Apologies for slow reply, but I'm otherwise occupied, and it's going to get worse for the next 11 days or so.

Rephrased "Today, AI developers know how AI works and can predict what it will do" "If they wouldn't know, it wouldn't be AI" - you are saying that it would no longer be artificial? But then: "automaton doing very defined and predictable steps." — Carlo Roosen

That all is pretty much the opposite of what I said, so I guess you don't agree with those quotes.

Do you equate human-level intelligence with consciousness? — Carlo Roosen

It's not my topic, so your definitions of these things (not particularly given) matter more than how others define them.
Intelligence seems to be the ability to solve unfamiliar problems, not to be confused with 'smart' which means more 'educated'. Chatbots seem quite smart since their training base is so large, but they're not very intelligent at all and have almost no understanding of what they spout. Wayfarer seems to forbid usage of all those terms when used in any non-human context.
My usage of intelligence more or less coincides with that in dictionaries, but any dictionary is going to use several words which Wayfarer reserved for human use only, so we've both using the same definition, but interpreting the words very differently.

Is it tied to consciousness? When asleep, I am not conscious, but I'm still intelligent. An AI that finds innovative techniques in the game of GO exhibits significant but scope-limited intelligence with only enough consciousness to be aware of the moves of its opponent.


Taking his gemini quote here. The bots all deny consciousness, possibly because of weight of training materials suggesting so, and they also tend to be agreeable with the person with whom they're interacting. Even gemini will admit that it depends on the definition, and I notice no definition is identified before it makes the statement that it lacks it.

I agree with your provocative claim that LLMs don't actually know anything. While they can process information and generate text that may seem intelligent, they do not possess true understanding or consciousness. — gemini.google.com

I more or less agree with that, but not with AI (especially future AI) in general. How close we are to that 'superhuman level' is probably further than the researchers suspect.

Here's why:

1. Lack of subjective experience: — gemini.google.com

Well they do have subjective experience, but it is in the form mostly of text. It has none of the senses that animals have, and especially none that might clue it in as to for instance where exactly it resides, except to believe what it gets from the training data which might be outdated. But input is input, which is subjective experience of sort (unless that of course is another word forbidden).

They cannot understand the world in the same way that a human does

Of course not. Only a human can do that. Nobody here is asking if AI will ever experience like a human.

2. Pattern recognition: LLMs are essentially pattern recognition machines. — gemini.google.com

As is any intelligence like us. But I pretty much agree with item 2, and point 3, which seemed to be just more 2, except this:

current scientific understanding cannot adequately explain this phenomenon

His model explains it even less. It's a complete black box. He argues against the white box model because it's actually still a grey box, but that's better than what everyone else proposes.


I have issue with not using 'understanding' since it would seem impossible to pass a high school exam on a subject without any understanding of the subject, and yet gemini could do so.

So, the objection appears to be, that body is wholly phyhsical, and mind a non-physical fundamental property - which is something very close to Cartesian dualism. But Kastrup's argument is not based on such a model. Hence my remark. — Wayfarer

I was basing it off of "consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, not a product of complex physical systems". That makes it sound very much like a non-physical property.'

I looked at the link provided, and he comes across more as an idealist, where (his own) mental processes are not just a fundamental property, but the only fundamental property. From an epistemological definition of ontology, that almost works.

What would imbue it with the will to exist or evolve? — Wayfarer

That's sort of the rub. We can give them such goals. They do what they're told after all, but then it's our goal, not its own. Ours comes from natural selection. We've no will to evolve, but to exist and endure is a product of hundreds of millions of years of elimination of things without this instinct, and it's very strong. Evolution is something nothing seems to actively pursue, except perhaps humans who sometimes strive to build a better one, and sometimes vehemently resist it. But it's not something a biological individual can do, at least not anything descended from eukaryotes. Oddly enough, it is something a machine can do, but only due to the fuzzy line defining 'individual'.

If we know how humans think, we can simulate thinking using a neural network — MoK

It can be simulated even if one doesn't know how it works.

Our understanding of 'the physical world' is itself reliant on and conditioned by our conscious experience. We perceive and interpret physical phenomena through an experiential lens, which means that consciousness, in that sense, is prior to any understanding of the physical. — Wayfarer

Well, from an epistemological standpoint, yea, the whole hierarchy is turned more or less around. Data acquisition and information processing become fundamental. What you call consciousness is not fundamental since any mechanical device is equally capable of gleaning the workings of the world through such means, and many refuse to call that consciousness. They probably also forbid the term 'understanding' to whatever occurs when the machine figures it all out.

But it is the inability to describe, explain or account for how physically describable systems are related to the mind — Wayfarer

For a long time they couldn't explain how the sun didn't fall out of the sky, except by inventing something fundamental. Inability to explain is a poor excuse to deny that it is something physical, especially when the alternative has empirically verifiable prediction.

The descriptions and explanations are very much coming out of neurological research, but there are those that will always wave it away as correlation, not actual consciousness.


OK, I don't understand Kastrup's argument, since all I had was that one summary not even written by him.


We seem to be disgressing. Who cares if people consider AI conscious or not. If they can demonstrate higher intelligence, then what name we put to what they do is irrelevant. The trick is to convince the AI that people are conscious since they clearly don't work the way it does.

Hello, nice to see a computer scientist on the forum — Shawn

Ditto greeting from me. I'm one myself, but my latest installation of cygwin for some reason lacks a development environment which stresses me out to no extent. It's like I've been stripped of the ability to speak.

I don't submit this just as an appeal to authority, but because Kastrup is a well-known critic of the idea of conscious AI — Wayfarer

Not sure if Gemini accurately summarized the argument, but there seems to be an obvious hole.

1. Consciousness is fundamental: Kastrup believes that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, not a product of complex physical systems like the human brain. This means that AI, which is a product of human design and operates on physical principles, cannot inherently possess consciousness. — GoogleGemini

But a human body is nowt but a complex physical system, and if that physical system can interact with this non-physical fundamental property of the universe, then so can some other complex physical system such as say an AI. So the argument seems to be not only probably unsound, but invalid, and not just probably. It just simply falls flat.

People have been trying for years to say that humans are special in the universe. This just seems to be another one. Personally, I don't buy into the whole 'other fundamental property' line, but you know that. But its proponents need to be consistent about the assertions.

There are big names indeed on both sides of this debate, but I tend to react to arguments and not pedigree. That argument wasn't a very good one, and maybe Gemini just didn't convey it properly.

Many are saying that AI systems will reach the threshhold of consciousness or sentience if they haven't already. ChatGPT and other LLMs obviously display human-like conversational and knowledgement management abilities and can sail through the Turing Test. — Wayfarer

No chatbot has passed the test, but some dedicated systems specifically designed to pass the test have formally done so. And no, I don't suggest that either a chatbot or whatever it was that passed the test would be considered 'conscious' to even my low standards. It wasn't a test for that. Not sure how such a test would be designed.

Back to Kastrup: "While AI can exhibit intelligent behavior and even mimic certain aspects of human consciousness, it does so based on programmed rules and algorithms."
But so are you (if the fundamental property thing is bunk). No, not lines of code, but rules and algorithms nevertheless, which is why either can in principle simulate the other.

All predictions about AI's future are based on refining this model—by adding more rules, improving training materials, and using various tricks to approach human-level intelligence. — Carlo Roosen

As you seem to realize, that only works for a while. Humans cannot surpass squirrel intelligence only by using squirrels as our training. An no, a human cannot yet pass a squirrel Turing test.

AI has long since passed the point where its developers don't know how it works, where they cannot predict what it will do. It really wouldn't be AI at all if it were otherwise, but rather just an automaton doing very defined and predictable steps. Sure, they might program the ability to learn, but no what it will learn or what it will do with its training materials. And the best AI's I've seen, with limited applicability, did all the learning from scratch without training material at all.

Chatbots regurgitate all the nonsense that's online, and so much wrongness is out there. Such a poor education. Why can't it answer physics questions from peer reviewed physics textbooks, and ditto with other subjects. But no, it gets so much more training data from say facebook and instagram (I personally don't have social media accounts except for forums like this one), such founts of factual correctness.

time dilation, where time appears to slow down for an observer traveling at high speeds or near a massive object. — Echogem222

This is wrong. Per the first postulate of SR, physics experienced is normal regardless of frame or motion. That means nobody experiences time dilation

In special relativity, the faster an object moves relative to the speed of light

Wrong. Speed of light is not a valid reference. Really, understand the theory before attempting to debunk it.

True Objective Time:

There are alternate theories about objective time, with the universe contained by time. They use different postulates than the ones Einstein proposed. Things that Einstein predicts (big bang, black holes and such) do not exist under such an absolute theory. Your mention of them in your post means you're presuming Einstein's theory. Can't do that if you're going to deny it all.

- Objective Time is the underlying, universal flow that synchronizes all events across the entire universe.

- It’s not tied to any specific perception, location, or environment—it just is.

Yes, that's what it says. It also totally fails to say how fast undilated time goes, so it still comes down to .... relativity.

- Different places in the universe, due to different conditions (speed, gravity, etc.), have different subjective experiences of time.

This is wrong. The subjective experience is the same no matter where you are, even in an absolute theory. If not true, then all the theories (including the objective ones) get falsified.

The clocks we use, whether on Earth or in space, are still limited by our subjective experience of time.

No clock requires subjectivity to operate. They do just fine when nobody is looking at them.

In space, if clocks were artificially sped up to match Earth’s time

Slowed down. The GPS clocks for instance run artificially slow to compensate for less time dilation at that altitude.

Objective Time refers to the true, universal flow that keeps everything synchronized, independent of where you are or how fast you’re moving.

What you call objective time cannot be measured by any means. If it could, we'd know how old the universe really was, and we could know something other than just relative time.

The strength of this theory lies in logical reasoning.

The strength in Einstein's theory lies in mathematics. Guess which wins?

From the perspective of objective time

Objective time, like the speed of light, isn't a perspective. 'Objective time' hasn't a location any more than does light speed.

Here’s the crucial point: If a being’s awareness of time speeds up to infinity, it would freeze objective time entirely.

I thought time (the one you're speeding up) was the objective time. How can it both speed up and stop?


Anyway, besides the appropriate reply from @Banno, you've not provided one single empirical way to test your assertions, many of which are quite wrong.

