Abstract
Some philosophers have argued that, owing to our humble evolutionary origins, some mysteries of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say that humans are ‘cognitively closed’ to some parts of the universe, or that some problems will forever remain ‘mysteries’? First, we distinguish between representational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and imaginative understanding (immediate, intuitive comprehension of those representations), as well as between different modalities of cognitive limitation. Next, we look at tried-and-tested strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations. In particular, we consider how metaphors and analogies can extend the reach of the human mind, by allowing us to make sense of bizarre and counterintuitive things in terms of more familiar things. Finally, we argue that this collection of mind-extension devices is combinatorial and open-ended, and that therefore pronouncements about cognitive closure and about the limits of human inquiry are premature.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This chapter is based on an earlier paper published in Biology & Philosophy: Boudry, M., Vlerick, M., & Edis, T. (2020). The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them. Biology & Philosophy, 35(1), 1–16.
- 2.
To a large extent, the epistemic pessimism of the new mysterians recapitulates arguments developed by German naturphilosophen and Victorian scientists in the nineteenth century, in particular during the so-called Ignorabimusstreit (Tennant, 2007).
- 3.
In our previous work (Vlerick and Boudry 2017) we called these predicaments, respectively, “representational closure” and “psychological closure”. We have now decided to opt for a slightly different terminology, because the adjective “psychological” was too broad for our purposes.
- 4.
In his original formulation, McGinn wrote that “A type of mind M is cognitively closed with respect to a property P (or theory T) if and only if the concept-forming procedures at M’s disposal cannot extend to a grasp of P (or an understanding of T)?” (McGinn, 1989, p. 350). By adding these parenthetical asides, McGinn suggests some rough equivalence, or a mere terminological difference. But there is a crucial difference between the claim that we cannot form a representation of some property P, and the claim that we cannot understand or grasp the representation itself.
- 5.
According to the “extended mind” hypothesis in philosophy of mind (Clark and Chalmers 1998), the human mind literally extends beyond the skin/skull boundary, encompassing notebooks, computer screens, maps, file drawers, and so forth. But one does not need to embrace this radical philosophical view to appreciate how artefacts “extend” the reach of our minds.
- 6.
Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675: https://bit.ly/2hIzhIe
- 7.
This thought experiment was earlier used in an essay for The Conversation (Boudry 2019).
- 8.
It is curious that mysterians have not explored quantum mechanics as a possible example of a domain to which we are cognitively closed. This might perhaps be attributed to the fact that quantum mechanics is notoriously demanding, to the extent that even confidence about its status as a mystery might be hard to come by.
- 9.
ΔxΔp ≥ ℏ/2 is really ΔxΔk ≥ ½ for waves in general, combined with the de Broglie relationship of p = ℏk.
- 10.
In this respect, a more consistent (and radical) form of mysterianism can be found in Kriegel (2003), who maintains a strict second-order ignorance about the reasons for our sense of mystery.
Bibliography
Bao, L., & Redish, E. F. (2002). Understanding probabilistic interpretations of physical systems: A prerequisite to learning quantum physics. American Journal of Physics, 70(3), 210–217.
Boudry, M. (2019). Human intelligence: Have we reached the limit of knowledge? The Conversation, October 11, 2019. bit.ly/32KodQ6
Boudry, M., & Pigliucci, M. (2013). The mismeasure of machine: Synthetic biology and the trouble with engineering metaphors. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(4), 660–668.
Boudry, M., & Pigliucci, M. (2016). Vindicating science – By bringing it down. In K. Rutten, S. Blancke, & R. Soetaert (Eds.), The culture of science: Scientific understanding & cultural representation (pp. 243–258). Purdue University Press.
Boudry, M., Vlerick, M., & Edis, T. (2020). The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them. Biology and Philosophy, 35(1), 1–16.
Boyer, P., & Barrett, H. C. (2005). Domain specificity and intuitive ontology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 96–118). Wiley.
Brown, T. L. (2003). Making truth: Metaphor in science. University of Illinois press.
Campbell, D. T. (1997). From evolutionary epistemology via selection theory to a sociology of scientific validity. Evolution and cognition, 3(1), 5–38.
Carey, S., & Spelke, E. (1994). Domain-specific knowledge and conceptual change. In L. Hirschfeld & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind domain specificity in cognition and culture. Cambridge University Press.
Chomsky, N. (1988). Language and problems of knowledge: The Managua lectures (Vol. 16). The MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2000). New horizons in the study of language and mind. Cambridge University Press.
Chomsky, N. (2014). Science, mind, and limits of understanding. Paper presented at the The Science and Faith Foundation (STOQ). From https://chomsky.info/201401__/
Clark A and Chalmers D (1998) The extended mind. Analysis:7–19.
Condit, C. M., Bates, B. R., Galloway, R., et al. (2002). Recipes or blueprints for our genes? How contexts selectively activate the multiple meanings of metaphors. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(3), 303–325.
