We, as humans, take for granted that what we understand, we also comprehend. However, as discussed many times on this blog, the comprehension is not so straightforward.

Robert Nozick’s famous second part of his first chapter, Metaphysics, in his Philosophical Explanations (1981) reads: “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing”.

Although Nozick’s Ethics and Political Philosophy remain compelling today, his Metaphysics stumbles due to the time at which it was written. It was when logical positivism, as espoused by Wittgenstein and other philosophers who relied solely on logic and syntax, distanced itself from semantics. It was a time when Thomas Nagel, Nozick’s friend, was already very much present, but marginal.

Nevertheless, I enjoy conducting thought experiments based on the methodologies of past great minds. For that reason, I have “found” and rewritten the eleventh chapter of Plato’s Republic. And for that reason, I praised Dante the in M,ind Intell,ect and Wisdom Challenge. 

Thely is something. Something exists. We need not Nozick to experience reality. But there is an epistemological barrier that prevents us from comprehending much of that reality. Let us see the proof.

Thesis 1.

Things and events are as simple as possible at their lowest level of interdependence.

Explanation 1.

Things and events exist only in relation to their backdrop. The simplicity of a thing or an event does not lie in the thing/event itself, but in relation to a backdrop. The background consists of all other things and events, but the one that is being measured. A thing or an event cannot choose which part of the back it should be measured against. It is, by definition, measured against the whole backdrop.

Thesis 2.

The complexity of the backdrop is so vast that no rational entity can recognize/comprehend it.

Conclusion 1.

Rationality can thus not comprehend (recognize) even the simplest element of reality measured against the backdrop.

Question 1.

How come, then, that rational living entities like humans can survive? One can survive only if both one’s identity and one’s environment (backdrop) are recognized. Even if something is not rational and lacks self-awareness, it still needs to differentiate itself from its background, from the environment. This differentiation is one of the necessary proofs of life.

Thesis 3.

All living creatures de facto differentiate their identity from the backdrop; thus, de facto “understand” both self-identity and things and events in the environment.

Question 2.

How come, then, that living creatures de facto “understand” things and events, even though the complexity behind things and events cannot be comprehended in principle?

Thesis 4.

A significant portion of the human response to the environment is not rational, as it has been genetically and memetically imprinted. We are not born as blank slates. That we are genetically hardwired, proven by Steven Pinker, that we are also memetically hardwired is on me to prove (not in this post).

The already known thesis 5.

Genes evolutionarily transmit hardwired heredity, while memes evolve a mental response system, both conscious and unconscious.

Explanation 2.

That memes evolve a mental response system (and at the same time that mental response system evolves memes) does not mean that memes are rational. Memes are like irrational numbers. They exist as irrational only because there is rationality that can conceive them. (More about the quantum ontology of memes in my dissertation.)

Thesis 6

The vast complexity of each thing and each event can only be “comprehended” through micro-adjustments of living creatures over vast periods.

Conclusion 2.

What Buddhism names as “oneness” is nothing but acceptance of the unity of hardwired non-rational (subconscious, limbic) “understanding” of complexity, and rational understanding of things and events. We thus comprehend the environment (in terms of complexity) as much as we do not rationally understand it.

Thesis 7.

Hardwired (genetic) “understanding” is vastly broader in size, influence, robustness, and fidelity than mental, memetic.

Thesis 8.

Human management systems rest entirely on memetic management as much as management systems pertain only to Western culture. Eastern cultures do not manage. They let it go, as explained in brandlife.

Explanation 3.

Contemporary “Eastern” management systems in China, India, and other countries rely on Western management ideology; therefore, they strive (in vain) to find a link to their heritage. It seems that quantum logic might help to conceptualize this link. Eastern (forgotten) philosophy was/aligned with pre-Renaissance philosophy (to a certain degree).

Methodological conclusion 3.

Contemporary quantum science is closer to the ideas of Thomas Aquinas and Buddhism than to those of Newton.

Climatic Conclusion 4.

All conclusions so far prove that even if humans cause climate change, such change cannot be managed rationally. Limbic systems and all other hardwired systems cannot be managed by any single living entity, but can only be managed (passive expression obligatory!) by evolution.