I was shocked to read the post by ↪flannel jesus claiming that there are still many folks who believe minds are not generated from physical brains. If mind is not in brain, where would it be? — Corvus

It just goes to show how easy it is to mistake "the people that I know" for "everyone". It happens all the time. One issue is whether the mind is located in time and space. Another is the nature of the relationship between mind and brain. Descartes believed that the mind interacts with the body through the pituitary gland. But he did not believe that the mind was generated from it. But see my reply to Pantagruel below.

If a person memorizes the "times tables", and uses them to work out the result of a multiplication, are they actually doing a calculation? — Agree-to-Disagree

No. The times tables are a short cut. They are the results of calculation. We memorize them because it makes it easier to do more complex multiplications. (I'm sure you know that 2 x 3 = 2+2+2). Some (perhaps all?) primary school children are introduced to multiplication in that way. Once they understand that multiplication reduces to addition, they are moved on to memorizing their tables.

There are many ways that people use to solve a mathematical multiplication. Most involve either using their memory, using a calculator, or using an algorithm. Computers normally use an algorithm. Doesn't that mean that computers calculate in a similar way to humans? — Agree-to-Disagree

Perhaps at the software level it does mean that. But in this case, I think the "different way" is based on the machine coding of the process. (However, the AIs are a different case. The difference is clearly at the software level.)

In the complex system wherein and whereby the embodied brain operates — Pantagruel

Yes, I agree with that. My understanding is that once you get into details, the spine is deeply involved in what the brain is doing, so we should not think of the brain alone, but of the brain + spine - and the entire nervous system. Then we have to recognize the hormonal system in the emotions and the heart and muscles in action. In the end, I actually prefer to say that the connection is between the mind and the whole body. But I am too lazy to always be correcting people, so in most circumstances I just let the difference go.
That gives a basis for thinking that a machine constructed from silicon could never be a person or behave as a person does. I'm not all sure about that conclusion, though.

At the moment humans are hoisting AI up. It is not hoisting itself up by its own bootstraps. If humans hoist AI up high enough then AI may gain the ability to hoist itself further without human intervention. — Agree-to-Disagree

The fundamental problem is to understand when we can say that the machine is doing anything, in the sense that humans do things. Can they be said to calculate, for example? Do they check our spelling and grammar? Searle says not because it is we who attribute significance to their results. But that means that their results are significant; we treat what they do as calculation or spell-checking. It isn't straightforward either way.

everyone knows the mind emerges from the physical brain. — Corvus

I see that a lot of people have jumped on this. There's a lot of disagreement. But I agree that most people think that there is a close connection between the mind and the brain. But there is a good deal less agreement about what that connection is. It is a hard problem indeed.

I think that some people believe that AI is hoisting itself up by its own bootstraps, programming itself, perhaps in some sense that is a precursor to sentience. In fact, AI is parasitically dependent on human intervention. — Pantagruel

This is a really useful way to think about these issues - particularly when we are thinking about how AI might develop. It seems to me that it can be applied very widely to technology in general. Darwin applied evolution to living things because they are self-replicating. However, that idea depends on how you look at things. Some parasites are dependent on another species to replicate. (I have in mind the fungi that replicate by hi-jacking ants - Wikipedia - Ant-parasitic fungus Viruses hi-jack the cells in their host to replicate - though they are border-line alive. Lichens are another interesting case.
The key point here is that once a parasitical relationship is established, evolution ensures that the development of parasite and host are inter-linked. This is a helpful model for understanding AI. But I don't see that it enables us to make predictions about how it will go or not go.

Specifically, if human beings rely too heavily on AI then essentially we are back to the self-consumption of AI and model collapse, yes. — Pantagruel

Maybe this also applies to human beings. Too much recycling of the same ideas without evaluation or criticism of them is harmful to thinking. Full stop.

You claim that YOU don't need an external observer to know that YOU are thinking. But YOU are a special case. You are making an observation about yourself. Other people need to observe YOU to try and determine if YOU are thinking. And people need to observe a computer to try and determine if the computer is thinking. — Agree-to-Disagree

If I don't know the difference between "I" and "you" (and "they"), how can I articulate my observation that I am thinking? If I can't articulate the observation, is it meaningful to say that I can observe it? I think not. So the thinker's awareness that they are thinking may be a special case, but it is not independent of other people's observation that they are thinking and the thinker's awareness that other people are thinking.

Humans can be considered to be biological machines. — Agree-to-Disagree

Quite so. That's why the short argument about whether machines can be conscious etc. is that there are already conscious machines in existence. There are plenty of questions about what would persuade us that something is a conscious or living machine, so that argument is not very helpful. But for what it is worth, I think it stands up.

This has been a very interesting - and stimulating discussion and I regret that I can't contribute more to
This is a fascinating discussion and I regret that I am unable to contribute to it. There are lots of interesting ideas at play here.

Why do you need information about the physiological state of the subject? Unless you are a medical doctor or neurologist, it seems to be a remote area which wouldn't reveal a lot in terms of one's state of consciousness in analytic and metaphysical level. — Corvus

I'm afraid I wasn't very clear about this. It is quite true that we don't need information about the physiological state of subjects to attribute states of mind to them. However, states of mind are said to be internal. We are able to make connections between those states and physiologically internal states of subjects, but those attributions are very different from the internal states of computing machines. There is a sort of parallel between mental/physiological states and software/hardware states, but also important differences.
It is clear to me that once we appeal to the internal states of an AI machine we have gone beyond any Turing-type test, so the fact that we find such information significant is important. This is obscured by the standard description that AI constructs its texts in a very way that is very different from the way that humans construct their texts. Quite how human beings construct their texts is pretty much unknown at present, but the difference is identified in the remark that human "understand" their texts, whereas AI doesn't (as is shown, for example, in the fact that it sometimes "hallucinates" data, especially references, and seems to lack any capacity to critically evaluate its sources). (Or that's the impression the reports that I have read give me.)
I take the point about states of consciousness at the analytic or metaphysical level except that I don't have a clear grasp about what those things mean. My view is that attributions of "internal" states, of belief/knowledge, desires and intentions is attributed by interpreting a given action in context of other actions and responses.

