I enjoy a cigar from time to time, something I do in the privacy of my back yard when weather permits. While self-indulging one day, I noticed Mike, my cat, doing something interesting. We have an old milk can in the corner by the back door and Mike caught sight of a mouse in this vicinity. He pursued the mouse, and it very reasonably ran into the corner behind the milk can. Here is the interesting part: Without hesitation, Mike went to the other side of the can to catch the mouse as it emerged. It didn’t emerge of course, opting to hide over running. I rescued the mouse by removing Mike.
Here’s why I found this interesting. The cat behaved as if he believed in the persistence of hidden objects. More than that, he behaved as if he believed in Newtonian space; that the mouse continued on the same trajectory, under the constraint of the corner which in its way makes up the x, y, and z axes. I’ll admit this might be pushing things a bit, but to push a bit further, the cat might be functioning within the same forms of perception as we do. For me, these are the Kantian ones of space, time and causality. To expand on that, space, time and causality are a priori (logically prior) to any knowledge we might have. They mediate our understanding, we understand in their terms.
As Richard Nixon said, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I’m not claiming that cats believe things, although they might, who am I to say? I’m suggesting that regardless of the sophistication of a living thing, it is successfully existing and reproducing because it behaves as if it knows something about its world. This is backing off somewhat from A. J. Ayers’ definition of knowledge as a true belief with sufficient reason to a more humble definition of knowledge being a behavior that looks as if it were a belief that’s confirmed by results. I know that’s a bit mealy mouthed, but it’s the best I can do. If you want to say something about the world of putative things, which Kant referred to as the noumenal world, I think that’s about as good as it’s going to get.
But to finish with a grander claim, the living things in the universe are like keyholes through which the universe catches a glimpse of itself.
Afterthought.
I think physical things and awareness of them lie on the same continuum. They’re made of the same stuff, whatever that stuff might be. And obviously, matter, energy, and mind don’t cover enough ground to be that stuff. If anyone cares, this was also Carl Jung’s take on things. Here’s an interesting quote from the theoretical physicist David Bohm, who also agrees, if I understand him correctly:
“If the thing and the thought about it have their ground in the one undefinable and unknown totality of flux, then the attempt to explain their relationship by supposing that the thought is in reflective correspondence with the thing has no meaning, for both thought and thing are forms abstracted from the total process. The reason why these forms are related could only be in the ground from which they arise, but there can be no way of discussing reflective correspondence in this ground, because reflective correspondence implies knowledge, while the ground is beyond what can be assimilated in the content of knowledge.
Does this mean that there can be no further insight into the relationship of thing and thought? We suggest that such further insight is in fact possible but that it requires looking at the question in a different way. To show the orientation involved in this way, we may consider as an analogy the well-known dance of the bees, in which one bee is able to indicate the location of honey-bearing flowers to other bees. This dance is probably not to be understood as producing in the ‘mind’ of the bees a form of knowledge in reflective correspondence with the flowers. Rather, it is an activity which, when properly carried out, acts as a pointer or indicator, disposing the bees to an order of action that will generally lead them to the honey. This activity is not separate from the rest of what is involved in collecting the honey. It flows and merges into the next step in an unbroken process. So one may propose for consideration the notion that thought is a sort of ‘dance of the mind’ which functions indicatively, and which, when properly carried out, flows and merges into an harmonious and orderly sort of overall process in life as a whole.” David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 55.
IMAGE – Steve Armstrong, Box Painting, 2008.
I really hope some physics and philosophy type persons are moved to comment. I don’t doubt this post needs refining, and perhaps even rejecting. Go for it.
Not at all, I think this post is great! I actually just posted something vaguely related on the nature of knowledge. I think it’s precisely this: some internal representation that’s more or less refined and leads to a certain behavior. And I agree that most animals will need some sort of a priori idea of space in order to be able to interact with the world. I am actually pretty sure cats have a similar notion of space as us.
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I try hard to not be an anthropomorphizing crackpot, but I agree that we share this notion with cats, although I need to be careful about the implications of my notion of notions. As Genetic Fractals says below, it’s very unlikely cats have thoughts about thoughts and I tend to think that a belief is a thought about a thought. So cats act as if they believed something.
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“physical things and awareness of them lie on the same continuum”. I quite agree and I think that is where the conundrum lies. Things and Thoughts are inextricably together; born as one in our consciousness. They cannot exist outside our experience of them: no thoughts, no things. Cats clearly notice Things and therefore I agree that they must have Thoughts about them. What may set humans apart is that we have thoughts about thoughts (as we do here). That makes Thought a Thing and there is no limit to the confusion we may create for ourselves in doing so. I think that this is where my cat draws the line. He thinks about things but not about thoughts and it seems to make him happier than most humans. What if human thought is an evolutionary regression?
PS: That box painting in its white space is the perfect illustration: it becomes a thing because you allow us to think about it. Love it.
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Thank you. I made box paintings three different ways, but the ones that seem to float just off the wall have become my favourites. And they are about the what-ness of things. I’m really glad you noticed. My work doesn’t get it’s point across as often as I would like.
Exciting idea that may go too far: The noticing of things might be a component in a Turing test.
Human thought as an evolutionary regression, or the unfortunate side effect of some advantage?
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So your cat is smart & bees seem to be smart too…
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And even microbes detect whatever it is they need. I guess I’m turning Skinner on his head to propose that stimulus/response could be awareness.
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That’s just semantics…
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Yes, you’re right, but the universe seems more interesting when it becomes aware of itself, as opposed to responding to a stimulus.
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Self-awareness is just another stimulus response…Mostly to socialization…
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I like how you start with your cat being a Newtonian and you end with flux!
The description of the dance of the bees as harmony is beautiful, but it doesn’t make life itself harmonious, I think. There’s just too much human experience in that to make it proof of anything except our own creative mind at work…
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“The Newtonian Cat” sounds like a comic book I would really enjoy.
I think Bohm used the word harmonious to describe how things fit together so well because of their shared source. Unfortunately, I don’t think he considered the other ideas the word suggests like attractiveness, peace, cooperation and so on.
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I wish there were still physicists like Bohm, Eddington, Schrodinger, Heisenberg et al around. These days they seem to have turned into thoughtless technicians. Or maybe I’m just not reading the right books.
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Long time to get back to this, sorry about that. Life has been awfully busy lately. The only physicists I’ve read are Heisenberg, Einstein and Bohm and they all write very well. I need to check out Eddington and Schrodinger.
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Maybe it’s that. Something to do with a loss of immediacy.
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PS. Studies with feral children are interesting in this context. Their awareness is found to be much more immediate and spontaneous than our educationally and socially conditioned experience of it. Once ‘rehabilitated’ they often express sadness at the loss of that non-self-reflective immediacy.
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Interesting, I guess the loneliness that comes with the belief in distinct individuality is more acute when this development is delayed.
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