they do need a degree of universality in order to function. — Olivier5

it is sufficiently similar to all other As — Isaac

We're going round in pointless circles as you keep conceding points and then raising them again a few posts later as if nothing had been said on the matter. I shan't continue this nonsense.

If a poorly drawn A is good enough for you to consider it as a practical A, why should a not-absolutely-universal concept not to be regarded as a practical example of what a universal could be? — Olivier5

Because, without begging the question, the definition of an A could be that it is sufficiently similar to all other As. The definition of a universal cannot be that it is just sufficiently similar to other examples. That's the definition on nominalism, the opposite of universalism.

So, this 'hidden states model' is not applicable to scientific reasoning? By what criterion do you distinguish scientiific judgements from the ordinary neural activities which you say comprise mental life, and are based on a model of the mind's hidden states? — Wayfarer

I don't. Scientific judgements are a sub category of such inferences which can be supported in a particular way (mainly testable empirical evidence). Science is a kind of public rehersal of the process of inference we have a priori. The publicness of it enhances the process by allowing more models to compete for quality of prediction, increasing the quantity of sensory data to input, speeding up the filtering process etc.

Any examples of what these additional senses are, over and above the five we're taught at school? — Wayfarer

Can't really beat what @Pfhorrest, @Olivier5 and @Kenosha Kid have already posted.

But are these sensory? 'of or relating to sensation or to the senses sensory stimulation. 2 : conveying nerve impulses from the sense organs to the nerve centers : afferent sensory neurons.' I suppose I can see how they are sensory in the broadest sense, but I would have thought those abilities were basically autonomic reactions, are they not?

The traditional distinction in philosophy is between reason and sensation - both central to knowledge, but separate faculties. — Wayfarer

You're begging the question. The 'traditional' distinction in philosophy is the matter under scrutiny. Being 'traditional in philosophy' confers no inherent truth to a proposition.

If you want to make a distinction between a cortex receiving a signal from a neighbouring network whose terminal dendrite is under your skin from one whose terminal dendrite is in your skull, you'll have to make the case as to why they are different. Sensory neurons are simply those with relatively long dendrites compared to their axons. Any signal derived from a sensory neuron is a sense. Often, long dendritic chains are included in the definition of 'sensory' if they replicate the activities of typical sensory neurons.

The goal of my comment wasn't to defend the universality of certain ideas, but the existence of ideas. A largely similar idea of "New York" exists. And that idea is not material. Though not a separate substance either. — khaled

I see, now it makes sense. There's been a lot of confusion about what's at issue. In order to necessitate a separate existence (substance or property dualism), universals have to be an entity, which, according to the law of identity, has to be identical with itself. So to make the argument work (and I'm claiming it doesn't work), the concept needs to be completely identical in every way because it is an indivisible unity, an identity according to the law of identity.

Since we can identify no single self-identical unity which is 'the concept of New York', or 'the letter A', we must reject the argument. How close the myriad individual concepts are to each other is immaterial, though it helps to explain why we feel as though there might be a single universal concept.

That seeming contradiction did not bother you that much when you explained at length why it is possible to have multiple, slightly different As. So you are ready to be a bit charitable with your concept of A but not with your concept of universal. — Olivier5

It's not a seeming contradiction. There definitely are multiple, slightly different 'A's. Hopefully no one is mad enough to dispute that. Here's one A, and here's another A, looking the same, but in a different location and microscopically different on your screen. There's also, categorically, multiple, slightly different concepts of A, some people might have different criteria to others and even for themselves in different contexts at different times in their life.

None of the above applies to universals, which are a posited philosophical entity which may or may not exist.

I believe we can do far better than nominalism. — Olivier5

What does it fail at?

Let us agree then that anything that has sufficient resemblance to universals is a universal, for all reasonable purposes. — Olivier5

Well then we'd have multiple, slightly differing universals, a definitional contradiction. Why are you insisting on redefining 'universal' to make the concept exist? Why not just discard it? When it became clear that phlogiston was not required, we didn't redefine it to make it true, we just discarded it.