They would make great Christmas presents — Agree-to-Disagree

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps someone will design artificial birds and deer - even big game - so that hunters can kill them without anyone getting upset.

they can't think creatively. — Relativist

Well, some people claim that they can't think at all! Are you conceding that they can think, just not creatively? Can you give a definition of "creative thinking " that could be used in a Turing-type test?

There's an inherent risk in trying to draw a clear, single line here. If you identify something that machines can't do, some whizzkid will set to work to devise a machine that does it. It may be a simulation, but it may not.

Let's suppose they do finally develop a machine that can drive a car or lorry or bus as well as or better than humans can, but in a different way. Suppose they are sold and people use them every day. What would be the point in denying that they are self-driving just because they do it in a different way?

it should be fine to produce some rudimentary intentionality, at the levels of some low level animals like cockroaches. Terminating it would then be a pleasure. — Relativist

Yes, I guess so. So long as you make quite sure that they cannot reproduce themselves.

It seems safe to predict that, on the whole, we will prefer our machines to do something better than we can, rather than doing everything as badly as we do. Who would want a machine that needs as much care and attention and takes as long to make (20 years start to finish) as a human being? It wouldn't make economic sense.

Yes, I meant "construe" to mean interpretation for other people's minds. I feel it is the right way of description, because there are many cases that we cannot have clear and obvious unequivocal signs and evidences in real life human to human communications. — Corvus

Exactly - though I would have put it a bit differently. It doesn't matter here.

Inference can be made in more involving situations, if we are in a position to investigate further into the situations. In this case, you would be looking for more evidences and even psychological analysis in certain cases. — Corvus

Yes. Further information can be very helpful. For example, the wider context is often crucial. In addition, information about the physiological state of the subject. That also shows up in the fact that, faced with the new AIs, we take into account the internal workings of the machinery.

But you don't comment on what I think is the fundamental problem here:

I think the fundamental problem is that neither Turing nor the commentators since then have (so far as I know) distinguished between the way that we talk about (language-game or category) machines and the way that we talk about (language-game or category) people. — Ludwig V

I don't think there is any specific behaviour (verbal or non-verbal) that will distinguish clearly between these machines and people. We do not explain human actions in the same way as we explain what machines do. In the latter case, we apply causal explanations. In the former case, we usually apply explanations in terms of purposes and rationales. How do we decided us which framework is applicable?

Scrutinizing the machines that we have is not going to get us very far, but it seems to me that we can get some clues from the half-way houses.

If these are the criteria for intelligence and maybe even self-consciousness, then AI certainly is sentient. — Pez

The question that next is whether we can tease out why we attribute sentience and intelligence to the parrot and not to the AI? Is it just that the parrot is alive and the AI is not? Is that perhaps begging the question?

The possibly insurmountable challenge is to build a machine that has a sense of self, with motivations. — Relativist

Do we really want to? (Somebody else suggested that we might not even try)

I agree with every word of that! :smile:

I think the fundamental problem is that neither Turing nor the commentators since then have (so far as I know) distinguished between the way that we talk about (language-game or category) machines and the way that we talk about (language-game or category) people. It is easy to agree that what the machine does is the only way that we can even imagine tackling the question and mean completely different things by it.

For example, one can't even formulate the question. "Could a machine be a (not necessarily human) person?" By definition, no. But that's very unhelpful.

But then we can think of a human being as a machine (for certain purposes) and even think of a machine as a person (in certain circumstances).

My preferred strategy would be to start from the concept of a human person and consider what versions or half-way houses we already recognize so as to get a handle on what a machine person would look like. We would need to think about animals, which some people seem to be doing, but personification and anthropomorphization and empathy would need to figure as well. It would even help to consider fictional representations.

We're not getting anywhere like this. Time to try something different.

Your saying the AI operation is simulation was a real over-simplification. My analysis on that claim with the implications was realistic and objective. — Corvus

I did put my point badly. I've tried to find the analysis you refer to. I couldn't identify it. If you could point me in the right direction, I would be grateful.

I've tried to clarify exactly where are disagreements lie, and what we seem to agree about. One source of trouble is that you seem to hold what I think of as the traditional view of other minds.

Problem with all the mental operations and events is its privateness to the owners of the minds. No one will ever access what the other minds owners think, feel, intent ... etc. Mental events can only be construed with the actions of the agents and languages they speak by the other minds.
.....To know what the AI machines think, and feel, one must be an AI machine himself. The possibility of that happening in the real world sounds like as unrealistic and impossible as the futile ramblings on time travel fictions. — Corvus

That's a high bar. I agree that it is impossible to meet. But it proves too much since it also proves that we can never even know that human beings have/are minds.
On the other hand, you seem to allow some level of knowledge of other minds when you say "Mental events can only be construed with the actions of the agents and languages they speak by the other minds". It is striking that you use the word "construe" which suggests to me a process of interpretation rather that inference from evidence to conclusion. I think it is true that what we know of other minds, we know by interpreting what we see and hear of other people.
You also say:-

AI is unlikely to be sentient like humans without the human biological body. Without 2x hands AI cannot prove the existence of the external world, for instance. Without being able to drink, AI wouldn't know what a cup of coffee tastes like. — Corvus

I'm not sure of the significance of "sentient" in this context, but I agree whole-heartedly with your point that without the ability to act in the world, we could not be sentient because, to put it this way, our brains would not learn to interpret the data properly. The implication is that the machine in a box with no more than an input and output of language could not approximate a human mind. A related point that I remember you pointing out is that the machines that we currently have do not have emotions or desires. Without them, to act as a human person is impossible. Yet, they could be simulated, couldn't they?

There is not yet an understanding of what, for me is a key point in all of this. The framework (language game) which we apply to human persons is different from the framework (language game) that we apply to machines. It is not an inference to anything hidden, but a different category. If a flag waves, we do not wonder what it's purpose is - why it is waving. But we do ask why that guy over there is waving. Actions by people are explained by reasons and purposes. This isn't a bullet-proof statement of a thesis, but opening up what I think the crucial question is.

Yes, I do have ideas about how such a discussion might develop and progress, but the first step is to put the question why we attribute what philosophy calls actions to human beings, and not to machines, and I want to say it is not a matter of any specific evidence, but how the evidence is interpreted. We see human beings as people and we see computers as machines. That's the difference we need to understand.


Yes, animals have a way of surprising us. They are perfectly capable of learning and one wonders where the limits are.

