In the past I’ve struggled with depression and so have some of my friends. After my climb out of that pit I encountered African philosopher, Pius Mosima, during a Radboud Reflects lecture, you can see his talk here. His views on depression made me think about African philosophy, the truth that it holds and how it can be consolidated with Western philosophies such as existentialism, nihilism and absurdism. It also gave me many handles to deal with though mental situations, including helping a friend out of his depression. Because it had such an impact on my life, I wanted to take a bit of time to review the insight that I got and how it helps me view the world in a different perspective. In a later blog I also want to write about how this has affected my views on storytelling, but that’ll come in another post. Let’s first dive into western philosophy.

Western philosophy and Value

I’m here mainly concerned with the existentialism, nihilism and absurdism streams of western philosophy. In particular, I want to focus on their view of intrinsic value. In various degrees and forms these reject or limit the intrinsic value of the world around us, either of parts of it or as a whole. This is, of course, not true for all branches of these philosophies, but it is the vessel suited for exploring my insights based on African philosophy.

For now I want to focus on the hypothesis that life and objects around us have no intrinsic value; that the universe is a bubbling soup of atoms and molecules that randomly produced humans. What value does anything have if it is all just molecules and atoms?

To give us more tools to deal with the universe and the world, I want to introduce the difference between the perceived world and the physical world.

The perceived world is the world as we experience it. It is a personal world which is different between you and I. It is the world we can interact with. It only exists of what an individual can sense with their senses, and thus is highly personal.

Contrary, the physical world is the hypothetical world that gives us the impressions we perceive in the perceived world. There is no way for us to verify that the physical world is even remotely similar to the perceived world or that it is shared between all humans (or that more humans exist). There might be colors we can’t see and sounds we can’t hear. In fact, physics tells us that these colors and sounds exist (infrared, ultraviolet, ultrasound). But if for some reason the perceived world is a distorted view of the physical world, we have no way of proving that there is such a distortion. If there is a change, it could that we are hallucinating, or that the rules of space and time have deformed in ways we thought impossible; and if there is no change we can’t tell if it was different from other people to begin with.

In short the perceived world is what each individual hears, sees and feels, while the physical world is whatever is real that causes these perceptions. There is no way we can verify the form or shape of the physical as different from the perceived world, because we are only privy to our own perceived world and any experimentation or communication must take place in the physical world itself.

This is an essential problem because the only way I can be sure of perceived world being in any way real and similar to the physical world is through blind faith. I must trust that my world is real, as much as that I must trust that the laws of physics stay the same. This could not even be countered with “But, we can do experiments, share results, communicate with other people”, because even the people populating my perceived world might be fake, or our shared experiences might be manipulated such that we each experience opposite outcomes. This leaves us with knowing nothing about anything around us for certain.

“I think, therefore I am” - Descartes

This is the famous tenet from Descartes. It is the essential existential thesis. The fact that I think and can perceive my perceived world means that in some form, in some way, I must exist. I may not know anything for sure about the physical world. It may be populated by pink elephants riding dirt bikes, but I exist and thus I exist in it. All of my perceived world may be false, a delusion, but my existence isn’t. This is a kernel of truth that is absolute.

African philosophy

This was the point where I found myself philosophically before Pius Mosima’s lecture, with no guarantee of reality. Pius explains how African philosophy follows from the idea of Ubuntu which I will translate here as

“I am, because you are.”

This tenet evokes Descartes’ tenet. And, it got me thinking. It is a reciprocal tenet; “I am because you are” also means that “you are, because I am”. It somehow takes a multiple to create existence and when there is existence it is a multiple.

This philosophy is probably derived from communal life. In small groups you live for each other and the group helps you live. The philosophy of Ubuntu is usually taken to its extreme to encompass the world. But, regardless of where it comes from or how it comes to fruition the fact remains that we must question its truth.

During my depression I sometimes thought of suicide, of ending it all. And, I hold some uncommon views on it. I don’t mind suicide as an act. For me it is a conscious choice, a freedom and liberty to live my life as I will and to end it as I will. The fact that it is an option is a great relief to me. On the flip side, I never did commit suicide.

