:up:

everybody remember this scene from Dead Poets Society?
https://youtu.be/tpeLSMKNFO4

Art is a way of seeing; we declare what is art, we don't discover it. — J

The same is brought up in discussions of math and the laws of physics. Difficult to know sometimes. But this is definitely true of art.

There is no standard by which the judge these things.
— Patterner

Sure there is. Let's say that a composer which is lively is a composer which is good. We'll have some identifying criteria for what we mean by "lively", and thereby come to judge a composer as good. — Moliere

The criteria of "lively" is not objective. Some don't like lively. It doesn't seem right that somber music lovers would never get anything they love on the list of "good music".

One way to think on this with your examples -- perhaps there's a way of understanding why someone would say "Vivaldi wrote the most beautiful Baroque music" and why someone would say "Bach wrote the most beautiful Baroque music". I may have a preference for one or the other, — Moliere

Your preference is all it is. I can understand that you like music with certain characteristics, and possibly predict which compositions you will like. But that's not the same as saying those compositional are "good," or that I like them.

but there's an attitude I can adopt to both in seeing why they're the ones we are considering in the first place: they're both good! And what is this goodness? Why these people, and not the butchers of the same time period? — Moliere

I'm a baroque fan in general, and Bach in particular. Vivaldi was one of his influences, so we can compare them easily enough.

The question is, is there such a thing as aesthetic value over and above each tradition.
— RussellA

Yes, that's what I was trying to get to. If someone denies this, would you say they are a relativist about aesthetic value tout court? — J

Some people think classical music is the most beautiful kind of music. Some think baroque music is the most beautiful kind of classical music. Some people think Vivaldi wrote the most beautiful Baroque music, while others think it was Bach. There is no standard by which the judge these things.

I think Johnny Cash's best work was on Colombo. :grin:

bread and Russian novels boring. — Tom Storm

Well, of course, you have to do something with the bread. :grin: Make French toast. (Using only pure maple syrup.) Sandwiches of any sort. I just find it interesting that, regardless of what I do with it, I like breads of opposing qualities for those opposing qualities.

But asking why quickly drags us into an infinite regress, each reason presupposes another, and eventually we’re probably left circling back to temperament and taste. — Tom Storm

Yup. I can't even imagine what other kind of scenario there could be.

You're certainly right that we can give more detail about what we like and don't like. But it seems to me it just moves the question down a level. Why do we like or dislike the details?

It's strange sometimes. I like bread. But I like both a soft, fresh loaf, and a multi-grain like Arnold's or Killer Dave.

I love just a lone guy playing the guitar and singing, like James Taylor. The clarity, the simplicity. Odd that if that guy with a guitar a country singer, and I almost certainly won't be able to listen to the whole song. Also odd that I love Steely Dan, which is very far removed from JT in instrumentation and chord progressions, yet those are the things I love.

Two days ago I literally met the only other person I know who can't stand watermelon! Thought I was the only one. AND she ALSO can't stand cucumbers! Funny that she specifically said the texture of the cucumbers is her objection, while the flavor is mine

I'm asking for an aesthetic justification -- which would basically be a way of answering your question "Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else?" -- or at least a way to answer it. — Moliere

I don't believe any of the questions have answers that don't ultimately come down to "That's just the way it is.". And I suspect most of it is just the wiring of our brains.

But even the "why" doesn't help. Take Bach. I love counterpoint. I love how he weaved the voices in and around each other, yet the harmonies were always beautiful.

Why does that resonate so strongly in me? No idea. I didn't choose to like it. Piano teachers gave me Mozart all the time. As far as classical goes, I didn't know anything else. But then one day I heard Bach, and my world changed.

Why doesn't it resonate in everyone else? Lots of people don't want to hear Bach.

Does it have to do with how my neurons are set up?

But why these ideas and not those ideas?

Surely you see we gravitate towards different philosophers. — Moliere

Perhaps for the same reason I love Bach, but Mozart doesn't do much for me. Or why I love chocolate, but don't bother with strawberry. There is no "why". I just do. I assume it's the same for philosophers. What one talks about fascinates, and what another talks about is meh.

Richard Dawkins has claimed that reproduction is just a way for genes to replicate themselves. I think that’s a question of perspective and not definitive statement of fact. Dawkins might disagree with me on that. — T Clark

I haven't read Dawkins, but I know he has a book called The Selfish Gene. Is that where her days that?

What is your perspective?

But what about information? Do you think DNA is encoded information?
— Patterner

I think you have to be careful when you talk about information. It has a very specific technical meaning in information theory, which I don’t understand very well. — T Clark

Googling "information theory and DNA" gave me this:

Information theory, initially developed for communication systems, has found significant applications in understanding DNA and molecular biology. It provides tools to analyze the storage, transmission, and processing of information within biological systems, particularly regarding DNA sequences and gene expression. This framework helps analyze patterns in DNA, estimate information content, and understand how genetic information is encoded, stored, and utilized by cells. — AI Overview

And there are many links that discuss it.

