If the IRA and Palestinians were comparable — BitconnectCarlos

They are not. The IRA were a terrorist organisation and the Palestinians are a population of people. Maybe you meant IRA and Hamas? In which case I would not agree. The IRA were not genocidal.

You have really opened up a can of worms here :D

Next on the agenda .. Race! Is 'race' cultural? Can we blame a 'race' because race=culture in some respects.

I honestly do not think this discussion will get far because people here are too emotional about such topics. Culture is a many-headed hydra! It is an umbrella term that covers pretty much every aspect of human life.

At the end of the day I do not really think you can blame a whole body of people. People are stupid, so it is hardly their fault for coming up with ideas that are mistaken nor it is the fault of the stupid who know no better following them blindly into the fray.

The simple truth is most of us would have been the prison guard at the concentration camp rather than the one standing up against genocide. The best hope we have is to realise the monster we see in others is only possible because we recognise it in ourselves. The more repulsive something is to us the more likely we are to refuse we are capable of such a crime ... unfortunately this is usually a sign that we would be that repulsive monster.

Thanks for your thoughts. I think of 'home' as being a place of memories, usually with other people.

Coccia actually seems to be arguing that now the Earth has become our home. Previously we would create a refuge from nature but now we have gained so much control over what was previously unknown and mysterious that home is literally anywhere humans are able to live (which is everywhere!).

I imagine a space station even feeling like home, but in the vacuum of space no one feels at home ... yet!

What has been your experience with stoicism, or what do you think is the issue here? Thoughts and comments welcome. — Shawn

I think Mencius encapsulates much of what Stoics believed. Not sure if Mencius was into a cyclical universe though?

Simplistically, Stoicism = "amor fati"

In the broader sense Stoicism is about cataleptic phantasia; 'true experience' and 'avoiding illusions/delusions'. You can kind of see where the Que sera sera attitude of stoicism came from I guess :)

These are all very pertinent questions that require multiple approaches.

Articulate your questions carefully. Contemplate the terms used and their meanings in different fields of expertise. For instance, in linguistics those who study animals are quite happy to call what bees do a 'language' but others focused in other areas of linguistics are not. It is an arduous task sifting through the detritus of words and it is necessary to make mistakes.

What I think you may just be beginning to understand (or rather understand more fully) here is that every word you type can mean different things to different people and that this then becomes exponentially more likely once these words are put in sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into ...

There is a lot to focus on. Pick something and stick with it to the point where it drives you utterly insane, then switch tack and tackle the next one. Often once you have circled back around to the first thing you began to tackle it has crystalised a little and leaves you to further reexamine it AND other related ideas.

If you want to talk about Language then break that up into parts and tackle them on eat a time. If you want to tackle the concept of Intelligence, likewise.

When I asked some days ago what you hoped to get out of philosophy you said "I don't know".

If you are interested in Language I would recommend you read three books written by different people with opposing views in parallel to each other. Do not read second-hand analysis or interpretations, just read the source material -start with the Conclusions (last Chapter/Page/Paragraph) and then read the Intro. Make a comparison between them. Then read them through jumping between one then another. This should prevent you being too taken in by any one particular view over another.

I would hesitate to recommend any books because my knowledge is limited. Perhaps other can suggest THREE and look at what people suggest as three comprehensive and opposing views of this topic.

Off the top of my head I would suggest:

- The Language Instinct, Pinker (as a general introduction only).
- Any introduction to linguistics book (I have one by Anne McCabe which is alright).

Then:

- Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein.
- The Language and Thought of the Child, Piaget.
- Something about Language by Searle and/or Chomsky maybe?

More nuanced stuff:

- Poetics, Aristotle ALONGSIDE The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche. (This might be a bit too much though as it is more obscure in terms of how it relates to Language).

The gist of what I am saying is you seem serious, so do some serious work. Knuckle down rather than distract yourself with what some people online think or say. It is a place for honing a few individual nuggets or for throwing something randomly out hoping to hit something ... other than that the real understanding and progression lies in your own focused personal time and research, not loose discussions.

btw I have nothing of interest to say regarding what 'intelligence' is. You can study some neuroscience if you want and see what they have to say about it if you want. I took a passing look once, but there is nothing there for me really.

