Level Confusion

Level confusion is confused thinking that arises from examining a system at different levels without realizing that you are doing so or what the implications might be. Here are some common areas of level confusion:

• Mind vs. Body and reality: the X proved real fallacy. “I can imagine whatever I want, so my thoughts aren't real, but brain scanners can tell what I'm thinking by real changes in my brain. It's all so confusing…”
• Determinism vs. Free Will and moral responsibility. It is an intuitively appealing argument that if mind arises from a deterministic physical process, then there is no free will, and no moral responsibility. “If my behavior is determined, then I should stop worrying about making decisions because I don't have any choice, and I can do whatever I want without taking any responsibility, but then I must have been destined to believe in determinism, and if I were destined to believe in free will, would my responsibility be different? It's all so confusing…”
• Subjective perception vs. the physical world and Naive Realism. “I just crashed into a car that wasn't there when I looked before, but it must have been there because I crashed into it. It's all so confusing…”

Clearly this thinking is confused, and something must be wrong here. Confusion can result from the failure to understand that:

• The map is not the territory! (reality vs. representation and hardware vs. software) The brain is real and we can make factual statements about its functioning, but this tells us nothing about whether thoughts are true or real, or whether there is free will.
• More is different! Because of Emergence simple thought experiments with commonsense interpretations can lead us far astray. Reality and the brain are not simple. Any system that consists of a huge number of complexly interacting parts can behave in unpredictable novel ways.

See Level Map for our model of the level structure in the human condition.