Suicide has fallout. My life might be gone, but my parents and my sister would still be alive, and they would need to deal with that fallout, both emotionally and physically. In this sense suicide would be a selfish act. And, hurting my family was part of what held me back.

But what has this to do with African philosophy? And, how can it be selfish if I am unsure of the existence of my family? Let me deal with the latter first, as it will lead into the answer of the former.

I cannot know for certain what is real and not real, and that extends to my parents and my sister. I cannot know if they are real or fake, but taking the chance that they are fake would still be selfish because I cannot know if they are fake or not. These elements of my perceived world I cannot just dismiss as fake or real. This leaves me in an awkward position. I cannot know, both fake and real are possible.

But now it would be a fair question to ask: does it matter? Does it matter that my parents are real or fake? Does it matter that my sister is real or fake? If it is impossible for me to tell the difference, then they might as well be real to me. And this is the basic existential thesis about the perceived world. It is real, because it is everything that will ever influence you other than you yourself. If you are pricked with a pin in the perceived world but not in the physical world, then it hurts because your pain sensors tell you it was a pin prick. If you see boring gray elephants where in the physical world they are bright pink, then they are still boring (though you ought to change your opinion about elephants). This is part of the truth of “I am because you are”. If we cannot distinguish between real and fake, we might as well treat each other as real because in my perceived world people will react as real.

So on the surface this tenet or rather its partner “You are because I am” confirms the existence of the perceived world. When we think of “I am because you are” in terms of the perceived world, then we are handing the perceived world the power of our existence. Somehow the perceived world holds some influence over me. This is at odds with the previous concept of intrinsic value. We have the claim there is no intrinsic value in the perceived world. Yet the Ubuntu maxim puts all the existential power in the perceived world. How can we consolidate this?

A.I.

This was the question I asked myself after Pius Mosima’s lecture. And, it bugged me for months. The idea that there is little natural to no natural value in objects in the world around us rings true to me, but at the same time I recognize a kinship with other human beings. I care for my parents and my sister as well as a lot of others. And what is intrinsic value if I cannot be sure that the perceived world exists as I experience it?

These questions accompanied me during my frequent walks. It was during one of these walks that I hit upon the answer, or at least my answer. I’ve been interested in AI and human reasoning for a while. And, from experience with those fields I’ve come to understand that neural networks in AI and the human brain perform very similarly. Similar is key here, because they are not the same. There are differences, but the way neural networks developed may inform us on how our brains behave.

First thing to note about brains and neural networks is that both train by updating themselves. A neural network is not trained by looking at the entire data set in one go, but rather by looking at pieces. Similarly, our brain is not trained by taking in all the information at once, but rather by taking in small pieces at a time. Neural networks and our brain also can optimize to achieve a target. There are plenty of sports people who perform amazing feats of accuracy. Whether it is in timing or spatial exactness, we humans do some pretty awesome stuff, and it all happens through piecemeal learning. So, let’s take a look at how a neural network does this.

Neural networks optimize through a loss function. This is a function which provides two things. First, a sense of distance to the target, and second, the direction of optimization. These two are both necessary, because without a sense of distance it is impossible to tell if the network is close to the target, and without a direction of optimization the network will just randomly guess parameters until it gets close by chance; meaning the network will hardly ever perform better and instead will most of the time perform randomly.

We see similar behavior when neural networks learn as when humans do. We have a sense of being close, or at least we try to establish such a sense, and we tend to slowly get better over time instead of getting random results until we happen upon the right way to think. This suggests that humans also have some sort of loss function.

However, trying to establish what our loss function is can be very difficult. We have various different moral systems. People react differently to different emotions. For every possible suggestion of what could serve as a loss function there is probably an exception to the rule.

Instead, we should perhaps think of people, not as having a loss function, but as having a loss system. A system that is more flexible, and a system that we have some sense of control over. There are things we focus on and get better at, but there are also things we do every day but pay no attention to that we also don’t get better at. I still burn my fingers every now and then on a hot cup of tea despite the fact that I really should know better considering all the experience I’ve had with it. Conversely, I spend years mastering mathematics, an NP-hard problem, and I’ve become pretty good at it.