But even without Alex's achievements, I would have said that Alex is sentient. Animals are contested territory because they are (in relevant respects) like us in some ways and unlike us in other ways. In other words, they are not machines. To put it another way, we can related to them and they can related to us, but the relationships are not exactly the same as the relationships between human beings. It's really complicated and it is important to pay attention to the details of each case.

It is called Inductive Reasoning, on which all scientific knowledge has been based. It is a type of reasoning opposed to the miracle and magical predictions. — Corvus

I see. But then, there's the traditional point that induction doesn't rule out that it might be false, as in "the sun might not rise tomorrow morning".

I don't know what you know. You don't know what I know. We think we know what the others know, but is it verified knowledge or just mere guess work? — Corvus

There are two different questions here. If you know that p, I might also know that p, but not that you know that p. But I can also know (and not just guess) that you know that p. For example, you might tell me that you know that p. And I can tell whether you are lying.

They seem to just want to be called as "the useful assistance" to human needs. — Corvus

Yes. It sounds positively cosy, doesn't it? Watch out! Assistants have been known to take over.

Imitation means not real, which can imply being bogus, cheat, deceit and copycat. AI guys wouldn't be happy to be called as 'imitation', if they had feelings. — Corvus

You over-simplify. A forged painting is nonetheless a painting; it just wasn't painted by Rembrandt. An imitation of a painting by Rembrandt is also a painting (a real painting). It just wasn't painted by Rembrandt.
But I wouldn't call the AI guys an imitation. I do call their work in programming a machine to do something that people do (e.g. talking) as creating an imitation. In the same way, a parrot is a real parrot and not an imitation; when I teach it so say "Good morning" I am not imitating anything; but when the parrot says "Good morning" it is imitating human speech and not really talking.

AI is comparable to a sophisticated parrot being able to say more than "Hello" and "Good morning". But in the end it just mindlessly spews out what has been fed into it without actually knowing what it says. — Pez

Yes. But what would you say if it mindlessly spews out what has been fed in to it, but only when it is appropriate to do so? (I have in mind those little things an EPOS says from time to time. "Unexpected item in the bagging area", for example. Or the message "You are not connected to the internet" that my screen displays from time to time.) It's a kind of half-way house between parroting and talking.
More seriously, Searle argues that computers don't calculate, because it is we who attribute the significance to the results. But we attribute that significance to them because of the way that they were arrived at, so I think it is perfectly appropriate to say that they do calculate. Of course it doesn't follow that they are people or sentient or even rational.

If I can't tell that other people are sentient, then I don't know what it is to be sentient.
— Ludwig V
Exactly. — Corvus

But I can tell that other people are sentient. I don't say it follows that I know what sentience is. Do you?

Simulation = Imitation? — Corvus

Yes. Do you disagree?

What is the ground for your saying that there was no ground? — Corvus

What is your ground for moving from "it hasn't happened" to "it will never happen"?

We don't know that for sure, unless we become one of them in real. — Corvus

I know that other people are sentient, so I assume that I can tell whether insects, bats, etc. are sentient and that rocks and rivers are not. Though I admit there may be cases when I can't tell. If I can't tell that other people are sentient, then I don't know what it is to be sentient.

I think a simulation scenario could be otherwise. Maybe we are all AI, and the programmer of the simulation just chose this kind of physical body out of nowhere. Maybe there were many different attempts at different physical parameters. Maybe the programmer is trying to do something as far removed from its own physical structure as possible. — Patterner

I'm really puzzled. I thought your reply to @RogueAI meant that you thought we should not take such fantasies seriously. But you are now saying that you think they are possible (or perhaps not impossible) nonetheless. I do think you are giving them too much credit, In brief, my answer is that we already accept that reality is very different from what we think it is, what with quanta and relativity. But there is evidence and argument to back the theories up. The wilder fantasies (such as Descartes' evil demon) have no evidence whatever to back them up. Taking them seriously is just a waste of time and effort.

My point was that due to the structure, origin and nature of human minds (the long history of evolutionary nature, the minds having emerged from the biological brain and body, and the cultural and social upbringings and lived experience in the communities) and the AI reasonings (designed and assembled of the electrical parts and processors installed with the customised software packages), they will never be the same type of sentience no matter what. — Corvus

Oh, well, that's different. Insects with multiple lenses have a different type of sentience from us. Spiders detect sounds in their legs. Perhaps bats' near total dependence on sound would count as well. Different types of sentience are, obviously, sentience. I also would accept that anything that's running the kind of software we currently use seems to me incapable of producing spontaneous behaviour, so those machines could only count as simulations.

Do you have any evidence or supporting arguments for the prediction that AI will possess the same sentience as the human's in the future? In which area and in what sense will AI have human sentience? — Corvus

There is exactly the same amount of evidence for the prediction that AI will possess the same sentience as the humans in the future as for the prediction that they/it will not. None. But I wouldn't want to actually predict that it will happen. I meant to say that it might - or rather, that there was no ground for ruling it out.

But just think of the film "Matrix". In principle we could connect a computer to all the nerves of a human brain and thus simulate a "real" world. Virtual reality is just a first step towards this "goal" and so is creating artificial limbs a person can activate with his brain. — Pez

Yes, that's exactly my point. In the world of "Matrix", not everything is a simulation.
As to virtual reality, it is a representation of reality even when it is a simulation of some fictional events/things.
An artificial limb activated by the brain wouldn't be a simulation of a limb, but a (more or less perfect) replacement limb.

Descates' argument, that I cannot even trust my memories, — Pez

But there are ways of sorting out the reliable memories from the unreliable ones. I'm only objecting to the idea that all my memories might be false. Any one of my memories might be false, but if none of them were true, I wouldn't have any memories to distrust.

AIs can be intelligent, powerful, versatile therefore useful. But I wouldn't say they are sentient. Sentience sounds like it must include the intelligence, emotions and experience of lived life of a person i.e. the totality of one's mental contents and operations. AI cannot have that.
Also AI can never be versatile as human minds in capabilities i.e. if you have AI machine for cutting the grass, then it would be highly unlikely for it to come into your kitchen and make you coffees, or cook the dinners for you. — Corvus

Everyone will agree that current AIs are limited. But I don't see why you are so confident that those limitations will not be extended to the point where we would accept that they are sentient.

