No, it isn't. Wittgenstein said nothing of the sort. — Banno

So you say, but will you demonstrate that you actually believe what you say? Otherwise you are just showing that you know how to arrange words in an intelligible way.

Seems to me, at the fundament, that what we who pretend to the title “philosopher” are looking for is some semblance of truth, whatever that is; at writing that is thought provoking; at nuanced and sound argument. Whether such an argument comes from a person or an AI is secondary. — Banno

AI at this point is not capable of giving any "semblance of truth".

I’ve used AI to quickly and succinctly summarise accepted fact. — Banno

Yes, it can very aptly "summarize accepted fact", and you might want to use it for that, if that is what you are after. But "fact by the masses" is a far cry from "semblance of truth".

The idea is that the AI isn't really saying anything, but is arranging words as if it were saying something. — Banno

I really do not see the difference here. Following Wittgenstein, all that "saying something" is, is arranging words as if you were saying something. Meaning (as in what is meant, by intention) is not a separate requirement for "saying something", because meaning is assumed to be inherent within "arranging words as if you were saying something".

Modern philosophy has so effectively combined meaning with saying, such that meaning is taken for granted, and "saying" is nothing more than arranging words in an intelligible way. You will not provide an effective argument to say that what the AI provides has no meaning. Therefore you will not have an argument to say that the AI doesn't say anything.

This implies that the ship has already sailed (the paste is out of the tube) with respect to "saying". It's too late to go back and insist that "saying" is something more than arranging words in an intelligible way. Instead, we need to look deeper, at the meaning of words like "honesty". "truth", and "communion", to determine whether AI partakes in any of these.

What's the problem then? Change happens over time. Where's the problem? I made no mention of points in that.

What happened to decisions and the eventual state of no longer being able to have chosen otherwise? — noAxioms

I think the problem is, that if change happens over time, and a person can always change one's mind as time passes, then how does that state of not being able to choose otherwise ever come about?

I think that "not being able to choose" is always there, to some degree, as what is impossible. One cannot make happen what is impossible. So as time passes what is possible, and what is impossible, is always changing. That's what change is. We make our decisions based on how we understand what is possible and what is impossible, in relation to what is wanted. We always misunderstand, to some degree.

Therefore it's always possible to choose otherwise, all the time. But some things are not possible, even if we think they are, and try to make them happen. Likewise, many things which are possible we never even consider.

I don't see the difference between "it's an expression of logical possibilities" and "elect one or another possibility as the one which will occur". — Harry Hindu

You don't see the difference between stating a number of possibilities, and selecting one possibility? Come on Harry, where's your mind at?

Give an example of making a decision without reasoning. — Harry Hindu

I'm sitting on a chair. In a few minutes I will decide to get up. I will decide this without reasoning. I make many such decisions without reasoning, every day. I just decided to take a sip of tea without reasoning first.

Logically prior. That doesn't compute. — frank

Sorry, my mistake, I wasn't thinking when i wrote that. I didn't adequately grasp what you were asking. I didn't say that content precedes form did I? I said content and form cannot be opposed dialectically, and that Adorno mentions the pre-eminence of content. He is saying that the content always extends beyond the conception, and this is due to "non-identity".

I read through that again, and I really don't know what he means by this. But pre-eminence doesn't mean "prior to."

But that issue aside, when you say content can precede form, are you thinking about existence preceding essence? — frank

Content is logically prior, by Aristotelian logic, in the way I explained. And also the way that Adorn described, "the whole which is expressed by theory is contained within the particular to be analyzed".

i cannot draw any relation to existence and essence. Those terms have not yet been discussed by Adorno, and I don't know how you would understand them.

Ever listen to Rush, where Geddy Lee says, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"? — Harry Hindu

Exactly, and that is the point. To choose not to decide is an example of a type of choice which escapes your description of what a choice is, which was either A or B. Therefore your description of choice was faulty.

