Gamma

This is small bit of notation \(\Gamma \vdash A\) in Gentzen’s Natural Deduction formalism, which is usually ignored, is actually the key to everything.

It, accidentally and intuitively, it seems, reflects how the mind works in principle. Any language-based human mind.

It stands for “what is already known”. A set of “facts” and assumptions.

The problem is that we can’t tell which assumptions are valid, because they are socially conditioned and implanted in the dynamic representations (or “maps”), which our brains continuously build, update and maintain, by a language-based shared cultures.

The most famous such assumptions are:

• death is not the end (something survives destruction of the body).
• I am That of Upanishads (less wrong).
• A drop of water which eventually returns back into the ocean.
• Neti, neti – not this, not that (the famous argument of Upanishads)

• time exists and can accelerate or slow down etc.

  These things are socially conditioned or literally implanted (as memes) by a shared language-based culture, and for most people these things are valid assumptions or something they “know”.

This is what is in common between religious, abstract philosophy, abstract mathematics, theoretical physics and any kind of abstract theories in general.

Someone created a convincing argument out of words (and words alone), put it in print, usually in a symbolic form, and this augment, eventually, becomes a common social construct, accepted as an assumption. All religions has been created in exactly this way.

It has been implanted in \(\Gamma\) as something “already known”, and the machinery of the mind keeps pilling up more “facts” upon it.

Yes, it is that simple and fundamental. All the notions of contexts or environments or any sets of “facts” is just an intuitive reflection of how the mind works in principle. Any mind.

Besides emotion and feeling driven (dopamine, etc) so-called animal mind we have this “thinking in a language” human mind. These major subsystems work in parallel and supposed to complement each other and never be “in a conflict” about anything in “reality outside of our heads”.

Grossly oversimplifying, when some sensory input draws our focus to a recognized pattern such as a stray cat, the brain “loads” related or linked language-based thoughts too.

While visual patterns which correspond to stray cats are almost the same (they, obviously, slightly differ upon actual conditioning - what kinds of cats you have seen. Cats are very different in topics) the related language-based contexts are very different.

The fundamental principle is that a “thinking in words language” mind never “sees” the actual cat (only sensory processing brain circuitry does) but brain’s inner representation of it.

The mind only “sees” or can access to its own stuff. Its \(\Gamma\). Everything else follows from this and is more or less easy (once you understand the principle).

Given an arbitrary sentence in a human language a brain can tell whether it is well-formed or not and what “inner representation” it is related to – the brain will “load or prime up or form” what we call a “context”.

What the brain cannot tell is whether or not is bullshit, or partially bullshit. Again, the brain evolved in an environment where bullshit and delusions never existed.

Delusions and bullshit arise from use of a language and language-based “thinking” and this is what the ancients called “the veil of Maya” (which conceals and distorts reality), which is the actual cause of most of our suffering and fundamental problems.

It turns out that almost everything we “know” and “think” is utter bullshit, because our inner representations (our inner \(\Gamma\) is pulluted by bullshit and infeseted by semantic viruses what we call memes.)

What a brain can do is to match against already completed parts of a Jigsaw puzzle, which by definition does not have any single contradiction in it, and discard what does not fit (or contradicts). And this is, literally, the best strategy we could have.

And it does. We have very bad feeling (a sounding alarm) when suddenly our assumptions are invalidated. This is a signal that we are delusional and this is very bad for survival.

Having an adequate “inner map” (however oversimplified but not wong or distorted) of a territory is crucial for survival. Think of a “map” as partially completed “jigsaw puzzle”

A brain cannot tell which sensory and linguistic input is bullshit. It has been evolved to on assumption (LOL) that there is no delusion, lies or bullshit in the world. Animal’s minds are almost never confused about their environment.

Delusion arises as abstract concepts, which made out of words of a language enters our mind. Words are supposed to be just labels for things, attibutes and processes, but something went wrong.