I think they’re both exactly the same except that one is much more complex than the other. In addition, the DNA reaction ends up producing something that’s important to humans whereas the vinegar one does not. I think that is what gives the illusion of purpose. People like to tell stories and goals and purposes are stories that People are particularly good at. — T Clark

I think DNA produces the environment in which it can reproduce. Doesn't matter what species, it's what all life is. I'd say that's the definition of life - DNA builds the environment in which it reproduces.

Do you view all that in some other way?
— Patterner

Clearly, yes. And just as clearly, this is a difference of opinion we’re not going to be able to resolve. — T Clark

Likely not. :rofl: But if modify posted her about things they didn't agree on... But what about information? Do you think DNA is encoded information? Or is it just... I don't know how to word it. It just happens that the order of the bases happens to to lead to proteins being assembled.

My position throughout this discussion has been that teleology does not mean just that one event leads, through a chain of events, to another event. Here is the definition that matches my understanding of the meaning. It’s from Google‘s AI summary, so I’m not saying it’s definitive or correct necessarily, but it is my understanding.

“Teleology, in philosophy, is the study of purposiveness or goal-directedness. It examines how phenomena, whether natural or human-made, are explained by their ends, goals, or purposes rather than their causes. The concept suggests that things exist or occur for a specific reason, implying a design or intention behind their existence.”

I think intention is the right word to use here. Teleology implies that an event took place because it was intended. It’s my position that intention is a mental state. You need a mind for there to be a goal or purpose. — T Clark

I wonder if it's possible that ends, goals, or purposes can exist without intention. How can protein synthesis not be the goal of DNA and its cohorts? Protein isn't the result of a spontaneous chemical reaction. (I take this kind of thing to be what Barbieri means by "spontaneous molecules" and "spontaneous reactions".) It's not like vinegar and baking soda coming in contact, and there's a chemical reaction that releases carbon dioxide. I don't see how CO2 can be the goal of vinegar and baking soda, since they might never have come into contact. But protein is synthesized by an intricate process that has several molecules taking the information stored in DNA, and assembling the amino acids and proteins. DNA doesn't do anything other than this, and the order of its bases is obviously the recipe for amino acids and proteins, and nothing else.

Do you view all that in some other way?

These patterns are neither external to us, nor are they merely internal to us. The order emerges out of our discursive and material interactions with our environment. It is not discovered but produced , enacted as patterns of activity. — Joshs

I disagree. I think old faithful would erupt with the same regularity whethet humans, or any life, existed. I would say the same about pulsars, and many more examples.

However, that doesn't even matter. Even if there are no patterns in the universe whatsoever other than those humans construct, humans are a part of the universe. Therefore, patterns are a part of the universe.

I don't know about the universe, as a whole, being teleological. I don't see any reason to believe it is. But teleology is certainly found in the universe.
— Patterner

Agreed, but I would say only where there is intention. I guess that means human or other outside intervention. — T Clark

Intention is a sure sign of teleology. But I have to wonder about intention. Consider DNA. These are Marcello Barbieri's words:

The physicalist thesis would be correct if genes and proteins were spontaneous molecules, because there is no doubt that all spontaneous reactions are completely accounted for by physical quantities. This, however, is precisely the point that molecular biology has proved wrong. Genes and proteins are not produced by spontaneous processes in living systems. They are produced by molecular machines that physically stick their subunits together and are therefore manufactured molecules, i.e. molecular artefacts. This in turn means that all biological structures are manufactured, and therefore that the whole of life is artefact-making . — Marcello Barbieri

Genes and proteins, in short, are assembled by molecular robots on the basis of outside instructions. They are manufactured molecules, as different from ordinary molecules as artificial objects are from natural ones. indeed, if we agree that molecules are natural when their structure is determined from within, and artificial when it is determined from without, then genes and proteins can truly be referred to as artificial molecules, as artifacts made by Nature. — Marcello Barbieri

DNA is two complimentary strands of nucleotides running along sugar phosphate backbones, and joined by hydrogen bonds. DNA means chains of amino acids and proteins. It is encoded information. In an extremely simplified description, helicase unzips DNA so that mRNA can make copies of that information, which it takes out of the nucleus to the ribosomes, where tRNA molecules each take one codon of information to the molecule aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase, which knows which amino acid the tRNA's codon represents, which it gives to the tRNA, so the ribosome can stick them together into proteins.