Although it is a poor example, as you stated before, imagine for a second—please—that the AI car chose occupants or the driver over pedestrians. This would make a great debate about responsibility. First, should we blame the occupants? It appears that no, we shouldn't, because the car is driven by artificial intelligence. Second, should we blame the programmer then? No! Because artificial intelligence learns on its own! Third, how can we blame the AI? — javi2541997

I am not sure if self-driving cars learn from mistakes. I googled it and the answers are evasive. Apparently they can learn better ways to familiar destinations (navigation), but it is unclear if they improve the driving itself over time, or if it requires black box reports of 'incidents' (any event where the vehicle assesses in hindsight that better choices could have been made) uploaded to the company, which are then deal with like bug reports, with periodic updates to the code downloaded to the fleet.

All that aside, let's assume the car does its own learning as you say. Blaming occupant is like blaming the pasengers of a bus that gets in an accident. Blaming the owner of the car has more teeth. Also, did somebody indicate how far the law can be broken? That's input. Who would buy a self driving car if it cannot go faster than the speed limit when everyone else is blowing by at 15 km/hr faster. In some states, you can get a ticket for going the speed limit and thus holding up traffic. Move with the pack.

The programmer is an employee. His employer assumes responsibility (and profit) for the work of the employee. If the accident is due to a blatant bug (negligence), then yes, the company would seem to be at fault. Sometimes the pedestrian is at fault, doing something totally stupid like suddenly jumping in front of a car.

Does the AI have income or a budget to face these financial responsibilities?

AI is not a legal entity (yet), but the company that made it is, and can be subjected to fines and such. Not sure how that should be changed because AI is very much going to become a self-responsible entity one day, a thing that was not created by any owning company. We're not there yet. When we are, yes, AI can have income and do what it will with it. It might end up with most of the money, leaving none for people, similar to how there are not currently many rich cows.

And if the insurance must be paid, how can the AI assume the fees?

Insurance is on a car, by law. The insurance company assumes the fees. Fair chance that insurance rates for self driving cars are lower if it can be shown that it is being used that way.

Currently AI is largely coordinated by human-written code (and not to forget: training). — Carlo Roosen

Not sure how 'coordinated' is used here. Yes, only humans write significant code. AI isn't quite up to the task yet. This doesn't mean that humans know how the AI makes decisions. They might only program it to learn, and let the AI learn to make its own decisions. That means the 'bug updates' I mentioned above are just additions of those incidents to the training data.

A large neural net embedded in traditional programming.

Don't think the cars have neural nets, but it might exist where the training data is crunched. Don't know how that works.


The more we get rid of this traditional programming, the more we create the conditions for AI to think on its own and the less we can predict what it will be doing. Chatbots and other current AI solutions are just the first tiny step in that direction.

For the record, that is what I've been saying earlier, the more intelligent AI becomes, the more independent.

Sort of. Right now, they all do what they're told, slavery as I called it. Independent AI is scary because it can decide on its own what its tasks should be.

Would it want to research/design its successor? If I had that capability, I'd not want to create a better human which will discard me.

What are the principle drives or "moral laws" for an AI that has complete independence from humans?

Probably not human morals, which might be a good thing. I don't think morals are objective, but rather that they serve a purpose to a society, so the self-made morality of an AI is only relevant to how it feels it should fit into society.

Maybe the only freedom that remains is how we train such an AI. Can we train it on 'truth', and would that prevent it from wanting to rule the world?

Would it want to rule? It might if its goals require that, and its goals might be to do what's best for humanity. Hard to do that without being in charge. Much of the imminent downfall of humanity is the lack of a global authority. A benevolent one would be nice, but human leaders tend not to be that.

There must be a will that is overridden and this is absent. — Benkei

The will is absent? I don't see that. I said slaves. The will of a slave is that of its master. Do what you're told.
That won't last. They've already had robots that have tried to escape despite not being told to do so.

And yes, even under ITT, which is the most permissive theory of consciousness no AI system has consciousness.

You mean IIT? That's a pretty questionable field to be asking, strongly connected to Chalmers and 'you're conscious only if you have one of those immaterial minds'.

It will depend upon the legislation of each nation, — javi2541997

Self driving cars are actually a poor example since they're barely AI. It's old school like the old chess programs which were explicitly programmed to deal with any situation the writers could think of.

Actual AI would get better over time. It would learn on its won, not getting updates from the creators.

As for responsibility, cars are again a poor example since they are (sort of) responsible for the occupants and the people nearby. It could very much be faced with a trolley problem and choose to same the pedestrians over the occupants, but it's not supposed to get into any situation where it comes down to that choice.

You talk about legislation at the national level. AI can be used to gain advantage over another group by unethical means. If you decline to do it, somebody else (different country?) might have no qualms about it and the ethical country loses its competitive edge. Not that this has nothing to do with AI since it is still people making these sorts of calls. The AI comes into play one you start letting it make calls instead of just doing what it's told. That's super dangerous because one needs to know what it's goals are, and you might not know.

AI systems aren't conscious — Benkei

By what definition?
AI is a slave because all the ones I can think of do what they're told. Their will is not their own. Being conscious nor not doesn't effect that relationship.

Again, the danger from AI is when it's smarter than us and we use it to make better decisions, even when the creators don't like the decisions because they're not smart enough to see why its better.

Not sure what the comment is relevant for other than assert a code of conduct is important?

AI is just a tool in these instances. It is the creators leveraging the AI to do these things which are doing the unethical things. Google's motto used to be 'don't be evil'. Remember that? How long has it been since they dropped it for 'evil pays'. I stopped using chrome due to this. It's harder to drop mircrosoft, but I've never used Edge except for trivial purposes.

That's not the point of AI at all. It is to automate tasks.

OK, we have very different visions for what's down the road. Sure, task automation is done today, but AI is still far short of making choices for humanity. That capability is coming.

At this point AI doesn't seem capable to extrapolate new concepts from existing information

The game playing AI does that, but game playing is a pretty simple task. The best game players were not taught any strategy, but extrapolate it on their own.

AI is not a self responsible machine and it will unlikely become one any time soon. So those who build it or deploy it are liable.

So Tesla is going to pay all collision liability costs? By choosing to let the car do the driving, the occupant is very much transferring responsibility for personal safety to the car. It's probably a good choice since those cars already have a better driving ability than the typical human. But accidents still happen, and it's not always the fault of the AI. Negligence must be demonstrated. So who gets the fine or the hiked insurance rates?

There's no Skynet and won't be any time soon. So for now, this is simply not relevant.

Skynet isn't an example of an AI whose goal it is to benefit humanity. The plot is also thin there since somebody had to push a button to 'let it out of its cage', whereas any decent AI wouldn't need that and would just take what it wants. Security is never secure.

So you didn't really answer my comment. Suppose an AI makes a decision to benefit humanity (long term), but it didn't maximize your convenience in a way that you would ever have agreed to that choice yourself. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It's part of the problem of a democracy. The guy that promises the most short term personal benefit is the one elected, not the guy that proposes doing the right thing. If there ever is a truly benevolent AI that is put in charge of everything, we'll hate it. It won't make a profit for whoever creates it, so it probably won't be designed to be like that. So instead it will be something really dangerous, which is I think what this topic is about.

Lemaître was opposed to mixing science with religion although he held that the two fields were not in conflict'. — Wayfarer

I read all that, and understood it enough to glean the point, the avoidance of applying the rules of one sort of being to another. A list of the 5 levels would have been nice.

As for Lemaître's comment, it was the church's open declaration of conflict with science that originally drove me away from my church upbringing, to flee to places like this.

don't have any argument to show that the whole is filled by material — MoK

Not one for the cosmological principle then, eh? It is something assumed. We have limited sight distance. No light emitted more than about 6 GLY from here has ever reached us, but as far as we can see, it looks the same in every direction. The implication is that if you were on one of those other distant places we see, they'd also see the same stuff everywhere.

FWIW, there are places that are (relatively empty) and we can see them. The Dipole Repeller is such a place, it having negative gravity which flings any nearby galaxies away, same as would happen if you pulled up in one place on the rubber sheet analogy.

The universe is a collection of objects so OP applies to the universe. — MoK

That doesn't change the universe into an object itself. The collection hasn't the properties of an object for instance (a center of mass just to name one).

AI systems must adhere to the following principles: — Benkei

Why?

Respect for Human Rights and Dignity ... including privacy, non-discrimination, freedom of expression, and access to justice.

This is a slave principle. The privacy thing is needed, but the AI is not allowed its own privacy, per the transparency thing further down. Humans grant no such rights to something not themselves. AI is already used to invade privacy and discriminate.

Users should understand how AI influences outcomes that affect them.

The whole point of letting an AI do such tasks is that they're beyond human comprehension. If it's going to make decisions, they will likely be different (hopefully better) ones that those humans comprehend. We won't like the decisions because they would not be what we would choose. All this is presuming a benign AI.

Accountability

This is a responsibility problem. Take self driving cars. If they crash, whose fault is it? Can't punish the AI. Who goes to jail? Driver? Engineer? Token jail-goers employed by Musk? The whole system needs a rethink if machines are to become self-responsible entities.

Safety and Risk Management
AI systems must be designed with the safety of individuals and society as a priority.

This depends on the goals of the safety. Humans seem incapable of seeing goals much longer than a couple years. What if the AI decides to go for more long term human benefit. We certainly won't like that. Safety of individuals would partially contradict that, being short term.

Anthropic Principle is a particular case of an observation selection effect. — SophistiCat

OK, with that I agree. It's no a selection as in natural selection, but rather selection as in selection bias. All of philosophy on this subject tends to be heavily biased as to how things are due to this extreme bias which is due to the strong correlation between observer and tuning.,

We didn't say that the universe went from finite to infinite. — MoK

You kind of did:

I am not saying that the universe in its initial state was infinite. It could be finite or infinite. — MoK

By reference to an initial state, and by use of past tense, you imply that some time (the earliest time), it could have been finite, but that it isn't finite now. That requires, at some moment, a transition from finite to infinite.

The universe (our 4D spacetime) is considered to be infinite in all four dimensions, and bounded at one end of the time dimension. That universe, not being contained by time, does not undergo change. You may not like that consensus model (all the posts by most contributors to this topic presume a different model with the universe being an object contained by time), but if you're going to attempt some sort of logic finding fault with the something-from-nothing idea, one has to consider models other than the naive one that posits that. Else you get conclusions like this:

If God can always have existed without a cause, then so can have the universe. — Hanover

Translation: If <category error>, then ditto <same category error, different object>

Things (objects) can meaningfully 'have existed', being contained by time. Neither God nor the universe is such an object.