I do not think he is suggesting anything like a revolution. He is more or less assessing how the revolution of Home has already happened.

One interesting point he makes at the start is how when we move house we expose ourselves. In the process of putting stuff into boxes and seeing the house stripped bear of our trappings, we also experience a sense of uprooting of self. We bring ourselves into focus as a 'being' apart from the world rather than as grounded in it to some degree.

I believe people have much the same feeling, of a loss of orientation, when they lose their phone as they have when moving house. There is a feeling of 'loss' as if part of ourselves is left behind which brings into question what we are in and of ourselves in the first place.

The Home is a refuge. A castle. Also, it could be the prison of Plato's Cave too perhaps? At least for some ... maybe?

I don't know whether Plato's Cave is an apt image when talking about phones and algorithms or not. It seems like a bit of a stretch. As for home, does the zombie haze lift when the wasted wanderers, the clochards, get home? Not if they all are sitting at the dinner table eyes still glued on the screen. — BC

I was thinking more or less along the line of the city is cut off from the natural world, the home from the city and then the mobile device from the home. We have retreated further into the Cave. That kinda thing :)

Personally, I see something of the possible reemergence of the clochard in the form of mobile devices.
— I like sushi

It strikes me as just... weird to reference a mobil device as a clochard given the meaning below. I don't see how gadgets limp, sleep under bridges, are Parisian bums, or anything similar. BTW, it seems like everyone everywhere is bewitched by their phones. — BC

That was not what I was doing. Clochards are the people with devices NOT the devices themselves. This should be apparent enough:

Personally, I see something of the possible reemergence of the clochard in the form of mobile devices.I noticed many years ago when I was in Bangkok that everyone I looked at had a phone in their hands or were actively using some kind of electronic device. Even the people conversing did so whilst browsing online or unconsciously clutching their prized phones to the chests.

Will technology replace the home? Is the metaverse already here in a sense and that we just simply have not really noticed that we spend our time'at home' in the 'elsewhere' world of texting and (doom)scrolling? — I like sushi

Please don't turn this into dictionary corner. I just had to check my own sanity with ChatGPT and it understood well enough what I meant. Case Closed!

Reemergence of the Clochard:

The mention of the clochard (homeless person) is intriguing here. The speaker might be suggesting that, just as a clochard has no physical home, modern people could be becoming metaphorical “clochards” by being mentally and emotionally “homeless.” The constant use of mobile devices could be seen as replacing or displacing a sense of groundedness or "home."
The clochard could symbolize disconnection from a traditional sense of place and physical presence. Mobile devices may give us access to virtual spaces, but those are temporary, fleeting, and lack the permanence and stability of a home. — ChatGPT

I would add to that that mobile devices can make it seem like your Home is in your pocket. You are anchored to it and it to you. Remove it and a piece of you seems to be missing.

(C) people who do not think in words at all (do they exist? Is it possible?) — Carlo Roosen

100%. There are plenty of cases where people do not possess any language so they obviously cannot think in words if they have none.

(D) people who believe they do not think in words, but they would discover they do, if they practiced a bit of non-thinking (although you say some cannot, which I doubt in fact. Some proper teaching will help, plus of course the wish to learn it) — Carlo Roosen

I think there is likely a scale of ability as there is with practically all human attributes. Maybe for some the ability is so low as to be unworkable? I do not know.

(E) people who know two modes, and both call them thinking (I am curious as to how they experience thinking without words) — Carlo Roosen

You just said you do not call 'thinking without words' by the term 'thinking' but can do this. So, how do you experience this 'other' mode if not with words? Why do you not call it thinking?

You can answer that question yourself. Why are you curious about the answer if you have it?

I think he is looking at the home as a 'place apart from' rather than somewhere we go about our daily business. Where we retire from the daily events is called home (where we tend to sleep and eat).

