Are you weird?

Please go back for a moment to my last week’s blog and look at the picture of the Müller-Lyer Illusion. The weird thing of this figure is – and that’s why we call it an illusion – that the upper line looks shorter than the line under, though actually the lines have the same length. Or don’t you see the illusionary difference of length of the lines? If so, probably then you are not weird, or rather you are not WEIRD, for especially people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies are tricked by the figure. In other words, whether you see the illusion or don’t is culture dependent. This is not only so for this illusion but for other illusions as well. But let me here concentrate on the Müller-Lyer Illusion as an instance of all illusions.

This illusion has been first described in 1889 by Franz Müller-Lyer. Since then several psychological explanations have been proposed. However, all tests of the illusion have been done by investigators with a Western background and almost everybody who has seen the illusion has this background as well. Therefore, it wasn’t realized that the illusion might be a WEIRD phenomenon. This changed in the 1960s when it was realized that seeing the illusion might have been influenced by cultural experiences. So Marshall H. Segall, Donald T. Campbell and Melville J. Herkovits got the idea that people living in different kinds of environments may see the illusion in different ways. To test this idea they selected peoples living in different physical environments, varying from environments with mainly straight lines like big cities with sky scrapers to environments with chiefly winding and varying lines like you find them in wood areas. Teams of data-collectors were sent to peoples in 15 different environments who were asked to estimate the length of the lines in the Müller-Lyer Illusion; or rather they had to judge the difference in length. In their summary of the project the investigators don’t specify the peoples involved but – to give an idea – you have to think of inhabitants of New York as opposed to Kalahari hunter-gatherers, Suku tribespeople from Northern Angola, and Bete tribespeople from the Ivory Coast. Care was taken that the test persons were not influenced by the data-collectors and, as said, the test had been developed that way that the informants could indicate what according to them the difference in length of the lines in the pair was, in case they saw a difference. (Actually, they had to judge not only the Müller-Lyer Illusion but four other illusions as well.) And what happened? The illusion appeared to be an illusion. Or rather some saw differences in length between the lines, but the differences were different for different peoples; in addition the differences were zero for some. Moreover, to what extent people were susceptible to the Müller-Lyer Illusion was dependent on the environment where they lived. People from Western societies – societies characterized by straight lines – proved to be more susceptible to the Müller-Lyer Illusion than non-Western peoples, i.e. for the former the difference in length was more than for non-Westerners. Also among the latter for some the difference in length of the lines was more, for others less, dependent on the environment where they lived. In other words, seeing the illusion or to what extent you see it depends on the culture where you live. In an older blog (dated 22 June 2009) we have seen that whether a certain epistemic intuition is really an intuition for you depends on your social-economic background. Here we have an example of the fact that illusions are culture dependent. Often it is so that mental and visual perceptions are related to cultural differences. And if you are weird you see illusions where others maybe don’t. But since the whole world still becomes more westernized to some degree, it’s not unlikely that in future more and more people will become weird.

References and related websites

- Barthelme, Simon, “Culture and Perception, part II: The Muller-Lyer illusion”: http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/simons-blog/culture-and-perception-part-ii-the-muller-lyer-illusion

- Donaldson, J; F. Macpherson, “Müller-Lyer” (Some explanations of the Müller-Lyer Illusion): https://www.illusionsindex.org/ir/mueller-lyer

- Schulz, Colin, “Are Optical Illusions Cultural? People from around the world respond to optical illusions different. But why?”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/are-optical-illusions-cultural-6633978/

- Segall, Marshall H.; Donald T. Campbell; Melville J. Herkovits on their research: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7f19/97864b14ec48d827fc24c41701be6bca5833.pdf

- Wade, Lisa, “Cultural differences in cognitive perception” (Some statistics of the research by Segall et. al.): https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/12/26/cultural-differences-in-cognitive-perception/

Why do we believe?

An intriguing problem in philosophy is the question “Why do we believe?” And then I don’t mean “believe” in a religious sense but in a psychological sense, for instance as it is worded in the Wikipedia as “the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty”.

Many philosophers think that we have no reasons to believe our beliefs. Of course, we may produce reasons why we believe that something is the case, but finally such reasons are mere justifications. In the end we believe without having reasons for it: we just believe. Wittgenstein said it this way in his On certainty:

“173. Is it maybe in my power what I believe? or what I unshakeably believe?

I believe that there is a chair over there. Can’t I be wrong? But, can I believe that I am wrong? Or can I so much as bring it under consideration? – And mightn’t I also hold fast to my belief whatever I learned later on?! But is my belief then grounded?

174. I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

175. ‘I know it’ I say to someone else; and here there is a justification. But there is none for my belief.”