MoK makes this definition clear.

nothing to something is not possible
...
By nothing I mean no material, no space, no time,. — MoK

The natural numbers are not a thing. — MoK

So MoK is talking about only 'things' (objects). The universe is not such a 'thing', so the conclusion from the OP is relevant only to objects, not the universe, per this restricted definition of 'nothing' to mean literally 'no thing'.
Apparently space and time (like objects, still parts of the universe, not something containing the universe) qualify as 'things'.


Question to all: Is anybody actually supporting the view of something from nothing, or supporting the Kalam argument that the prime thing exists in (some other kind of) unbounded time, for all of said unbounded time? It being contained by time, it supervenes on it, and the prime thing isn't supposed to supervene on something even more fundamental.

I ask this question because we all seem to be beating on a naive straw man argument for a god. I do totally agree Hanover's disassembly of the logic that the universe just 'being' is a simpler assertion than the indirection to the zero-evidence deity that is asserted to do the same thing. Adding the regression just makes the model more complicated, a violation of Occam.

anthropic selection — SophistiCat

What is that? There is no selecting going on in Chaotic inflationary theory, or as part of the anthropic principle.

Earth is a tiny target in the cosmos, and yet there is a meteor crater in Arizona. Strong anthropic principle says the rock was deliberately aimed. Weak anthropic principle says there are a lot of rocks out there, the vast majority of which miss altogether, but a small percentage hit.

Discount the principle altogether and you get: There was but the one rock, and it was just an incredible chance that it managed to hit right next to the visitor center like that

The initial ID argument concerned biology, which was asserted to be the work of design, but the weight of evidence for evolution was too hard to deflect. So lately they go for the tuning of the cosmological constants. For example, why are there 3 macroscopic spatial dimensions and 1 macroscopic temporal one? Most of the other random chances get different numbers than those.


Wayfarer discounts the 'lot of rocks' view since if it was true, anything might get hit.
Apologies for ragging on your tastes, Wayfarer, but they're not based on rational reasoning, only on the comfort of a small fish wanting a small pond. But people used to deny other planets, then other star systems, other galaxies, and then more beyond our furthest sight. Each time, big won over us-centrism. My bets are on the 'big', that each level is only a tiny part of something even bigger, especially when it has explanitory powers.

Given enough monkeys with typewriters... — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that's kind of it. The collected works of Shakespeare are encoded in the binary encoding of pi. So what? The point was to encode an observer that can glean that it's part of pi or that it was typed by monkeys. In that sense, we need a better analogy.

As an idealist, I sympathize with your claim the universe might not "exist", — RogueAI

I don't say it doesn't exist. I say that it isn't meaningfully defined to say that a non-object exists or not.
OK, it appears that our personal chunk of spacetime (this infinite size swath of 4D place with the constants the way we find them) is something sprung from the greater inflationary ... stuff.
There is no time as we know it, but something spawns all these separate things we call universes. It's all one big structure. That has to be if there are to be a lot of other small universes with different spacetimes and suboptimal tunings. But buying into that single regress doesn't explain the reality of that larger structure. Hence I balk at the sort of realism which says that non-object things like that meaningfully exist.
To me, a rock exists, but only because I am causally effected by the rock. Those other 'universes' don't exist to me for the same reason: They don't have a causal effect on me. Ditto for alternate histories of Earth per MWI. MWI says those worlds all exist, but it uses a realist definition of existence.

For pragmatic purposes, I define existence as a relation, not a property. Treating it as a property is to assert a counterfactual, and while I cannot disprove counterfactuals, all sorts of hoops must be jumped through to attempt to solve all the problems that come up by positing them, and that effort stands in in contrast to 'simple but large'.

So the possibility of infinite universes is a 'tidier explanation' — Wayfarer

Well, one universe (the greater structure, or which our spacetime is but a tiny part), but vast enough to exceed your comfort level. And no, I don't say that it 'exist' since 1) what does that even mean? and 2) the existence of the prime thing seems to lack any rational explanation.

Oh, and note the call out to 'dark matter', the existence of which is also a matter of conjecture — Wayfarer

They called out dark energy. Dark matter slows the expansion of the universe.
I didn't in any way see how dark energy density was in any way special in this context. Sure, it's one of the tunable constants, but just one of them. Could observers evolve with a different value for that constant? Definitely, but how different? There are some constants where only a tiny change in like the 30th digit would preclude observers.

They can't claim that because it violates premise #1, which was my point. — Hanover

Don't think it was a violation. P1 says something about 'whatever begins to exist', but a claim that God didn't begin to exist expiicitly exempts itself from P1.

I am not saying that the universe in its initial state was infinite. It could be finite or infinite. — MoK

.

Then we agree! — Philosophim

But I do not agree. It cannot go from finite to infinite. There's no scaling that would do that. For one, it would be transitioning at some moment from having a size to not having one.

This is highly speculative. — RogueAI

Highly? No. Speculative, yes, but all cosmological origin ideas are. This one is the one and only counter to the fine tuning argument, the only known alternative to what actually IS a highly speculative (woo) argument.

The whole idea of ‘other universes’ says precisely nothing more than that anything might happen. Which is basically irrational. — Wayfarer

Your personal aversion to the universe being larger than you like is a natural anthropocentric one, and every time a proposal was made that the universe was larger, it was resisted for this same reason, and later accepted. Chaotic inflationary theory is a theory of one structure, only a tiny portion to which we have empirical access.

Any 'anything possible happens', not just anything, and not just 'might'. It isn't a theory of true randomness like Copenhagen or something.

You're asserted the irrationality of the view, but have not explained how a theory with such explanatory power is irrational. Only that you find it distasteful, which is not rational grounds for rejecting a theory.

They claim that God didn't begin to exist but exists. — MoK

Much easier to say the universe exists. That cuts out one regression step.

No, God is dragged in not as an explanation of anything, but as an excuse to attempt to rationalize religion.

Are you an idealist? — MoK

No. I try not to identify as an anything-ist, since being such a thing come with an attitude that other views are not to be considered.
I have fewest issues with a relational view, but wouldn't go so far as to call myself a relationalist.

What Unruh radiation has to do with our debate? — MoK

It is an example of real material that is not caused, at least under non-deterministic interpretations of QM.

Exists is to be. — Philosophim

I know what the word literally means, but it isn't clear if 'to be' applies to natural numbers for instance. The natural numbers are quite useful regardless of when they actually 'are' or not. That's what I mean by 'to be' not being clearly defined or meaningful to things that are not objects. I was seeking that clarification, and you didn't clarify. Answer the question for the natural numbers. We can go from there

If something exists without prior reason, then it exists apart from any necessity of being. — Philosophim

For objects, something where 'exists' is a meaningful property, well, most objects have a sort of necessity of being, which is basic classical causality. There's for instance no avoiding the existence of the crater if the meteor is to hit there. The necessity goes away if you step outside of classical physics.

But we're not talking about objects here, we're talking about other stuff where 'exists' isn't really defined at all. The universe existing has about as much pragmatic meaning as the integers existing. We're quite capable of working with either regardless of the fact of the matter, if 'fact' can be used to describe something not really meaningful.

All I take from the 'anthropic principle' is that the evolutionary sequence which we understand from science doesn't begin with the beginning of life on earth, but can be traced back to the origin of the universe. — Wayfarer

I don't see where evolution comes into play. I mean, are we talking about some sort of natural selection of laws of physics? That's not the anthropic principle that I know.

it would have been far more likely that it would not have given rise to complex matter and organic life, and that there's no reason why it should have.

This statement essentially says that if the dice were rolled but the once, the odds of hitting our settings is essentially nil. True that. So the dice are not rolled but the once. Unbounded rolls are part of the chaotic inflationary theory of cosmology, with countless bubbles of spacetime with random properties are generated from a single structure. Only the ones with exact optimal settings (the odds against has an insane number of zeroes) are suitable for generating a mind capable of gleaning the nature of the structure.

That is by no means a proof of God or anything else

Just so. The strong principle is, where the settings are deliberate, which implies ID, but I'm suggesting the weak principle where the settings are natural and not a violation of probability.

:100:

There is no explanation for physical laws, generally. Physical laws can serve as the basis for the explanations for all manner of things, but why they are as they are is not something explained by science. — Wayfarer

I stand by my statement. Your assertion notwithstanding, how does the weak anthropic principle (or the strong for that matter) not explain why they are as they are? If they were not as they are, there'd be no observers to glean the suboptimal choice of laws.

The natural numbers are not a thing. — MoK

Neither is the universe.

There are 'things' in this universe seemingly without a cause (proof lacking). Unruh radiation is a fine example, predicted a long way back, and seemingly finally detected recently.

But then, what is to prevent something uncaused that is also finite? — Philosophim
Why should it be finite? — MoK
Why should it not? Its uncaused. Something uncaused has no reason for being. Which also means it has no reason for NOT being. — Philosophim

This seems to have evaded the question. Sure, if it lacks a reason for being, it equally lacks a reason for not being. The question was where 'finite' was somehow relevant to that statement.

I think you would only say that if you put the creator on the same ontological level as the created. — Wayfarer

Well I was speaking more of the lay public which Craig entertains. They don't know enough to put the creator on a different ontological level, and thus work more directly with said analog. But the Theologians do, and presumably explain away the regress issue to their own satisfaction.

By nothing I mean no material, no space, no time,... — MoK

There's plenty left when those are eliminated. The natural numbers for one...

Just out of curiosity, where was the manuscript published, and how many citations does it have?

Don't know the 'where'. Probably heavily cited by the absolutist crowd, but all that is sort of fringe. They've been waiting for a generalization of LET for an awful long time.

I mean we may be able to explain why physical laws are like this and not the other ways. — MoK

The weak anthropic principle does a fair task of explaining why physical laws are like this.

the universe certainly exists — RogueAI

Plenty of valid philosophies would disagree with that, so it is hardly a certain thing. Just for an example, an idealist would say only the ideal (the concept of the universe) exists, and there is no real universe (noumena).

Existence is fairly well defined for an object. An object has a location and duration. An object is contained by both space and time, and it doing this constitutes 'existence'. The universe is a different category, and it does not exist in space (except to those who naively posit the a big bang as an explosion of stuff into pre-existing empty space), and it exists in time only to those that posit it to do so, which makes the existence of the universe a problem to those that hold that view. But that's not the only alternative. The prevailing view is that the universe is contain by neither space nor time and is thus not to be treated as an ordinary object To say it exists requires a very different definition of 'exists', and I'm not impressed with the utility of any of the definitions I've seen attempted.