In terms of mobile devices, I was thinking that perhaps we have, to some degree, appropriated the social aspect of home-living and taken it deeper into the 'Cave' or even removed it completely from the physical home. The digital nomad still has a home, but the permanence of their world is now abstracted in the web rather than possessing a physical existence (other than through devices that access the web).

Not sure how far this thought can be taken. It is a thought though :)

He was making a point about Philosophy not coming from the City because people do not live in Cities, they live in homes. The only true citizens of a City would be someone Homeless.

It is a fairly interesting read and he takes his thoughts to a conclusion I was not expecting - which is always nice :)

Are you being annoying on purpose. You think I wrote 'the Clochard' meaning 'the homelessness'? Are you mental?

GO AWAY PLEASE. Troll some other post

Bye

1) Beds and tables as they are by their nature, the singular forms.
2) Beds and tables as they are made by the craftsman with an eye to the form
3) Beds and tables as they are made by a maker of images, whose model is the beds and tables made by the craftsman. — Fooloso4

Their Nature is their Law (Natural).

The Soul is its Nature.

The Law (of polis) is an Imitation of Nature.

The Nature of things is what their Truth is.

"Clochard" is a new word to me. I had to look it up .Maybe you should, too. — tim wood

I didn't. Literal quote from book is "the homeless, the clochards."

Give me some credit for knowing the meaning of the word PLEASE! :D

"Clochard" is a new word to me. I had to look it up .Maybe you should, too. — tim wood

It means 'homeless'. I had seen it before in Oscar Wilde I think, and again in the very book I quoted - 'homeless'. I was using it in a dystopian sense of what could come.

If you do not understand, you do not understand.

Someone else can explain if they want to. I already tried.

1) Beds and tables as they are by their nature, the singular forms.
2) Beds and tables as they are made by the craftsman with an eye to the form
3) Beds and tables as they are made by a maker of images, whose model is the beds and tables made by the craftsman. — Fooloso4

1) The purpose.
2) The technique/skill ('techne'/'arete' perhaps?).
3) The sensory impression ('imitation').

To what extent is justice in the soul like justice in the city? — Fooloso4

1) Purpose = Nature
2) Ability = Individual
3) Imitation = Law

The laws of a city is an imitation of natural laws. The human 'soul' is a 'natural law'. The individual is allowed to reconstitute itself in the face of nature and the contraposition of the 'imitative' force of nature embodied in 'law'.

The main problem with the last part is Plato trying to equate the idea of 'imitation' of a 'visible image' with a 'narrative'.

edit NOTE: I am not stating Plato's position here.

It is pretty simple.

Some people (A) cannot comprehend 'thinking' as X and others (B) refuse to define 'thinking' as X. In both cases A and B would, probably more often than not, state "thinking must have words" (A and B are not mutually exclusive either).

It could be possible that someone who cannot comprehend 'thinking' without words would accept the statements from those who say they can. One need not experience something to believe in its possibility. That is why I wrote 'probably more often than not'.

I think there is some truth to that. If I understand him correctly, Damasio makes a distinction between emotions and feelings. Emotions come instinctively while feelings have to be learned. — T Clark

Things get messy when people use the same words within different contexts. I personally see philosophy as being one of those fields of interest that plays a large role in sorting out such messes, whilst often also exacerbating them! It gives with one hand and takes with the other :D

Thinking is not "guided." Guided by whom? — T Clark

'Goal Directed' would have been a better way of framing it. As in, merely having a sense of the word "gradation" as possessing the taste of "blackberries" is not really teleologically significant.

Using Logic is pretty useful. Other than that ... I dunno?

Are you familiar with Schiller? This link might interest you. I have not read it myself but I have read the full work, so assume they pick out the main focus of his work.

If not, there are is some similarity in what he conveys with the ideas of material-impulse (concrete, physical world) and formal-impulse (abstract, rational world) being somewhat bridged by the playful-impulse (aesthetic world).

Maybe I was acting harshly above. My comment to the maker of this thread was simply to keep in mind that some people will not accept that 'thought' can exist without 'words'.

That is all. I can absolutely 'think' without the use of 'words'.