I don't know you and I can predict that you will either respond to this post, or not respond to this post... — Harry Hindu

That's not a prediction, it's an expression of logical possibilities. A prediction would be to select one or another possibility as the one which will occur. You totally distort the nature of "prediction", in an attempt to describe a person as predictable.

If you have no reasons then you were not reasoning and making decisions is a type of reasoning. — Harry Hindu

Now you totally distort the meaning of "making decisions" to support what you want to argue. Many decisions are made without reasoning.

I think I get what you're saying. Could you point me to where he talks about the "pre-eminence" of content? If it's not too much trouble? — frank

It is the concluding paragraph of that section, where he talks about the remainder, which is an instance of non-identity. In the last few sections he's been describing how the object overextends the concept. This is mentioned in the first paragraph of this section, as "...the whole which is expressed by theory is contained within the particular to be analyzed..." Then this is further explored in the last paragraph:

"The pre-eminence of content reveals itself as the necessary insufficiency of the method."

Other ways of rendering it would be "the quality of having content" or "contentfulness" or "that which pertains to or constitutes content" — Jamal

Yes, this describes the traditional use of "substance" quite well.

And, this section actually goes a long way to resolving the dispute you and I have had since the beginning. I understand "society" as a concept, because I generally do not apprehend the substance which provides the objectivity for that union of people to be known as an entity. Traditionally, substantiation was provided by God, or Spirit, but this is rejected as a faulty substantiation. You have insisted that "society" is an objective entity, but I haven't been able to determine the objectification

Adorno has now demonstrated to me, that although "social totality" appears to me to be solely a "whole which is expressed by theory", i.e. a formal concept, if I understand this unity, or whole, as a unity of form and content, the content can validate an objective, substantial whole. Now I can grasp what he calls "the social totality" or what you call "society", as a union of form and content, whereby the content provides what is necessary for this to be a substantial, or objective whole. And so long as we maintain the pre-eminence of content, whereby the object extends beyond the concept as non-identical, the conception may be true.

It's that form and content imply one another (just as subject and object do). It's dialectics lingo/jargon to say the form is in the content. — frank

But that's the mistake of dialectical identity thinking which Adorno is exposing with negative dialectics. The two are not properly dialectically opposed, in reality, so we cannot say that each one implies the other. If one (content) extends beyond the other (form), then in the way explained by Aristotle, the former (content) is logically prior to the latter (form). Then, mention of the latter (form) necessarily implies the former (content), but not vise versa. Mention of content does not necessarily imply form. This is the reason for "the remainder", "the pre-eminence of content".

'm not convinced we disagree, but as frank says, this kind of talk can get convoluted. It's at least partly a fractal kind of thing: you have this dialectical pair, form and content, but within the content this pair is repeated again. So for example, philosophy has its form and its content, where the latter might be a concept or a social relation, but that concept or social relation (the object) itself has both its own form, e.g., the principle of exchange, as well as its content, i.e., the object's specificity and non-identity. It's form/content all the way down. — Jamal

I agree that there is two pairs, but where we must be careful is in the way that things invert when we relate one set of pairs to another. So for example, "form and content" is a formal, theoretical representation. But when we look at things from the perspective of practice rather than that of theory, we have the pair of "substance and philosophical method". Now "substance" is assigned to the societal totality, which from the theory perspective is the whole of "form". So substance correlates better with form here. Accordingly, "philosophical method" is a property of the individual subject and therefore ought to correlate with content. However, the demonstrated remainder denies the actual truth of this correlation.

The significance I suppose is that dialectics is the only method which is properly aware of this and which refuses to allow form and content to be separated (although Adorno cricizes Hegel for doing it too) — and actually enacts this in its own practice and self-conception. — Jamal

Form and content are separated only in theory. That is why "substantiality" must be a union of the two. But this union makes it so that substance cannot be immediately correlated with content. Then we see that substance, being a unity, a totality, is more closely related to form, as the whole, than to content, necessitating that content has a remainder in its (therefore non-identical) relation to form. This implies that content is logically prior to form, and provides for truth in any theoretical separation of form and content. Content must be represented as logically prior in any theoretical separation.

