I'm in France, drinking an expresso, replying to this stupid thread. What next?

That's a false analogy. The cpu merely decodes a constant binary stream according to the specific and hardwired instruction set. There is no deviating from this mechanical process and thus zero creativity, at all. Computers at best can only mimic creativity, or intelligence. They are completely determined. They lack spirit.

oh yeah, what programming language did you use to engineer your kids? Computers only understand 1s and 0s. Kids have a creativity that isn't reducible to an algorithm.

Is "everything" stored on a hard drive - or, can flash drives, cloud storage, or other things - be used as storage of information? How does the method of storing information limit whether a machine knows anything or not? — Don Wade

The type of storage only affects the rate at which data can be accessed (e.g SSD's are faster) and the total size capacity ( flash drives are smaller). Cloud storage is still storage on a HDD, but that HDD is on a remote server.

'AI' is improved by having access to large amounts of data. Which is why big data is so important these days.

A machine knows nothing. It just blindly executes algorithms in the way it was programmed to do so. It cannot deviate from, or add anything to that dumb computation. Everything you ask a voice activated program can be stored on a hard drive, in a database, for later recall (querying). If you want to think of that as memory..

See what - the truth? — Harry Hindu

Partially.

So, it's not a game but there are goalposts. I see. Are the goalposts for scoring points or merely decoration?

I am saying that what I said is partially true. :wink:

Ah we are such good sophists. Going round and round and getting nowhere. I'm stepping off now. Good game.

I merely wished to highlight that your universalist claim*, that any assertion about reality must be objective, doesn't actually hold up universally. I wasn't making an objective assertion about reality when speaking of my faculties of perception.

*Any time you try to make a case for what reality is, and how it is, then you are making an objective statement. — Harry Hindu

I have multiple faculties of perception. I used the word 'all' to encompass them. As a quantifier. As an umbrella term. I think it is you who struggles with words. But this is pure sophistry, as is usual in philosophy discussions.

Virgins trying to justify their failure with the opposite sex via over-rationalisation. I agree with @unenlightened about the ridiculousness of demanding reasons for everything. Philosophers don't even know how to live. Thinking too much and feeling too little. If you had met a women whom you love, these desires for reasons would vanish.

Objective. Again you are asserting a state-of-affairs that exists for ALL, and you are implying that this state-of-affairs is true even if no one knows it is true. Any time you try to make a case for what reality is, and how it is, then you are making an objective statement. — Harry Hindu

Nah. I used all to refer to my faculties of perception, and hence my unique experience. In other words, I wanted to encompass the various modes of perception under the quantifier 'all'. It was not a statement about the universality of perception for other entities (human or otherwise).

The statement is an objective claim about the ontology of perception and understanding, which is just another way of saying epistemology. Any time you make a statement that asserts how some state of affairs exists for all humans, not just yourself, like what perception and understanding is for all humans, you are making a objective statement. — Harry Hindu

It is partially true that all perception and understanding of reality is subjective. Is my previous statement objective or subjective?

Psychoanalysis is gibberish with no grounding.

a word invented by Husserl to describe his approach to philosophy — Olivier5

The word was used before husserl though.

I'll readily agree that philosophy should be knowledge based if we assume science doesn't have the monopoly on knowledge. And let's mix in a little speculative metaphysics to keep things interesting.

Philosophy by that description is relegated to merely the janitor of the sciences. Not a view I share.

Its one of those grand open-ended questions that pervade the history of philosophical thought (what is truth? What is beauty? What is justice? Etc). I tend to doubt the effectiveness of these type of questions to reach a consensus. Rather, we tend to get nowhere (and everywhere) with such questions, since every philosopher brings a divergent thought to the matter. This highlights (to me) that philosophy is proliferated by difference, and therefore a key metaphysical characteristic of philosophy must be: difference.

But there are many books on this. Heidegger, D&G and Agamben each have produced books with the same title "what is philosophy?".