My friend didn't "pretend" to fit in, she wasn't aware until late in life that she was any different from other people. — T Clark

That is not what I meant at all btw. People do tend to conform and if they believe something about how they perceive the world differs from others, and they are viewed with deep scepticism, they tend to just say they experience the world like others do. You know this, as does everyone. That is all I meant; AND I have seen people do this firsthand when quizzed about worded thought versus other thought. One minute they state they cannot visualise and when they realised this was 'different' to me they switched. When pressed further they resorted to stating they cannot 'see' or represent ideas in any other way than through worded thought.

There is the then the further problem of measurable data, in terms of fMRI and such, because they are one particular aspect of the empirical evidence. Empirical evidence and anecdotal evidence are close enough when dealing with subjective experiences in the real world. This is simply because we cannot create a 'controlled' setting if the setting is life experience.

I am not trying to twist the meaning of 'anecdotal evidence' here only state that the more subjective the phenomenon under investigation, the more so-called 'anecdotal evidence' becomes meaningful when some rigor is added - hence the field of psychology.

Synesthesia is another instance where experience and thought can become difficult to grasp. Many people can assign colours to abstract ideas where to others this seems utterly ridiculous. Again, this is a 'thought' in some sense of the word, but not something that utilises 'words'. Some people cannot do this. It can be argued by some that this is not 'thinking' though because it does not appear to be guided ... this is precisely the bias some people hold (maybe correctly) regarding what we refer to as 'thought'. Which seems to be more or less what you are saying. We can agree to disagree here.

There is a psychologist (or cognitive neuroscientist/linguist?) who believes that ALL emotions exist only because we created words for them. Crazy as that sounds we can see clear physical changes in a toddlers brain when they first learn the words for colours. Through fMRI it can be seen clear as day that pre-speaking one part of the infants brain lights up when exposed to and focusing on a particular colour, yet when they learn the words for the colours the activity in the brain dramatically shift to the other hemisphere. Of course, this does not present hard evidence for or against, but it is intriguing nevertheless.

Note: I do think Damasio has a point when it comes to viewing consciousness more in line with 'feeling' and his somatic marker view of consciousness. He did a lot to tear people away from the widely held dichotomy of emotion and reason in the public eye.

You are being silly. Bye

I have never met Ms. C. Science nor Mr. Psychology. Widen your circle :D

Seriously, you are confusing subjective experience with empirical data. You would hardly tell someone with blind-sight they can see just because they can walk around a room and avoid every object. For them they are blind.

I have met several people who cannot think without words. I first became aware of this when my secondary English teacher told the class he could not think without words - had no subjective capacity to produce images and his dreams were purely auditory. Other people I have spoken to like this do have visual dreams but cannot perform the same visualisation when in a waking state.

It is bizarre, but it is more prevalent than you would think. A lot of people when pressed on this matter do sometimes 'pretend' to fit in. I get random flashes of images when I meditate but some people get nothing other than their own inner dialogue. Some people also insist that 'thinking' has to involve 'worded thought' and they are usually the ones who have a limited visualisation or none at all.

To repeat, some people on this forum have stated they cannot think without words.

If you speak to enough people some will tell you this.

But to really understand that idea, you must learn to step out of thinking a bit. — Carlo Roosen

You are talking about 'worded' thought. You will come to understand, if you have not already, that some people cannot 'think' without words. This was a strange thing for me to find out and equally strange for those who cannot think without words to grasp that anyone can think without words.

There will be some people on this forum that simply cannot fathom 'thinking' without words; and others who refer to 'thinking' as only being worded.

Yesterday I wrote that I not only have to build this SHAI to save the world, I also have to get philosophy back on track. Maybe you think I am arrogant. Believe me, I am not. A better description would be that I feel extremely lonely. It feels like I am in a room with 120 people and they all say that the moon is a cube. — Carlo Roosen

Stating this is not at all likely to help your cause. Some things are best left unsaid. Which you will agree with given what you are hoping to explicate .