And this is to say that negative dialectics resists reification, because the separation of form and content is the mechanism of reification. — Jamal

That's right, because form and content can only be separated when the reality of substance is denied. Disrespect for the necessity of substance is what results in reification. Therefore we must pay attention to how Adorno employs "substance", how he sees substance, to understand his grounding, and how he avoids reification.

Classically, if the state (of all of you) immediately prior to the point (and not the process) of decision was the same, it means the process was already arriving at this conclusion. How could it not act on that process, regardless of where you consider that mechanism to take place? If you don't mean the state at that point, then when? — noAxioms

I don't think we can accurately talk about real points within what is assumed to be a continuous process. This is the problem with representing the end of the decision making process as the "conclusion". "Conclusions" implies an end point. In reality, even as we are acting we are free to change our minds as the conditions require, so "conclusion" is arbitrarily assigned.

Therefore, to speak about a point immediately prior to the point of conclusion, really confuses the issue. When we remove those arbitrarily assumed "points", then we have a process which is in theory infinitely divisible. Then at any time in that duration the process could theoretically be changed. Even between your two arbitrary points, A being immediately prior to B, being the point of decision, there must be a duration of time during which a change in the process could occur between the arbitrarily assumed A and B.

The further problem however, would be the mechanism of such a change. Since I've already outlawed points, to get to this position, I cannot now say that the change happens at a point in between the two. This leaves a problem.

Between philosophical conception and follow-through (execution) there is a divergence because of the divergence between concept and object already described. But in the execution there is a remainder, which I think is either a receptivity to the non-identical, or is just the non-identical itself (which agrees with your interpretation Metaphysician Undercover).

Another way to put that is that Adorno is moving from a description of the divergence between concept and object to an emphasis that in philosophical experience, particularly the execution of dialectical method, this divergence has a substantive remainder, namely the non-identical itself. That is, this gap between concept and object isn't just empty. — Jamal

I think we are very much in agreement here. Where we disagree is concerning the finer points of how he gets to this conclusion, and exactly how to understand his terminology, which can be quite perplexing.

Here, form is philosophical method, and content or substantiality is what is being analyzed or philosophized about. — Jamal

To persist with our continued disagreement, I don't think it's right to equate content with substantiality at this point. I think it is better to think of substantiality as a combination of form and content. This would be similar to Aristotle's primary substance which is a combination of form and matter.

So when he says "the whole which is expressed by theory is contained within the particular to be analyzed", he claims "the mediation of both is itself substantive". Notice that it is the mediation of both of these which is supposed to be "substantive". So it might be the mediation between the whole of theory (form), and the particular (content), which produces substantiality And this substantiality he calls the "social totality". So he has a distinction between the whole which is expressed by theory, which I assume is the form in this context, and the substantive totality which is society itself.

The difficult thing is that he is talking about a process, "philosophy", what you call "philosophical method". So I take it that he is talking about philosophy as a method of unifying form (concept) and content (object) as a social totality, based in exchange. I believe the basis of the unity is found in the following statement "Concept and reality are of the same contradictory essence".

So at the end of the section he has a distinction between "philosophic conception" and "follow-through". The "philosophic conception" would be the form, the concept, while the "follow-through" would be the method by which the substantive totality, society itself, reveals non-identity in the relation between form and content. This aspect of non-identity, I believe is what produces the remainder. The only thing that I can see which would escape substantiality is the method itself, the follow-through. I think that's what's alluded to in the final sentence: "The philosophical ideal would be to render the accounting one would give for what one does superfluous, by doing it."

But yes, i was wrong that "if you believe that quote, you will agree with me", but to me the trains of knowledge are consistent: if i can't step in the same river twice (as the river is always changing), then i also couldn't have done anything differently in the past...but if you reason "i have a local river called river calhoun, and i have stepped in it twice! Heraclitus was wrong!", then i can see why you would believe that you could have made different choices in the past. — ProtagoranSocratist

I really don't see how your analogy about the two rivers is relevant. The question is, could the person, at the time prior to stepping into the river, have decided at that time, not to step into the river. I think that was a real possibility to the person at that time. Therefore at that time the person could have decided not to step into it. How do you think stepping into the same river twice is relevant?