Is sentience a yes or no issue, or are there degrees of sentience? — Agree-to-Disagree

There's plenty of evidence from biology that the latter is the case. As a starter, is phototropism sentience or not? I think not, because no sense-organ is involved and the response is very simple.

In biology, phototropism is the growth of an organism in response to a light stimulus. Phototropism is most often observed in plants, but can also occur in other organisms such as fungi. The cells on the plant that are farthest from the light contain a hormone called auxin that reacts when phototropism occurs. This causes the plant to have elongated cells on the furthest side from the light.

Wikipedia - Phototropism

What if this is all a simulation and everyone you think is conscious are really NPC's? Is that any more farfetched than the idea that the sun doesn't really move across the sky? That you're just on a planet going really fast through space and you don't know it? — RogueAI

Can't say it's impossible. But if you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make? If it's real, and you drop a bowling ball on your foot, you're looking at some pain. If it's a simulation, and you drop a simulated bowling ball on your simulated foot, you're looking at some pain. Either way, careful with that bowling ball. — Patterner

As it happens, I can say that it is impossible that everything is a simulation. A simulation needs to be a simulation of something. Take simulations of people. It is possible to make a figure that is so like a person that people think it is a person - until they talk to it. That's a simulation of a person. But the idea that all people might be simulations doesn't work if there are no such things as real people.
It is not just an empirical discovery that other human beings are people or that I am a person. The process by which I come to understand what that means is the process by which I learn what a person is. Human beings are the paradigm of what a person is and it is no more possible that they are not people than it is possible that the standard metre is not 100 cm or 0.0001 km. (Yes, I know that it is more complicated than that. The point stands.)

Is there reason to believe other people aren't really other people? Or that the consciousness they seem to have is not? Has someone noticed something nobody else has that reveals the seeming to be false, and learned what's realty going on? — Patterner

We learn what people are by interacting with them. Once we know what a person is, we are in a position to recognize that some things that are like people are not (really) people. There will be reasons for such decisions, and, as it turns out, there are often disagreements about specific cases. Animals are the obvious case in point. More than that, we can imagine that things that are not people at all are people (anthropomorphization).
But, it seem to me, the critical point is that it is not just a question of fact, true or false. It is question of how we interact - how we treat them and how they treat us. It is not easy to recognize that the volcano is not a person, but it turns on recognizing that the volcano is completely indifferent to us - does not treat us as people.

In the case of living things, we find a huge range of half-way houses - beings that are like us in some respects, but not in others. Trying to decide whether they are or are not people may be futile and beside the point. The point is to understand how we can relate to them. That's the situation with animals. Why would it be any different in the case of AI's?

And then, because we have to assess each case, trying to decide in advance whether it is possible for an AI (or silicon-based machine) to be a person seems hopeless.

There's more to be said, of course, especially about the Turing test, but perhaps that's enough to steer the discussion in a more fruitful direction.

But most people assume that other people do have human sentience. We presumably base that assumption on what the other people do and say. — Agree-to-Disagree

That's exactly why Turing's test is so persuasive - except that when we find machines that could pass it, we don't accept the conclusion, but start worrying about what's going on inside them. If our test is going to be that the putative human needs to have a human inside - mentally if not necessarily physically, the game's over.

Yes. I don't think we'll really get anything out of going through all that again. Nor do I think we'll get further than our partial agreement. I'm just trying to articulate my own take on it.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, the air still vibrates with the fall. We don't need someone to hear the vibration of the air for the air to vibrate. — Philosophim

That's a very good example. "A cloud of philosophy condensed in a drop of grammar", as Wittgenstein would say. In this case, condensed in the definitions of two words - "sound" and "vibration".
I'm sure you know that the decision to exclude sounds, colours, tastes, smells, etc from physics was taken in the 17th century (first by Boyle, I believe) on the grounds that they are not amenable to mathematical representation. At the time, it was probably a sensible decision. But it set up a philosophical conundrum that has lasted from that day to this with no solution in sight.
So, you see, the conceptual framework that we apply to reality makes a difference to what reality we grasp. (I don't say it makes a difference to what is real. By definition, it doesn't.)
You prioritize the framework of physics in your intellectual life, but in your everyday life you have no problem knowing where sounds are and often what makes them and no problem knowing what colour the table is (and when it seems to be a colour that it isn't "really"). Neither has priority. Both are useful.

One theory about the big bang is that prior to it, there existed the big crunch. — Philosophim

I didn't know about that. I'm not surprised. I have never believed that the Big Bang was the end of the story. It doesn't make any difference to our problem, does it? But it does confirm my view that the first cause is a moving target, not a fixed point.

No, a first cause is not an opinion. It is a truth. A first cause can have no prior cause for its existence. This is independent of whether we discover its existence or not. — Philosophim

Well, of course it is a truth. By definition. But you have also specified conditions for its discovery that seem to exclude the possibility of ever discovering it, except as a temporary phenomenon of whatever theory we devise.

I did want to note that the conclusion applies to reality, not our knowledge or understanding of reality. — Philosophim

That's a complicated statement. I'm not at all sure that I understand it.

"First cause" does not mean, "The start of where we decide to look at the causal chain." — Philosophim

Sometimes it means exactly that. When it doesn't, it means "the first cause so far as we can tell".

There is no human context. — Philosophim

How can there not be a human context when we are discussing it?

To know it is a first cause, we must prove that it is. — Philosophim

Well, there's a scientific argument about that, so now the burden of proof is on you to prove that it isn't and to explain what would count as a proof.

If I could get my head round your dialogue with @ucarr, I would have intervened before now. But I can't.

Lets say, if anything is possible, that there is a 40% chance of a universe forming from a big bang, and a 60% chance of a universe forming from a little whisper. — Philosophim

No real meaning has ever been attached to possibilities. If what you are thinking is meaningful, you mean "Let's say, if anything is probable, that there is a 40% chance of a universe forming from a big bang, and a 60% chance of a universe forming from a little whisper." But to assign probabilities, you need to include all possible outcomes, and the total of your assignments must add up to 1.0 and no more. You need to assign a probability to all the "anythings" that you refer to in "if anything is possible". Unless you have a reason to assign different probabilities to different outcomes, you must assign the same probability to all outcomes. (Knowing the outcome doesn't count)

I think that there are infinitely many possibilities (including the possibility of a Big Bang and a Small Whimper). You cannot assign any special probabilities to either the Big Bang or the Small Whimper. However small a number you assign to each probability, either it will be infinitely small or the total will be infinity. This makes your assignments meaningless.

