A Case for Gods

I’ve been playing with belief in God since I was a child.

During my adolescent years, when I started really digging the catchphrases of pseudo-rational-types like Terry Goodkind, I became a staunch atheist. It wasn’t until after my last grandparent died and I really came face-to-face with the living faith of my family that I suspected there might something more to belief in God than had previously met my horny-for-evidence hormone-blinded eye.

So, in order to make sense of this glimmer of an intuition that there’s something to faith, I joined a Bible study in my first year at university. I talked with other young Christians about what they believed. I teased out the little glowing thread of my own experience of divinity, the divinity I saw and felt in the room at my Oma’s funeral service. By the end of my winter semester, I felt as though I had a fairly close relationship with God, and I had a good working understanding of my fellow Bible-studiers as well. However, as the semester came to a close, I gave up on the project of Christianity in favour of something else that caught my fancy, who can remember what.

Two years later, (ie., this past week), a friend of mine wondered in passing at my faith in God. The word “faith” rankled, because even when I was trying on the hat of Christianity, I never made use of faith. While I loved the people in my Bible study, and respected their personal relationships with God, my long-abiding sternly-atheistic dismay at faith persisted.

I believed then and I believe now that God can be explicitly modeled in a way that preserves both rationality and the essential sense in which spiritual people mean “God.”

Return to the idea that our brain is playing a game of “interpret reality-data into predictively useful systems of symbols.”

If that’s the game, what’s winning? If the game is as described above, winning is “correct prediction.” However, within conscious experience, our sense of winning-at-life and correct prediction are rarely equivalent.

For example, when I look at my girlfriend’s eyes while she looks into mine, and the euphoria of love bubbles up inside of me, prediction is the farthest thing from my mind. That’s not to say the predictive model of cognition can’t, at some level, capture why I love my girlfriend. However, at the level of consciousness, if I’m trying to cultivate that love, the predictive model will be next to useless. This is because I don’t experience my own predictions directly, I experience them symbolically. Love is an unitary cognitive symbol emergent from an immense tangle of countless different predictions about my girlfriend. Trying to parse that tangle of predictions on its own terms is beyond my cognitive abilities.

It seems to me that, when the win-condition shifts from “correct prediction” to “the experience within consciousness of correct-predictions-as-symbols (eg., love and its accompanying euphoria),” we need to rephrase the operation of the game. The game pieces are no longer predictions, but symbols, with all the emotional freight attached to them.

The way to play this game is to maximize your access to the most euphoric possible symbols.

To return to the idea of God. When I say “God,” what I mean is “the set of all euphoric symbols.” This captures most of what God is to most of the Christians I’ve met, setting aside their zany metaphysical claims.

This treatment of God raises a question: why treat the set of all euphoric symbols as though it were a person? Why make it a character with a personality at all? Why not just take the set as it is?

This taps into the heart of why anyone believes in gods at all. My theory is as follows. Symbols and systems of symbols are far more palatable to our brain if they come in the form of a person. We are exceptionally good at mirroring the behaviours, emotions, and underlying structures of other people. Our brains are built for it.

So, if you want to mirror “the set of all euphoric symbols,” call it “God” and treat it like a person. If you want to mirror “the set of all euphoric symbols relating to a tree,” call it “dryad” and treat it like a person. If you want to mirror “the set of all euphoric symbols relating to masculinity, sex, life, death, and the cycles of nature,” call it “The Horned Lord,” or “Pan,” and treat it like a person.

Spend enough time with these people, and their symbols will come easy to you.

Symbols

Our conscious experience of physical structures (or “reality,” for convenience sake) is not reality itself. Rather, our experience is composed of symbolic interpretations of reality.

By symbol, I mean “a unitary cognitive object that is used to refer to another object or system of objects.” For instance, the letter “A” is a symbol referring to a number of different sounds that a human voice may produce. When we experience “A,” it appears to our consciousness as a simple, unified thing. It is only through analysis of the use of “A” that we may see what system of objects it is used to refer to.

The set of all symbols contains more than just objects of spoken language. For instance, when I look at my house key, the image of that key within consciousness can be understood as a set of symbols. I experience the key’s shape, for instance, as a seemingly unitary object. However, that shape refers to a system of much more granular sensory objects like lines, points, and colours. In other words, my experience of my key’s shape is symbolic. Our brains begin translating sensory data into symbols at the deepest levels of cognition. Otherwise, the wash of information would be useless, incomprehensible, and its components would be mutually unintelligible.

