Blog Archive

Wednesday, 5 September 2018


Some might wonder how a brain that was optimised over long periods to optimise the reproductive potential of hunter-gatherers could then presume to be equipped to unravel the deepest truths of nature. This is a false problem, since it is a bit like asking how a machine that was originally designed to compute ballistic trajectories or crack codes could presume to embody the most general paradigms of computability - it turns out that you don't need to go deep into rule-based systems to get to a universal Turing machine. It is the fallacy of origins: just because something originated in A doesn't mean it can't also do B. With all this, however, the problem of bubbles still remains. How do you know that your most broad, most possible, understanding of things is not locked inside a bubble? What is the most general form of bubbles? Scepticism of truth, or of truths, remains warranted, as does the sense that all the discursive modes that have hitherto attempted to internalise this breach, are inadequate to the gravity of the problem. There's no going back and there's no going forward - there's no point in bursting out of one bubble only to find yourself in another one, and not even a bigger one. The problem is how to approach the limitations of thought not by way of further thought but by way of what it is that thinks.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.