The IEP has a pretty clear definition of 'universals'. It's clear that even you agree that nothing matching that description exists. Why are you so invested in rescuing the concept. Hundreds of philosophers are nominalist, there's a long history, why redefine universalism to resemble nominalism, why not just call it nominalism in the first place?

our insistence on treating educated adults as if they come shrink-wrapped and fully formed is particularly apparent in philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the Rationalists of the Enlightenment. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, absolutely. And it permeates even through to psychology. You'd be shocked (or perhaps not) at the extreme resistance to experiential models of external-world theories in child development. Some of my wife's work was in that field and although well-accepted now, it was like wading through treacle getting it even considered.

But isn’t this a problem for science? I mean, science of all types must assume the basic rules of inference to even begin to hazard what such and such neural data means. And science has been doing that with respect to a vast range of subjects for hundreds of years. So there must be some a priori principles to even propose such a theory. — Wayfarer

Why would that be a problem for science? I use my a priori methods of inference to model these a priori methods of inference as being neural networks. I'm not seeing the problem.

When you understand a logical principle, or algorithm, say, to make a prediction, or solve some arcane mathematical conjecture - how can this be possibly be categorised as a ‘sensation’? — Wayfarer

I thought I'd just explained that. 'Understanding' a thing is a post hoc model of the actual link between sensation and response. We can prove this by lesion experiments, as I've described. So one senses, by interoception, that one is possessed of an idea. You may be limited by thinking of senses as being just the five we're taught about in primary school. This is just a simplification for children. There's scores of 'senses'.

in any case you do admit there is a unified idea of “triangle” that we all (basically) share.

So why can’t the same be said of New York? Or “A”? — khaled


Good development. So there exist what we could call "near universals", concepts that we all or nearly all agree about, like Euclidian triangles. — Olivier5

I don't see anyone yet disagreeing with this. The disagreement is over the existence of actual universals, not over things which are nearly, or quite like universals. The distinction is absolutely crucial for the argument at hand because the law of identity would have us hold that only where the concepts are identical in every way can they be said to be one entity, identical with itself. Otherwise we're talking about several entities, all very, very, very similar. No matter how many 'very's I put in there, it will not be enough to qualify as identical and so not one unity requiring it's own existence.

As you've said, it may well be convenient to talk about it as such, but only within context. If, when teaching maths, the teacher refers to the 'near universal' concept of a triangle as if it were an actual universal, that is most certainly convenient for both her and her pupils, but when we're discussing something like the physicality of the mind, that contextual convenience does not just carry over by default. The context has changed, it may no longer be convenient to use the façon de parler in this new context. In fact, I think it's quite clear that it isn't, because we already run into substantial problems with laws of physics (how these entities interact), neuroscience (how to explain the studies showing a disconnect between stated 'ideal forms' and the capability to interact correctly with, for example, geometric objects). I'd say it's demonstrated already that it is no longer useful in this context, in fact it's getting very much in the way.

don't you think the claim that ideas are 'represented in' or 'inscribed on' neurons is rather confused? Because it seems to me, amateur that I am, that both 'representation' and 'inscription' refer to semiotics or semantics. How could a physical state or disposition of elements 'represent' anything, in that sense? Do you see what I'm questioning? — Wayfarer

What we're in the business of doing when we have 'ideas' is the modelling of the hidden states we assume are causal in respect to our sensations. Triangles, letter 'A's, some multiple of similar objects, a city... these are all postulates, models of the causes of the sensations we receive. The same is true of thoughts. Thoughts are all recalled post hoc. The concept you have in your conscious mind of 'a triangle' is not the one your brain actually used to bring the word 'triangle' to mind on seeing the object. We can prove this by observing people with damage to the Hippocampus who can reliably identify objects (like triangles) but cannot bring to mind the definition of one, or people with damage to one or more subsections within the prefrontal cortex who can distinguish triangles from squares but cannot count the sides.

So if the concept you have in mind is demonstrably post hoc relative the the actual mechanism your brain uses to identify triangles, then it must either be coincidental (possible), or it must be itself a model of the that process, an inference of what's going on (the hidden states) in the subconscious mind, that yields the sensation (interoception) - 'triangle'.

You receive sensations (including interocepted physiological states), you behave in response to them, you model the cause of that whole relation. The mistake is in reifying the model to the actual.