Why do you choose to do what you do? What it the decision making process like for you? Don't you have to first be aware of the situation you are in and then aware of options to respond to the situation, and if you have enough time (as time limits the amount of options you can have at any moment before the power of decision is taken from you) go through each option, predicting the outcome of each option and then choosing the option with the best outcome? It isn't much different than how a computer makes decisions with IF-THEN-ELSE statements. IF this is the situation, THEN think about the outcome of option A, ELSE try option B. Learning entails repeating these steps over and over - observing the situation, responding, observing the effects, responding again, etc. until you've mastered the task. — Harry Hindu

Well, quite often I decide not to choose, or decide to do something completely different, totally unrelated to A and B. How is this compatible with how a computer makes a decision?

People that know you will can actually predict what you might do or think in some situation, effectively making you predictable. — Harry Hindu

Haha, that's a joke, isn't it? That someone might be able to predict what I would do in one specific situation makes me "predictable"?

Then that ought to be stated with reference, instead of ""If the mind emerges from physical processes..." which implies that you believe it is possible that monism is wrong. You should start with something like " As demonstrated here (ref), mind emerges from physical processes", instead of the extremely indecisive "if the mind emerges from physical processes..."

I asked, what does cosmology say about dualism? — Copernicus

There are dualist cosmologies. That's why arbitrarily ruling them out, as you do in your op with "If the mind emerges from physical processes...", provides you with a misleading starting point, an unsound principal assumption. The alternative, but equally misleading starting point would be "if mind is priori to physical processes...". They are both unsound principle assumptions. So the proper starting point would be "it is possible that mind emerged from physical processes, and it is also possible that mind is prior to physical processes, therefore we ought to consider the arguments for both of these".

to see if the basis needs change. — Copernicus

If you are not educated in classical philosophy, then you are excused for not being acquainted with the cosmological argument. However, I am sure you are fully aware of your own ability to choose. Do you not see how this is incompatible with materialism? Or do you really believe that the laws of physics can explain why you choose to do what you do?

That's two good reasons, as "the basis" which you asked for. Why do you ask for more?

Well, you must have a basis for other arguments to circle around. — Copernicus

Yes, there is a number of reasons to believe that materialism is false. We have our experience of free will choice for one. And there is also the cosmological argument which demonstrates that there is necessarily an immaterial actuality which is prior to all material existence.

Substantiality and Method

In this section, I think Adorno attributes substantiality to society. The following are two key passage which I believe indicates this:

Objectively, however, the whole which is
expressed by theory is contained within the particular to be analyzed,
not first through the cognizing subject. The mediation of both is itself
substantive, that through the social totality.

In their inalienably general elements, all philosophy, even those
with the intention of freedom, carries along the unfreedom in which
that of society is prolonged. It has the compulsion in itself; however this
latter alone protects it from regression into caprice. Thinking is capable
of critically cognizing the compulsory character immanent to it; its own
inner compulsion is the medium of its emancipation. The freedom
towards the object, which in Hegel resulted in the disempowerment of
the subject, is first of all to be established. Until then, dialectics diverges
as method and as one of the thing. Concept and reality are of the same
contradictory essence. What tears society apart antagonistically, the
dominating principle, is the same thing which, intellectualized, causes
the difference between the concept and that which is subordinated
under it. The logical form of the contradiction however achieves that
difference, because every one which does not suborn itself to the unity
of the dominating principle, according to the measure of the principle,
does not appear as a polyvalence which is indifferent to this, but as an
infraction against logic.

The "totality" referred to in the first passage is described as formal, and "that of exchange". The second passage is more difficult but I take Adorno to be saying that the substantiality referred to is logical. He then describes a "remainder", what is left due to the insufficiency of the formal method in its capacity "to wholly absorb the contents".