A lot of work is being done by a lot of different molecules to construct something that will not come to exist in any other way. Is there not intent.. Not thoughts of intent. But the system works toward something in the future. If there is intention here, then human or other outside intervention is not needed for intention.

If there is NOT intention, it is still a lot of organized work from different players using encoded information to bring about a specific future. So teleology.

I don't know about the universe, as a whole, being teleological. I don't see any reason to believe it is. But teleology is certainly found in the universe. To demonstrate this, I just did this.
I thought about a future state that was not going to come about without my envisioning it, my intent to bring it about, and my work to bring it about.

(It turns out it takes a minute to get the one on top to stay, because the cap of the one below is not a flat surface with sharp edges. In case anyone was wondering. :grin:)

How would we go about calculating the probability of the BB?

I suspect I am not, although I don't really understand. It seems to me that you're sometimes saying there are consistencies/regularities/patterns in the universe, and sometimes saying there are not. How can we make sense of the indeterminate, beyond knowing it is indeterminate? What I mean is, what greater understanding of it can exist beyond the fact that it is indeterminate? If, for no rhyme or reason, something changes its shape, size, state (solid, liquid, gas), and everything else we can think of, each at its own random interval, isn't that all we can understand about it?

We engage with an open and indeterminate reality by constructing tentative models that help us navigate and make sense of it, knowing these models are provisional and will eventually be replaced as our understanding evolves. — Tom Storm

As our understanding of what evolves?

The question for me is: are the patterns external, or are they the product of our cognitive apparatus? — Tom Storm

I think this brings me back to my original question. If the patterns are not external, why would our cognitive apparatus produce them?

To call a pattern a law of nature reifies it, or at least risks mistaking a useful human construct for something intrinsic to reality itself. — Tom Storm

"Law" is an unfortunate word, but it's the one we've been using for ... well, quite a while. No, I wouldn't think the inverse square law is a thing that demands or forces the gravitational attraction between two objects to be inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Nevertheless, the gravitational attraction between two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Maybe the science world should start using new words.

I'm not saying there are no patterns — Tom Storm

I thought you were saying that, particularly when you said, "At present, I tend to believe that the idea that the universe “behaves in an orderly way” reflects a human tendency to project patterns and impose coherence where there may be none inherently. What we call "order" is not something we discover in the universe but something we attribute to it through our descriptive practices."

it's about how we tend to perceive things and that our predictive model change over time and may not map onto something we call reality. We tend to fall back on predictions to cope with our world. So if it rains after we pray or do a special dance, we'll keep doing it to try to bring rain again. — Tom Storm

Certainly, our perceptions, and guesses regarding the meaning, of the universe's regularities and patterns change over time. Hopefully becoming more accurate, though Donald Hoffman might say not. But I take 's OP as asking why there are regularities and patterns at all.

There were regularities there of some kind, of course — Moliere

That's what I took to be the point of the OP. There are regularities, patterns, consistencies.

Nothing. It's just interesting. — RogueAI

Ah! Ok. I thought you were getting at something specific.

No regularities seem chaotic. It would be difficult to learn from evidence (or experiences, assuming there could be any). — jorndoe

I doubt there could be any. If sometimes electrons and protons repel each other, and sometimes attracted to each other, and if the strong nuclear force sometimes bound nuclei together and sometimes didn't, and matter sometimes warped space-time and sometimes didn't...

Not only do we act like it's a low probability event, we believe it too. No one is scared the universe will kill us all in the next minute. We believe that's very unlikely, but how do we know? — RogueAI

That's true. But, what else can and should we do?

That's a good question. Also, why do we believe the universe will continue to behave in an orderly way? How do we know there isn't some principle at work whereby the universe becomes chaotic tomorrow. How do we even go about calculating the odds of such a thing? But we all act like it's a low probability event. Is it really? — RogueAI

I can't think of a different way that we should act. If it does not continue to behave tomorrow the way it is today, how could we guess in which ways it will be different? which type of disaster should we plan for? Some of which, such as the sudden disappearance of the strong nuclear force, could not possibly be prepared for anyway. So we may as well all act like it's a low probability event.

I’d guess that humans are pattern seeking, meaning making machines. We see connections everywhere and this often helps us manage our environment. — Tom Storm

Why would we be machines of that nature? I would think because it's a successful strategy. If so, why would seeking patterns/meaning/connections in a universe where there aren't any be successful?