Interpretation of complex systems into simple symbols is incredibly useful, because it helps our brains predict things quickly and efficiently. When I’m hanging out in my bedroom, with all of its posters, its tapestry, the books on its shelf, and its colourful blankets, my peripheral awareness makes perfect sense of every last detail (at the resolution our brains care about at least) with an expense of energy so trivial that, most of the time, I don’t even notice it’s happening.

So, the game our brain is playing is the interpretation of data about reality into comprehensible systems of symbols.

Self and No Self

Our conscious experience of the world seems tuned to the level of detail most important to our survival. We experience shapes, colour, depth, size, velocity, et cetera, with high fidelity. Anything that would be useful in tracking a deer, climbing a tree, spotting a mountain lion. This world of solid objects, heat, light, and sound, is eminently comprehensible.

However, we know that it is only part of the picture.

Our experience of a body of water changes profoundly when we analyze it at the level of fluid dynamics, or molecules, or quarks. The same is true when we analyze it at the level of the water cycle, or meteorology, or geology. Any given object of experience may be understood at different levels of analysis. These levels bleed into one another, and seem to extend from our baseline object-perception in all possible conceptual directions.

In the 19th century, while the scientific consensus held that matter is made of particles, humanity at large was still struggling with the idea. It’s easy to imagine the difficulty people had bridging the gap between this novel level of analysis and their intuitive view of a world. Up until that point, for most people most of the time, there was no reason for people to believe that objects were other than they appeared. Rocks were made of rock, full stop.

Taking consciousness itself as the object of analysis leads to the same difficulties. Compelled by force-of-habit so deeply ingrained that it’s practically carved into our skeletons, it is difficult for most people to see any alternative to the default view of consciousness. In the west, this default centers around “the Self” and “choices.”

A more robust understanding of psychology and neuroscience can provide some sparse furniture for further levels of analysis. However, consciousness can only be fully understood from within. Exploration of one’s own mind is required to get a full picture of any analysis of consciousness orthogonal to the Self. This sort of exploration is laborious and unintuitive for anyone, let alone those unpracticed in any serious contemplative traditions.

This is why most people are forced to simply take it on trust that there is a level of analysis wherein the Self is completely absent, let alone that it is possible for anyone to inhabit the No Self just as completely as they inhabit the Self.

Consider again the example of particle theory. Over the last couple centuries, it has become common knowledge. However, while the vast majority of people can tell you that matter is made of particles, very few can tell you what the world of particles looks like. It takes a lot of conceptual modelling and practical experience and intuitive understanding to experience the world of particles in a way that somewhat reflects the truth of the matter. The difference between declarative knowledge and intuitive knowledge (or, “grokking,” or, “insight”) cannot be understated.

Consciousness is no exception. It is one thing to know that the Self is optional. It is another to have intimate, experiential, intuitive knowledge of the No Self.

While my grokking of No Self has been improving, I still often feel as though I am only seeing its shadow. However, I think that I have a sort of compass pointing me towards No Self, if not an actual map. That compass is “unasking the question,” “ungame,” or “mu.” It is the act of noticing the level of analysis you are currently taking for granted as reality, then of stepping out into a different level.

Of course, when it comes to a level of analysis as deeply ingrained as the Self, this is far easier in theory than in practice.

Noticing that I am experiencing the world as though I were a Self is hard enough as it is, because I am so used to being a Self. However, the Noticing becomes easier and easier as I become more acquainted with the nature of Self through meditation.

The Stepping into No Self is hardest of all, because my consciousness only has a dim sense of where to go. I feel like a foot searching for a stepping stone underneath the surface of rushing riverwater, in the dead of night, with no lantern. Even if sometimes I can feel its edge, I am either to afraid or too unskilled to take the step.

It’s a work in progress.

P.S.

The language of “levels” of analysis might seem hierarchical. I do not mean it in this sense. One of my deepest intuitions is that all levels of analysis are all equally valid. Each has its own limitations and internal logic, but no level is more intrinsically valuable than another.

I have the sense that many contemplative traditions disagree with this intuition. Most significantly, No Self is often privileged over Self. I do not see any reason why this should be inherently true. Even if it instrumentally true (which my intuitions somewhat align with), I don’t see why it should so in all circumstances. My intuitions about ethics and consciousness identify No Self (which I often see conflated with Enlightenment, though I sense that they may be seperate) as only one valid move among many in the game of consciousness.

