Shinsekai Yori: a bit of philosophy and the rise of Cantus This entry was posted by Vale.
As a commenter pointed out at my post about Cantus, the quantum explanation for the origin of its energy (or to be more precise, the explanation of its workings) raises a few philosophical questions.
The commenter pointed out that if Cantus works by manipulating the information of the universe, that could lead to solipsism. That’s true. Solipsism is the ontological “school” of thought that claims that the only thing in existence is “my own” mind. I phrased it like that because it applies to everyone. If you believe in solipsism, you’ll believe that your mind is the only thing that actually exists (based on Descartes’s “I think therefore I am” argument), and you’re imagining everything else. Of course if I presume that all the world is just in my mind, that’d mean that theoretically I should be omnipotent, able to change the world as I want. Similar much to the concept of “overwriting quantum information with Cantus”?
Needless to say, solipsism isn’t really a feasible explanation. Even Berkeley, who’s often credited with inventing it made it irrelevant by claiming that the mind that the world exists inside is God’s. There are a great number of problems with solipsism. First of all, if it’s all in my mind, why can’t I control it freely? If it’s my conscience generating the world, then what happens when I’m asleep or unconscious? If it’s my subconscious, doesn’t that mean that the control of the world is not in “my” hands (“me” as in the conscious I)?
Berkeley claimed that since everything is in God’s mind, he’s constantly observing everything in the universe, thus making everything stay in existence. Another possible explanation is that we all collectively “dream” the world into existence. That would mean that we can’t change the world easily because the others are preventing the change by being conservative. On the other hand, if you truly believed it (call this power “to truly believe” Cantus), you should be able to change things where others’ opposition is weak. But darn, I’ve written about this matter quite a lot before on my blog.
If you noticed before, I wrote that this explanation of Cantus could lead to solipsism. It’s not a necessity. Solipsism (or collective idealism) sure provide the individual tools to freely change the universe, but it’s not the only way. The problem is that Shinsekai Yori uses this argument as a scientific justification of the Cantus’s workings, but it only describes what it does, not how it does it. Cantus is the power to overwrite quantum information? Sure, cool, but how does it work? Not to mention that the world definitely does not consist only of information. While our consciousness only processes the copy of the information we received through our senses, that doesn’t mean there’s no outside source for that information or that we can freely control that source of information. We can’t even freely change the information that’s already in our minds!
If we disregard solipsism and presume that the other humans actually exist, and consider that we’re interacting with the same world in consistent ways, we can assume that the information our minds process is identical, or at least consistently filtered by our senses. (For example, it might be that in one person’s mind the color green appears in the way as the color red appears in someone else’s mind. This causes no difference in their interactions with the world or each other.) If so, there has to be some source for that information, at least the original information itself that we all copy through our senses. Saying that Cantus is the power to freely control that source of information is no explanation to anything. That would just make Cantus magic, a mysterious power that just is.
The commenter asked, “If one person is allowed to change the make-up of the universe (foundations and all); then how is this different from changing ones perception of the universe?” It’s different because the other people are seeing and confirming the changes too. If Cantus wasn’t changing the universe itself (where by universe I mean the source of information for our perception), but instead changing only one’s perspective, that would mean that it’d need to alter the perception of everyone that ever comes into contact with the subject of manipulation. For example if I just drew a white line on the road, then walked away, my Cantus would need to linger there and change the perception of everyone walking by so that they’d see the white line there. Killing others as fiends did would be even harder to explain.
Another commenter pointed out that “It seems unlikely viewed in this light that the only thing standing in the way of PK’s rise to prominence was people’s belief in it.” That’s so true. Actually I’m not sure why PK only rose to prominence after its scientific confirmation. On the other hand, I mentioned in the Cantus post that the novels “also mention that the mental process to magic as described by Frazer is very similar to the mental process of activating PK”. This would mean that the novels acknowledge that (shamanistic and all other) magic was actually PK. The logical question then is also as the commenter asked: “so why didn’t PK emerge then?”
I have an explanation: critical mass. Don’t forget that even at the golden age of mankind, at the beginning of the 21st century, when population reached seven billion, the largest ratio of Cantus users was a mere 0.3%. That would be outright insignificant in a smaller population, but even if you disagree with that, it sure explains the number of medieval witch trials. Not to mention that since the rise of Christianity, magic was detested and oppressed, which would already count as a mental restraint. (I’d say that even before that, scientist philosophers were denying magic, but I couldn’t support my argument.) Then when Cantus was unleashed in a population past 7 billion, of course there was a huge effect. Modern society is also considered a lot more stressful and mentally straining than primitive societies, which would also explain the destructive effect it had.
A commenter pointed out that it was after “one person (Nona) broke through the paradigm” that Cantus spread. The thing is, she didn’t break it. The whole point of Ismailov’s way of lowering the human interference in the experiment was that the observers’ disbelief put a huge mental restraint on the subject. Ismailov created an environment for the experiment where the paradigm didn’t apply, thus removing the mental shackles and allowing Nona to use her powers. He had to go quite a long way to create such an environment, constructing the experiment in a way that every participant (including himself) knew the least amount possible about the experiment. I’m not even sure that’s possible at all, but let’s just presume they managed to do it. By thus scientifically proving the existence of PK, he unchained the rest of humankind as well.
