The Equivalent Conclusions of Logic and Evolution

A crescent-shaped argument

List of edits and link to old version are in the link at the bottom. Mainly I wanted to rewrite the arguments for clarity, and simplify the first case.

Case one in which we build a logical semi-formalism (I hate too many overused symbols, I’d rather use words) to define belief, intelligence and wisdom.

1. Assume two distinct worlds, an outside one that we interact with using one set of senses, and an inside world that we interact with using a separate set of senses.
2. An ability distinct from my senses, I can have beliefs about propositions, which means assigning them a truth value.
3. The truth value can be in the sets the known known (true, false), the known unknown (I know that I don’t/can’t know), the unknown known (I don’t think I know/I don’t remember), and the unknown unknown (I don’t know I don’t know).
4. Information can also be in the above sets, where information is defined as simply an awareness of the existence of something or some phenomenon.
5. Beliefs create a framework of basic assumptions. These beliefs come from our genetics, parents, other social circles/authority, some would say god (I’ll address this at the end).
6. A belief about the existence inside world is self evident; or take the long way around look up cogito ergo sum.
7. A belief about the existence of the outside world can be justified through known known. While an initially weak notion, it’s strengthened by engineering things in the outside world (discovering from the sets of unknown and proving they’re in your known known by applying them), based on how we observe that world. We can’t have absolute certainty of everything, but we can be more and more sure about phenomenon local to us. The reliability of our local observations can be strengthened when we find other people engineering proofs-by-construction as well.
8. Generally, I define knowledge as a belief justified by information in the set of known known. This resolves Gettier problems, see endnote 1.
9. External knowledge is derived by repeated observations using our external senses, confirming hypotheses (beliefs) about information residing in the outside world.
10. Internal knowledge is derived by beliefs about what the experience of internal sensations, or feelings. Emotions are feelings and a kind of information, the variety of which grows in several ways.
11. Therefore qualia, the internal sensations/feelings of our external senses, is an internal information that can only be knowledge with a known known belief. We can have beliefs whether this qualia, and therefore the outside world, are real.
12. Intelligence is a complicated operator over knowledge. There aren’t, as far as I can tell, good words for splitting up the operations, but I think together intelligence includes, but is not necessarily limited to: rate of learning, capacity for knowledge/information, rate of recall, ability to combine arbitrary knowledge and its components into sets called understandings, and see 13 & 14.
13. A correct understanding of something can be obtained by ensuring the correct knowledge is weaved together; more intelligent people are more likely to come to the correct understandings, if their foundational (initially unchosen/forced on them) beliefs do not contradict too heavily with the subject matter to be understood.
14. Connections between understandings are weaved with common threads of knowledge and belief. Understandings can be “traversed” in a sense that you can follow the path of reasoning. Higher intelligence implies more efficiently following the reasoning between understandings.
15. A belief does not directly give way to other beliefs, it is only through understanding that new beliefs can be built from old ones. New truth is generated from connections between understandings, because these new understandings lead to new beliefs about the things we understand.
16. Wisdom operates on understandings and decides truth by choosing which understanding to base next-level (wise) beliefs on, similar to intelligence operating on knowledge and leading to understanding by choosing what’s in the set and what’s out.
17. Beliefs, wisdom, and intelligence are conceptual operators and therefore strictly internal — perhaps necessary (if not sufficient) elements to create the ghost in the machine.
18. Wisdom is an intelligent operator on truth in that it decides between truths via choosing understandings, distinct from a belief which assigns a truth value to a proposition. Higher order beliefs are informed by wisdom, thus “wise” beliefs.
19. We can, and should, have wise beliefs, which necessarily means we have to start somewhere; where we start are the beliefs we are given, which we cannot choose.
20. An open mind is willing to use wisdom on understandings that may shock that mind’s belief framework. An open mind is the only mind that can overcome socially ingrained base beliefs and choose most wisely.
21. This epistemology explains higher order understandings/truths when combined with emotions: love, a mix of understandings and truth and feelings shared with another person; jokes as emotional tension and logical subversion between beliefs and/or knowledge and understandings; beauty as truth paired with an emotion which explains art and sunsets.
22. I think some people call that higher order understanding god. I don’t, because it does not exist as an external entity to me, I have not observed the external god phenomenon in a reliable way, and using this definition of god to presuppose a new argument in favor of god as an external entity is absurd to me; god can only be a function of internal operators, a deep feeling, but strictly internal.