One more try...

The metaphor of a causal chain is helpful in one respect - each link in the chain is both cause and effect. The 10th link is the cause of the 11th link, and the effect of the 9th link. In the real world, no chain is infinite, but the possibility of another link, both before the first one and after the last one can never be excluded.
The actual causal chains that we formulate are constructed either in a practical context or in the context of a theory. They are limited in the first case by pragmatic considerations and in the second by the theories we have. So when we construct actual causal chains, there will always be a first cause and a last cause, and these will present themselves as brute facts - we discussed those a while ago.
Change the context and different possibilities will open up. Remove all context and the system is meaningless. That's why I cannot discuss this in the abstract and had to insist on discussing the first cause we actually know about.

Atheism itself is about a single issue and doesn't have a worldview. — Tom Storm

I guess that's true, though it leaves room for people to adopt a range of views, non of which would be incompatible so long as it doesn't presuppose a "Nobodaddy in the sky".
Agnosticism is similar. It's important that Buddhism starts from a diagnosis of the cause of suffering, and everything revolves around that. If religion is defined as believing in a god(s), it is not a religion. If religion is defined as a way of life, it is.

For my money this is waffle. It only makes sense if you already presuppose an account of god as per Berkeley. — Tom Storm

I wasn't saying that it is anything but waffle, just that Berkeley reveals here that his argument is constructed in the service of a project. There are other passages where he makes is quite clear that his metaphysics is supposed to reveal God's glory and lead to an awareness of the omni-presence of God. Side-note:- It seems that elsewhere, he thinks that we will then go on to accept that we need to obey him and his representatives on earth (and that includes the king).

(Don't forget he lived 1685–1753, so he would have had the British Civil War and all that in mind. One assumes he would also have disapproved of the French and American Revolutions if he had known of them.)

Does romanticism generally hold that the world is soulless or meaningless? — Tom Storm

I generalize cautiously - on the whole the answer is no, but the critical idea is the opposition to the dominance of the new science and critique of the industrial revolution, which seems to be a result of it.

It's not as if theists don't find life meaningless. I have worked in the area of suicide intervention and on balance those who find life meaningless and become suicidal are just as likely (if not more so) to believe in a god. — Tom Storm

I'm not surprised. The standard sales pitch makes big assumptions about what believing in God means. There are also people whose belief in God means guilt, self-loathing and sadism.

I do accept that "is" does not imply "ought". But there is no doubt that "is" does lead people to conclude "ought". Analytic philosophers, whose tradition derives from Hume, have great trouble recognizing that. Hence discussion of it is not academically respectable. Cavell points us in a different direction.

I'm afraid I can't resist some explanation why I can't contribute to this discussion. Paradoxical, I know, but then what's another paradox or two in this environment? You can always ignore me, and I don't complain at that, because my position doesn't take your dialogue forward. So I won't need to disrupt you again.

Your underlined fragment suggests randomness in the role of the trigger of the singularity's rapid expansion. If that's not assignment of causal agency to randomness, its a talking point that flirts with such — ucarr

I agree with this. The reason why this is so is simple. "Randomness" is being used unself-consciously, without an articulate understanding of how "random" (as opposed to "randomness" which is a misleading application of the grammatical rule that allows us to generate a noun corresponding to an adjective) is used in those applications where it is perfectly comprehensible and meaningful. If you want to extend the meaning of "random" beyond the Big Bang, it has to be done carefully and explicitly.

I don't think that "random" can be meaningfully extended beyond the Big Bang. Our normal use of "random" applies to events (which can also stand in causal relationships to each other. Ex hypothesi, those don't exist behind/before the Big Bang, so I can't grasp any meaning for it.

However, your mentions of nothingness, randomness and now potential vaguely suggest they're subject to the gravitational pull of causal status due to our reasoning minds needing talking points to grasp nothing-then-something inception. — ucarr

Exactly. But the need to do that is inherent in the positing of the Big Bang (and another extension beyond the Last Cause is equally inevitable). That's the power of the argument for infinite causal chains. But trying to apply concepts that were developed to apply to what exists after the Big Bang to what (if anything) exists before/behind the Big Bang is extremely problematic and liable to lead nowhere. Whether the mathematicians are doing any better, I can't possibly judge. But I would have thought that their approach stands a better chance than anything that can be made from ordinary language.

:smile:

Exactly, well said Ludwig! — Philosophim

It's nice to agree on something, isn't it? I wasn't sure whether you would welcome the agreement or criticize the way I undermined it.

1) the order inherent in thinking is foundational to the human identity; 2) the essence of thinking is its natural orderliness — ucarr

I'm not sure I have any clear grasp of what either statement means. Is 1) a version of the idea that the essence of humanity is rationality? If so, it depends what you mean by "rationality" and "essence", but is far from obviously true.

Following this line, I want to say the world appears to us orderly because it's rendered to our awareness through our thinking. — ucarr

I'm not sure the world does appear to us as orderly, though it is true that there is some order in it. But a lot depends on what you think of as order.

I mean, I can put my books on their shelf in order of size, price, weight, date of publication, name of publisher or printer, first letter of title, first letter of author, Dewey decimal classification etc. What's more, if you put them on the shelf at random, I can then find the order in which they are put. In short, I defy you to think of a way of putting them on the shelf that isn't in some order or another. Disorder among the books can only be defined in relation to some principle of ordering them. (I have not forgotten that "book" is more complicated than it might seem. Is the Bible one book or two or many? Is a volume of Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire a book or part of a book. Is a pamphlet a book?)

Is it (sc. "Origin boundary ontology is a gnarly puzzle") sufficiently suggestive to give you a clear impression of what it's trying to communicate? — ucarr

Not really.

Are you inclined to believe origin stories must discard causation at the start point? — ucarr

It depends what kind of origin you have in mind - I mean what the origin in question is the origin of. In terms of this discussion, it does seem that the origin of a causal chain cannot be a cause, though if you change your definition of cause (or of what counts as an explanation) at that point, it may be possible to provide some sort of account.

Maybe a practical application of the language of silence consists of the axiomatic supposition supporting analysis: things exist. — ucarr

Maybe. Though I have seen people trying to discuss that statement.