At present, I tend to believe that the idea that the universe “behaves in an orderly way” reflects a human tendency to project patterns and impose coherence where there may be none inherently. What we call "order" is not something we discover in the universe but something we attribute to it through our descriptive practices. I don’t think we ever access a world “as it is” apart from interpretation; what we take to be real or empirical is shaped by historically contingent terminology and shared frameworks of understanding. These frameworks are always provisional or tentative, useful for communicating, and predicting, but not revealing some deep, necessary structure of the universe. Any sense of order is thus not a property of the world itself, but of our current ways of making sense of it, which remain open to continual revision. — Tom Storm

Why would humans attribute order where there is none? Wouldn't that mean order is a part of our nature? And if order is a part of our nature, and we are of this universe, doesn't that mean order is an attribute of the universe?

Here's a funny thing: After learning that atoms are mostly space, one does not find oneself sinking into one's arm chair. Things remain solid. — Banno

Go figure.

I will, however, point out that the reason the X-Men's Kate Pryde can pass through solid objects is because she's able to take advantage of the spaces between. So there's that.

I think Dave Matthews Band's The Space Between is a great song.

Human imagination had often come up with some fairly bizarre ideas that turned out to be accurate explanations of what's going on in our reality. Einstein's relativity and the structure of atoms are great examples.

As brilliant and imaginative as many people are, I cannot imagine anyone is ever going to come up with any workable explanation for how things exist as they do if there was not coherence and predictability. If electrons did not always have negative charges. If mass did not always warp spacetime. If light did not always travel at c. If the strong nuclear force wasn't always about 100 times stronger than the electromagnetic force and 10^38 times stronger than gravity. Many many other examples of consistency in our reality.

If these things were not consistent, nothing of what we know would exist.

My thinking is that, whatever the answers might be, they are the answer to how we come about. People say, "That steel isn't really solid. It's mostly empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is what gives us the illusion of solidify." I say that's empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is, is how solidity is accomplished.
— Patterner
Your reply is correct. But "people" already know that. The problem is that what you take as the explanation of solidity, they take as undermining solidity. You have to show them that they have messed about with the meaning of "real". It is a mistake to allow them to get away with that, because once that's happened, there's no way back. — Ludwig V

I'm more concerned with the definition of "solid" at the moment. The definition does not say there is no space between nucleus and electrons, between atoms, between molecules, etc. The explanation for solidity is not the somewhat vague idea probably everyone has before learning what's really going on. but when a rock is coming out your head, regardless of all that, it's best to prevent that impact.

The explanations for things like the human mind, self, and consciousness might be very different than the very vague idea I'm sure most people have before exploring these topics. But whatever the explanation, I still really like chocolate ice cream, Bach, and sex.

The real question is: how serious am I willing to be in answering that? Because the answers might shatter everything I believe to be true. Every conviction I hold might be up for some serious maintenance. — Kurt

Brinn of the Haruchai said:
“I will know the truth. Any being who cannot bear the truth is indeed unworthy.”

My thinking is that, whatever the answers might be, they are the answer to how we come about. People say, "That steel isn't really solid. It's mostly empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is what gives us the illusion of solidify." I say that's empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is, is how solidity is accomplished. And whatever all the specifics are that explain the specifics of my existence are are just how my existence is accomplished. It doesn't matter. (I don't mean matter, I mean matter. :grin:)

Wow. Such a presence. I'm sure even more in person than here. My condolences to her family and friends.

I don't think that's quite what he meant, but it's funny anyway! — J

More seriously, the answer is No. It's a question I remember asking as a child. I assume most people wondered at some point. But no. It's outright impossible.

The question really should be, let's say, could the Queen -- could this woman herself -- have been born of different parents from the parents from whom she actually came? — N&N, 112

I guess there fact that there are billions of people in the world who were born of different parents and none of them are the Queen doesn't prove it can't happen. But I'm leaning that way anyway. :grin:

Thank you.

So would a carefully constructed neural network made from pipes and water wheels that is set up to process inputs and outputs like a human brain be conscious? Could we carefully set up toilet paper rolls to be conscious?
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Very good point. If we take informational or structural accounts of consciousness seriously, then in principle, any system that implements the relevant patterns should be conscious—even ones made from absurd materials. — tom111

I have a very different idea of consciousness, which I won't bother going into in this thread, not wanting to derail. But, consciousness aside, would such a system be capable of what ChatGPT is capable of?

consciousness is meant to give the affected organism ownership of it's mind — T Clark

Could you explain what "ownership" means?

I'm also wondering about "meant". That sounds like it was the plan, which I don't assume you meant?

That position doesn't make sense to me. If what we see is an hallucination or other phantasm, then our eyes must be, also
— Patterner

If you're at the Overlook Hotel and you see people who shouldn't be there, you should question whether you're hallucinating. — frank

I'm not suggesting there is no such thing as hallucination. I'm saying the thought that reality is of a certain nature, but we hallucinate it is of a different nature, and we hallucinate sense organs to perceive that hallucinated reality, doesn't make sense to me.