Embrace uncertainty, shun dogma -- be a possibilian!

Dichotomies are limiting. Also, unrealistic. Theist/atheist. Believer/skeptic. Conservative/liberal. Follower/leader. Human/animal. Matter/energy.

The world comes in a lot more flavors than just vanilla and chocolate. There's all sorts of shades of gray between black and white. Reality doesn't completely conform to how we Homo sapiens' conceptualize it.

This is one reason I like David Eagleman's "possibilian" philosophy so much. (I've blogged about it before here and here.)

Eagleman is a scientist. He recognizes that the scientific method is more than passively open-minded; science also actively seeks out new possibilities, creatively wondering "what if... ."

Yet this doesn't mean giving credence to every crazy notion that comes along. Possibilities are hypotheses. If a possibility can't be confirmed by solid evidence, it remains what it is.

I just watched a twenty-two minute You Tube video of Eagleman giving an entertaining talk at a TEDx, meaningTED-like, conference. (Thanks, Dogribb, for sharing this link in a blog comment.)

The guy is lively, sharp, humorous, and youthful-appearing. He's one of those doctors that I encounter more and more frequently now that I'm over sixty: looking like they're not out of high school yet.

 

I was inspired by David Eagleman's presentation.

His basic attitude toward life, reality, and the cosmos is pretty much the same as mine. Explore possibilities, but know the difference between what's only a product of human imagination and what's truly "out there."

Out there needed to put between quotation marks because everything we know and experience is in here -- within our brains. Eagleman, a neuroscientist, says that consciousness is one of the many mysteries which science hasn't yet been able to unravel.

And may never do so. Uncertainty almost certainly always will be part of the human condition.

We may never understand how our universe came to be or how our brains are able to experience it. As Eagleman says in the video, the human brain is the most complex entity we know about.

Maybe, he observes, one day we could put together a model of the brain akin to assembling a trillion piece Lego set. Yet at what point could we conclude that what we've constructed knows what it is like to taste some mint-flavored hummus?

(Not the example he gave, but I just tried some that my wife experimented with making. We both agreed that the experiment never should be repeated, as minty hummus turned out to elicit an ugh from us.)

This world is amazing.

Every day we should look upon life with wide-open possibility-seeking eyes, embracing both what we know and what we don't -- the latter being a much vaster portion of the cosmic ocean that we're floating in.

I liked how Eagleman ends his video:

Try to lead a life that's free from dogma, full of awe and wonder, and to celebrate possibility, and to praise uncertainty.

Religion, he says, can't be embraced because there's no evidence of a supernatural being or the many other sorts of divinities hypothesized by the world's religions. Yet a rigid form of atheism also isn't defensible, because we simply don't know what lies beyond the horizon of current scientific knowledge.

So that leaves us with possibilities, a great place to be. You can explore Eagleman's notion of possibility space via various links on his web site.

Comments

[Marina]

Wow, this site could be a ‘Possibilian’ site – all different possibilities.
My first reaction was ‘oh no. Here’s the science lesson. Old man with glasses....boring!’How narrow.

What a great video!
I thoroughly enjoyed it. I shall add that story to my others in my egg basket. My new word is POSSIBILLIAN.

Can you imagine sitting beside David Eagleman on a plane journey. How time would ‘fly’. We could travel the universe, from one end to the other, something that an aeroplane could never do. Are we just amazing or what????

It has opened brain nerves and endings and what have you, in my brain.

I feel like a child who has for the first time in their life(well maybe I have been here before but have forgotten), being brought into a big major store at Christmas time and is over stimulated by all the toys (possibilities) that they never thought existed.
They look at toys (things/ situations) that they never had seen before (other possibilities/ ways of looking at things). Picking things up and then dropping them for some other toy. Mesmerising! Nothing been a ‘problem’ until they grasp unto something and want it, and then cry if it is taken away from them.

And I like his take on ‘cowboy up’. Yes it is good when you come to a red traffic light to make a committed stance and stop.

It reminds me of the film ‘Blazing Saddles’. The bad guys are after the good guys. The good guys are in a desert and put up a tepee tent and put something like 5 cents on the outside of it. The bad guys come along and of all the desert that is available, they stop and say something like ‘we need to go back and get some quarters’. No other possibility??? :))

It is usually when we desire something to be a certain way, out of a need to be right, to be liked, to be worthy that we close off possibilities. We no longer see things as possibly any other way. We want to hold on to our way, usually out of fear. So alas, we grip, we cling, we defend, we fight, we argue, we ignore.......

It is a great way of saying – be open and more than that......

I just had a funny thought – what if I had this possibilian thing back when I was at college.
Can you imagine? You are sitting there with a maths paper and you haven’t a clue as to the questions, never mind the answers. Oh all these equations; this equation = this and so on.

Would it have been possible to pass, even if you didn’t know the ‘standard correct answers?’

Would it have been possible to right a note on the back of the paper saying something like:

“Dear teacher,

The answer to all of these questions are a combination of the numbers, letters and signs below

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
A b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

( ) - = +.......

There are a numerous combinations and not just ‘one’ right answer.
I am sure you will see this as true when you look at other students’ answers and the different possibilities that may arise. Einstein may not have the only way to solve these equations. You may see this as a manipulation, but could the possibility be there that it is just as real?