Is today's establishment science wrong in its pragmatic decision to keep within its analytical physicalism, with the axiomatic established as the boundary? — ucarr

No. It wouldn't be what it is if it didn't. I might have something to say about a scientist who kept strictly within the boundaries of physicalism, even within working hours and we might decide to set different boundaries if circumstances changed.

How so? — Tom Storm

Good question. It is awkward and that's why I like it.

Wittgenstein leaves us with these ideas, but little indication of how he would take them further. I am sure some people have tried to develop them, but there don't seem to be any inspiring ideas. It's a difficult area to deal with. It doesn't fit comfortably with what we think of as philosophy, which has abandoned the core question of Greek philosophy - how to live - because it appears unscientific and therefore not respectable.

For Berkeley, the point of his argument is not that it is true, but that it is the basis of what I will vaguely call an attitude. Paragraph 109 in the Treatise says:-

For, after all, what deserves the first place in our studies is the consideration of God and our duty; which to promote, as it was the main drift and design of my labours, so shall I esteem them altogether useless and ineffectual if, by what I have said, I cannot inspire my readers with a pious sense of the Presence of God; and, having shown the falseness or vanity of those barren speculations which make the chief employment of learned men, the better dispose them to reverence and embrace the salutary truths of the Gospel, which to know and to practice is the highest perfection of human nature.

That's an attitude and, according to Berkeley, it is the basis of a Christian life. It follows that he thinks that the scepticism, atheism that he is arguing against do not support that attitude. One wonders, though, what attitudes he thinks those doctrines lead to.

Religions codify and organize life, so it is easy to see what the implications are of accepting his arguments. Atheism and Agnosticism do not have a codified way of life that goes with them and it is not clear what kind of attitude or way of life might go with them.

Starting-points might be the Greek Sceptics - Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus. It seems that they were working in the same arena as Stoicism and Epicureanism and, like them, were pursuing scepticism as a way of reaching ataraxia - tranquillity. See Stanford Encyclopedia on Sextus Empiricus 3.3

In a different vein, Existentialism (and Romanticism) seem to me to be a response to the idea that the universe is a soulless, meaningless machine.

On the contrary, I'm suggesting true randomness cannot be contemplated because it deranges the foundational order of thinking.
— @ucarr
It simply causes us to consider something we have not considered before. This does not disrupt thinking or logic. Its merely a continuation and updating of what we can consider. — Philosophim

I'm not sure what the foundational order of thinking is or even whether there is one. But it is true that we are so reluctant to accept "no cause" that we try to corral it by speaking of probability, which at least establishes a sort of order in the phenomena.

The fact that we can consider something does not prove that it exists or even that it could exist, so that does not get us far. We can even accept that Pegasus might exist, but we all know very well that it doesn't, any more than dragons do. In the case of first causes, the evidential bar is so high, that it is more plausible by far to believe that it will never be met, except in the context of a specific theory, which is far from conclusive.

Suppose I succeed in stopping my internal dialogue, have I earned a nod from Walter White? — ucarr

I'm afraid you have me there. I don't know whether you mean the actor or the civil rights activist. But I don't think Wittgenstein meant that. He didn't say there was any problem about asserting well-formed propositions, did he? Certainly, he didn't succeed in stopping his own internal dialogue - I'm not even sure that he tried. Maybe a Zen monk?

Does this explain some of the cognitive dissonance required for specific religious claims counter to empirical evidence for you? — AmadeusD

I hadn't thought that far ahead. But yes, why not? It might require accepting, what Wittgenstein never said, but I suppose might have thought, that the rules of a specific language-game might be inconsistent, In fact, empirically, we find that existing language-games frequently throw up inconsistencies where we "don't know our way about"; we just settle them as we go, so that's all right. There's a further complication that what seems an inconsistency to an atheist, might not seem inconsistent to a theist - the problem of evil might be an example. Internally, at least in Christianity, there are certainly doctrines that seem inconsistent to some, but not to others - the Trinity, perhaps.

The big issue would be whether and how that way of life relates to other ways of life. I read Wittgenstein as thinking that there can be different ways of life, but not thinking about what differences between them mean - conflict or incommensurability. In practice, I would say, religions mostly think that their way of life should be universal and having great difficulty in inter-acting with them.

Are atheism and agnosticism ways of life? In a way, yes. Perhaps not entirely comfortable.

This may just be a language issue. There is no prior or external cause. Typically saying, "self-cause" implies that there is first a self, then a cause. That's not what I'm intending. There is no conscious or outside intent. It just is. That is the answer. Nothing more. — Philosophim

Too right. From my point of view, this discussion suffers because it sets out to discuss metaphysics, which seems to be interpreted as discussing the issues unself-consciously, that it, without paying attention to the tools that are being used - the language. I am not dogmatic about linguistic philosophy, but that doesn't mean that attention to the language-game is not relevant.

That's the start of causality and the end of our questions up the causal chain. — Philosophim

I'm afraid that the rules of the game can give you the start, but not the end of the questions. There is always scope for that.

Why is true randomness -- completely unpredictable and unlimited, but active -- not the cause of what you call first cause? But it is: something, then nothing. — ucarr

You mean that randomness that is not an unknown explanation is the only "true" randomness. What makes it true, as opposed to an illusion?

Randomness won't countenance links in a causal chain, so talk of links in causal chains is distraction which cannot distract from Wittegenstein's silence. — ucarr

Wittgenstein's silence in the Tractatus is defined against a very limited concept of what can be said - that is, of what "saying" is. Fortunately, there are more expansive views available. How far he took advantage of them in the later philosophy to say something that that cannot be said is an interesting question. One does notice, however, that his use of language is no longer limited by that early account of language.

I dealt with the existential realm, but there was no interest in that either. So where does that leave us? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure it is a question of interest or not, rather than a question of understanding or not.

We seem to have a range of philosophical approaches in play and a certain frustration because none of them seems to generate a constructive discussion. And so the nature of philosophy is called into question. What, exactly is at issue? What counts as a solution?

I don't know the answers. Perhaps we need to start from there, rather than a fixed position - which we all seem to have.

I'm not sure it makes any difference, but I think you have left out two options. I think the options are:-
1. A beginning, but no end (your ray).
2. An end, but no beginning.
3. No beginning and no end (your line).
etc.

Yes, I thought it an interesting - even ingenious - manoeuvre. But it ends up as a rather fruitless disagreement, which is fundamentally merely tactical.