So when I talk about what 'ideas' really are, I mean to refer to a model of their hidden states. What causes the sensation that I'm possessed of an 'idea'. My model for that is that of neurons being in certain configurations and having reached threshold levels of activation. Just like if you felt wetness on your skin, your model for the hidden causes might be one of rain, weather systems, air pressure gradients etc.

I could even, should I so wish, develop a model of this model. What would cause the sensation that there is such a model. And so on...

So yes, I do get what you're questioning - at least I think so. But I don't agree with your choice to reify the model when it is clear to me that models are, by definition, within their own Markov blanket, and so have hidden states. It is, by my model, those hidden states which deserve (if anything does) to be reified.

Would a non-euclidean object with those properties still be a triangle? — Isaac


If it’s non Euclidean it wouldn’t have straight edges. — khaled

Right. and yet your definition stipulated straight edges.

What about shapes matching that description but in non-standard topologies? — Isaac


If it’s not on a standard topology it wouldn’t have straight edges. — khaled

As above.

False, that’s exactly how they found the answer. They had the ideal form, and checked if a non Euclidean “triangle” can have its proprieties. It can’t. Then they checked if non standard topologies can. They can’t. Etc. — khaled

But non-eucledian triangles are still called triangles. As are triangles in non-standard topologies. See https://www.cs.unm.edu/~joel/NonEuclid/area.html for example, or here https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1035931/properties-of-triangles-in-non-euclidean-geometries where some mathematicians are quite comfortably discussing the properties of 'triangles' in non-eucledian space without being misunderstood.

So are we mis-naming the things we commonly call triangles? — Isaac


Technically yes. — khaled

Then how are we understood? And prior to the formal definition, in whose mind was the 'correct' use when no one on earth knew it, but many were using the term (or it's translation) in everyday language? What's more, on whose authority is 'correct' judged? We'd normally turn to a dictionary, perhaps, in matters of conflict, but mine has...

Definition of triangle

1 : a polygon having three sides — Merriam Webster

...which is not the same as yours.

While we're on the subject, I presume everyone in the world is also misusing the word 'straight', because they keep applying it to things which aren't 'really' straight?

My dictionary has...

Definition of straight

(Entry 1 of 4)
1a : free from curves, bends, angles, or irregularities

and then proceeds to give the example of "straight hair or straight timber". Neither of which are completely free of all curves, bends, angles, or irregularities at any scale.

So are you suggesting that even the world's dictionaries have it wrong?

There's only yours, mine, everyone else's. — Isaac


If someone’s idea of a triangle includes that it is comprised of 4 vertices, don’t we have justification to tell them they’re wrong? From where do we get that justification? — khaled

It's not similar enough for their current purpose to the definitions the rest of their language community are using.

“very similar” is not enough. When speaking of geometry, it has to be exact. — khaled

We've already established that your definition is not the same as the one being used in the maths papers I cited. Nor, in fact are their definitions exactly the same as each other. Nor is either exactly the same as the dictionary's, and again - each maths textbook will have slightly differing definitions. They just all have key things in common, but are not "exactly the same" as per the law of identity, which would be required to posit a single entity.

you do admit there is a unified idea of “triangle” that we all (basically) share. — khaled

No, not at all. I've demonstrated above that there is no such idea. Just several ideas which share common features.

As has already been shown, neural activity shows no such regularities or patterns that can be discerned when the brain is exposed even to a simple stimulus. — Wayfarer

It's notable how often you reach for the "you don't understand the philosophy" argument when disagreeing with those who've not read the same texts as you, in a field entirely composed of armchair speculation, yet you seem quite happy to paraphrase the results from a paper in neuroscience as if you understood it without a hint of humility.

I don't know what you think the Schoonover-Fink paper concludes, but it is not that concepts are not carried on neurons. If you want to understand representational drift I suggest you start with Tim O'Leary's work, such as this paper here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31569062/ where he explains some of the mechanisms.

