Donald Hoffman’s Errors from the Perspective of the UTOK
Yesterday I put up the Tree, Coin, Garden blog and got this comment:
“This is the clearest explanation from first principles of your theory. I still struggle to understand how The Tree, The Garden and The Coin influence each other so an article focusing exclusively on that would be great. Thank you. My background is in finance and I am always looking for the high level elevator pitch (which is the most difficult to make) before going into details.”
I happened to see this note just prior to going on my daily walk. In looking for a podcast to listen to on my walk, I had happily discovered this YouTube/podcast channel called Theories of Everything. And I decided to listen to the exchange with Donald Hoffman. Hoffman is a brilliant man, who did his PhD in computational psychology at MIT and is a prof at UCLA Irvine. Unfortunately, despite his brilliance, he is philosophically confused.
Let me share how I see Hoffman’s work from the vantage point of the Unified Theory of Knowledge. In particular, in responding to yesterday’s comment, I will be focused on showing how the “Tree” and “Coin” work together to show why I see Hoffman as confused. (Note, as this prior blog explains, the Tree of Knowledge System refers to the frame for objective behavioral science, whereas the iQuad Coin is about unique particular subjects).
If you listen to Hoffman’s podcast on Theories of Everything, you will hear over and over again that he is concerned with two problems and is wondering if they are connected. First, he is up-to-date with the general relativity/quantum field revolution in physics that took place in the 20th Century. As such, he knows that spacetime is not fundamental. The idea that spacetime is not fundamental is his first problem, and he repeats this regularly.
Second, he knows that there is a profound “hard problem of consciousness” in the move from objective description of brain activity and neurocognitive correlates into the explicit qualities of subjective states. Although we have reasonably detailed neurocognitive maps that correlate with subjective states that are associated with what brain activity, we are very confused about the specific “why” “when” and “how” questions regarding the way that brain activity produces subjective conscious experience. This is the ontological or neurobiological engineering problem associated with subjective experience. Unfortunately, Hoffman does not seem to be aware that there are really two separate aspects of the hard problem, one that is ontological in nature, and that is one epistemological. See here for this argument. The failure to differentiate the two aspects of the problem is probably one of the reasons Hoffman is confused.
Based on the spacetime is not fundamental and the hard problem of consciousness, Hoffman concludes that standard scientific ontology that objectively tracks cosmic evolution is misguided and that maybe “consciousness is fundamental”. I encourage folks to listen to at least the first 30 minutes of the exchange if you are interested. Or listen to one of the many talks he has given. Hoffman has been making this argument in many places (see, e.g., here and here).
From the UTOK vantage point, Hoffman is wrong. Why? Because he is confused about metaphysics, ontology, epistemology and the ontic reality, and does not have a clear way of differentiating and coherently integrating the language game of objective, natural, behavioral science and the language game of unique, subjective conscious experience. That is, he has fallen into the long dark shadow of confusion cast by the Enlightenment Gap. In reference to yesterday’s blog, his sense making system fails to realize the difference between the Tree (objective behavioral science onto-epistemology) and the Coin (the onto-epistemology of idiographic subjective phenomenology) and how to coherently interrelate the two. Given the problem of psychology, it is easy to fall down this hole. Unfortunately, when you do, things can get very fuzzy, and you can end up concluding things like “objects have no causal powers” and “the moon does not exist until we look at it,” which are repeated quotes from Hoffman in the podcast.
What is going on here? Hoffman basically ends up arguing for a consciousness idealist version of the universe that we have seen a few philosophers, such as George Berkeley, advocate for. A similar argument appears in Bernardo Kastrup’s work. Rather than thinking about the world in terms of the correspondence theory of truth, such that a knower forms an image/belief/representation of the known and the relationship between the two is how to determine authentic or true knowledge, Hoffman argues that we need to “start with consciousness” and see everything — ontologically and epistemologically — through that lens. He makes a number of interesting points. However, in the end he comes up empty.