What follows is not hard core philosophy, merely reflections.

Supposing this issue is raised by a presuppositionalist who wishes to simply assume the existence of God, without argument. All the atheist needs to do is to assert that they do not wish to make the same assumption. End of debate.

But that's not, apparently what presuppositionalists really want to do. Van Til, at least, wants to mount a transcendental argument for God and claim that order and reason in the world cannot be explained without appeal to God. No atheist would accept that idea, so, again, end of argument.

I'm not sure that the existence of at least some order and reason is a contingent fact. It seems to me more like a project, a way of looking at the world which we need to stick to because without it, we could not live. The concept of an entirely chaotic world is, by definition, incomprehensible to me.

One thing that I and the presuppositionalist might agree on is that the existence of God is not susceptible of rational proof (and hence not susceptible of rational disproof, either). I don't say that Christianity is irrational, only that rationality comes in after the starting-point (hinge proposition? axiom?) is established. I prefer, however, to say that the doctrine is secondary to an attitude and a way of life and derives from that, rather than the other way about.

Existence is a set of all things that exist. — Philosophim

Ah, well, that's different.

I even understand you when you say:-

The logical conclusion from there being a first cause is that there can be no prior cause for its existence, therefore there is no reason for its existence, therefore there is no reason for its existence, — Philosophim

But I don't understand you at all when you say

besides the fact that it exists. — Philosophim

. Why don't you just say "therefore there is no reason (or cause) for its existence"? I'm not saying there can't be a reason for its existence, just that there may not be one.

No. What you and many other people are accidently doing is confusing an origin with a first cause. An origin is a start for measurement. On a X/Y graph, the common origin is 0,0. However, we can also make the origin 50,50. Does that mean 0,0, suddenly does not exist? No. So imagine a line that represents a finite chain that starts at 1,2. We could do an origin at 0,0, but it would be pointless because there's nothing there. We could follow the line and make the origin at 10,15. — Philosophim

I had thought that it must be possible to "extend" our time-line beyond the Big Bang 14 billion years ago. If we treat "now" as the origin of the line. That's no different from treating the year Christ was born as the origin and extending it back from there.
The catch is that if time is not happening, there is no way of knowing how far back one is, or how long one has been there, as it were. The Big Bang is the origin of change and without change, there is no way of measuring time. It's not as if we can put a clock in our pocket before we go.

If you mean that when a first cause appears, it is bound by what it is and then is bound by the natural consequences of its specific interactions with other existences, yes. — Philosophim

I'm not at all sure that this really makes sense. If there are other existences, then the question arises what caused them? If that question has an answer, then the first cause wasn't the first.
I guess you might be thinking of some distinction like the differences that some people identify by talking about causes and conditions. The cause of the explosion is the spark, the molecular structure of the explosive is (part of) the conditions. But that doesn't apply to a first cause like the Big Bang, which is the cause and origin of all the physical things in our universe. Or perhaps it does?

So by the rules of the conservation law, that energy must still be within the system somehow, only not available to the system. — Metaphysician Undercover

A pretty puzzle indeed. So the conclusion must be that something continues to exist after the heat death, even though time and space no longer exist. I did notice that heat death did not say that the temperature must be zero, only that temperature differences would be ironed out.
No doubt that unavailable energy is hanging around waiting to be released in another Big Bang. That would not be an unsatisfying solution.
Naive question. Am I not right that, strictly speaking energy is work done - the capacity to do work is called "potential energy", isn't it? I can see why unavailable energy can't be called potential energy, but it sounds as if we need a concept like the potential for potential energy. Awkward.
On the other hand, there is so much mystery about in the form of anti-matter and dark energy, that perhaps we should just wait for someone to find all that unavailable energy and release it - hopefully not all at once.

It's simply a matter of recognizing that concepts naturally conform to the things which they are applied to, and if we want to understand what is outside of those things, like cause of and prior to them, we need to provide the concepts which can do this. — Metaphysician Undercover

Quite so. It's perhaps worth noting that the same applies to what happens after the heat death of the universe.

So it is possible, like anything else, that there was only one first cause and that's all of existence. It has the same meaning as any other kind of first or set of first causes we could have. — Philosophim

My difficulty here is that you seem to be treating "existence" as if it were a property of the things that exist. I'm sure you are aware that this has been contested ever since Kant and Hume, and with Russell and Frege's treatment of it in the predicate calculus this has been a staple of analytic philosophy ever since. If that's right, pointing to existence as a cause of anything is incomprehensible. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it qualifying as an non-causal explanation of something, but it can hardly explain why something exists (circularity). If you disagree, then there is scope of a discussion of the point, but you can't expect others to accept what you say on the face of it. In short, I agree with both the quotations below:-

In sum, all of this draws a circle back to saying temporal primacy of existence is meaningless. — ucarr

As said above, "it simply exists" does not qualify as an explanation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think Hume hit the nail on the head. Causation is a word that exists to account for a human intuition. — Lionino

I hope I'm not being too pedantic, but I think that's not quite what Hume says. He accepts the sceptical argument against the scholastic notion of a "power" that a cause exerts to produce its effect, but then says that we will continue to think and speak of causation based on a custom or habit arising from the association of our idea of the cause with our idea of the effect (not an intuition).

The conclusion "there is not a prior reason" is unsupported. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the case of the Big Bang, time and space are created by it and do not exist before it. So nothing can be prior to it, whether cause or reason. But, it seems to me that a cause cannot exist outside time, whereas a reason can. So there is reason to think that there might be a reason for the Big Bang. But I don't see that there could be a cause for it. (I have no idea what the reason might be, but there seem to be some interesting speculations around.)

Perhaps a physically reductionist causation is something worthy looking into.....but at least it allows us to clear up our language. — Lionino

Anything that cleans up our language is worth looking in to.

I think he missed the "prior" part as well. — Philosophim

Not quite right. For me, a cause must be prior to its effect (except when it is part of a causal analysis) and a distinct entity. So I interpreted "prior cause" as a pleonasm. But I see that I misunderstood.

Mostly because I've been ingrained to use different words instead of the same one repeatedly in a sentence. :) In this case there was overlap, as if there is no prior cause, there is no prior reason. But not all reasons are causes just like not all cats are tigers. — Philosophim

Yes, you are not alone. I've seen some very well-known philosophers indulge themselves in that way. I don't think it is particularly helpful and it can be rather misleading. The terms here are very unclear and common usage is no help. In my usage. which I think is also common philosophical usage, a reason is not a cause, because it does not need to be an event or even a spatio-temporal entity.

And, as I explained to Philosophim already, if we move to allow that "cause" of an event includes also the "reason" for the event, as a type of cause, then we must remove the defining feature of a chain, series, or sequence, because this type of cause does not occur in a chain. — Metaphysician Undercover

Quite so.

The reason why there can be no prior reason for a first cause, is that there is no prior causal event. There can be a reason as an explanation for why a first cause exists, "That is it simply exists." But there cannot be a prior reason, as there is nothing prior which causes it. Does this clear up the issue? — Philosophim

As I tried to say earlier, the reason you suggest for the first cause/reason is, to me, not a cause/reason at all, but a rejection of the request to provide one. "Because it exists" marks the limits of our explanations - a brute fact or a first cause.

And this, so far, is the only weakness I've seen in the argument. It is only a logical argument. A logical argument does not mean empirical truth. — Philosophim

I always thought that the existence of something was always an empirical, not a logical question, so I'm treating your first cause as a possibility, not a certainty.
There was a time when it was thought that there must be a foundation for the earth and that seemed logically necessary. But it turned out, empirically, that it was not the case. That required new thinking, and the new thinking was forced on us by various empirical truths. Check out Five ways to prove the earth is a globe. That's why I regard a first cause as an opportunity for new thinking.

Why? Why not deal with the one he (@philosophim) presented, and either help him work out the defects, or understand what he's trying to say... — AmadeusD

Because considering a variety of cases in terms of similarities to and differences from the central case helps one to understand it.

But to your main point. You have a sequence, A is caused by B, B is caused by C, C is caused by D, and so on, and you suppose it to be valid to ask what causes the entire sequence. — Banno

We focus on the "A caused B" kind of cause. If the spark caused the explosion, we can ask what caused the spark and what effects the explosion caused (and sometimes it can cause another explosion, as in an atomic bomb). That's our paradigm of causation.
But we can also ask why the spark caused an explosion (or why sparks cause explosions) and we'll get an answer in terms of the reactions between molecules at certain temperatures. This doesn't fit the "A caused B" model, if only because it doesn't provide a "prior" cause, so it is probably clearer to call this an analysis. This kind of question is also recursive. When we reach the limits of our understanding, we are left with brute facts. The possibility of developing another layer can't be ruled out (and we have), but I think the argument applies.

For any person, it is legitimate to ask from whom they were born. It is not legitimate to ask that of the sequence of births - it is not a person and so does not have a mother. — Banno

That's true, so far as it goes. But we can ask, and answer, the question why people are born and then those people bear children. But not in the same terms. We need an analysis of the sequence, not an addition to it. That's what happens in the case of the explosion.

But the analysis is still in terms of cause/effect relationships, which are the presupposed framework of the sequence. It isn't at all clear to me what kind of answer can be provided to the question why causal relationships (regularities?) exist. It seems to me a brute fact - possibly necessary in some sense. I am clear that "It simply is" is not a cause and not even an explanation. On the contrary, it is a rejection of the question.

There was a moment when one of my children realized the power of the question "Why", which, as good liberal parents, we always tried to answer. But every answer can generate another "why?". When one runs out of explanations - or time - one has to say, "because it is." This is not answer. It is a refusal to answer or a confession of inability to answer.

I don't think I'm asserting anything as a first cause that would later be found to have a prior cause. — Philosophim

"Later" is a long time. How long would you wait?
For me, it will always seem more likely, and always possible, that any putative first cause will turn out to have a prior cause (or, in my language, that we will develop a prior cause) than the alternative.

The fundamental argument, if I'm not wrong, is this:-

If we don't know whether our universe has finite or infinite chains of causality A -> B -> C etc...
Lets say there's a finite chain of causality. What caused a finite causal chain to exist instead of something else? There is no prior reason, it simply is.
Lets say there's an infinite chain of causality. What caused an infinite causal chain to exist instead of something else? There is no prior reason, it simply is. — Philosophim

I notice that here, as elsewhere, you use the word "reason" at this point, instead of cause. "Reason" and "cause" are not synonyms, are they? At least, not in philosophy. So what is the significance of this change in language?

Non-religious theism as about god without dogma. — Lionino

That could work if a religion primarily of practice works. Depending on the details of the practice, that could be an intellectually respectable way to go. Perhaps that's why Bhuddhism is so popular these days.

I generally find presuppositionalists more sad than funny, because presuppositionalism is pure epistemic poison, that badly cripples the thinking of many who fall into it. — "wonderer1

I think it depends a bit on the attitude of the presuppositionalist. It seems to me the poison is in the attitude (as in the video earlier). Worse still, that dogmatic inability to engage with someone who verntures to disagree seems likely to me to betray a certain level of uncertainty.

How else could we guarantee the truth of these laws in an inherently meaningless and godless universe? — Tom Storm

I would suggest that gives far too much to the other side. If logic needs a guarantee, that means it could be wrong. But how could it be wrong?
For myself, I would go for observing that God's guarantee doesn't seem to be worth much, given how much chaos and disorder there is in the universe, and wondering why It didn't bother to include sub-atomic particles in its promise.

I used the term 'arbitrary' to indicate that I think mystical and psychedelic experiences can be rationalized in terms of any religious/ metaphysical framework. — Janus

Fair enough.

My experience is that bad trips may either be indicative of underlying psychoses or be just due to existential anxieties. So, I have known many people who have taken many trips, but no one whose subsequent ongoing psychosis or extreme neurosis could be definitively attributed to the use of psychedelics. That said, I don't doubt that the use of psychedelics can in rare cases trigger incipient psychoses. — Janus

That may be true. I only wanted to say that what happens after you swallow the pill is not determined. It depends on you (not in the sense that you are responsible for it or in control of it!) and your circumstances. From what I've read and heard, having an experienced guide with you makes a big difference, at least at the beginning. It goes back to the beginnings in the '50's. The "aristocrats" emphasized the need for a guide, the "democrats" insisted it was for everyone. The aristocrats were probably guilty of snobbery and elitism, but they were right about the guide - as the psychiatrists seem to be demonstrating nowadays.