As Wittgenstein puts it: There is no justification for a belief. Even empirical facts cannot give it. Take the picture at the top of this blog. It’s the well-known Müller-Lyer Illusion. Someone who doesn’t know it will believe that the line on the top is shorter than the line under, while actually the lines have the same length. I can say to him: “Take a ruler and measure it”. But he replies: “I have done it but a devil makes my ruler longer each time I measure the line below. That’s why it looks as if both lines have the same length.” What then? I believe that there are no devils and that his ruler is reliable, but I cannot prove that his belief is false. Each “proof” by me can be “falsified” by another belief. It will not be difficult to construct a false belief, and if you believe it, you believe it. And why shouldn’t there be a deceiving devil that steers our beliefs? Until Descartes reasoned that his existence cannot be denied by such a devil and until Spinoza implicitly reasoned against the existence of gods that steer our lives, almost everybody in the world believed that nonhuman beings have a big impact on how we live and what we think. Despite many false beliefs man successfully survived more than three million years and led a happy or less happy life.

According to Andrew Newbert, this is the matter (as discussed by Jackson Preston King in an article; see “sources” below).The world around us is very complicated and very extended. We can know only a fraction of it, even if studying the world would be our main task. To quote from King’s article: “An individual person, living in a specific physical location on the earth, will never in the course of a lifetime encounter 99% or more of all the information and/or experience that is available on just this one tiny planet. We won’t read all the books. We won’t visit all the places. We won’t meet all the people. Most of the animal species on earth we won’t even see a picture of in our lifetimes, let alone witness in person.” Therefore, the only option we have is to construct images in our minds of how the world might be, based on our limited knowledge. We do this by forming beliefs and structures (“schemas”) of beliefs. Then such beliefs and schemas of structured beliefs help us to find our way in the world and to act: “Dr. Newberg’s explanation is that navigating the limited piece of physical reality we encounter in life, and remaining mentally and emotionally secure enough to survive, find mates, and propagate the species, requires an unquestioning, and when you think about it, strikingly unreasonable confidence in ourselves and in the world. Since full awareness of reality as-it-is was not an option for our ancient ancestors (as the overwhelm caused by so much data would have diminished, rather than enhanced, their chances of survival), evolution equipped them – and, as their descendants, us too – with brains capable of generating a convincing illusion of the reality of our own small words.” (ibid.) That’s why we have beliefs. They are like beacons in the sea that guide the ships passing by. Even if a beacon is on the wrong place or has gone adrift, it may hold its function, especially when we don’t know that it will lead us astray (which may be the cause of many problems). Without beacons we feel lost and so we construct them then in our minds – if necessary as illusions. Happily, enough of our beliefs are okay in the sense that they help us lead a life that avoids most obstacles.

We believe because our knowledge fails and because we need to act anyway. Fortunately most of our beliefs – correct or not – are effective and useful guides, and so, as Wittgenstein said “I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.”

Sources

- “Belief” in Wikipedia, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief )

- King, Jack Preston, “Why Do We Believe Anything, Anyway?”, https://medium.com/@beyondtherobot/why-do-we-believe-anything-anyway-cbbceb5f8130

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/files/wittgenstein-on-certainty.pdf

Puppet on a string

After Charles IX, only 14 years old, had become King of France in 1560, he made a tour through the country in order to have his kingship recognized by the local authorities. He made also an entry of state in Bordeaux, the town where the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne lived then. The political elite organised a grand reception for the young king, including a long procession. The parade included a group of prisoners from twelve countries accompanied by 300 soldiers. The prisoners were Greek, Turks. Arabs etc. but also Indians from Brazil, so from the just discovered New World. All wore their national costumes and their leaders held speeches in their own languages. How pity that we don’t know anymore what they said.

It was there that Montaigne met the Indians he tells us about fourteen years later in his essay “Of Cannibals”. Montaigne writes there that the King talked with three of them a great while and that the Indians were shown the town and shown how the people lived. Next they were asked what they thought of what they had seen and what had surprised them. They mentioned three points, but after 14 years Montaigne had forgotten one of them. These are their other observations according to Montaigne :

“They said, that in the first place they thought it very strange that so many tall men, wearing beards, strong, and well armed, who were about the king (‘tis like they meant the Swiss of the guard), should submit to obey a child, and that they did not rather choose out one amongst themselves to command. Secondly (they have a way of speaking in their language to call men the half of one another), that they had observed that there were amongst us men full and crammed with all manner of commodities, whilst, in the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors, lean and half-starved with hunger and poverty; and they thought it strange that these necessitous halves were able to suffer so great an inequality and injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throats, or set fire to their houses.”

