Respect for personal property is not enshrined in nature, it is established cooperatively in human societies. In an emergency, the government will requisition whatever it deems to be required for the protection of the people, and that limitation to ownership will also be cooperatively established. It seems hard for some to understand that one cannot have ownership unless others recognise and respect that relation. — unenlightened

Why do some societies enshrine private property? I think it may have to do with a lack of trust. Maybe it first started in chaotic times. Then once the order is reestablished, the property owners really want only one thing from a chieftain: protect their property rights. Whereas the chieftain was once the hub of the world, he or she has been reduced to constable. Property owners are now the hub.

So the US GDP is down and initial jobless claims are up. Wall St celebrates. Isn't that weird? The reason Wall St is happy is that it means Powell may lower interest rates a little sooner. Lower interest rates means investment becomes easier. The moral to the story is that if Wall St and Main St have diverging agendas, Wall St is going to win because it has the federal government backing it. The other moral to the story is that while the government is backing the well-being of Wall St, you should invest in it.

As such, any criticism of LD based on our current knowledge of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics is flawed because our current knowledge of these things is incomplete so it is possible that reality is different than the way we describe it using terms like "physical". By definition, LD would have access to all dimensions and all space and time. — Harry Hindu

I think it's because LaPlace lived during the advent of mechanistic thinking, and contributed heavily to it, so his universe was kind of like a pool table.

That, I believe, is the point if LD. Maybe? If all is deterministic, then numbers and information, and consciousness and intent, are irrelevant. It can all be reduced to particle physics, just as thermodynamics can. I suppose it would know why brain states also feel like mental states to us. But if "feel like" is all there is, but they have no casual power, and are, themselves, determined by the physical events, then it doesn't matter. Itt doesn't interfere with the calculations. — Patterner

I agree. I guess where I was headed is that an idealist can also be a determinist. LD can be revised to know everything about a universe that is essentially mind.

:up:

This is what I was asking about before, is the randomness we observe really a product of our own ignorance, the state of our minds and the information we have access to at any given moment, or is the randomness something inherent to reality outside of our minds? If the former then LD will know how to solve the problem of integrating quantum mechanics with classical/macro physics. If the latter then LD is invalid. — Harry Hindu

I really have no idea. All I know is that quantum mechanics is supposed to be an argument against the LD. I don't know if that argument prevails or not, but not knowing would be an argument against LD, wouldn't it?

I don't know how LD would deal with quantum events. I suppose it's possible that it would understand why things happen randomly, uncertainly, and, to it, the events would not be random and uncertain. If half the atoms of plutonium are going to decay in 81 million years, maybe it knows which half, and maybe even which one at which moment. I have no idea. But I am certainly willing to stipulate that for the sake of argument. — Patterner

Yea, I guess the revision is that however it works, LD knows how it works.

however, if consciousness is not the result of, or at least not entirely the result of, physical events, of which LD has absolute knowledge, then it would not have absolute understanding of consciousness. LD only knows what it knows knows. — Patterner

That's if you limit LD to so-called physical events, which automatically excludes non-physical things like numbers and mental states. We could imagine an LD that has knowledge of the non-physical stuff, right?

frank
LD is defined as knowing everything about everything, which I would assume would include the solution to the hard problem. — Harry Hindu

I think that's kind of what Chalmers was doing. That would make the LD irrelevant to the issue of free will, right?

For huge corporation it's hard to pick up innovations. Apart from warfare, states and public sectors aren't very apt at looking from totally new ideas. Small companies and the self employed do have a historically important role here. As they have in ordinary stuff too. — ssu

Huge corporations can be innovative, though. Apple, AT&T, IBM etc. But they were all in a social setting that fostered innovation because of growth.

Right. if there is free will. If everything we think, feel, and do is not determined solely by progressions of arrangements of all the constituent parts of our brains, which change from one arrangement to the next because of the ways the laws of physics act upon them. — Patterner

Chalmers adapted LD to accommodate quantum physics by just making it open ended. In other words, the demon knows how events unfold, however that may be (I think that's what he meant anyway). So couldn't we have an LD that know mental states and however it is they evolve?

Or would it say, "I don't know, because there is something going on in conscious beings that is not determined in the same ways everything that is not conscious can be determined." — Patterner

Not determined in the same way?

11/6/60 - Lincoln wins the election
1/5/61 - The South fires upon the North when it attempts to resupply Ft. Sumter, so the North abandons that effort.
3/1/61 - Jefferson Davis reinforces the defenses around Ft. Sumter.
3/4/61 - Lincoln is inaugurated.
4/4/61 - Lincoln sends reinforcements to Ft. Sumter
4/12/61 - The South fires upon the northern reinforcements and the Civil War officially begins. — Hanover

Right. The South succeeded when Lincoln was elected. SC then took Ft Sumter. Many predicted that Lincoln wouldn't start a war, but would just let the South go. The prominent politicians around Lincoln had begged him to give a speech advocating a constitutional amendment that would permanently protect slavery in the South. He did give a speech, but left out the amendment and said that in sentiment he was with the abolitionists. The war was a result of Lincoln's actions, and his alone. Weird, I know, but the whole war was weird.

My point remains that the reason for these hostilities leading up to the Civil War was that the Lincoln election spelled an eventual end to slavery and the only way to stop it was to fully remove the South from northern control, which was to remove those votes from influencing southern policies. — Hanover

That's not true. All the South had to do was wait for the SCOTUS to hand them victory. The back story:

The reason Lincoln was elected was that the Democratic party fell apart prior to the election when the southern delegates walked out of the national convention. The Democrats were running two guys for president, the Republicans were running only one: Lincoln. This was a reversal from the way things had been for decades previously. The pro-slavery forces were always united, while there were 5 different anti-slavery parties splitting the anti-slavery vote (note that anti-slavery is not the same as abolitionist) One side effect of pro-slavery's unification was that the SCOTUS was leaning heavily pro-slavery, and this resulted in the Dred Scott "decision."

The Dred Scott case led the SCOTUS to declare that outlawing slavery is an infringement of the federal govt's jurisdiction over property rights. In other words, as soon as a case came questioning the constitutionality of free states, the SCOTUS was going to do away with them. Slavery would be legal everywhere. This was a shock to the anti-slavery forces in the North. They were now facing the result of years of division and apathy. It was believed that once this happened, the chances of ever uprooting slavery from the US would be slim to none. There was nothing anyone could do, though. Congress was so divided that representatives were beating each other up. There's nothing a president could do, even if the anti-slavery people could get into the White House.

And on to the scene walked one guy. John Brown. For real. It's a crazy story.

That is, in order for the tyranny to continue over the slaves, the vote had to be suppressed and manipulated so that the only votes that would count would be the ones supporting the current system. And that was my main point, which is that American slavery is not an example of how democracy fails, but it is an example of why democracy should not be suppressed. — Hanover

I think you're saying the war was a result of voter suppression. If the slaves had been citizens, then they would have been freed. I see what you're saying. What didn't fail was the constitution. It allows a president to become a temporary dictator during wartime. The civil war was the first test of that, and it turned out well.

I guess if I had to sum up I'd say the issue is that describing organisms traits seems to require speaking to an additional sort of potency over and above the potency that exists in "all matter." I would tend to trace this to form not just because Aristotle does, but because form seems to explain how it is that matter within an ecosystem can be transformed into different organisms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Potential is a concept that's long fascinated me. If you hold a penny above a vat of oil, then drop it, it will proceed at a relatively slow speed down through the oil to the bottom. If you hold the penny above an empty tank, then drop it, it will drop more quickly. In each case, the potential was the same. In other words, we conceive potential as a product of resistance and kinetic manifestation. So it's not something that exists in matter, per se. At the very least, it's a component of how we analyze events, so yes, form is definitely the basis, but more the whole form of a situation. Any given situation can give rise to many events depending on the resistance that's supplied.

So an acorn has the potential to grow into a tree. It also has the potential to become a squirrel's lunch, or a bead on a necklace. If it sprouts, there are many trees it could become, depending on the weather, and such. So potential connects one moment in time to a multitude of possibilities, each shaped by circumstances. Sorry, I did say I was fascinated by it. :razz:

The war started when Lincoln sent supply ships to Fort Sumter, which had been a federal fort, now seized by SC. SC fired on the supply ships and Lincoln declared rebellion.

So anyhow, I think Locke's arguments fail, even though I am not big on "innate" or "a priori" ideas myself. But in particular, I think they fail in a way that demonstrates how telos is still mighty helpful for any sort of anthropology, or even biology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Leibniz envisioned innate concepts as latent, being brought into being through a developmental path. The kneecap is an example of that. A baby is born with the seed of it, but it won't develop until the stress of walking activates it to grow. Subsequently, the adult won't be able to walk without it.

Two other arguments for innateness are Chomsky's assessment of the timing of language acquisition and Quine's argument about the innateness of the ability to apply rules to new situations.

Consider donuts. Who gets the last donut? If by common decree no one gets the last donut, then who gets the next-to-last donut? — tim wood

What they do is slice the donut into as many pieces as there are people present. If there are 300 people in attendance at the conference, they have to make 300 slices. They might need some kind of laser slicer outfitted with a scanning electron microscope, and a robot to put the slices on individual napkins so there's absolutely no cheating.

A society with no property might give unreasonably high rewards to the sociopaths, psychopaths and parasites. You can take anything without giving anything. Have what you want, give back nothing at all. Such a society would be stripped of its resources by leeches faster than you can say "maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all". — flannel jesus

That's another reason a collective would need a chieftain or monarch. So maybe private property is a requirement for democracy. Ownership laws are taking the place of the chieftain when it comes to people who stray from the ideals.

That's an interesting passage. It would stand as an argument against slavery. About 25% of the people in Aristotle's world were enslaved. He's saying that nature is being defied since they can't own property.

But apparently he would say a collective won't last because of quarreling. I think it's true that there would have to be a strong central authority to act as the backbone of the collective. That would eliminate the quarreling. A democratic collective will probably never happen (for long.) So maybe we're never without the concept of ownership, but it's a matter of who actually has possession. In a collective, the owner is everyone, and so it's really the central authority.

The co-creation thing doesn't belong to any particular system. It shows up in a lot of the cool ones, though

If you ask Antony questions, he's more than happy to engage and isn't at all dogmatic. Not much of a gatekeeper.

Wayfarer and I were talking about how Schopenhauer can be taken as phenomenology, although Schop himself didn't seem to think of it that way. We know Witt read Schopenhauer. The Tractatus contains language that's very reminiscent of Schopenhauer, and it can be taken as a warning about stepping beyond phenomenology into theory. You read the assholedness into that. There wasn't any intended.

No, you are not immune either, bro. — schopenhauer1

I agree. I have my biases. For me, it's a step in the right direction to at least recognize that. It makes you more mentally flexible. It allows you to step into the shoes of those who believe the opposite. From there, you can more clearly see the weaknesses of your own position, you know?

That is along the same lines as the 'critical reflection' in the SEP entry that I mention above. But I'd say, it's deeper than a feature of thought, it is inextricably part of organic life, as all living things strive to survive (although only humans come along and ask why.) — Wayfarer

You're doing what Witt warned against: you're giving in to the desire to see the world from a vantage point you can't have. But there wouldn't be much philosophizing going on if everyone took Witt's point. :razz:

Poor guy. Thank you. — ENOAH

Genius poor guy.

I think it's the other way around. Will is represented as 1) your own body, and 2) the world.

Schopenhauer is along the lines of phenomenology. He follows what appear to be intellectual dictates, such as the Law of Explanation. He's not saying this law is a feature of the universe, it's a feature of thought. We can't think beyond it, so it's like a signpost of the border of thought.

Taking him this way, he flows into Witt's Tractatus, which can be taken as a warning against trying to turn phenomenology into a theory of everything.

Schopenhauer was a hard determinist. He said this was a source of solace. Whatever the human race is, it was bound to be, since the beginning of time.

:up:

So maybe the way I phrased the question gave me the answer I agree with? Sam asked it if AI art can be meaningful with meaninglessness input. If he'd asked why it can't be meaningful, it would have answered that?

But the patterns that underlie the generation of its answers are very abstract and are able to capture the meaning of your query together with the logical, semantic, pragmatic and even rational structure of the texts that it had been trained on, and reproduce those "patterns" in the response that it constructs. This isn't much different from the way the human mind works. — Pierre-Normand

I think the human mind is usually a tool of the emotions. This forum shows how people generally start with the answers they're invested emotionally in, and they only use their intellects as weapons for defense. An open minded philosopher is pretty rare. So the AI is mimicking those defensive constructions?

Are you asking how LLM-based chatbots work? — Pierre-Normand

I guess I am? How does it create such a detailed answer? Is it quoting someone in particular?

The AI generated the answer. — Sam26

I know, but how?

That's freaking bizarre. Who's viewpoint is that?

Such exploration through random choices is still guidance. And we've seen that in traditional art as well, especially abstract art. — Christoffer

That's true. So AI becomes another tool, not a competing intellect.

Art is the interplay between the artist and the audience, the invisible communication through creation, about anything from abstract emotions to specific messages. The purpose of a created artwork is the narrative defining the value of it. If all you do is generating images through randomization, then what is the purpose you're trying to convey? — Christoffer

My view is based on people seeing my work and reading complex messages into it. And this is painting, not ai art. I'm interested in their interpretations. My own intentions are fairly nebulous. Does that mean I'm not doing art? I guess that's possible. Or what if communications isn't really the point of art? What if it's about a certain kind of life? A work comes alive in the mind of the viewer. In a way, Hamlet is alive because you're alive and he's part of you. I'm saying what if the artist isn't creating an inanimate message, but rather a living being?

If someone wanted to, they could use their knowledge to gain money, just remember where the power came from. — chiknsld

True, I just meant that money is power during our time. In a feudal society, military prowess was power. Knowledge can be power in a theocracy or where statesmen rule. The character of the society dictates where the power-hungry put their energy.

I think it's a pretty good answer, what do you think, and what other questions would you like it to answer? — Sam26

Ask it if AI generated art can be meaningful if the input is meaningless.

The more I "input", the more of my subjective intention I bring into the system as guiding principles for its generation. — Christoffer

This can be true, but not necessarily. Look at this image:



All sorts of meaning could be projected onto it, but my intention probably wouldn't show up anywhere because of the way I made it. The words I entered had nothing to do with this content. It's a result of using one image as a template and putting obscure, meaningless phrases in as prompts. What you get is a never ending play on the colors and shapes in the template image, most of which surprise me. My only role is picking what gets saved and what doesn't. This is a technique I used with Photoshop, but the possibilities just explode with AI. And you can put the ai images into Photoshop and then back into ai. It goes on forever

I think the real reason art loses value with AI is the raw magnitude of output it's capable of.

New technologies spur growth seemingly in minutes. — BC

I know, and it seems exponential. HG Wells thought the species might split, between those who keep technology and those who retrogress. I think that's possible. Maybe those who keep technology can form a no-growth culture.

Intention is more than just will, intention drives creation in a fluid constant manner, not just a will to paint a park, but every detail of that park and the interpretation of it into reworks and changes.

But it's important to know the depths of all of this, because that's what's part of defining the foundation for laws and regulations. — Christoffer

I was thinking of intention as in a desire to create something meaningful. An artist might not have any particular meaning in mind, or even if they do, it's somewhat irrelevant to the meaning the audience finds. So it's obvious that AI can kick ass creatively. In this case, all the meaning is produced by the audience, right?

And this is also why I say that artists won't disappear. Because even an AI that is a superintelligence and has the capacity to create art on its own because they're essentially sentient, would still just constitute a single subjective perspective. Becoming a single "artist" among others. Maybe more able to produce art quicker and int more quantities, but still, people might like its art, but will want to see other perspectives from other artists and that requires a quantity of individual artists, AIs included. — Christoffer

Yea, an AI artist could create a century's worth of art in one day. I don't really know what to make of that.

Is such a thing as wage and price stability (no growth, no shrinkage) possible? — BC

Bronze age cultures were no-growth. They remained stagnant for centuries. One assumes new ideas appeared from time to time, but died, possibly because life was precarious and holding to tradition was viewed as a matter of survival. Our own high-growth is made possible by technology, which was made possible by high-growth, so it's a cycle.

So, it's essentially exactly the same as how our brain structure works when it uses our memory that is essentially a neural network formed by raw input data; and through emotional biases and functions synthesize those memories into new forms of ideas and hallucinations. Only through intention do we direct this into forming an intentional creative output, essentially forming something outside of us that we call art. — Christoffer

I agree with your point, but might disagree with this detail. I don't think intention is a requirement of artistic output. An artist may not have anything to say about what a particular work means. It just flows out the same way dreams do. Art comes alive in the viewer. The viewer provides meaning by the way they're uniquely touched.

AI doesn't have a dreamworld or collective unconscious from which things flow, which is why AI generators have to be censored. The potential for new art is clearly enormous. The artists who are offended by it are just upset that their skills have become superfluous.