Case two, where we build a logical argument for evolution’s most probable reason to encourage the development of beliefs, intelligence, understanding, wisdom, etc…

1. The way we look at the world, the scientific method can be applied equally to phenomenon in the observable universe as a method of wisdom to gain knowledge, discover understanding, and thus find/create truth, then justly believe that truth as we replicate experiments and/or engineer things with that truth.
2. When we turned the scientific method to the history and diversity of life, we developed the theory (understanding) of evolution from the knowledge gained through the method.
3. We can look at our old beliefs through the lens of understanding — another aspect of wisdom; when our new understanding conflicts with the old, we must keep an open mind to ensure the right wisdom guides us to the most truth.
4. From an evolutionary lens, then, beliefs would have formed as a survival mechanism for life, first as instinct, like swimming towards a light (Assumption).
5. Evolution propagates the best survival mechanisms, or the best beliefs (fact from definition of evolution and observed evidence). By a similar way to how we determine physical law, through repeated observation, evolution’s repeated passing down of a gene set is proof of its utility, or assumptive truth about that creature surviving.
6. Environments are not static; more complicated (and thus more hungry) creatures need to either be built very resilient to change or be able to change behavior, otherwise extinction occurs.
7. Something emerged as a successful mechanisms to change behavior in sufficiently complex creatures, where emotions and instincts are assumed proven successes, analogous to unchosen beliefs.
8. Language provides a framework to share and build on things and concepts, each represented by words. It is in part a knowledge base because words can represent information and beliefs about that info.
9. Good/practical communication is an intelligent use of language, or equivalently a weaving of knowledge into understanding.
10. The compounding of concepts is equivalent to understanding; creating new words, or sentences, paragraphs, articles, and novels are all different levels of understandings because they combine knowledge (contained in words).
11. When we form a new understanding, we can create a new proposition, which in turn requires a belief — the resolution of that belief is guided by wisdom, which may in turn be rooted in a resolved belief or an emotion or a logical method.
12. It follows that language (not necessarily spoken, but the idea of symbolic representation of external things) is a good candidate for the behavior changing mechanism from 7. A simple example: a creature has a representation (symbol) for food, and eats something that it believes fits that symbol. The creature gets sick, and must make a distinction between what it just ate and everything else it believes fits the symbol for food; this is combining knowledge into understanding. Now that the creature understands the distinction between food and poison, it updates it’s beliefs about what food is and doesn’t eat the same poison again.
13. Complex language bridges the gap between our internal and external worlds by letting us express mental states, and mathematics is a key language in understanding the universe, and by extension, ourselves.

So we have two cases, and each led to equivalent conclusions about beliefs, intelligence, understanding, and wisdom; the first case from only the assumption that our senses view two distinct worlds and that we have beliefs, which are obviously true assumptions to all sufficiently intelligent, rational beings. The second case makes the further assumptions that the scientific method is a reliable path to knowledge and understanding (and therefore truth) for any observable thing in our universe.

QED.

Endnote 1: Gettier problems are resolved because information in the set of known known provides a sufficiently strong justification. Case 1 in the wiki is resolved because the truth, from Smith’s perspective, is actually in the unknown unknown: he does not know his boss lied, and he does not know he has 10 coins in his pocket, which is the information he would have to know he knows to be considered knowledge. Case 2 is resolved in a similar way, where Smith’s justification is not in the set known known.

Old version of the argument:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DkqNLDxUaZk1K4b1RRONsxr5-wyOIJNx5Qc30sDZBqs/edit?usp=sharing