Every object that we observe and that is part of our experience is conceptualized, and often we go as far as personifying inanimate objects. We distinguish between categories, such as living and non-living, good and bad, useful and useless, entertaining and boring; all notional categories that animals don't create and which don't have any objective valence.

We conceptualize relationships too, and we cognitively understand hierarchies and status. We conceptualize natural phenomena, and we often vitalize them, especially from a traditional perspective, where forces of nature are associated with deities. Sometimes, in our mythologies, we give them personalities. Sunshine is a powerful force for good, whereas storms generally have more negative connotations—unless we're talking about the Marvel superhero, of course—and this is generally related to the effects these forces and phenomena have on our lives. Obviously, none of these phenomena have any consciousness of their own (apologies to any panpsychists listening to this). They don't have a purpose, but we imbue them with purpose, personality, and meaning.

Another way that humans create conceptual frameworks is when it comes to aspects of our nature that evolved as adaptive traits over long periods of time, but which may not bear the same relevance in a contemporary context, and thus, their original purpose is no longer obvious. This is an area of research called evolutionary psychology.

 There is a long-running debate between the evolutionary psychology camp and those who believe that babies are born as blank slates, without any inherited personality traits that evolved naturally, and therefore, all the ways in which we behave are learned and can also be unlearned, according to this group.

Personally, I side quite strongly with the evolutionary psychology camp, and this is the perspective that I am presenting here. Examples of what I'm referring to include behavioural sex differences, racism, signalling, status-seeking, sexual displays, aggressive posturing, and the various biases that we hold. Why do people seek to enrich themselves? Why do we wear jewellery and designer clothes? Why do many of us go to the gym and build large muscles? Why do—mostly men—drive fast, sporty cars and act recklessly? Why do we experience jealousy in romantic relationships? All these behaviours have had adaptive benefits throughout our evolutionary history, but that's not how we conceptualize them in our subjective understanding and especially in a modern context, where the adaptive benefits of these behaviours are no longer as relevant or applicable.

 Going back to what I was saying previously, there are illusions that we all accept as true, unquestioningly. Often, these include sensory experiences that are generated by our neurochemical machinery and which there is little benefit in questioning, such as colour, sound, et cetera. So, while I understand cognitively that colour perception is created by optical networks within my brain, and colour doesn't objectively exist outside, in the world around me, I can't stop seeing colour, and therefore, I can't strip myself of that illusion on a practical level. There are conceptual frameworks that are shared by large groups of people, such as religions, but not by everyone. For example, Christianity and Islam count over a billion adherents each. All these people operate under more or less the same framework: that there is one single creator to everything in the universe. We have no way of ascertaining whether such a creator exists, so on a logical basis, it is foolish to believe such a thing. Having said that, we are just as unable to disprove the existence of a creator, so hard atheists make equally implausible claims. What's important here, however, is not whether this belief is true or not, but rather whether it benefits our survival, our social cohesion, our mental integrity. As long as it does, then there is no strong argument for depriving ourselves of this illusion, right up until it begins to be damaging and cause suffering, which most religions have been guilty off during some stage of human history. Atheists, on the other hand, can strip themselves of all belief in a creator or a universal purpose, or perhaps never acquire it in the first place, and still go through life unaffected, without their subjective reality changing in any significant way.

Lastly, there are conceptual frameworks that we acknowledge are not objectively real. They are total inventions, but they are so useful, that we choose to accept them and operate as if they were as real as any physical entity. These include ideas of nationality, borders, laws, moral notions of right and wrong, human rights, even money! This is another category of illusion that I, myself, accept as true. I cognitively know that morality doesn't exist objectively, but I choose to live by a strong moral code, because I understand that it benefits me, as well as everyone else.

This then becomes so ingrained that most of the time, I can talk about ethical rules without consciously acknowledging their subjectivity. Essentially, I treat them as if they were as concretely physical as trees, houses, or pizzas. Yeah, I really like pizza, in case you haven't noticed.

Often, what makes it difficult for people to remove one of the filters that they wear is the degree to which they identify with the illusion it generates. This type of identification can be personal, in the way that we think of ourselves as moral beings, as well as our position within social groups. Identification can relate to notions of allegiance and belonging—a great example of which is nationalism. In Rwanda, the Hutu and Tutsi people are essentially the same in every physical way, and yet, they have—in the past—been willing to slaughter each other in the name of ethnicity, cultural differences, and other imaginary criteria that divide them. The same goes for Serbo-Croatians and Bosnians, and most recently, Russians and Ukrainians. There comes a point where otherwise useful frameworks and sacred values, such as national boundaries or group identity, become harmful and dangerous, and as we know, most large-scale bloodshed throughout human history has been over borders, the idea of land possession and control, but also other adaptive beliefs, such as religion, culture, and other specific in-group traits.

The more strongly one identifies with a conceptual framework, the less willing or able they are to entertain the possibility of detaching themselves from it, or even that it could be erroneous.

As a final point. I want to talk about drugs: I recently had a conversation with a friend about drugs, and I was reminded of just how important and practically relevant our conceptions are, thanks to this example.

Humans use specific words as shorthand to represent ideas that we all understand, but which, upon closer scrutiny, have little significance on their own. Some of these include “poison”, “drugs”, “good”, and “bad”. We all know what is meant by the word poison, but what is it really? Literally, any substance can be toxic or poisonous if consumed in a sufficient dose, including water!

Very few substances, natural or synthetic, are toxic in their most minute quantity, so it is the dose that makes the poison, not the substance. The word “drug”, while it is understood by most people to mean either a pharmaceutical or an illegal, dangerous, and addictive substance, actually means very little on its own.

When accompanied by a negative connotation, it refers to dangerous and addictive substances, such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines, but also non-harmful and non-addictive substances, like psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, and marijuana. The reason we refer to them as drugs is usually because they are illegal, which means that our society formally decides that this stuff is forbidden to consume.

Interestingly enough, however, once they do become legal to use, they are seldom referred to as drugs. Think of alcohol or cigarettes—both dangerous and addictive—but when was the last time you heard someone refer to them as drugs? Soon enough, marijuana will join that category, at least in North America and parts of Europe. People who have little familiarity with individual psychoactive substances generally categorize them in binary terms: drugs, and everything else.

While caffeine is psychoactive, it is not a drug and is okay to consume. Marijuana, until recently, was seen by most people as bad, even though very few actually understand its pharmacological properties, the way it interacts with human neurochemistry, et cetera. All this to demonstrate that we interpret and understand the world around us and everything in it through frameworks that make sense to us. We periodically adjust these frameworks, and again, most of them are practical and useful. Sometimes though, as with drugs and their criminalization, simplistic conceptualizations can cause far more harm than good.

So, in closing, I'd like to add that one of the most important things that humans strive for in life, without which very little is possible, is forming strong relationships with others. There are familial relationships, which we do not choose, but there are also friendships, romantic relationships, mentor–mentee relationships, et cetera. While we may not approach them in this manner, explicitly, often what we are doing, when seeking to form bonds with other people, is trying to find individuals who share many, if not most, of the conceptual frameworks we operate under. In fact, I would argue that a key to compatibility between people is shared illusions. As we go through life, we all implicitly or explicitly identify with stories that work for us and enhance our existence.

It's important to be careful, however, not to adopt frameworks and beliefs that harm us, or others. If you can do that, I think you've gone a long way in being a successful human being. Thank you again for listening.