I'd ask you to bring all your arsenal and attack me reasonably so that I can see if I have any fault. — Copernicus

I object to what you take for granted:

If the mind emerges from physical processes... — Copernicus

Materialism holds that mind arises from matter... If this is true, then.. — Copernicus

You take materialism to be true, and when confronted with the possibility that it might be false, you adopt the position that until it is proven to you that it is false, you will accept it as true. In other words you explicitly state that it is possible that materialism is false, with your conditional propositions of "if...", yet you are unwilling to accept that it is actually possible, stating that you will only accept this as a possibility if it is first proven as a necessity.

It's fine and perfectly reasonable to say to yourself "i could have done _____ differently, for _____ reasons", but the phrasing of the question is "could anyone have made a different choice". We tell ourselves we should/could have made different choices as a narrative that will help us make different choices in the future, but the truth is the choice we made was already made. — ProtagoranSocratist

I don't see the point. I agree, a choice made cannot be changed. But this does not negate the proposition that one could have made a different choice at the time when that choice was being made. This is just a feature of the nature of time. At the present, when time is passing we are free to make different choices. So when I look backward in time, I can say that "I could have made a different choice", meaning that at that time I was free to choose an alternative. It does not mean that it is possible that I actually made a choice other than I did. That, I believe, is a gross misunderstanding of the op, due to the ambiguity of "could have".

There's an ancient phrase that "you can't step into the same river twice", and if you believe the validity of the phrase, then you will answer no to the question, but otherwise, you will answer yes. For me to answer "yes", it would imply that the "anyone" had different knowledge or at least knew they were about to do something wrong or imperfectly. — ProtagoranSocratist

I think this is incorrect. I think you simply misunderstand the op's use of "could have", as explained above.

I had no idea a single choice could occur over a period of time. Could you elaborate on that? For example, what's the grey area between doing and not doing? — ProtagoranSocratist

How long does it take you to decide? Do you not deliberate? Take a simple math question for example, like 14x8-32+18, and time how long it takes you to decide what the answer is. Some choices take days, weeks, even years, to be decided.

We are talking about choices that could have only been made one time. — ProtagoranSocratist

What do you mean by "one time"? Do you deny that a person can deliberate, procrastinate, or otherwise delay in decision making, such that the choice occurs over a period of time?

since "the past" is a done deal, then i have to answer no. Is this some sort of survey in relation to free will and determinism? "Free Will vs. Determinism" is one of my favorite philosophy conundrums, but it doesn't have a clear answer. — ProtagoranSocratist

The question is not whether someone can change a choice which is already made, but whether one could have, at that time, the time when the choice was made, chose something different.

you couldn't convince otherwise — Copernicus

Your desire to be convinced is the problematic attitude. It's an attitude which rejects possibilities opting only for that which one is convinced of. And that is what you take for granted.

Wow. No objections. Looks like finally everyone agreed. — Copernicus

Or, we simply disagree with your premises (e.g. "mind arises from matter"), which you prefer to take for granted rather than to discuss.

I could use a memory upgrade — jorndoe

There might be a chip for that.

The scary thing about interacting with AI, is when it interacts with you without you knowing. But I guess that's nothing new.

I merely emulate Wittgenstein, who rightly noted that a serious and good work of philosophy could be (and I would add has been) written consisting entirely of jokes. — Ciceronianus

That's Plato, one of the best philosophers ever. He's all jokes, all the way through, until you hit the "Laws", the most mundane and boring work ever, but that's more like dogma than philosophy.

We lost chess to the machines some time ago. — jorndoe

Time for a showdown. Instead of Deep Blue against Kasparov, we'll pit chatGPT against ...(?)... in a debate.

Oh shit, I just used Google to remember Garry Kasparov's name, and it corrected me because I remembered Deep Blue as 'Big Blue'. What would the failing memory do without such aids?