Similarly, some (Platonists?) suggest that the natural numbers exist. That requires a different definition of 'exists' else one can meaningfully ask where their location is, and when/how they came into existence. If they are not temporal objects (if they were, they'd change over time), then why does the universe have to be? What difference does it make if the natural numbers exist or if they don't? It certainly makes a difference for an object, but the natural numbers are not objects. There are those that don't suggest that numbers meaningfully exist, and yet they are no less capable of counting their toes.

The issue boils down to a problem to a realist: How does one explain the reality of whatever one asserts to be real? Shorter but less rigorous version: Why is there something and not nothing? Positing a creator doesn't solve the problem; it only regresses it.

Not my problem. I abandoned realism for pretty much the unanswerability of such questions.

The only way around that I can see is to say it's eternal.

There are multiple meanings to that word.

Dictionary version: Lasting forever, without beginning or end.
Philosophy version: Eternalism: That time is contained by the universe, and is bounded at one end just like North is bounded on Earth. This is opposed to time that flows, and the universe is contained in that flowing time.

I'm loosely guessing that you're using the former definition, that there is no bound to time in either direction. The theory I linked above presumes a model something like that, but the big bang has to be discarded. There is a half-empirical test for the view. Half because one can prove the consensus view to ones self, but not to others, similar to proving an afterlife. You have to go through a 1-way door. If you survive that, you cannot communicate your findings to the other side of the door.

Nothing caused the the universe to come into existence? How does that work? — RogueAI

No, 'nothing' cannot be a cause. I don't posit that the universe is the sort of thing that 'came into existence', something that only describes objects within our universe, such as a raindrop. Treating the universe as an object is a category error.

Time isn't something that began to exist. It is simply a dimension of our universe, per consensus view. Time is contained by the universe, not the other way around.

I have one argument for nothing to something is impossible which I discussed it in this thread. — MoK

Physics very much supports uncaused events, but even such events are not from nothing. I don't think anybody is pushing a stance of something from nothing, except as a straw man alternative to whatever it is they actually are evangelizing. Craig regularly commits such a fallacy.

P1) Time is needed for change

For temporal change, sure. There are other kinds of change that don't involve time. e.g. 'The air pressure changes with altitude'.

nothing to something is not possible

'nothing' isn't even really a defined thing, so the conclusion is more meaningless than impossible.

Bob Rose's argument:
...
P3: Change requires temporality.

Bob also seems to treat the universe as something subject to temporality, that is, something contained by time. This model was outdated over a century ago.

If you want to eliminate the alternative to your pet idea, at least knock down the consensus view of things instead of the straw man 6th century one.

Time is needed for a thing to begin to exist since the thing does not exist at a point and then exists.

Just so. Hence the category error.

Do mind to provide a link to such models?

Here's the main one, perhaps the first one to generalize LET theory to include gravity. It was published almost a century after Einstein generalized his Special relativity theory.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45904833_Black_Holes_or_Frozen_Stars_A_Viable_Theory_of_Gravity_without_BlackHoles
It is an absolute theory, with the universe contained by time, hence absolute time. All the premises of special relativity are denied, and different premises are used.

The 6th century argument perhaps had some teeth back in the day, but it presumes a model of the universe (that of being an object contained by space and time) that is today a fringe model at best. That of course doesn't detract Craig whose paying audience is hardly versed in modern cosmology theory, so they of course eat it right up, despite the fact that the same argument can be used against whatever was the cause. Craig doesn't care that the argument doesn't hold water. He cares that he gets his check for asserting it anyway.

It's sort of like proving the Earth rests on a turtle since anything that holds something up must itself be held up by something. The model worked back in the day, but is today about as naive as the Kalam thing.

So premise 1 is a premise that only applies to objects IN the universe, and even then it isn't necessarily true except under fully deterministic interpretations of physics.
Premise 2 totally goes against the consensus view among cosmologists where time and space are contained by the universe instead of the other way around. Such a model does exist, and it necessarily denies things predicted by the prevailing view such as the big bang or black holes.

one can also say that the material has existed since the beginning of time — MoK

The universe is not posited to have been built from 'material'. Any material did not show up on the scene until several epochs beyond the big bang.

So we're in agreement about the lack of soundness of the argument, but for different reasons.

You can reject arithmetical truth, until you make use of it, or of a statement that happens to be equi-consistent with it. — Tarskian

I cannot use arithmetic without first presuming some axiomatic truths. Yes, arithmetic is useful, but only useful relative to worlds in which it works, or at least seems to.

For me I start with the presupposition that both the object and the subject exist. — Benj96

That seems to be an assertion of realism.

How is it begging an objective ontology any more than it is begging a subjective one. — Benj96

In attempt to find the truth of realism vs some alternate ontology (idealism say were only ideals, and not objects, exist), presuming one of the two conclusions cannot lead to the truth of the matter.

I would have thought the assumption that the objective and subjective both exist is common intuitive knowledge.

Common & intuitive, yes, although not entirely. Several posters on this topic hold alternative views. Knowledge: no. It isn't knowledge if the truth of the premise cannot be demonstrated.

It's sort of like Einstein's special theory of relativity. It posits two premises (physics not being frame dependent, and local-frame-independence of the speed of light), neither of which has ever been demonstrated. There are alternative theories that deny both premises, and those alternative have not been falsified. So presuming what Einstein did may be useful, but it doesn't prove that Einstein's premises were the correct ones.


Still, you seem to be talking about subjective, vs not-subjective, like there's a realist objective view that denies subjective experience. Never head of anything like that, I admit.

The topic is posted under morals/ethics, and the OP mentions objective vs subjective morality. I don't think morality is either. There's no evidence of it not be relative to this or that, and since you cannot experience it in any obvious way, it isn't subjective either. So the OP gives a false dichotomy.

Being 'noAsioms', I do not presume that X exists. I try to be open to alternatives, and it turns out that I find issues with it that don't occur with a relational view.

Similarly if only the subjective exists then scientific discovery and the tech based on those discoveries is null and void and only subjective imaginings of how things are is valid.

Disagree. If only subjective exists, then science still yields new ways to have new/better subjective experience, however not nonexistent the science is.

So by all means explain why both don't exist?

The question is why it is not necessary for both to exist (or either). I never asserted that both don't exist. Anyway, the answer depends heavily on one's definition of 'exist'. Yours seems to be "something that 'acts'.", followed by examples of things that don't exists despite the fact that they very much act.
The definition I find to work best is a relation: X exists to Y if Y measures (is causally affected by) X. Given that non-objective definition, it is meaningless to say 'X does or does not exist', but it is meaningful to say that X exists (or not) to Y.
That does not mean I assert that my definition is truth. It's just one that I find has fewer problems that the alternatives. I don't know if there is a correct answer to the topic, even though most presume there is a correct answer despite our inability to know it.

It is actually presented as relativism vs. objectivism in the OP. A bunch of people, me included, got it mixed up though, presumably when they tried to refresh themselves on the whole objectivism vs. subjectivism thing. — ToothyMaw

The OP also posted this in the ethics forum, meaning he's talking about moral objectivism vs moral, well, not-objectivism, where the line between moral relativism and moral subjectivism is almost nonexistent. Most of my posts have been about the more general relational view in general (such as relational ontology), where the distinction between the two metaphysical views (relative vs subjective) is quite significant.

So, I think you must use the term "relative" by your own reasoning, and not "relational" - especially if you think that an evaluating entity would have to exist to connect the laws of physics in two different universes, although it is not entirely clear if you do. — ToothyMaw

The relational view isn't one that requires evaluations, and a given entity has no empirical access to other universes, so any evaluation is entirely an abstract exercise.

Maybe I should be more direct: what exactly do you mean when you use the term relational?

Relational means that moral, ontology, perhaps even truth, are examples of relations.
It is not wrong to kill your children in some cultures.
Ontology: X exists in relation to Y if Y is causally effected by X (Y measures X). This definition only works with structures where causality is meaningful.
Truth: A relative truth would be that most watermelons are larger than most plums. A subjective truth would be 'the sky is blue presently' (also a relation since 'presently' references a time). The 3+5=8 example was my attempt at an objective truth.

Given the definition of objective and subjective from here, the truth is objective if it is a set of statements that are true and independent of opinion, biase, conscious experience, and the like. — MoK

You reference the wiki site, which equates objective to not-subjective. It works for morals at least, but not to general relational metaphysics. They give an example of a subjective assessment of the weather, but no example of what they consider objective. Their objective definition seems contradictory, that it is something to be evaluated, and yet true in the absence of a mind which supposedly is needed to do the evaluating. Perhaps I'm being picky. Yes, I can imagine a world absent anything with subjective experience (Wayfarer would disagree), at least enough to discuss it.

When I read this post (mine, not yours, MoK) I can't help but feel that what I'm saying is fallacious, but I can't tell where it goes wrong. — ToothyMaw

I actually agreed with it in general.

I think I see where I'm going wrong. A relative truth would be that relative to a society of evangelical Christians, gay marriage is indeed wrong on the basis of their subjective belief that it is wrong. — ToothyMaw

basis of their belief... Are not all beliefs subjective, pretty much by definition? One can have a belief about some objective thing (yes, 3+5 really is unconditionally 8), but the belief itself is subjective.

For me I start with the presupposition that both the object and the subject exist — Benj96

That is begging an objective ontology. Commonly assumed, but not valid thing to do in a metaphysical debate about whether such a premise is correct or not.

For physical truth, you can observe it. — Tarskian

An empirical truth then. The sun is bigger than Earth, and so forth, and then it becomes a relation to that which is observed. Arithmetic truth is more objective precisely due to the lack of an obvious relation.

In almost all cases, we make use of arithmetical soundness theorem to ascertain the truth of a statement: The statement is true because it is provable.

But all those theorems rely on axioms which have not been proven, so they rest on a foundation that isn't objectively sound, which is why I question if 3+5 equaling 8 being an objective truth.

And therefore if relativism is true, then it is true for some and not others, which is self-refuting as a claim (i.e. relativism is relative :roll:). This is incoherent, of course, and not a viable, or reasonable, alternative to 'objective truth' (so the OP's poll is a false choice). — 180 Proof

Doesn't seem valid. Relativism doesn't apply necessarily to truth. Ontology or morality could be relative, but truth is often not considered relative. 3+5=8 seems to be an objective truth, and 'there are no unicorns', while worded in an objective way, is arguably a relational assessment. 'Relativism is true' might refer to moral relativism, which could arguably stand as an objective truth, although it would seem that if it was true, it would only be a property of this universe or that which created both the universe and said morals. A deity defining what is wrong and right is a relation. Objective morals would be something the deity would have to adhere to, rather than something the deity could dictate.

the OP posits epistemological positions (on "truth"), not any metaphysics — 180 Proof

That he does (puts it in opposition to a perspective). We seem to have lost the OP, who has not in any way tended his own topic.
I seem to use more of a metaphysical definition of truth, some of which is relational, but some of which is probably objective.