From the vantage point of UTOK, this discussion is evidence that our “descriptive metaphysical system” for sense making is all f*cked up. Hoffman at least highlights this for us. Prior to explaining how to sort out the issues, I should say that it is conceivable that there is some universal field that somehow relates to consciousness that we are missing (i.e., what I call “Scientific Worldview D” in this blog). After all, anything is possible. Although this could come into play, I think this is largely a side issue, as I see Hoffman’s problems and arguments as being much more epistemological and metaphysical than ontological in nature.
In simple terms, I think Hoffman lacks clarity about whether and when he is speaking from the vantage point of science (Tree) or idiographic subjective conscious experience (Coin). Or, more properly, the lack of clarity in modern scientific and philosophical sense-making on these issues has resulted in him confounding and conflating the two, and offering a dubious version of how they are linked. From a UTOK vantage point, Hoffman’s conclusions are great evidence for how confused things are.
Let’s start by getting clear on why the moon existed before our beliefs about it existed. We can start with the “beginning”. When we do, we can see clearly how and why Hoffman knows that spacetime is not fundamental. It comes from our objective naturalistic behavioral science knowledge. Here is a simple video and picture of “the first three minutes”, which is a nice educational video that Zak Ali shared with me:
This is well represented by the Tree of Knowledge System. We can call it “the Big Beginning”, and it is a point at which space and time are collapsed into (or, really, have yet to emerge from) what I call the “Pure Energy Information Singularity”.
Starting here allows us to be clear that there is an “implicate order” of Energy-Information beneath the standard Matter plane of existence, where things behave according to classical physics. (See here for a brief summary of how UTOK frames energy and information as “glue fields” that ground the universe. I see energy-information as the stuff of quantum fields, and it affords us a way to at least frame the mysteries of both quantum mechanics and general relativity and there disagreeable relation).
The confusions that have emerged from quantum mechanics and general relativity regarding the nature of reality are central to Hoffman’s argument. I sympathize here because I do believe that physics is screwed up in part because it does not understand the relationship between energy, behavior, and observer. However, although I sympathize, the UTOK frames these “metaphysical knower” issues quite differently than Hoffman.
We should also take a moment to say that saying spacetime is not fundamental is not equivalent to saying spacetime is not ontically real or does not exist. That is a strong reductive fallacy of the worst kind, and it seems Hoffman sometimes makes this jump. As Sean Carroll notes in The Big Picture, cats surely exist, even if they don’t make on to the standard theory. Hossenfelder makes a similar point about time itself. Indeed, as the above video depicts, the four fundamental forces “emerge” as separate causal fields at the Big Bang. Despite the fact that they emerge, electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear “force fields” are real and have real causal consequences. So too does the sun, the moon and everything else that exists in the Matter dimension of complexification. The UTOK bottom line is that Energy-Information underlies Matter and is foundational. In a nod to Hoffman, we can perhaps note how much more consistent “Energy Information” is with consciousness than the old Newtonian material or “matter in motion” view. And, consistent with Hoffman’s analyses, everyone should be clear that a mechanical billiard ball physical ontology is dead, and has been for more than 100 years.
However, although we get some help thinking in terms of Energy-Information instead of mechanical matter in motion as fundamental, this does not help validate Hoffman’s central point. Indeed, as soon as we embrace our knowledge that space and time emerge from an implicate order, we also end up essentially killing the “consciousness as fundamental” argument. The knowledge that we have that Matter is not fundamental but emerges out of Energy-Information is ALSO knowledge that we have that Matter does NOT emerge out Mind (or Life or Culture or consciousness). The Tree shows this clearly.
Shifting gears to gain some alignment with Hoffman, there are some ways in which human consciousness is fundamental. First, there is the Kantian sense that human phenomenology plays a huge role in epistemology. That is, what we know objectively through science is, in some ways, dependent on the human mind. It is the case that objective truth claims are achieved via an intersubjective process. Likewise, empiricism is, in some ways, grounded in observation, which in some ways is grounded in human consciousness. So, that is an important point. However, we have known about phenomenological epistemological constraints since Hume-into-Kant. And, as Roy Bhaskar correctly points out, one can readily overshoot with this interpretation and generate a “epistemic fallacy” that results in reducing epistemology to ontology, which is major metaphysical error. Hydrogen atoms do not exist simply because we name them and believe in them. Hoffman seems to be philosophically tangled up in these issues.