How does this relate to Western and African philosophy? Consider western philosophy first. Nothing holds intrinsic value. For a selective loss system, this is certainly true. The value of objects is in how they affect me. That is, the value is composed of a combination of experience and utility (and possibly more). On the one hand seeing green is a pleasant experience to me, but I’m sure that if I lived on mars I could come to appreciate the sunrise over a red plain as much as I do green now. I think this is a matter of training. And, even if there is nature, I believe that training (or nurture) can overcome nature. At the same time I value some things as a tool for problem solving. Furniture is important to me for study, work or relaxation and its absence can be frustrating.

But these values are typical examples of extrinsic value, of value which I assigned to it instead of it having it of its own. This is I disagree with. The objects are part of my perceived world. At the moment of observation I experience a value of them. And, for most objects I experience only a small value. In this sense, it is similar to background noise. But, I cannot not change my experience of it. I can affect my future valuation of objects, but not my current valuation.

To give an example, if I destroy someones car they will be mad at me. They valued that car. And, telling them that there was no intrinsic value in the car will not make them less mad. The same goes for my family. If I lose a family member I can try and convince myself that they were just a bunch of molecules randomly stacked in that order, but it will not change the pain of losing someone. This is because our experience of our brain and its emotions and its loss is as much part of perception as the perceived world. These are things that are and cannot be changed. Neither can they be changed with a sudden switch. Instead they can only be changed over time, through a continuous process. In this sense they have intrinsic value to the perceived world because even my experience of emotion and loss is of the perceived world which is the only world that influences me.

In this sense the tenet of Ubuntu is true to me, because I do really care about other people. I recognize that other people have value to me and that I want to preserve that value. But, this must follow from my loss system (or a similar system). After all, there are psychopaths and sociopaths in the world who perceive the other people in terms of utility value but not necessarily of intrinsic value. The existence of such psychopaths and sociopaths means that Ubuntu isn’t fully true, but instead it could be true for most people. This suggests that many people do care about other people because they experience them as valuable.

It is important to realize that the loss system can be changed, but not quickly. If we break up with a partner we experience that loss and it takes a long time before we start to care less or differently about them. Intuitively, we understand that it takes long for our loss system to update to the new state, that is it takes long to move on. In this sense “I am because you are” is a temporal statement. It acknowledges the importance of someone else to our own being, because their existence in our perceived world influences the loss we experience at this moment and thus they influence how we change shortly after. We literally are shaped by the existence of other people.

It is then no surprise that we cannot dismiss other people as being important to us. This is the basic principle of Ubuntu; other people matter and through helping them you can help yourself. It is a simple and intuitive expression of the complicated process of loss systems and brains influencing each other. It recognizes the perceived world as real for it has a real effect on us. The introduction of loss systems and perception also bring the dynamics of the observed values of objects in context with learning. Moreover, because we cannot influence what we perceive in the moment nor can we change quickly change our loss system we can think of these values as being intrinsic values to the perceived world.

Reclassifying Values

At this late point let’s address the misuse of the term ‘intrinsic value’. The common idea of an intrinsic value is that the value is tied to the being of the object instead of to an extrinsic source. We’ve been speaking of the ‘intrinsic value’ when talking about objects existing in the perceived world instead of the physical world. However, we cannot conclude anything about the shape or existence of the physical world, but only about the perceived world. More importantly through the loss system the ‘intrinsic value’ tells us more about ourselves then about the thing that we are evaluating. In this sense we were talking about ‘internal received value’. It is definitely something which comes from outside our control but simultaneously from inside us. And, the only control we do have is over future evaluations but not the current evaluation. There is also an extrinsic-type value like utility value where something is valued for its purpose to serve a goal. This value comes from conscious thought instead of experience, and is thus extrinsic in the sense that it is truly in our control.

We can use this distinction to highlight a misconception about nihilism. There is a difference between something having no intrinsic value and something having no internal received value. Just because there is no intrinsic value in the world around us, doesn’t mean that we experience no internal received value. Quite the opposite, we will experience internal received value despite absence of intrinsic value. Other people can make us laugh and make us cry. There is value in that. All this is transmitted from one person to another and might be just bubbling particles traveling through space or it might be an illusion performed by monkeys on a typewriter, but we experience it as real. Thus we evaluate it. And, we change because of it. And, that makes it most important.