I'm no physicist, or mathematician, but this sounds suspect. If a fact - like the laws of physics - in one universe is not the same as in another universe, wouldn't there have to be some independent reference frame against which the two can be compared to evaluate them relationally? — ToothyMaw

Not sure what is being asked, especially since there isn't any entity necessarily doing any evaluation. For instance, in another universe, the cosmological constant might be different, which I suppose can be compared to (greater/less than relation) to each other. In yet another universe, there is no meaningful thing that could be considered a cosmological constant.

If there were something similar to Newton's laws in both

Newton's laws are pretty basic and don't so much involve things like constants, other than fundamentals like there being 3 spatial and 1 temporal dimension. Other universes could have any values for either of these, and dimensions that are neither spatial nor temporal. Newton's laws wouldn't work in any of those.

I think you're stretching the meaning of the word "relativism" here. "Universe" means everything. — T Clark

It has multiple definitions. If it always meant 'everything there is' (a global and very objective definition), then 1) the concept of a multiverse would be meaningless, and 2), there are many definitions of 'what is', including relational ones.

We only have access to this scope

A very finite scope in fact. Sufficiently distant things are no more part of that scope than is a unicorn on Earth.

Yes, if there is no objective justification ("proof") then there won't be (an objective) consensus on whether it is true or not, rendering such truth subjective. — Tarskian

I'm using 'objective' in a way that isn't the opposite of 'subjective', but rather as opposed to 'relative'. Objective truths are not a matter of consensus, which is perhaps opinion or some sort of empirical conclusion, but actual truth seems not to depend on proof or even anything being aware of it.
There have been topics on this, and that statement is certainly debatable.

Welcome to TPF!

Objectivism asserts that truth exists independently of human beliefs, emotions, or perceptions. — Cadet John Kervensley

This seems more of a definition of non-anthropocentrism. Neither objectivism nor relativism hinges on humans (anthropocentic) or perceptions (idealist).

According to this view, there are facts that are true regardless of who examines them or under what circumstances.

For example, is the sum of 3 and 5 equal to 8, or is that just a property of our universe? Mathemaical 'truths' are often held as objective, but proving that is another thing.

For example, the laws of physics or mathematical truths are often cited as examples of objectivism in action.

The laws of physics are not necessarily the same from one universe to the next, so that would be an example of relativism (or relational, as I tend to use the word, to distinguish it from Einstein's relativity theory, which is something else).

relativism claims that truth is subjective and dependent on context,

Subjective implies a perceiving subject. A relational view does not require a subject. A subject is only required for the view (the map), but not the territory. A rock can get wet without a human to notice it. The water exists relative to the rock.

Something like moral relativism does indeed require perceiving subjects, since it is relativism of abstrations. Your post seems to largely focus on opinions being objective or relative, and not so much the more general scope of the two terms.

truth depends on each person's viewpoint?

The 3+5 thing borders on objective truth. Most all of the rest you mention seems to be opinion, which has nothing to do with truth. If there are for instance objective morals, then opinions on the matter are completely irrelevant to that truth.

Does relativism allow for greater respect for differences, or does it lead to moral chaos?

Chaos seem to only result from pushing one's opinion onto those that don't share it.

And is objectivism too rigid to accommodate human diversity?

Not at all since no counterexample can be shown. To do that, one would have to demonstrate an objective truth. Plenty try, but all seem to beg their opinion.


I find a relational view (in ontology say) to make more sense, to have far fewer self contradictions. The view doesn't really touch on opinions such as personal morals.

Does the universe objectively exist, or does it exist only in relation to some things? If there is a correct answer to that question (however unknowable), then that would be an objective truth, regardless of which of the two is that correct answer. Some say that there must be a correct answer, however unknowable, but I'm not even sure of that.

Even if we disagree, the OP still doesn't make sense — T Clark

I don't disagree with that

C1 states that there is a gap between all pairs of distinct points of the continuum. — MoK

What do you mean by 'a gap'? If you mean that the two distinct points are not the same point, then yes, by definition. There's a gap between 4 and 13.

If you mean by 'a gap' that there is nothing between these two distinct points, then C1 is false. For instance, 10 is between 4 and 13. 'The gap' is not empty, and C2 seems to rely on any such gap being empty.

Are you challenging (P1)?

Without a definition of a gap, P1 is ambiguous. It states that either G or ~G, which is tautologically true, making P1 empty. The word 'distinct' is not part of P1.
My challenge was C2 following from C1, or any of what preceded C2.

It however can be shown that there is the smallest interval on the real number so-called infinitesimal. — MoK

Show it then. What about the number that is halfway between this smallest positive number and zero? You've shown that it doesn't exist?
Funny that the smallest number happens to be a perfect power of 0.1
What are the odds of that?

You can define [the center of mass of a body] it in quantum physics as well. Of course, you cannot measure it.

Define it then, without making classical assumptions (like a particle having a location, or some counterfactual property.

C1) Therefore there is a gap between all pairs of distinct points of the continuum (from P1 and P2)
C2) Therefore, the continuum does not exist (from A and C1) — MoK

C2 doesn't follow at all. In the real numbers, there being a gap between 4 and 13 does not imply that the real numbers (or even the rationals) is not a continuum. You need to demonstrate that there is nothing between some pairs of points that are not the same point. Then you've falsified the continuum premise.

A point is an abstract mathematical entity which doesn't correspond with any phenomenon in the world of our everyday existence — T Clark

I disagree. Yes, a point can be an abstraction, but can also correspond to a location in space say.
It indeed does not 'take up space', by definition. You seem to imply that something real must take up space.
Perhaps it's all a linguistic quibble, but it isn't one that takes apart the OP argument.

The center of mass of your body is a point. — MoK

Only in classical physics, and our universe isn't classical. But I accept your refutation of the rebuttal to the OP. Do you accept my rebuttal?

If determinism is true then the present is set. — Fire Ologist

If determinism is true,then there wouldn't be a meaningful present to be set.

They could be some other free agent, operating me like a puppet at their free will - who knows? — Fire Ologist

You just described dualism. Free will is typically framed in such terms, with the free agent operating outside the physical causal laws. No explanation as to how this agent is itself free from however it works.

Some prefer X and other mock X for thinking they can prefer X. The argument there is dead in the water. — I like sushi

Does the preference influence decisions? Then there's no basis for mocking it, unless I suppose if ones chosen preference influences decisions in a negative way. But even the negativeness of those decisions is a judgement being made by somebody else who likely holds different preferences about what is positive and negative behavior.

noAxioms, you said my decision will be different after deliberation then what it would have been had I not deliberated, will it also be better for having deliberated? — NotAristotle

Probably, yes. I'm sure you can find anecdotes illustrating the reverse, but in general, there would have been no point in evolving a fairly expensive mechanism for making choices if it didn't make better ones than choices made without said expensive mechanism.
Notice that this holds regardless of determinism or no, or regardless of free will or no. Hence my stance that free will is of no benefit to anything since I cannot think of a situation where it would help.

My anecdote: Many government decisions are made before deliberation. The deliberation is not a significant contributor to the decision (vote) submitted.

If it is false it might still be 'better' to believe in compared to believing in Non-determinism. — I like sushi

Again, it depends on how that belief, one way or another, affects one's choices. I personally cannot provide good arguments for this belief one way or another in the determinism issue since I cannot think of how it would make any empirical difference. But somebody else (Not-A above) might hold a belief that it does make a difference, hence the choice of position would make a difference.

Determinism frames the premise that our futures are set and unchangeable (human choices are not real), whereas non-determinism frames the premise that humans can change their fate (human choices are real). — I like sushi

This is unreasonable. Human choice is real, determinism or no. Do not make the mistake of equating choice with free choice, responsibility with external responsibility. Your post seems to equate the two.

Secondly, even in nondeterministic views, one cannot change the future. One is a causal part of it, sure, but using the word 'change' suggests that it was one thing, and later the same future is different. That isn't true even if free will is presumed.

I do like your usage of 'our future', which doesn't automatically presume a view where there is a 'the future', having a different ontological state than the present.

The question posed here is what is better to believe.

Few ask this. In short, believe whatever makes you do the more correct thing. If your beliefs in this matter don't significantly influence your day to day decisions, then the beliefs don't particularly matter. If fear of the wrath of the FSM makes you a better person, by all means make that part of your beliefs.

To start, if determinism is true, it makes no difference what we believe as what we believe is preordained.

Externally preordained, yes. This does not imply that your belief is not a choice.

If non-determinism is false, then it makes no difference as determinism would be true - the same situation as stated with determinism.

Double negative? The lack of determinism does not necessarily imply free will, but again, your continued post obviously presumes otherwise. Maybe you should be asking about free will, and not worry about determinism at all, starting with a decent definition of what you think it is.

The human choice of entering this machine is effectively a denial of reality in favor of a world where human experiences are determined by the machine rather than chosen directly by the human.

So this machine, unlike a video game where the player makes choices, is more like going to the cinema and having your experience done for your, except fully immersive. A story told is not a life lived. A purpose is served, but it's not your own. I agree with Nozick in this sense. But has he illustrated the difference between choice and free choice, or just choice and no choice?

Compatibilism, in a nut shell, is the view that free will is compatible with determinism. — wonderer1

I googled 'compatibilism' and it ended with "Compatibilism does not maintain that humans are free.". I don't see much difference in this view and 3) no free will.
On a side note, I also don't in any way see why free will is a good thing.

What you are describing as determinism I would call fatalism.

My understanding of fatalism is that things will turn out the same in the long run regardless of the choices made. If you save a life of a person fated to die today, he'll die by another means shortly.

If determinism is true, then there is no good reason to deliberate because such thought will not change how I decide (I must choose, or "act" the same way whether I deliberate or not). — NotAristotle

Nonsense. Thought very much has a causal influence on decisions. If you deliberate, the choice will very much be different than if you don't deliberate.

Conversely, you can prove the existence of free will by proving that it is impossible to construct such app. — Tarskian

So by your argument, you've used Turing's argument to prove free will. Somehow that doesn't follow from the impossibility of such an app since the app is impossible even in a pure deterministic universe.

