Limits of Human Knowledge

While it stands on its own, this discussion is a continuation of this post on an essay by Errol Morris.

At the end of his essay Morris contemplates whether or not there is a limit to human knowledge. He basically frames it as considering whether or not we will ever be able to understand the structure of the universe. His own opinion seems to be that we will not, but his only justification is that he would be disappointed in the architect of creation if creatures as simple as we were able to understand it all.

I think he gets the answer right, but his rational is frankly juvenile. By way of giving a better rational, I've long been fascinated by a very simple question. Is it possible to create a mind, an organism, that can understand itself? To focus on a concrete example, let's look at man. Neglecting temporarily our ability to make sense of the universe, will we ever be able to fully understand how our own minds work? To me, the answer is clearly that we will not, at least not without genetic manipulation which renders us a new species entirely, unrecognizable as homo sapien. Hopefully I at least began to spell out why in this post.

In essence, I think that no single person will ever be able to simultaneously understand all the biochemical interactions in our brain, the way all the different centers of the brain are specialized and interact with each other, and how the physical features and processes of the brain give rise to consciousness, to the fact that there is a way that our experiences feel that seems irreducible to materialistic terms. I think it's quite possible that at some point it may be possible to assemble a thousand biochemists who between therm understand the biochemical pathways of the mind, and similarly for its physiological structure and its philosophic ramifications, but I do not believe that any single individual will ever understand the whole.

But this leads to several other layers to the question. Can mankind as a whole understand how a human's brain works? If we take those three thousand specialists, might their collective knowledge give us an understanding of how the brain works? I think the answer there again is no. If those three thousand specialists got together to try to design a genetic manipulation or a drug to affect the brain in a certain way, my experience in the pharmaceutical industry tells me that to a large degree they would still be shooting in the dark at a series of moving targets, though perhaps in a room in which they had a flashlight or two. Human beings just don't interface as smoothly as collectives like ants or bees, and of course ant collectives aren't nearly sophisticated enough to understand the human brain, or their own collective lives.

But of course, there is another avenue of thought to pursue. These specialists could catalog their knowledge on a computer. If it were a sentient computer, it may even be capable of understanding the whole of the human brain. Of course, to go back to the original question, if we were to build such a sentient computer, this wouldn't mean it understood its own mind, simply our minds. Still, would such a sentient computer be able to understand its own mind? Unfortunately, this is a question that I can't even begin to answer. I'm inclined to think it more likely simply because computer CPU's can be understood by people, whereas brains cannot be understood. But no one yet knows what a sentient computer would require, whether or not its circuits would be of a type we could even build, or perhaps might require a team of thousands each working on a small part of the whole that only they understand. Perhaps the circuits required for true learning or creativity would grow more difficult to comprehend exponentially, so that every improvement that might lead to an understanding the previous iteration couldn't understand itself.

Either way, I think it would be an incredibly bad idea to build such a computer. It could only take two views of its human creators. It could think us irrelevant, or it could think us a waste of energy and space. Best case scenario, it tolerates our existence, worst case it tries to extinguish it. No upside. At all.

So, to go back to Morris's question, while I think a single homo sapien will never understand everything in the universe, I do think we have a chance to understand the general structure of existence. Looking at something like the periodic table, for instance, there is a stunningly beautiful simplicity to its arrangement. The consequences of its structure, most relevant to us in that a molecule like water is so abundant, stable, and conducive to life, are sublime and quickly give rise to a complexity and subtlety that likewise is stunning in both its beauty and rationality. My own opinion is that current efforts in subatomic particles and quantum mechanics have gone off the track somehow. I think that whatever force created the universe created a system, like the periodic table, that is stunningly simply fundamentally, but which quickly gives rise to complexities and consequences (like evolution, consciousness, and creativity) which blossom explosively.