Who’s the narrator of the novels, then? Saki? To begin with, I have a hard time accepting solipsism in fiction because there’s a gap between the reader and the narrator. And if the main character isn’t the sole perspective offered in the story, then just forget about it. For example, the shinsekai manga wastes the possibility on thought bubbles.
Yeah, it’s Saki.
Solipsism. It’s a helluva drug.
You’ve commented on some pretty interesting ideas here. So thanks.
Towards the end of my ramble I think concluded that Shinsekai Yori doesn’t actually fall into the trap of solipsism. At least not as Berkeley original argued for. You’re right in your statement that SSY explains the what but not the how of Cantus manipulating a metaphysical level of the universe.
You have prompted me to re-look at what I was talking about the other day and condense what I was aiming at into the below:
1) Information is fed to us by the universe.
2) Cantus allows us to change the quantum make up for the universes information.
3) If we can change the entirety of the universes information we can make anything and everything happen.
4) This removes the necessity of consistency within the physical world.
5) If consistency of the physical is impossible then we cannot be certain of the physical realm, it may just be a dream state where nothing exists.
6) We can only be certain of Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum
7) Hence, solipsism.
That was my line of reasoning. Also most of the above is absolute bullshit.
Firstly, there is problem that you rightly raised: other minds. The existence of other people makes solipsism absolutely moot. I won’t go into is because you laid it out rather well. Originally I was going to refute this problem by suggesting that with Cantus you could just wish away people as easily as any other object. If you accept that other minds can phase in and out of existence just as easily as any other objects then they have no effect upon your solipsistic world.
However, I forgot about the death-feedback. Kishi has sidestepped the issue of killing humans with Cantus by establishing that humans don’t have an easy time exploding other humans. In fact if they do this too much they exhaust themselves to the point of euthanizing themselves. I may be too far gone again but I think that this does add a certain degree of solidity to the existence of multiple independent minds within the SSY universe.
However the paramount flaw of my logic is that it is circular. The only possibly way for me to justify premise 1) is by accepting solipsism!
This world is real (and by extensions the SSY world). It has real people and tangible objects behind the information fed to our sense. If I were to support the idea that changing the universes information would change everything; I would need to resort to solipsism (the belief that world is just information without anything “real”). Considering that I can only logically conclude upon solipsism through premise 1) . . . I’ve shot myself in the foot.
So solipsism again is not the answer (I think that it’s only the answer if the question is: “what is a suitably idiotic philosophy that I can use to justify me being a jerk”). I’m pretty glad that it wasn’t solipsistic trap. That would have change my opinion of the show I think.
In between this post and the last I actually watched episode 10 (apropos of nothing; that was an absolutely incredible episode – best of the show so far). If we couple the ideas on Cantus put forward in that episode (mainly that it is a manifestation of the subconscious will) and the fact that it is not an omnipotent power, we get a picture of Cantus being rather similar to Plato’s black horse in his chariot allegory (or perhaps Freud’s Id – I’m not too sure as I’ve never properly study Freud). Plato sets up that the black horse represents the irrational appetites of man but maintains that it is still within the realm of control for the Charioteer. MINOR SPOILERS Something that apparently isn’t possible for some of the characters in Shinsekai Yori SPOILERS END. I think that there is a lot more at play with Cantus and it’s certainly one of the more thought provoking plot devices (if it can be called that) I’ve seen.
So “Ismailov created an environment for the experiment where the paradigm didn’t apply “. That explains a lot, thanks.
Sorry about the wall. Thanks for reading.
Regarding ancient writers and magic I can tall you that Horace seems to believe in it and describes two witches and their strange deeds (Saturae, I, 8; Epodes, V, vv. 11-38), Apuleius was deeply involved in a trial about his supposed witch-craft (and he describes magic throughout his Metamorphoseon libri, like II, 6. Another trial in Pliny the elder, XVIII, 41 ff.). As we can see people believed in it, but they didn’t like it at all.
Even in the Duodecim tabularum leges (Law of the 12 tables, 450 BC, so very, very old) there’s a reference to magic: (VIII, 1) “qui malum carmen incantassit […] qui fruges excantassit […]” (whoever cast a spell … whoever bewitched the harvest (of someone) […] and here it goes like “whoever etc. will be punished in this way”).
Obviously this is not only related to latin people, even greeks had their beliefs about magic and created characters like Medea and Homer’s Circe, so we’re talking about 800 BC.
Magic is always been here in our indoeuropean society. Who was skeptic in traditional religion like skeptics themselves, stoics, epicureans etc. was surely skeptic in these things too, but commoners believed in it (they believed in werewolves – see Virgilius, Bucolica, VIII, 97 ff. – and witches/owls who killed babies – see “strix-striges”), but didn’t like it at all. Anyway, only Christianity in late middle-ages started to panic about it.
Sorry about my ghastly english.