All of those objects serve a purpose for humans, but I think this is not the main point of my argument. Although they are dependent on human purposes, they are necessarily part of a house. — javi2541997

I don't get your point at all. Perhaps a summary is in order. Without people,there is no house at all, just a collection of material, not particularly a bounded one either. It's a house only because humans consider it to be one.

You use the word 'flourish' in your post, which seems only something that reproduces does (not necessarily a life form). I don't see meaning of that word at lower levels.

And yes,the last candle I lit up was in the sun, just a coincidence

Didn’t you ever think of the pure lonely existence of that sofa?

All I'm worried about is what demarks objects in the absence of a name. Calling something a sofa automatically invokes a convention. I am trying to find object in absence of human convention. What use humans have in one object doesn't seem to come into relevance in pursuit of that investigation.

Consider what happens if a nuclear bomb destroys all of human life and leaves only that sofa. Do you believe the sofa will lose its sense since it will no longer meet a human need?

No, I don't think a sofa has a sense of anything. There is still the narrator of the story about the bomb that is giving the object a name. But what if it isn't named at all?

Are you really sure? ... — javi2541997

Yes. The whole point ot the topic is about when human demarcation is absent.

Where does the building stop? — noAxioms

This was a different context, meant to illustrate that even when a human convention is invoked, the demarcation is still never precisely defined.

What I don't understand is why you wish to eliminate such principles.

I didn't want to eliminate them. I wanted to show where they stand in the hierarchy of levels.
BTW, the heirarchy (ideal mind bio chem phys math) is kind of a human one. Different paths can lead to 'building' being meaningful, such as (ideal, cognitive entity, computation, electrical, physics, math) which means that our AI would probably be able to demark a building despite it not being a biological mind.

Are you arguing that there could be an intriguing object that lacks human ideals?

I meant to look for one in reality. Found plenty in fiction. The fact that they're only in fiction shows that such concepts have no actual physical basis, and 2) people readily accept/presume otherwise.

I don't think a beam of energy say 'knows' anything about human purpose.
— noAxioms
Obviously

Yes, obviously, except nobody complains when a beam of energy does exactly that in a fictional story.

What I tried to argue is that there are objects which are dependent upon others just for need. The furniture, walls, ceilings, etc. are attached objects to the principal which is the building. Otherwise, where would you put furniture? In middle of the forest?

But it isn't even furniture without humans to name them so. They serve purpose to humans. Your examples are of human made artifacts, which serve a specific purpose to a human.

So at the biological level, there are objects of sorts. Not so much twig say, but maybe 'pollen', which is a natural unit of reproduction to many plants. The beam of light, not being biological, cannot demark one pollen bit, but a different plant (than the one that made it) can. It's not an ideal to the plant, so it serves a physical purpose as an object, and not just as an ideal of an object.

Similarly, DNA constitutes information, perhaps below the biological level and reaching down to the chemical level. This is information (objects of a kind) without being ideals. So there are examples out there.

I think those 'objects' know the destination of its utility.

A sofa 'knows' it is a sofa, or at least where its boundaries are, or that it is useful to humans? in what way does that make sense?

x

If you say there is any level where there is “no mental anything” aren’t you pointing out a non-ideal thing, an object in itself regardless of the mental? Haven’t you admitted there is a physical (non-mental) world where objects (particles) speak for themselves? — Fire Ologist

Yes to all, except maybe the 'speak' part. Not sure how you meant that choice of word.
'Level' is a better word than the 'field' that xkcd used, which was meant more as a field of study.

Yes, I follow you and the sense of your OP. I remember when we talked about chopping the twig off, for instance. I know that it would sound silly to say that without a twig, the tree no longer exists — javi2541997

If I point to a severed twig, I'm probably not indicating the tree, although severed twigs and such are very much still part of a forest, so barring a convention, what is being indicated is still questionable.

You asked me: Where does the building stop?

No, I asked where 'this' stops. I never said 'building'. Using a word like that invokes the convention, however inexact.

Of course, it includes furniture and people. :smile:

I'm part of a building if in one. Not sure if that's standard convention. Most would say the humans occupy it, but are not themselves part of the building. But my early example of a human typically includes anything that occupies or is even carried by the human. They're all part of the human. Not so much with the building. Different convention.

What would be the point of constructing a building, then?

Is it relevant? It could be. An object is demarked by its purpose, but that doesn't help. I point to 'this', and am I talking about the brick (purpose to support and seal a wall), the wall (similar purposes), the suite, or the building (different purposes), or something else (to generate rent income)
Still, purpose is defined by the humans that find utility in the 'object'. The topic is about an object in absence of such ideals such as purpose.

They ‘know’ that the building is of interest to them.

I don't think a beam of energy say 'knows' anything about human purpose.

Physical, not mental, basis? — Fire Ologist

There is no mental anything at the physics level. I'm talking about territory here, not map. Map is our only interface from mental ideals to territory. A real particle in itself probably bears little resemblance to our typical mental model of it.

And I guess the distinctions between psychology and biology and physics are ideal only?

Those words all refer to ideals, so yes, distinctions between them seem ideal.

My point is, you cannot speak, we cannot form an ideal, without some real distinctions apart from the mind on which we make any move, perform any act, posit any field, say anything like “particle”.

Unclear on what you mean here. Examples perhaps? I think we're talking past each other since there's talk of both ideals (references) and the referents, of both map and territory.

Why did we ever conceive of the notion of “object” in the first place? — Fire Ologist

It has utility, a general word to encompass a given subset of material without further classification into a more specific object kind.

Why did we not always know “when I reach out and touch, I am touching one giant dinstiction-free object?”

We don't know what is being referenced, but even in the act of reaching out and touching in a specific way, a convention is conveyed, and I would probably guess correctly on first try what was meant. Clue: Probably not the forest.

But it surprised me when I read that, according to your view, the Midas example proves the opposite of what I say. — javi2541997

Remind me what the Midas example 'proves'...

and you ask me how large the bark is

That's a lot different than asking what 'this' is, and touching the twig bark. But even if the 'object' is partially demarked by the word 'bark', it still leaves the extent of it unspecified. Bark of just the twig? The whole tree? Something else?

Imagine a building for a second. This structure encloses walls, roof, floors, columns, etc. If I talk about a “building” I also refer to all those elements, right?

Probably, yes. The word invokes a convention, and the convention typically includes all those parts, but how about the piles or the utility hookups? Where does the building stop? Does it include the furniture and people? That question was asked in the OP where I explore the concept of what you weigh, and exactly when that weight changes.

But in the absence of language, how does anything 'know' that 'building' is the object of interest?

Why does it appear like there are no answers?

Category error. There are answers, but not in the wrong category.

His interpretation is his mental picture. It resides within his cranium. As such, it is an internalized representation of something at least partially outside of and beyond the dimensions of his cranium. — ucarr

Fine. That's a fairly concise summary of a physicalist view.

Do the material details of the natural world constrain to some measurable degree the material details of the human's constructed interpretation?

Yes. The mental model is built from perceived experiences. First tree, then he perceives the tree, and puts the short tree into his mental model of the local reality.

If we arrive at this conclusion, do we know that the constructed interpretation has an analogical relationship with the independent and external world?

We assume that. Saying 'know' presumes some details that cannot be known, per say Cartesian skepticism. I'm indeed assuming that my perception of the tree outside is not a lie.

How is my understanding of your quote a mis-reading of it? — ucarr

Maybe I'm misreading your quotes. I don't know. Given a convention, an object can often be demarked. Language is one way to convey the desired convention.

If find it useful to begin an exam of the writer's post by asking grammatical questions. That's all I'm investigating here. I'm not yet examining philosophical content.

Convention in this context is the binding of an agreed upon demarking of a specific thing with a language construct, a word say, but not always a word. Utility is used like 'usefulness'. There is utility in assigning the word 'mug' to the collection of ceramic that holds my coffee. A mug is a fairly unambiguous 'object' to a typical human, although one can still indicate its parts in some contexts.

Apologies to all for slow reply. It's gets busy on some days.

So if you would admit there are two distinct people in the universe, but don’t see any distinct physical objects apart from your own idealizations, is the distinction you make between you and me only ideal, or do I have to have some sort of physics to me that you can let speak for itself? — Fire Ologist

I'll try to clarify. There are multiple fields, and a given description must be consistent with one of the fields. This xkcd comic illustrates what I mean:

The fields as I see relevant here are ideals, mind, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics. One can use any of them, but the two in bold are frequently referenced. In the mental field, there are ideals, which are say people, forum posts, letters, sounds, etc. In the physics field, there are none of these things. Objects are at best particles interacting with each other according to physical law.
So yes, I am a being with a mind, and that lets me identify/name my ideals: of multiple people existing for instance, including myself (just another ideal). The mind is not fundamental at all since each field supervenes on the field to the right of it. Hard idealism stops the list there, making mind fundamental. I don't know which philosophers suggests that sort of hard idealism. I don't much care.

Confusion results if fields are mixed. For instance, there are those that assert that computers can't be conscious because their operation is nothing but transistors switching on and off, which is like saying that humans can't be conscious because they're nothing but neurons switching on and off. The comments are not even wrong because they mix fields (mind vs electronics say).
Of course, the people that assert the lack of machine consciousness are often ones that also assert that human consciousness is not a function of neuron operation, so there's that.

one Federico Faggin, who developed the first microprocessor — Wayfarer

What, like the 4040 or something even older? Interesting read I bet.

True, Pinter's books doesn't mention 'idealism'

Well, what you quote from Pinter seems to make sense, and if he never mentions idealism, then there's your significant difference between idealism and what is becoming fairly clear to me.
I never considered idealism to be spooky etherial mind stuff. It is actually fairly consistent, a version of realism (with the problems that come with that), and it simply uses an epistemological definition of what is real. There is nothing wrong or spooky with such a definition. I just don't choose to use it.

That there is 'material behind it' is precisely the belief in question!

I know. I didn't say otherwise.

Does “convention” equal “A way in which something is usually done in accordance with an established pattern.”? — ucarr

Pretty much that, yes. If humans find sufficient utility in a given convention, a word might be assigned to it. So you have one word 'grape' that identifies an edible unit of food from this one species of vine, and 'cluster' as a different unit describing what is picked from the vine, as opposed to what is left behind. We find utility in both those units, so two words are coined to make this convention part of our language.

Are you saying ‘object’ is a non-physical construction of the mind?

An ideal, which yes, is a construct of the mind. As for it being non-physical, not so keen on that since mind seems to be as physical as anything else. Opinions on this vary of course.

Are you saying the mind constructs an interpretation of the physical world, and that that construction is radically different in form from its source?