What if neither monism or dualism are true? I agree that between the two, monism makes more sense, but it perhaps seems more reasonable to say that reality consists of many things that only appear to be unified. — ProtagoranSocratist

I would agree, neither one is true, but they each offer principles for an approach. And, I think it's very clear that dualism offers better principles, due to it being more consistent with how we experience things.

To begin with, we have a division between past and future. We definitely look at past events in a completely different way from future events, because we need to allow for the capacity of choice. The assumption that we can reduce past and future to being understood by the very same principles (monism) appears to be very mistaken. Maybe some people like to think that past and future are unified as "time", but I haven't seen evidence of that unity.

Perhaps, to rescue dualism, we might turn to interactionist dualism, the idea that mind and matter do interact. Yet this immediately raises another problem: how could such an interaction occur without violating the laws of physics as we understand them? The brain appears to be a closed physical system governed by conservation laws. To allow non-physical causes to influence it would require new physics or a revision of our current understanding of causation, and we have no evidence for either. — tom111

There is no such thing as a closed physical system, so we can dismiss this as a non-issue.

It's no secret that Trump would like to see a regime change in Venezuela. Is he trying to irk them into a response, so he has an excuse to attack? If so, is he risking getting some neighbours involved?

What's with trump's seemingly random attacks on South American vessels? Is he looking for war?

think, given the dangers of AI, and the ways in which prominent members of this site have used it to make themselves look smarter than they really are, that its use should be banned altogether on this site. — Janus

If copying AI makes them look smarter than they are, that's pretty sad.

Philosophy IS propositional conclusions without empirical evidence. — Copernicus

I think most serious philosophers work very hard to maintain consistency with empirical evidence. Otherwise it would be just like pure mathematics, where you make up axioms with complete disregard for empirical evidence.

if by "soundness" you mean empirical proof, then I must remind you this is philosophy, not science. — Copernicus

Then your op is misleading. I thought you said you were putting forth an argument. Anyone can put forth wild, unsupported speculation, but to claim that it is an argument with a conclusion is a little misleading.

My point was that such a proposal lacks soundness.

Absolutely not. Math (formula) is a language — a human creation.

Laws of physics means the nature of the universe. It can be uniform or disorganized.

If ultimately, the universe is chaotic, then that is its nature. — Copernicus

Let me see if I understand what you are saying. If there are aspects of the universe which we cannot understand, we could assume a law of physics which says that these aspects are chaotic, and not governed by laws. And by means of that self-contradicting law, the law that says there is no law which governs their behaviour, we could draw your conclusion "everything follows the laws of physics".

So, how would we distinguish whether things just appear chaotic, due to our misunderstanding, when they are really not chaotic, and whether things are really obeying a self-contradictory law, which stipulates that they will act in a way which is not governed by laws?

Do you see what I mean? Every time we cannot figure something out, we could just assume a law which makes it impossible to figure it out, and then we just get lazy and never have to figure anything out, because we've assumed that the laws make it so we cannot figure them out. Wouldn't it be better just to say that self-contradictory laws are impossible, and the universe is not chaotic? Then we can hope and pray that we will discover those laws, but still knowing that it might turn out to be something other than "laws".

Laws are laws whether we understand them or not. — Copernicus

The laws of physics are what is stated by physicists according to their understanding.

Even if we assume that the stated laws of physics correspond with some natural laws, we still have no indication that any natural laws not yet discovered, which would make the uncertainty of quantum uncertainty into something certain, are out their. So you are just hoping that such laws exist, and physicists will find them, just like I'm hoping that I'll win the lottery and become a millionaire. Good luck with your hopes, I suggest a few prayers.

Everything follows the law of physics. We're just a few decades or centuries away from understanding them. — Copernicus

So your argument, that we are all physical beings is based on what you are hoping physics will discover some day. OK, I'm a millionaire too, based on my hopes of winning the lottery some day.

Can you elaborate? — Copernicus

What is commonly known as quantum uncertainty, is an uncertainty which is caused by the objects in question not following the laws of physics.