Before you mark my paper, could you please be open to the possibility that you have taken Einstein’s word on this over mine. If you have studied Einstein and you to have understood it from that perspective could you at least see that it may be possible that my answer is equally as true.......

Ok, in the end it may be more ‘stories’ and instead of arguing about 2 sides as he put it; God V No God, it at least will be more interesting and more amusing if we can be in the middle ground(more possibilities), until maybe we see it as no story....possibly.....or not.

He finished brilliantly with having the possibility of

“celebrating possibilities & to praise uncertainty”

and the 3 best words science has given us:

I don’t know!

Thoroughly enjoyed it!!!

Marina

[Steve Mays]

I really enjoyed this video. You continue to be my best source for thought-provoking ideas. Thanks

[Nietzsche]

Marina try to come up with a different right answer to the equation 1+1=?

I think you missed the point but I do recognize your way of thinking. It gives a feeling that you are free from material or logical bounds but in reality we are not although we can forget that for a while with our life stiles. Try flying, in imagination it is easy ;)

[Marina]

Nietzsche, I find it amusing (after the first feeling of annoyance) as to why you always feel the need to correct me in some way.

For instance: I think you missed the point but I do recognize your way of thinking.

What point would that be Nietzsche?

Could it be possible that I get the point from my 'own' point?

Could it be possible that there is more 'points' than yours or mine?

Could it be possible that to me 1 + 1 could = 3 (maybe if I split one of the '1's in half?

What point did I miss? :)))

Now I never would have thought to use my imagination before!!! And there I was thinking that I was flying across the universe in my imagination with David Eagleman.....I learn something new every day. And it is always subject to change!

Marina ;))

[Marina]

PS Nietzsche,

1 + 1 = 1

Could this be another posibility?
If you have one and add some other one to the one, it is still all one - if you follow ;))

Marina

[Alex]

I'm just wondering:

What is the difference between Possibilianism and Weak Agnosticism (I don't know whether God exists or not, and I don't know whether I could know one day (contrast with the strong form: "human could never know whether God exists or not")?

What is the difference between Possibilianism and Freethought?

I just fear that this is another old thing being wrapped in a new word, forgetting that it actually has been around for a long time already. (I still don't undertand why Universism came out while Naturalism has been around for a long long time.)

[Alex]

"The possibilian perspective is distinguished from agnosticism in that it consists of an active exploration of novel possibilities and an emphasis on holding multiple hypotheses at once when no data is available to privilege one position over the others. Possibilianism is understood to be consonant with the "scientific temperament" of creativity and tolerance for multiple ideas when there is a lack of data."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sum_(book)

Okay. I know now its difference from Agnosticism.

But..."holding multiple hypotheses at once when no data is available to privilege one position over the others" is simply...science. Just as the next sentence implies. Why not call science science?

[Marina]

For me possibilion:

- anything may be possible and nothing may be possible.

- the paradox, allowing to go beyond the mind / experiences into the unknown, the Not Knowing or staying in the known

- Both sides of the coin

- middle of the road, not taking a stance on right or wrong

- balance, openess, letting go letting flow

Marina

[Nietzsche]

Marina
Glad you didn't try to solve the problem through introspection. You are learning! :)
Now forget about the oneness this here is duality where 1+1=2 (damn did I give it away ;))

[Nietzsche]

ps
if 1+1=1 then 2=1
I and the guru are 2 so I and the guru are 1.
So since I am the guru I suggest you obey me and say that
1+1=2
qed ;)

[Marina]

Yuck Nietzsche,

I dont wanna learn!!! I am trying to drop all learning. Trying being the stinky word.

I hear you loud and clear 1 + 1 = 1.

Marina :))

[Marina]

ps Nietzsche,

Neglected to tell you directly, I lol lol lol'd at your possibilities!!!

Now why didn't I think of it that way!
Ok you win this round. Ding, Ding, Ding :)))

Marina ;)

[Alex]

I would like to concentrate for a moment on the word "possibilianism".

Possibilian is a person. We seldom (if at all) make a word by adding "-ism" to a person, to form "person-ism".

So the theory a theist holds is not "theistism", but theism.

So the theory a possibilian hold is probably not "possibilianism", I guess, but "possibilism".

Or even "possibility" (but this might confuse with the common noun in daily use.)

Please forgive me; mind wandering is my hobby.

[Nietzsche]

Marina
I did not feel the need to correct you. I thought you missed a point and reacted, I could also have chosen not to react but I flipped a coin :)
In your later posts I change my point of view you might get the point.
Into the space of possibilities you can think of anything that is the point. But outside the space of the possibilities it does not make sense to think of anything.
The author seems to define the space of possibilities as the space of the unknown to science. But we should not add to that the space of the unknown to us. Perhaps this is a weakness of possibilianism that you should approach this space from above where it is clear that no one knows. It is difficult to approach this space from below.
I think it is save to just attend a church now and then to get an idea of where the boundaries of this space are and then think of something new and creative.
However I do feel an itch when Occams razor comes to mind.

[Nietzsche]

ps
from a logical incorrect assumption you can arrive at any conclusion. From a correct assumption you can only arrive at the truth conclusion. So when in doubt see if the conclusions make sense :)