The second issue is the Tree/Coin difference given by UTOK. We can ask: What is fundamental to Donald Hoffman specifically and how he knows about the world in particular? His consciousness! Everything that exists for him goes through his subjective conscious experience of being. Of course, this is in some ways true for all of us at some level. Thus, there is some ways in which “consciousness is fundamental,” especially at the level of idiosyncratic, subjective, personal, perspectival existence — the Gregg or Donald way of being in the world. This unique perspectival view is represented in UTOK by the iQuad Coin (see the prior blog for more on this).
As shown by the problem of psychology, modern objective behavioral science has had enormous difficultly figuring out how to “see” subjective conscious experience. Why? Because of the language game rules it plays by. It emerges by trying to develop a third person, generalizable, quantifiable view from everywhere/nowhere. Modern science is explicitly designed to factor out subjective qualities, and render an “objective” view of behavior in nature. This is the epistemological reason that subjective conscious experience has been such a hard nut to crack. And it has lead to so much confusion in modernist science and philosophy circles.
Enter the UTOK sense and meaning making system. Its metamodern view of science and subjectivity. This is explicitly given by the Tree and Coin. The Tree maps the world via a natural behavioral scientific ontology. The Coin represents the unique particular self from the first person vantage point. Unlike modernity, the UTOK does not struggle in putting these together in a coherent metaphysical system.
To see how, we can first turn to the Periodic Table of Behavior. This is an extension of the ToK System that shows how the levels and dimensions of complexification are actually stacked in nature and mapped by the natural sciences. In looking at the PTB, we notice that subjective conscious experience is not on it. Rather, you see “Mind1” as representing Floor 8. This refers to the neurocognitively mediated processes that coordinate the behavior of the animal as a whole. Also, we see floor 11 as Mind3. This represents the self-conscious justification narratives that coordinate the behavior of persons. The PTB maps our naturalistic behavioral scientific ontology writ large.
Crucially, relative to the problem of psychology, it shows that “mental behavior” is a particular kind of behavior. This is something that psychology has completely f*cked with its nonsensical dualism of “behavior and mental processes”. To round this out, we can bring in The Map of Mind1,2,3. This boxes in the hard problem of consciousness with an effective descriptive metaphysical system that is grounded in a coherent ontology of the mental. In particular, it gives an effective map of human mental behavior.
Now we have a proper frame for subjective conscious experience aligned with a coherent natural behavioral science ontology. We can see from this view that the idea that all things reduce to Mind2 is quite nonsensical. And this is really what Hoffman is saying, and this is why scientist are rightly reluctant to follow his radical metaphysics. While “Mind2” boxes in subjective conscious experience from the vantage point of the science of human mental behavior, we still have the problem of a unique human subjective identity. That is represented by the iQuad Coin.
With the Tree and the Coin, the UTOK shows that we need a place holder for both (a) the general concept of subjective conscious experience in science and (b) the actual idiographic individual seeing the world. These are radically different. Objective behavioral science is as blind to unique idiographic qualitative experience as it is to ethics and morality. (This is, BTW, why we need the Garden in addition to the Tree and Coin, but that is a different blog.) From the vantage point of objective behavioral science, everything that makes you a unique individual that resides inside or is framed by your unique epistemological portal of subjective experience is basically considered as “error”! That is, science is about the generalized objective descriptions of the world. To the extent to which you are a unique individual with unique particular experiences is a “hole” in the language game of objective behavioral science. That is why we need to Coin to represent our unique subjective existence. (This, BTW, one of the main reasons why so many modernist scientists and philosophers are tangled up in knots by consciousness. If you have any doubts about this, see this series from Closer to the Truth, here.)
The bottom line is that I don’t think we need to throw away modern objective behavioral science and believe that the moon exists only because we look at it. Rather, we can say that the moon only exists for us when we as individuals look at it. That is a statement from the vantage point of the Coin. Thus, UTOK suggests that we can keep the map of cosmic evolution that science has given us, and simply place Hoffman’s unique particular subjective conscious experience of being on the Coin on the Tree. I am happy to hang next to him.