A Quick Explanation of Mindfulness Meditation

My experience with meditation is all within the basic mindfulness tradition. It is incredibly simple in theory, but difficult in practice. In order to meditate, place your awareness on the sensation of breathing. Whenever you notice that you are lost in thought, return your awareness to the sensation of breathing. That is all.

Mindfulness is a state of non-identification with any object of experience. Most people, without serious practice, are unable to hold onto a mindful state for more than a fraction of a second before being swept away by thought once more. We are so used feeling as though we are our thoughts that it is incredibly easy to deceive ourselves into believing that we are meditating, when in fact we are only thinking “I am meditating, look at me, great job, this is meditation, sure am calm.” It is easy to lose patience with yourself, when failure is easier than breathing. You must accept failure as part of the process. Do not waste time judging yourself; judgement requires that you lose yourself in thought.

The more mindful you become, the easier it will be to notice when your attention is spiraling through uncertainty. Mindfulness enables you to redirect your attention towards an object or meta-structure of certainty (eg., breath, a mantra, or consciousness itself). Sometimes this diffuses suffering only momentarily, sometimes altogether. This technique can also be used to achieve a wide range of seriously altered states of consciousness (which can be fun).

Spirituality

Maximizing certainty is a different project from simply having rational beliefs about the world. No matter how rational a person may be, and no matter how much data they have, they will still have to contend with the difficulty of navigating uncertainty. Objective beliefs do not magically create certainty. Certainty is born out of believing well. It is one thing to believe, as a matter of fact, that love is a good principle by which to live. It is quite another to take that principle to heart — to believe it well, such that it informs layer after layer of your cognitive map. That’s not to say we shouldn’t care about having objective beliefs, but we should be equally concerned with deliberately training ourselves to relate to those beliefs in a way which will generate certainty. Such is the domain of spirituality.

Take the example of the fly that was buzzing around my legs this morning on the subway. I have some objective beliefs about this fly. It is an insect, nearly too fast to see, small, and will produce gross slime if squashed. My instinct is to be wary. When the fly nears my leg, and I anticipate it landing, anticipate its tickle on my leg hairs. It is natural and easy for me to characterize the fly as a menace, a foul, red-eyed agent of Beelzebub. That is one possible way to relate to the fly-structure that has appeared within my consciousness. However, that is not the only way.

With hardly a moments reflection upon this little bug’s living, humming, shining body, I fall madly in love with it. My beliefs about the structure of the fly have not changed, but I look at it with new eyes. I may not be certain about where the fly is going, but I am certain that it is a good fly. This fly is an object of perfect, radiant certainty. I am overjoyed. Rather than relating to the fly through the meta-structure of “where the hell is this thing going” (which can’t possibly yield any results, it’s too damn fast), I relate to it through the meta-structure of “it is alive, it can’t hurt me, it is a good fly”. Pulling back from pointless uncertainty into meditation upon the knowable, beautiful structure of the fly dispels my fly-anxiety.

This is not an endorsement of ignoring problems. Identifying which problems are worth our attention is an important skill. But, it’s also important to recognize that many problems which produce suffering are not inevitable or worthwhile. They are products of a misuse of our attention. It is a mistake to attempt to solve a problem when you cannot possibly have the data required to do so. It will only hurt.

Believing well means deeply entrenching the reflex of directing our attention towards structures or meta-structures which actually generate certainty. Sometimes the best meta-structure will be rationality, and sometimes it will be fly-worship. The more practice we get in redirecting our attention in this way, the easier it becomes. Eventually, these good structures can become second nature. This is the goal of spiritual practice.

Structuralism and Certainty

I love to throw around “structure.” When I say “structure,” I mean “a system of relationships.” When I say “Structure,” I mean “the system of all relationships.” I believe that everything that may be thought about is Structure in the same way (mostly informed by Stewart Shapiro’s 1983 essay “Mathematics and Reality” in the journal Philosophy of Science) Structure is all there is, and all that we can imagine, and all that any other consciousness could possibly imagine. A structure which we can’t detect with sensory perception, or which we can only imagine, is just as real as structure which we can detect through sensory perception. They are equally Structure. They are distinguishable only in that one is physically embodied.

When a structure is mirrored within cognition, we call it “knowledge”. This is what our brains are for: creating a map which reflects the structure we inhabit. When we are certain or uncertain, it is with respect to our reflection of structure.

We are uncertain when we our map of structure fails to predict actual structure. For instance, if we believe in x and y, but the truth is x if and only if not-y, and awareness of this arises in consciousness, we will suffer. The structure x and y fails to predict the structure x if and only if not-y. Ouch.