@Jack Cummins

The question presupposes that philosophy has a 'real' essence. Tell us what the essence of philosophy is and I'll tell you what a 'real' philosopher is.

A sick person.

You might like to read this piece on mathematical phenomenology

Matter is clunky and awkward. Abstractions, not so.

My theory is that it's the same reason humans can't just sit quietly eating pumpkins. We lust for hardship. We need to risk life and limb. We need poignant wars. — frank

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone — Pascal

Parenthetical: I don't agree with the quote but was reminded of it.

I'm not exactly in my element either. Blind leading the blind here.

I don't want to derail the thread and must be honest I am not a mathematician. However, it's my understanding that in your example numbers are not the thing being measured by the straight edge. The numbers are themselves a measure, or quantity of an arbitrary unit. Complex numbers can be used to measure quantites of other kinds (not straight lines). That means they have real world applications. I don't know the specifics but someone with real mathematical knowledge can back me up :D

Edit: The strength of an electromagnetic field can be measured by complex numbers (apparently).

By the way, if imaginary numbers exist, what is the square root of -1? I know the square root of 4 is 2, a number; I know the square root of 2 is 1.414..., another number. — TheMadFool

They exist as abstractions, mathematical concepts.

All real numbers are (probably?) instantiated in the universe. Take for example pi, wherever you see something circular/spherical, it's there as the ratio between circumference and diameter. — TheMadFool

There are certainly mathematical abstractions without a concrete actualisation, and these include real numbers. I think uncomputable real numbers would be an example (chaitins constant). Or a number a billion times larger than the atoms of the observable universe. I mean, there is always a larger number in abstract land..

The square root of -1, according to mathematicians, doesn't exist and that means, the aptly named, real numbers exist. — TheMadFool

I don't think this is right. Imaginary numbers exist as mathematical entities used by mathematicians. In exactly the same way that the real numbers exist for mathematicians: they exist because they are used. The imaginary numbers are just plotted on a different number line (not the real axis).
The term imaginary number is considered to be a misnomer by many mathematians.

There is no formula for life. Best we can do is have an ongoing discussion about a subject, for 100's of years, without reaching a definitive conclusion. Voilà philosophy.

on the numberline, yes. Where is the numberline located?

What do you mean by 'humanity'?

Yes that is true. My example is at the syntactical level. Ok I'll leave it to someone else to find an example at the semantic level.

I was attempting to give an example of a non-arithmetical use of the symbol '2'.

It is a counter-example of arithmetic. — simeonz

So my attempt was successful(?).

Strings are infinitely dimensional space — simeonz

I have no idea what that means.

An obvious non numerical example: dynamic programming languages tend to treat '+' as a concatenation operator when applied to sequences of 'chars'. So x = '2' + '2'; means that x is equal to (or has the value of) the string '22'. Not the integer value 22. This also answers @ArguingWAristotleTiff yes 2+2 can equal 22. If + represents concatenation.

In the end, a species ability to adapt to their environment is most important. It doesn't appear to this observer as if our conceptual capacity has led to anything more than getting that much closer to extinction. — synthesis

At least we get a little existential dread to spice things up. Afterall, the dinosaurs became extinct without conceptual capacity.

Look out into the world of living things and marvel at what these creatures can accomplish without conceptual thought! — synthesis

And some of the accomplishments of conceptual thought are: medicine, art, technology, science, space exploration, engineering, the Internet, etc. Not bad eh?

2+1 and 3 are symbols referring to the same mathematical entity. The symbol 2+1 also contains descriptive information about the process used to arrive at the mathematical entity (which can also be denoted by the alternate symbol 3). The symbols are different but the abstract entity they refer to are surely the same.

It seems that @Metaphysician Undercover is mistaking the symbols for the entity they refer to.

Sounds like you are into advaita vedanta

One cannot reason one's way to what one should care about, not even to caring about oneself. — unenlightened

Yep. One can reason one's way towards an ideal, but lived experience is not purely rational.