Yes of course I will do everything I can to describe it. The difficulty of course is that language can refer only to shared experiences, and even then only if we use the same labels. I could call it a "religious experience" for instance, but what does that mean for me and for you? — Carlo Roosen

I have a good enough idea of what you say you have experienced to say that it is likely far more common than you think. Not the EXACT experience, but the same family of experiences (be they brain clots or less apparent physiological/psychological instances).

I mentioned split brain cases to someone recently, and that kind of instance can be related to the kind of 'non-languaged' expression of experience in some way.

I haven't read it, I will. I had no stroke. No diagnosis has been given in my case, except for a conversion syndrome that distorts my left eye on occasion. — Carlo Roosen

I am certain you will find common ground in there.

When I woke up after a heart surgery, 5 years ago, my memory was completely blank. I didn't know my own name. No memory no thinking, yet I was perfectly conscious. Since that time this happens to me on a daily basis, although my memory does not drop out completely anymore. Without thoughts, I can eat my lunch, make coffee perfectly. When somebode asks something simple, I can answer. But cooking a meal is challenging, because I need to make decisions.

I believe this non-thinking state is similar to what animals experience. Some animals have learned a few words, but as far as I know, they do not have these trains of thoughts like we humans have. I don't think they have words that imply causality, for instance. — Carlo Roosen

I know this is practically impossible to explicate but I would appreciate further and more detailed accounts of this please. I would find this EXTREMELY useful to hear an attempt at a first-hand account of this experience (although I understand it is now second-hand to you).

Also, have you read 'My Stroke of Insight' by Jill Bolte-Taylor? She is a neuroscientist who had a stroke and had to relearn pretty much everything.

Where is the UK going? — ssu

Down economically, maybe Up in terms of politics (although the latter will not come into meaningful effect anytime soon). I think having a more diverse choice in terms of parties will help matters in the future ... I am talking more long term though.

Note: I do not follow economic growth, trading and such things. My perspective is merely one from a distance based on firsthand experience with a focus on the 'politics' of the country.

Blame only holds value if directed at yourself.

I could write more about it from this perspective, if that is helpful? — Carlo Roosen

It probably would be.

Context might help.

Example: https://www.rootstrap.com/blog/the-use-of-ai-in-a-cookieless-future

I would step swiftly away from Kant and speak as plainly as possible on your own terms and allow someone else to guide you to a philosophical approach that better suits what you wish to say.

It might help. Otherwise this could go on for several pages where everyone talks past each other.

Kant is a common stumbling block for many people.

The 'thing-in-itself' is where he arrives at the concept of Noumenon as opposed to Phenomenon. We can only talk of Noumenon in a Negative sense. We can talk of Phenomenon in a Positive sense.

It is quite hard to get your head around the idea of noumenon being more than simply 'stuff we do not know' it is more or less 'stuff we cannot even refer to' - hence 'negative' only.

What is unknowable is unknowable.

He is out! Will be interesting to see what happens now ...

But surely you see that if that is how Kant defines it by defining it it becomes fundamental reality. He cannot speak of that which he speaks of ... yet he does. Explain.

Also, how does this help you creating an AI algorithm?

In short:just accept that fundamental reality is (by definition) something we cannot understand, but we can prove it is there. — Carlo Roosen

Why?

Maybe you are better equipped to answer the follow-up questions posed:

Is there something we can say about it? Maybe it will be closer to fundamental reality? — Carlo Roosen

?

My was AI doesn't think. Concepts are associated with thinking.

Either way, I do not see how this reveals the questions that came after it. If you can explain.

I can run with the hypothetical that "AI" will just become "I". The question about how this forms will be shaped by input/output. If in 'cyberspace' then there could be something we may call akin to 'consciousness' but certainly nothing like human consciousness ... it may even be faulty to call it 'conscious' at all in anyway we appreciate the term.

So, no. This will not be 'closer to reality' as reality is for us what it is just as it is what it is for other conscious sentient creatures. A shared world makes the reality shared. If AI can map reality it is mapping reality not knowing it.

I have a feeling you mean more than this so you'll likely have to explain further what your point is?