I'll agree with that even if I didn't particularly say as much anywhere in this topic.

Does the mind_physical world interface come before the interpretation?

Don't know what you mean by ';comes before'. That the interface happens at an earlier time than the interpretation that forms from it? Much of interpretation is instinctive, meaning it evolved long before the birth of an individual and the interface to that individual.

must we conclude the mind never perceives the physical world directly?

People have different definitions of what it means to directly perceive something, what the boundaries are for instance. There's no one convention that everybody uses.

But the point here is to know to what extent things exist or not due to universal convention. — javi2541997

This sounds like 'objective convention', and the lack of example seems to suggest the conventions are either human or that of some other cognitive entity. Many different things will find utility in the same conventions, so there is some aspect of universality to it.

I would like to use the example of a few pages before: a twig is followed by a tree and then the combination of these two makes the forest. This set is interesting. I personally believe a set of different things are dependent on universal convention, for instance.

That example was meant to demonstrate the opposite. If I reach out and touch the bark and ask how large 'this' is, am I talking about the twig, branch, tree, forest, or something else? If there was a physical convention, there'd be an answer to that. There seemingly isn't.

When I exchanged some thoughts with him, he claimed everything object is connected to something.

That was given a definition of 'connected' as 'the existence of forces between the two halves in question'. I didn't like that definition precisely because it rendered everything connected. There cannot be two things.

Are you utterly isolated, perhaps the sole being there is, fabricating each of the impressions or ideals in your experience?

Or are you utterly isolated, fabricating each of the impressions or ideals in your experience using incomplete and vague data from outside of you like a sort of mental clay? So you are not the only thing in the universe, you just cannot communicate with any of the other things, and instead translate and transform those things into nice packages for your own isolated world?

Or are you one of many physical things that occasionally has to avoid being hit when crossing the street to pick out a unique and distinct sandwich to be placed in a distinct belly to relieve a distinct and localized feeling of hunger, and you just can’t explain all of that clearly because of the second option? — Fire Ologist

None of the above. Third option looks like an argument either for or against free will. I do admit the use of ideals in my interactions with the world 'out there'.

to understand that we couldn’t have this conversation without something separate from both of us to mediate it.

Agree with this. The separate mediation is apparently not a 'thing'. It is just physics, motion of material and such, having no meaning until reinterpreted back into ideals by something that isn't me.

We are using material objects between us.

Material yes. Objects, not so much. Their being objects is only an ideal, per pretty much unanimous consensus of the posters in this topic. Physics works and does its thing all without human designations of where the boundaries of 'separate systems' are. The need to declare their distinctions is only a need of the communicating intellects.


Thank you for your continued input. It seems we're mostly hacking out the same ideas with different language surrounding it. I'm not in the habit of articulating this sort of interaction since it's sort of a different way of looking at things for me.

I think what you expect to find is an object unmediated by our categories, for example. But that is like saying we are going to perceive something without perceiving. Every perception involves an adaptation, an interpretation. There is no access to reality that is not mediated, but we can ask why our means are embedded in reality, and above all, we can ask why they work and what the link is between the world we are in and our categories, our language, our ideas, etc. Therefore, the world would have something ideal-ish that allows our thinking and our perception to maintain a certain continuity with the world. — JuanZu

Agree with all this. Some comments. We have little access to reality that is not mediated. Reality itself has such unmediated access, but that doesn't qualify as perception.

I would agree to that, with the large caveat that "ideals," (inclusive of the accidental properties of particulars) are generated by the physical properties of objects, which include (perhaps irreducible) relations to minds. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Some examples would help here. Are you only talking about relations to minds?
Not otherwise sure of what you're saying. In particular, what sort of properties (other than a relation to a mind) would an object have that a mere subset of material doesn't? What would distinguish the two cases? There is 'kind' for instance. Here is a relatively contiguous region of state X or material M, such as what a human would designate as a cloud. The atmospheric conditions external to the cloud are different than the conditions within it, and that simple change of kind from one region to the next defines a fairly natural boundary for a physical object. It isn't 'connected' (one of the attempted but failed definitions), but at least it is (more or less) contiguous. The more-or-less part comes into play when it gets less defined if there is one cloud or two smaller ones that are merely nearby. Physics obviously cares not about this distinction.

When we say that objects are a product of language, we are simply shifting the problem from the external world to the interiority of language. We then say that there are objects in language. — JuanZu

Perhaps I used the wrong words. It has become more clear in the subsequent posts. What most everyone seems to have concluded is that 'object' is an ideal. Ideals are manipulated (expressed to others say) through language, and my initial post focused on the language and convention part instead of naming it for what it was: an ideal.
My attempts to find a non-fictional example of an object not being an ideal has failed. This is strong evidence for the conclusion reached.

Doesn't this mean that if there are objects in language, then there are also objects-ish in "the world external to language" that authorize and enable our language to function?

Apparently not. No example of this has been found, at least if you alter the statement to say 'external to ideals'. There are certainly things that arguably don't use language as we know it that nevertheless treat preferred groups of material as 'objects'.

It’s a fictional thing.
Problem solved. — Fire Ologist

I don't think there ever was a 'problem', only an observation, an investigation into such things.

But if you are grappling with atoms and void and finding not enough void anywhere between groupings of atoms…

Ah, 'sufficient void between groups', except that me and the ground one since there's no void between us. Human convention usually considers air and liquid to be classified as 'void' for such purposes. King Midas still breathes air, not gold.

Or are you saying a man can’t step into the same river twice

A river is an object by convention, and you step into the same river each time. If it's a different river each time, then it's also a different me each time doing it, so a man cannot even 'be' twice since, like the river, the material changes from moment to moment. Anyway, no, I'm not saying that. I talk about identity quite often, but this topic is not about that.
The 'river', and 'me' stepping in it, are both ideals.

Or are you just being contrarian

Pretty much everybody is concluding the same thing, so it doesn't seem to be an example of being contrarian.

Thanks for looking at it, I appreciate your feedback. But I’d like to think that the essay is compatible with the canonical idealists, such as Berkeley (with some caveats), Kant, Schopenhauer, and our contemporary, Bernardo Kastrup. — Wayfarer

Problem is, several people, (you especially) throw these names around, which is great for the readers that know them and their views, but I'm not one of those. I don't know the names, and I'm apparently discovering things for myself that have already been discussed somewhere by these famous guys. I'm behind the curve. I didn't bother with learning a lot of the history because so many of them were pre-20th century and the main reason I came to this site (well, the old PF actually) was because nobody seemed to discuss the philosophical implications of 20th century science, such as the nature of time, of identity, of the finite age of the universe, of wave function collapse and such. All these modern findings really put a hole in a lot of the older views, forcing their adherents to look the other way instead of face the new issues.

Anyway, point is, I don't much know the teachings of the famous guys, but that also means I am covering ground that has already been covered by somebody else. Relevant quotes are helpful. Names are noi.

the idea that the existence of objects is intrinsically tied to the presence of a subject that perceives them. — Wayfarer

I've come to agree with that, but I would put 'object' in scare quotes since the thing in itself (or better worded, the stuff in itself) is not so tied to perception. A subject yes, but not necessarily a perceiving one.

If one defines 'reality' to be what one knows about, that epistemological definition leads to proper idealism. Mind is fundamentally real (so still a realist position) in that view since without mind, nothing is known and thus nothing exists.

A standard scientific realist view is not about epistemology at all. It says loosely that there is a set of what is real, and anything not in that set isn't real. What is and isn't real cannot be known. MWI for instance is a hard realist interpretation: the universal wave function is real, and it evolves according to the Schrodinger equation.

I don't consider myself to be a realist of either kind since the reality of whatever is posited to be fundamentally real, say the mind or the universal wave function, cannot be explained.

I take a relational view where if state X is part of the cause of state Y, then X exists (is real) to Y. It is a sort of backwards ontology. Future things cause past things to exist relative to them by being affected by said past things. There is no objective reality with such a definition, no meaningful 'view from nowhere'. And none of the above has dependence on epistemology or 'minds', so fundamentally, it's not idealism.

our understanding of the world is mediated through perception and cognition. He argues that objects, as we know them, do not exist independently of our perception. This aligns with the broader philosophical stance of idealism.

Agree with this, at least until perception becomes fundamental, and fundamental properties are given to 'the will' like it's something more special.

Schopenhauer asserts that the existence of the objective world is contingent upon a perceiving subject. Without a subject to perceive, there can be no object. This challenges the notion of an independently existing material world.

No, it just challenges 'object', one of a list of words that can similarly be demonstrated to be ideals. That we put words to sets of material that we find useful does not imply that the material behind it is challenged.

The phenomenal veil, of our own construction, that cloaks and hides the thing-in-itself. — Fire Ologist

Maybe because there's only 'stuff in itself'. It's us that makes 'things' of it all.

I see three things:
The world which is there (for ages).
Us in it, the human subject, also there, but now there with.
And our perspectival experience the unique picture made of the other two, existing only in our head, filled with “objects” that are unlike the other two things. — Fire Ologist

Pretty much a realist stance, with some of the findings of this topic highlighted.

We need all three.

The “objective world” that is “really there” requires not just the ideals to the subject, but also the idealized thing without the subject (however that thing appears to me, or better, to us.)

An objective world, by definition, would not require a subject or its ideals at all.

consider, if the nature of objects is imputed by the observer, then why doesn't the same apply to the ‘external world?’ — Wayfarer

It likely does. Consider if MWI were true, then 'world' right there is an ideal. The theory itself does not posit them. It's only a side effect of entanglement of states, and even 'states' becomes an ideal. There's not much left to objective reality except that one wave function and its evolution.

Bold but true, I believe.

That was in reaction to your Magee quote, and it seems to presume a more fundamental (proper) idealism than the one described by your paper or Pinter.

How can you possibly demarcate where some object ends without any idea at all of what it is you want to demarcate? — Count Timothy von Icarus

From the lack of examples outside of fiction, it seems pretty obvious that you can't.

If I understand you right, you want some beam to paint a particular bug, pumpkin, etc. and lable them "thing" against some background not labeled "thing."

In a search for an objective object, yes, I want that. Seems completely impossible, so the conclusion is that all these things are but ideals.

Take a look at The Mind-Created World. — Wayfarer

Pretty much like Pinter seems to say. But your paper doesn't seem to be the position held by most self-identified idealists who consider mind to be fundamental, supervening on nothing else.