De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2010a). Paley’s iPod. The cognitive basis of the design argument within natural theology. Zygon. Journal of Religion and Science, 45(3), 665–684. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2010.01120.x
De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2010b). Science as structured imagination. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 44(1), 29–44.
Dennett, D. C. (2009). Darwin’s “strange inversion of reasoning”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(Supplement 1), 10061–10065.
Dennett, D. C. (2017). From bacteria to Bach and Back: The evolution of minds. Penguin Books, Limited.
Feynman, R. (2017). The character of physical law. MIT press.
Flanagan, O. J. (1992). Consciousness reconsidered. MIT Press.
Fodor, J. (1983). The modularity of mind: An essay on faculty psychology. The MIT Press.
Gelman, S. A. (2003). The essential child. Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. Oxford University Press.
Gelman, S. A., & Rhodes, M. (2012). Two-thousand years of stasis: How psychological essentialism impedes evolutionary understanding. In K. S. Rosengren, S. K. Brem, M. E. Evans, & G. M. Sinatra (Eds.), Evolution challenges. Integrating research and practice in teaching and learning about evolution (pp. 3–21). Oxford University Press.
Giere, R. N. (2002). Scientific cognition as distributed cognition. In P. Carruthers, S. P. Stich, & M. Siegal (Eds.), The cognitive basis of science (pp. 285–299). Cambridge.
Goldberg, S. (1984). Understanding relativity.Birkhauser Verlag
Goldman, A. I. (1999). Knowledge in a social world. Clarendon Press.
Healey, R. (1999). Holism and nonseparability in physics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-holism/
Henrich, J. (2015). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton University Press.
Kelemen, D., & Rosset, E. (2009). The human function compunction: Teleological explanation in adults. Cognition, 111(1), 138–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.01.001
Kriegel, U. (2003). The new mysterianism and the thesis of cognitive closure. Acta Analytica, 18(30–31), 177–191.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books.
Longino, H. (2015). The social dimensions of scientific knowledge. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
McCauley, R. N. (2000). The naturalness of religion and the unnaturalness of science. In F. Keil & R. Wilson (Eds.), Explanation and cognition (pp. 61–85). Cambridge.
McGinn, C. (1989). Can we solve the Mind--Body problem? Mind, 98(391), 349–366.
McGinn, C. (1993). Problems in philosophy: The limits of inquiry. Blackwell Oxford
McGinn, C. (1994). The problem of philosophy. Philosophical Studies, 76(2), 133–156.
McGinn, C. (2000). The mysterious flame: Conscious minds in a material world. Basic Books.
Mermin, N. D. (2009). It’s about time: Understanding Einstein’s relativity. Princeton University Press.
Nelkin, D. (2001). Molecular metaphors: The gene in popular discourse. Nature Reviews. Genetics, 2(7), 555–559.
Newton, I., & Cohen, I. B. (2004). A treatise of the system of the world. Courier Corporation.
Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. Norton.
Reiss, M. J. (2009). The relationship between evolutionary biology and religion. Evolution, 63(7), 1934–1941. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00714.x
Rescher, N. (2006). Epistemetrics. Cambridge University Press.
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press.
Shanks, N. (2004). God, the devil, and Darwin : A critique of intelligent design theory. Oxford university press.
Singh, C., Belloni, M., et al. (2006). Improving students’ understanding of quantum mechanics. Physics Today, 59(8), 43.
Smith, H. (2003). Beyond the postmodern mind: The place of meaning in a global civilization. Quest Books.
Stich, S. P. (1990). The fragmentation of reason : Preface to a pragmatic theory of cognitive evaluation. MIT press.
Tennant, N. (2007). Mind, mathematics and the Ignorabimusstreit. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 15(4), 745–773.
Thagard, P. (2012). The cognitive science of science: Explanation, discovery, and conceptual change. Mit Press.
Tomasello, M. (2001). Cultural transmission a view from chimpanzees and human infants. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32(2), 135–146.
Vlerick, M., & Boudry, M. (2017). Psychological closure does not entail cognitive closure. Dialectia, 71(1), 101–115.
Wolpert, L. (1992). The unnatural nature of science. Harvard University Press.
Wolpert, L., & Skinner, D. (1993). The triumph of the embryo. Oxford university press.
Zachos, C. K., Fairlie, D. B., et al. (2005). Quantum mechanics in phase space: An overview with selected papers. World Scientific.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Manvir Singh, Daniel Dennett, Stefaan Blancke and several participants during a seminar at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science at Leuven University, for offering useful feedback on earlier versions of our argument.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Boudry, M., Vlerick, M., Edis, T. (2022). Demystifying Mysteries. How Metaphors and Analogies Extend the Reach of the Human Mind. In: Wuppuluri, S., Grayling, A.C. (eds) Metaphors and Analogies in Sciences and Humanities. Synthese Library, vol 453. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90688-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90688-7_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90687-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90688-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)