It is not unlikely that the Indians really criticized the French society in this way, but I wonder whether Montaigne didn’t mention just this passage from what the Indians replied because it was his own opinion and because it indirectly refered to what his late friend Étienne de La Boétie wrote about society in his The discourse of voluntary servitude. For isn’t it so that the Essays, to which his “Of Cannibals” belong, are dedicated to La Boétie? Probably most readers of his time would immediately understand Montaigne’s silent reference to his friend. This is what La Boétie wrote:

“I come now to a point which is ... the secret of domination, the support and foundation of tyranny. Whoever thinks that halberds, sentries, the placing of the watch, serve to protect and shield tyrants is ... completely mistaken. These are used ... more for ceremony and a show of force than for any reliance placed in them. The archers forbid the entrance to the palace to the poorly dressed who have no weapons, not to the well armed who can carry out some plot. ... [I]t is not arms that defend the tyrant. ... [T]here are only four or five who maintain the dictator, four or five who keep the country in bondage to him. Five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to him of their own accord, or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices in his cruelties, companions in his pleasures, panders to his lusts, and sharers in his plunders. These six manage their chief so successfully that he comes to be held accountable not only for his own misdeeds but even for theirs. The six have six hundred who profit under them, and with the six hundred they do what they have accomplished with their tyrant. The six hundred maintain under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the government of provinces or the direction of finances, in order that they may serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper time and working such havoc all around that they could not last except under the shadow of the six hundred, nor be exempt from law and punishment except through their influence. ... [In this way] not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied.”

To my view, this is what Montaigne probably wanted to say in his essay “Of Cannibals”. This is how he saw society. Changes are necessary, but change is not simply a matter of substituting the puppets. So it has no sense that the guard kills the tyrant and choose their own leader. How society works depends on a complicated structure of dependence. Is it different in present-day society even though it is more complicated? In the end we don’t obey voluntarily but everybody is tied to someone else like a puppet on a string.

Sources:

- La Boétie, Étienne de, The discourse of voluntary servitude. Quoted from an English version that I downloaded to my PC already many years ago. Sorry, I couldn’t find the Internet link, but there are several other good translations available.

- Montaigne, Michel de, “Of Cannibals”, Chapter XXXX in his Essays. Quoted from the Gutenberg edition, English version, on http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0030

What Mary didn’t know

Last week I discussed a thought experiment by Hume. It says that if we know, for instance, all existing shades of blue but one, it’s possible to fill in the failing shade in your mind, without seeing it. This made me think of another thought experiment, which in some way is the opposite, since it implies that even if we have a full description of all shades of blue, we still don’t know them. It’s Frank Jackson’s though experiment about Mary in a black-and-white room. It runs this way:

Mary has lived here whole life in a black and white room. She has seen everything around her only in black and white and shadows of grey. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of “physical” which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles. One day Mary leaves her room and comes in our world full of colours. But then she learns something about the physical world she didn’t know before for she has learned what it is like to see something red, say. (see reference below, p. 291)

On the basis of this thought experiment Jackson argues that physicalism cannot be true. Physicalism is the thesis that the actual world is entirely physical. We can also say that there is nothing over and above the physical and that there is only one substance in the world: matter. So physicalism opposes Descartes’s view that there are two substances, namely matter and mind. However, so Jackson, physicalism cannot be true because Mary discovers what it is like that a colour is red when she leaves her room, and just because this what it is like – the feeling of redness, I would say – cannot be described in a physical way. And since Mary cannot know what red is like by a physical description, physicalism cannot be true (cf. id. pp. 291-2).

All this seems plausible. If it is true, one conclusion could be that there are (at least) two substances in this world: matter (the world as described by physics) and mind (the world as you experience it). I don’t want to say that Jackson went that far, and I’ll leave it as it is, but my point is that this famous thought experiment simply is not correct, for it contains a hidden assumption that includes already its conclusion. According to Jackson, physicalism is the “challenging thesis” that the actual world is entirely physical and that accordingly, if this were true, complete knowledge of the actual world is physical knowledge, as physicalists say (id. p. 291). However – and that’s my point – the thesis that the actual world is entirely physical, says only something about how the actual world is; it is on the level of ontology. But the knowledge of the actual world says something about how this world is described; it is on the level of epistemology. It’s simply not possible to reduce epistemology to ontology and it is quite well possible that there are two (or more) unrelated descriptions of the same object. So even if Mary has learned in her black-and-white room how the world is in a physical way, we know already beforehand that she still doesn’t know how the world is in a phenomenal way, for that’s a different way to describe the world. It’s another type of knowledge. Mary even couldn’t get this phenomenal knowledge in her black-and-white room and she starts to acquire it only after she has left her room. By confusing knowledge of the actual world in physicalist terms with the physical state of the actual world, Jackson assumed already in his thought experiment what he wanted to prove, namely that physical knowledge doesn’t lead to phenomenal knowledge. If physicalism isn’t be true it is for other reasons.

Phenomenal knowledge describes the phenomenal characteristics of the world like the experienced shades of red, white and blue. Physical knowledge describes the physical characteristics of the world like the wave lengths of these shades. This doesn’t suppose, however, a non-physical mind but only that we can describe experiences in a non-physical way. And isn’t it so that the mathematical formulas as used in physics are also mental and that they fit the human mind just as a phenomenal description of colours does? Be it as it may, it’s not so easy to think out a convincing thought experiment.

Reference

Frank Jackson “What Mary Didn’t Know”, 

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d5f0/b1d40bd79be8ec2419e824771300ac5db204.pdf

See also his “Epiphenomenal Qualia”, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2960077?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents