Common sense doesn't lead very far when it comes to Big Questions

What is the ultimate nature of physical reality?
How do relativity theory and quantum mechanics relate?
Is our universe unique or one of many?
Do we live in a computer simulation?
What produces consciousness? 
How rare is consciousness in the cosmos?
Do humans possess free will?

These are Big Questions. Some bigger than others, but all are substantial when compared to lesser questions more amenable to being answered, if not now, at least in the not-so-distant future.

You'll note that I didn't include any questions about God, spirit, soul, heaven, and such. That's because while there's a non-zero chance supernatural entities exist, it's much more likely that -- given the lack of demonstrable evidence for them -- they're fantasies conjured up by the human mind.

So religious questions can't be Big Questions given that their subject almost certainly is a figment of the imagination. It's the same reason wondering How many angels can fit on the head of a pin? may be of interest to those who believe in angels, but for the rest of us, we've got better things to do.

Recently I wrote an initial post about Eric Schwitzgebel's book, The Weirdness of the World. It's an interesting philosophical examination into Big Questions about cosmology and the mind/consciousness.  His thesis is that every currently viable explanation of these areas ends up being (1) weird, and (2) dubious.

Meaning, basically, strange and unprovable. However, some explanations are less weird and dubious than others. Concerning consciousness, for example, Schwitzgebel says he leans toward materialism among the four broad types of explanations for the mind-world connection.

(1) materialist, according to which everything is fundamentally composed of mindless material stuff like quarks and photons,
(2) dualist, according to which material substances exist but so also do immaterial substances like eternal souls,
(3) idealist, according to which only immaterial substances exist, and
(4) a grab bag of views that reject all three alternatives or attempt to reconcile or compromise among them.

Common sense comes up fairly often in the first part of the book, which is as far as I've gotten. Common sense is both useful and useless when it comes to possible explanations of Big Questions.

Useful, in that common sense helps us discard excessively weird and dubious explanations such as those put forward by religious believers. Example: there's no need to wonder how the universe came to be, because the Bible says God created it in just a few days.

Useless, in that common sense doesn't have a great track record when it comes to Big Questions. Example: before Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, the notion that time slows down at high speeds would have seemed crazy, defying common sense. Yet, it's true. For a photon traveling at the speed of light, there is no time at all.

Here's some passages from The Weirdness of the World regarding common sense.

Of course, common sense is culturally variable. Societies differ in what they take for granted or regard as obviously correct. But this fact doesn't undercut my thesis. 

All well-elaborated metaphysical systems in the philosophical canon, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, conflict both with the common sense of their own milieu and with current Western anglophone common sense.

Kant's noumena, Plato's forms, Lewisian possible worlds, Buddhist systems of no-self and dependent origination -- these were never part of any society's common sense.

...The argument in this section is an "adductive" one; that is, an inference to the best explanation of an empirically observed fact. 

The empirical fact to be explained is that across the entire history of philosophy, all well-developed metatphysical systems -- all broad-ranging attempts to articulate the general structure of reality -- defy common sense. Every one of them is in some respect jaw-droppingly bizarre.

An attractive possible explanation of this striking empirical fact is that people's commonsensical metaphysical intuitions form an incoherent set, so that no well-developed metaphysical picture can adhere to them all.

...Certain fundamental questions about the nature of the mind and its relation to the apparently material world can't, it seems, be settled by empirical science in anything like its current state, nor by abstract reasoning. 

To address these questions, we must build partly on commonsense foundations. If common sense, too, is no reliable guide, we are unmoored. Without common sense as a constraint, the possibilities open up, bizarre and beautiful in their different ways -- and once open, they refuse to shut.

The metaphysics of mind tangles with fundamental cosmology, and every live option is bizarre and dubious. 

...However, as I argued in chapter 2, common sense is a flawed and contradictory guide to questions about the relation between mentality and the material world. While it's not unreasonable to resist bizarre philosophical conclusions on commonsense grounds, such resistance should acknowledge that what initially seems bizarre can sometimes ultimately prove to be true.

Conflict with common sense alone cannot decisively warrant the rejection of group consciousness if enough other considerations point in its favor. [Schwitzgebel entertains the possibility that the United States as a whole is conscious, as unlikely as this may seem.]

Comments

[777]

ALL this. yr subjects are solved
by the notion that
YOU are the Almighty Creator
in a state of voluntary amnesia

Congrat_ . . . mysteries solved

777

btw
any consciousness in the universe
The Universe is nothing than consciousness ( c.q. Regions )
You are in the nice possibility to EXIT all that

777

[Appreciative Reader]

"Common sense doesn't lead very far when it comes to Big Questions"

Absolutely. I think I've posted this at least once already, in response to 24-hours-more (I think I misremember his pseudonym, something like that), and maybe more more than once overall. The bit from Dawkins' God Delusion, where from his standpoint of an evolutionary biologist he very convincingly argues that our common sense is ultimately a faculty we've evolved, to help us navigate the conditions we happened to find ourselves in. Which for the most would be the savannahs of Africa, and maybe to an extent the colder climes us homo sapiens migrated to after. Therefore, our common sense merely reflects what would be a broad-brush quick response to situations and circumstances we evolved in. So that when it comes to aspects of reality completely outside of that narrow range of circumstances (that we evolved in), our common sense is not a good guide at all.

All of which is kind of the whole point of the scientific method.

---------

"Conflict with common sense alone cannot decisively warrant the rejection of group consciousness if enough other considerations point in its favor. [Schwitzgebel entertains the possibility that the United States as a whole is conscious, as unlikely as this may seem.]"

Haha, no! Absolutely not! That thing about the US being conscious, at least if he means it literally. (And if he means it only metaphorically, then his bringing in this bit about how common sense does not help us with situations outside of a very narrow set of circumstances and ideas, is completely irrelevant.)

The fact that we don't go by common sense when it comes to situations outside of a fairly narrow set of circumstances (of the kind we evolved in), does not mean that we jettison common sense altogether, and nor does it mean that when we justifiedly leave the crutch of common sense, then any random speculation is as good as any other.

The fact is that what we do use to guide us in forming conclusions is evidence, and more precisely the whole scientific method thing. That precept does hold: Extraordinary claims need to be backed up with extraordinary evidence.

If this guy literally believes that the US is conscious, then sorry, he's a total complete loon. (And if he merely means that metaphorically, or if he merely throws that out as some kind of random speculation, then fine, he can do that certainly, but like I said, then his bringing up how inadequate is common sense in navigating situations completely outside the narrow range we evolved in, is completely irrelevant.)

[Noneofusreallyknow]

“non-zero” is a mighty big word.

[Life magazine]

Fact:
Followers of RSSB are abnormally gullible people with low IQs.