In fact, the more you ponder it, the more inevitable it seems. Evolution gave us the cognition we needed, nothing more. To the degree we relied on metacognition and casual observation to inform our self-conception, the opportunistic nature of our cognitive capacities remained all but invisible, and we could think ourselves the very rule, stamped not just the physical image of God, but in His cognitive image as well. Like God, we had no back side, nothing to render us naturally contingent. We were the motionless centre of the universe: the earth, in a very real sense, was simply enjoying our ride. The fact of our natural, evolutionarily adventitious componency escaped us because the intuition of componency requires causal information, and metacognition offered us none.
The basic gist of it seems to be that we don’t have, and ought not expect evolved systems like ourselves to have, the cognitive capability to understand our cognitive limitations, at least not without information about the causes of those limitations that comes from something other than “metacognition”.
I’m not sure what Bakker means by “metacognition”; if he means this I’m pretty confident he’s just wrong.
In fact, the more you ponder it, the more inevitable it seems. Evolution gave us the cognition we needed, nothing more. To the degree we relied on metacognition and casual observation to inform our self-conception, the opportunistic nature of our cognitive capacities remained all but invisible, and we could think ourselves the very rule, stamped not just the physical image of God, but in His cognitive image as well. Like God, we had no back side, nothing to render us naturally contingent. We were the motionless centre of the universe: the earth, in a very real sense, was simply enjoying our ride. The fact of our natural, evolutionarily adventitious componency escaped us because the intuition of componency requires causal information, and metacognition offered us none.
-Scott Bakker
This looks like it might mean something. Can anyone dumb it down to the point where I can understand it?
The basic gist of it seems to be that we don’t have, and ought not expect evolved systems like ourselves to have, the cognitive capability to understand our cognitive limitations, at least not without information about the causes of those limitations that comes from something other than “metacognition”.
I’m not sure what Bakker means by “metacognition”; if he means this I’m pretty confident he’s just wrong.