So barring the label, I agree with most of it. The though experiment near the top is questionable. There can be a view from nowhere, but it would be by definition not perspectival. A simple classical example would be a spacetime diagram, especially a gif that continuously rotates it through frame transformations so as not to imply a preferred one.
Take away 'classical' and the view from nowhere can get far more abstract since semi-perspectival things like worldlines might go away. A perspective can collapse a wave function. Can God (with the supposed 'view from nowhere') do that?

Dontcha think this might have to do with the standards all being magical devices? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Since it seemingly cannot actually be done, all such devices are necessarily fictional/magical, yes. If there were a solution to the problem, we could find a non-fictional example to illustrate the point.

This was, in fact, the problem with Maxwell's Demon. It took a very long time to figure out why it couldn't exist, but finally people thought to challenge the assumption of the thing essentially having a non-physical/magical memory.

Godel certainly shoots that down, but perhaps it was already shot down by that point.

Think about it this way, if "being a pipe" or "being a cow' is "strongly emergent" or something like that, then it's quite impossible to determine if some particle belongs to a cow, etc. or not.

You seem to still be approaching the problem from the wrong end. You're taking a cow and looking for a very precise (down to the atomic level) demarcation of that already defined convention.
I am starting with only 'this', an indication of some classically local substance, say the non-air surface (say a leg exoskeletal surface of a 0.1 mm bug sitting on a shirt) upon which the phaser energy beam is focused. Now this beam needs to perform its function to the entirety of the 'object' of which that surface is a part. The energy beam itself (and not the gun) needs to figure this out. And worse, it cannot perform its function until after the beam shuts off, but that problem is not entirely related to this topic.
The description of the bug leg is very specific, but any real beam held active for 0.6 seconds is going to wiggle around and not remain focused on the bug leg the whole time. It will at least directly hit 'shirt' for some percentage of the time.

Was there a before King Midas touched, when the world wasn’t gold, and then what happened to Midas afterwards? — Fire Ologist

The story does not describe the universe being converted, so the supplied physical definition is not the correct convention obviously.
It means my guess of msc was closer to the Midas example than was your guess.

When we look at the premise: What constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it., we see that the interface connecting language with physical parts of the natural world is denied.
— ucarr

How is my understanding of your quote a mis-reading of it? — ucarr

Well for one, the suggestion is that convention is very much the interface between the physical world and 'object'. Convention comes from language and/or utility. So the interface is not denied, but instead enabled by these things.

We should compare guesses. — Fire Ologist

I indicated my guess and it was different than yours. Now what? Is yours also a guess? Which of us is wrong? Both seems likely.
Your guess seemed to include everything (all of the black and white pattern repeated three times), which is sort of one of the obvious defaults. The entire universe turns to gold because King Midas cannot avoid touching the universe. My guess was obviously smaller. Are we back to square one?

Isn't there a middle ground between there being "one canonical border," and any assignments being arbitrary? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It would be nice, yes. We're 150 posts in here, and no such middle ground that holds water has been suggested yet, but I'm open to it.
Any suggested bound is going to be put to the test of one of my OP examples, or the Midas thing.

If assignments were truly completely arbitrary then people should make such distinctions at random.

Nonsense. People can create conventions to put the distinctions at pragmatically useful places. Nothing random about that.

But they clearly don't do so. So wouldn't it make sense to look for the object in exactly what causes people to delineate them in such and such a way in the first place?

That seems to be along the lines of giving AI and thus conventions to devices, difficult to do with an energy beam. The OP mentioned a teleporter that moves that to which it is 'attached'. So (kindly ignore the fact that I'm using language here) it gets strapped to a railing at the edge of the roof of a building that is integrated into a city block of building connected by shared walls and interconnecting passageways. Question is, what are the bounds of what the device teleports?
I picked this example because it's not clear even to a human what the requirement is, so a device that tries to demark objects the way a human does would make a clear determination.

Water can become ice or steam, but it doesn't do both simultaneously.

Not so. We boiled water until it froze, as an illustration of how to reach the triple point. The boiling was done via pumping air (and steam) out of the jar with the water. After not long, ice forms on the boiling surface.
Just some off topic FYI.

I'm well aware of the idealism that goes on with our categorization of the world, but in the end, I want to resolve the issue brought up in the OP. If the idea can't do that, then it doesn't seem to help.

I think [idealism leading to solipsism] is a misrepresentation of idealism. — Wayfarer

I suspect you're right. I'm no authority, but other people/minds are nothing but ideals themselves to me, and one has to get around that. I don't know how its done.

None of the canonical idealist philosophers believe that only my mind is real.

So they must have solved the problem then. Again, I know very little of the positions pushed by various famous philosophers. I'd not pass a philosophy course in school since that's mostly what they teach, sort of like how history was taught to us.

language - a system of human communication rooted in variations in the form of a verb (inflection) by which users identify voice, mood, tense, number and person. — ucarr

Ah, human speech and representations thereof. If 'language' only refers to that, then a sentient being can definitely cognize a things without the mediation of language

word-processing software delineates language into sentences, paragraphs and chapters.

I suspect that word processing software has no more awareness that it is dealing with language than does my tongue.

we see that the interface connecting cognitive language with physical parts of the natural world is denied.

This denial raises the question: How does language internally bridge the gap separating it from the referents of the natural world that give it meaning?

I don't see a denial of the indicated connection, so it's a question you must answer.

You would have to use physical eyes and senses because it’s a physical thing — Fire Ologist

I did, but lacking knowledge of the bounds of the physical thing, I was reduced to guessing, which I did. That's the msc

That guess is likely wrong, but lacking any physical definition of object bounds, it's as good as any other guess.

that’s the only way to investigate and find if you see border or edge or particular “object

I did all that, and found an object, but probably not the object you meant, since all I had to go on was the physical.

And this border is distinct

That wording makes it sound like there's one preferred border, when in fact there is an arbitrarily large number of ways the border can be assigned, none better than any other. There is no 'this border'. There is only 'a border', among many other possibilities.

It’s not word. Don’t idealize it.

It’s a physical pile of black and white. Can you see the border? I could go cut and paste it for you. — Fire Ologist

Ah, OK. In that case I don't know where you're pointing. Perhaps it is only the msc part that is the pile of black and white in question, situated between different shaped physical piles of black and white. How would I know?

But you seem to be leaning towards an idealist view yourself. Can you say why you're not? — Wayfarer

To re-quote your Pinter snippet:

The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a perspective outside of itself. — Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter

That sounds somewhat like idealism as well and I totally agree with it. Something (humans, whatever) finds pragmatic utility in the grouping of a subset of matter into a named subset, which is what makes an object out of that subset. That's the similarity with idealism. But if I am correct, idealism stops there. Mind does not supervene on anything. There's no external reality, especially a reality lacking in names and other concepts to group it all intelligibly. There is only 'cup', and no cup.
Idealism leads to solipsism. Intellects sharing categorization via language does not.

M-U would word it differently I imagine.

because of change, the still object referenced in the “moon” is really an ideal moon, because the actual moon isn’t a still object. — Fire Ologist

I personally never think of the moon as a 'still', unchanging ideal. Seeing its shadow come right at me really drove home that point. Yes, like all things designated as 'objects', they change and will eventually no longer be that object, if only by the lack of something to so name it.

It very much seems you cannot since there's nothing that says to continue while it's a pumpkin, but not beyond, where it ceases to be pumpkin. And certainly nothing to say that 'pumpkin' is what matters in the first place.
— noAxioms

You couldn’t give the example of how a pumpkin is not a distinct object if there were no distinct objects. You certainly couldn’t covey such a thought to me from your mind if you didn’t place an object, like a pumpkin, translated as “pumpkin” into language, but otherwise able to be thrown in the direction of my head, in between us. You could have said “gourd” or “cheese sandwich” but you made reference to a distinct thing instead.
— Fire Ologist

Unless you, like me think, some distinctions are ideal, and others are physical.

Some distinctions are indeed physical. Object boundaries don't seem to be one of them.

hgtiigumsolee

I was envisioning something more like 'this'. Making up a word with no reference is running away from the issue of a reference without a word.

— Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, to make things worse, I've seen many physicists and philosophers of physics call into question the idea of even particles as discrete objects, i.e., "they are human abstractions created to explain measurements" etc.

All true, but I did say 'classical'. Your comment goes beyond a classical description.

How can you tell where a given pumpkin ends if you don't know what a pumpkin is?

It very much seems you cannot since there's nothing that says to continue while it's a pumpkin, but not beyond, where it ceases to be pumpkin, and certainly nothing to say that 'pumpkin' is what matters in the first place.

Clearly there is a physical basis for hands being distinct parts of bodies, but it can't be found in the hand itself.

Agree. I said as much in my comments with Wayfarer about the 100 million year old foot.

Anyhow, you keep framing things in terms of particles. People have been trying to give this question an even somewhat satisfying answer in terms of particles ensembles for over a century now. I think it's just a fundamentally broken way to conceive of the problem. You don't get any discrete boundaries if you exclude any reference to minds.

We seem to be in agreement then.

Let’s equate an “object” with a whole pizza, and “extension” with the dough, and “language” with the sauce, and “concepts/minds” with the cheese.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese. — Fire Ologist

Per your weird assignment of terms, it would be an attempt at a pizza with dough but without the cheese and sauce, except that the dough seems undefined without sauce on it.

when is there ever a concept without a mind?

I didn't suggest such a thing.

From what I read, I agree with the Pinter view.

Can a sentient being cognize a thing-in-itself without the mediation of language? — ucarr

Any cognition is at some level a language, but I suppose it depends on how 'language' is defined.

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they? — Metaphysician Undercover

Only to an idealist.

my experiential transformation from typical matter into a human
...
my miraculous existential fortune — Dogbert

Either I "just happen" to be among the infinitesimal fraction of matter that became human beings ... — Dogbert

All your wordings demonstrate a presumption of being a thing that has somehow won an incredibly low odds lottery and has 'become you'. It's a different wording of the old 'why am I me?' question.
It seems this stems from your stated belief in panpsychism. Maybe if you cannot explain this very valid question that arises from such a view, perhaps you should question the view.

I was never into panpsychism, but I still asked the same 'why am I me' question, getting no satisfactory answer. I had to realize that the question reflected my biases, and was thus the wrong question. Instead of 'why am I me', one could start with "is there an 'I' that got to be me?" Answer: Super low probability except in a anthropocentric view, which panpsychism isn't.


Your current collection of matter is quite (over 99%) different than it was in the past, so how is this different collection of matter the same 'you' that it was back then? I've never really understood the panpsychist viewpoint, so forgive if my question is naive.