If, on the other hand, we believe x and y, and the truth is x and y, it feels pretty good. We predicted structure successfully. If we are confronted with the fact that x and y = z, it doesn’t contradict our representation of structure. However, it presents us with a novel structure, a new relationship. Yum. More predictive power.

Morality and the Game of Consciousness

It is a fact of consciousness that some objects of experience are positively valenced while some are negatively valenced. Consciousness seems to valence objects in a consistent way. Consciousness must have operational rules in order to create this consistency. Since humans all share essentially the same genetic structure and were produced by the same evolutionary necessities, there is good reason to believe that each human consciousness follows the same essential operational rules. So, it’s fair to say that all humans consciousnesses are navigating towards some objects and away from others according to this consistent set of rules. This means that each humans consciousness is participating in an instance of the same game.

It is at the level that we are all playing the same game that we can talk about we objectively ought to do. There are true things to say about what strategies in any given game are optimal. I don’t think there is a meaningful difference between “optimal strategy” and “strategy a player ought to use”. To say otherwise is to deprive “ought” of any meaning at all. It is inherent to playing a game that the optimal strategy is the one you ought to use. If you know an optimal strategy within a game and deliberately don’t use it, then you have ceased playing the game. But we can’t cease playing our own game. It defines us.

It seems to me that when people talk about “morality,” they are talking about the human-consciousness-game. As such, morality is a field of objective thought, and may be explored scientifically.

(PS: The objective of the game of consciousness, if we buy into predictive processing theory, seems as though it must be the experience of predictive certainty.)

Predictive Processing

My understanding of cognition is informed mostly by “predictive processing theory,” which, according to Scott Alexander in his review “Surfing Uncertainty,” is hot right now. The idea is that the brain is essentially a prediction engine constructed from stacked data filters, where each layer of the filter makes more and more granular predictions, acting as a map of the world at different levels of detail. The bottom-most filter is the first layer of sensory data processing. Let’s call it Layer A. This filter has a map of the data it expects to receive. If the data that passes through the filter is similar enough to the map, then the filter passes the map up the line to consciousness. If the data is different than the map predicted, this produces a surprise reaction. The data is passed up to the next layer of cognition, let’s call it Layer B, which has a slightly more abstract map with slightly more abstract predictions. If the offending data fits well enough within Layer B’s map, Layer B will pass its map up the line to consciousness. Layer B also signals to Layer A that the data was acceptable, so Layer A adjusts its map accordingly. Each subsequent layer obeys the same rules, all the way up the line. It’s only if data falls well outside our brain’s map of reality that we register surprise within consciousness. This system works to filter out small discrepancies between what we see and what we expect. While this may seem problematic (as it means that we are programmed for self-deception to our very core), for most people it functions to save a lot of energy while rarely producing significant delusions.

When surprise does reach our highest layers of cognition (thought, working memory, etc.), we attempt to rationalize it. If we are successful, our brain is flooded with sweet, juicy reward chemicals. The new lines and boundaries of the updated top-level map are passed back down the line, with each lower-level map being adjusted to fit the new predictive paradigm.

However, this process isn’t perfect. Often, lower-level maps are slow on the uptake of new upper-level paradigms, so the same disruptions can cause us to spiral through the same painful rationalizations again and again. Furthermore, there are many different levers to pull in this system that, when pulled, can send the mind spiralling into disorder. For instance, what would happen if some dastardly cartesian demon pulled the lever controlling threshold for discrepancy between prediction and data? Everything is surprising! Throw out all the maps! Pure chaos and hell. We can only thank the gods that most people don’t have to deal with such disorders.

This model for cognition is interesting to me because it offers a potential mechanism for what actually produces our experiences of peace and suffering. Suffering is uncertainty, a torn map, dissonance within the system. Peace is certainty, an ordered map, an internally consistent system.

This is complicated by the fact that our experiences of peace and suffering are so varied. Peace and suffering aren’t binary, but exist on a continuum. This continuum doesn’t seem to have hard limits. In one moment, I might feel certain with respect to everything present within my experience. That might be associated with feeling of warm, easy contentment. However, that is not the end-all of possible positive experience. Within this state of peace, I might listen to a beautiful song, or think about the endless chain of relationships and loves and mothers and fathers that led to me, remember an evening spent drinking and laughing with friends. Each beautiful structure unfolds and fills me even greater certainty. The pleasure of one certainty may build on the pleasure of another ad infinitum as our consciousness encounters novel structure. Conversely, uncertainty may build on uncertainty until consciousness is a twisting hellscape.