Are Humans Built to Justify or Investigate?

If human beings have difficulty accepting data that runs counter to our models of the world, what is the role of data and justification in one's belief system?

One important aspect of consciousness is that it is the only direct experience that we have. For everything else, we depend on data — information for which we have no direct, personal experience.

When it comes to “models of the world” and being utterly honest about them, it is easy to observe how people vote with their beliefs in the available data to construct a model in which they can abide, even if this model conflicts with their own direct experience (consciousness).

Many examples exist. One could be condemned by the Catholic Church, for example, as Galileo was in 1633, for having a heliocentric understanding of the universe. Today’s Flat Earth believers have decided that their direct conscious experience coincides with certain physical, measured observations that support their belief, in spite of other data that describe a more, er, well-rounded belief system. Religions are full of what we might call “unscientific” constructions, which may be a feature rather than a bug.

Having one’s conscious experience align with “the data” is a source of comfort for many. “Settled science” (there’s no such thing!) tends to be quite attractive for those in need of comfort and stability. On the other hand, challenging the resultant beliefs and understanding of “the data” with the objective of changing minds becomes very difficult to do successfully, even when “the data” change to support a very different novel understanding. Generally, it’s harder for non-scientists to let go of a belief or understanding when that belief is challenged by new data, as Galileo must have realized.

Music, as an example of a direct experience of consciousness, also offers a great example of how physically measurable data fail. That is, although we can determine frequencies, beats per minute, timbre, volume (loudness or softness) in the music, and monitor the activity of the listener’s human brain, heart, lungs, and such, then assemble all this data into an evidence-based statement of how the measurable elements of a certain music act and how a certain human responds to that music, we still fail to understand how that can be! Still, we assemble this feat of measurement into a kind of dataset-with-caveats and soldier on in search of more understanding.

Through repeated applications, we can strengthen that music dataset in hopes of enhancing its potential for being predictive. That is, “play Song X for people and they will reliably respond in Y ways.” Fortunately, as we know from the current research on this topic, we will arrive at the somewhat discouraging observation that the Song X dataset is in conflict with another dataset that shows people respond differently to the same musical stimulus and, for all our measuring, we have not achieved a way to justify an outcome for either set of data.

While that might be a dead end for some, it is in fact an invitation for others. What if we were to expand the dataset of all responses to a particular music to include measurable data and self-reported qualia? That is, what would happen to our current understanding of music if, in addition to the physical measurements of its data, we add the non-physical direct experiences of listeners or musicians as they hear the music…consciously?

Indeed, to really “get it right” in this example, we might suggest that one’s personal, conscious experience of music ought to the be only “data” we consider if we are truly interested in pursuing “pure” research. Learning to observe quale is a much different skill than recording measurements, isn’t it? And, as much as it concerns researchers when physical measurements and self-reported qualia cannot be predicted reliably, there’s not a great swell of interest in helping sharpen the self-reports of the one thing we can experience directly: consciousness.

(Musimorphic has begun to assemble a more qualia-based dataset for music, and you’re invited to participate. The idea here is that the same music often has different meaning and emotional content for us depending on when and how and sometimes where we hear it, so why not collect all of that into a dataset? In any case, you are welcome to provide your data as often as you like at this link.)

Measuring the effects of music, however, is not the only data-based problem to solve in our changing understanding of measurement and expanding awareness of consciousness.

Thanks to quantum mechanics, the data-based foundations of the universe as we understand it are beginning to trend away from measurable “facts” towards qualia-informed observations. In simple terms, binary thinking of the sort so valued by the ancient Greeks is beginning to dissolve around the edges, because it no longer works as well as it once did.

For example, is this particular photon I observe either a particle or a wave, and why does it change states based on my observation of it? Does its behavior over time determine how I see it now, or does my attempt to see it now change its behavior over the time it took to become observed by me in this here and now?

These observable (and thus “measurable”) data defy binary thinking, which gives me hope for a future in which any Flat Earth believers that remain can live alongside the rest of us without either side coercing the other or needing to justify its point of view. Instead of arguing over what belief system is best supported by the “the data,” perhaps it makes sense to improve the ability of consciousness to more accurately interact with the physical world, unbound by historical “data” that may very well contradict even an unskilled consciousness and challenge any resident belief system(s).

“Keeping an open mind” is one aspect of this exercise in discomfort, for it may be quite uncomfortable to surrender one’s beliefs when new evidence becomes accessible through direct, conscious experience. Practices in multi-dimensional thinking may help smooth the transitions in beliefs (there will doubtless be many), and it feels most helpful to encourage exploration of modalities that expand our awareness beyond the available data. (For a brief and compelling sojourn in a binary universe, please see Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, penned in the 1880s by Edwin Abbott Abbott.)

Music may be a superb modality to teach Earthlings how to expand consciousness in this way: mental, emotional, and physical measurements in music combine with the currently unmeasurable and yet undeniably important qualia of music in ways that offer expansion of consciousness without a need to engage either a belief system or justification of one based on data. Would learning to “think” in that way — to become conscious in that way — have a positive, measurable effect?

We aren’t the first to say “yes!”