To require a non-physical stuff you need a true universal, something which cannot reside in each individual's brain because it is mind independent, so identical in each instance that it is one entity (law of identity), which means it cannot reside in each person's brain (otherwise each instance would have a different location and so be a separate thing). — Isaac


Which is just what universals are. — Wayfarer

That'd be why I described them. And, as I've been discussing with Olivier, there's absolutely no necessity, or warrant to think such things exist.

Got it! Thanks.

This is fun, more distraction from actual work, so thanks for pointing it out. I'm stuck on 2.8 though, I can't get the 3E solution. One element has to be the tangent itself, so that doesn't leave enough elements for the way I was taught to do it (back when we inscribed all this on clay tablets, of course).

If anyone has any hints - without giving the actual answer, I'd appreciate a pointer.

This is all fair enough, but the matter at hand is the existence of non-physical objects. The key factor here is that nominalism allows for each of these concepts to be exactly the neurons on which they are coded in each individual's brain. A different entity in each brain, just very, very similar to each other example. To require a non-physical stuff you need a true universal, something which cannot reside in each individual's brain because it is mind independent, so identical in each instance that it is one entity (law of identity), which means it cannot reside in each person's brain (otherwise each instance would have a different location and so be a separate thing).

If what you're arguing for is concepts which are very, very similar yet still reside in each individual's brain, then there's no argument for non-physical matter and so no necessity for dualism. I have not and would not deny the existence of concepts. Contrast that with someone like Wayfarer who actually thinks there's an existent form for numbers etc outside of the individual minds for whom it is a concept - a proper dualist.

Yeah, it does look crazy the way I've written it! The figures I quoted were from memory from a paper out of the Max Plank Institute from several years back. If I recall, the 37PW was available solar energy, so would be the equivalent of about the 174PW in the Wikipedia article minus the amounts returned to the atmosphere and in water vapour latent heat (89 absorbed-12-40=37). The total power figure was for all energy, including agriculture and I think included ecosystem services too (hence much higher than our actual electricity consumption - which is only about 15TW I think). It was about sustaining the human population rather than supplying our electricity. I'm afraid the paper is so old that I actually read the literal paper copy and I can't recall the title, otherwise I'd recommend it, it was very interesting. The main point was, that we can't just use up all the solar energy because most of it is busy doing stuff - like driving the climate and ecosystems etc. Apologies for the confusion, but in my defence, clarity wasn't my top priority!

Then, you need to think in terms of meaning, not just glyphs. — Olivier5

I have no idea what you mean by this.

You said...

There is likely very little difference between what you conceive as Pi and what I conceive as Pi. Nevertheless, there will always be one guy or another out there who has a different conception, e.g. who thinks that Pi is equal to 3, or that it's a rational number.

Therefore the term "universal" is not really correct, even for Pi. I guess the word "concept" is better here, as it expresses the possibility of a personal or personalized concept, whereas a "universal" cannot logically be "personal". — Olivier5

Which is precisely what I've been saying (and you've been arguing against) all along. Same's true of triangles, spellings, numbers, letters and every other damn thing you've raised these last God knows how many posts in opposition to my making this exact point.

When was the last time you made your own argument and not just chiming in pro or con on someone else's claim? — schopenhauer1

Last week. I make arguments all the time, it's part of my job.

there still needs to be enough commonality between your meaning and my meaning of a given word for us to understand one another. — Olivier5

So...

sufficiently similar for my purposes. — Isaac

...then

It has 3 vertices connected by 3 edges and all of them are perfectly straight. — khaled

So it's being on a plane is not a property of your ideal triangle? Would a non-euclidean object with those properties still be a triangle? What about shapes matching that description but in non-standard topologies? Because it's my understanding that each of those questions had to be answered by a small group of people as they arose. They could not simply derive the answers by comparing their new objects to some ideal form, they had to just make a choice. The answer didn't pre-exist as a form.

Nothing material fits that description. — khaled

So are we mis-naming the things we commonly call triangles? Or is what you're imagining not a triangle? If both the object you're imaging and the objects like my neckerchief are correctly called triangles the what is it that sets yours apart? On what grounds do you assign the object you're imagining special status among all the objects correctly named triangles?

Are you proposing that the idea of a triangle doesn't exist, and only real physical triangles exist? — khaled

I'm proposing that your idea of triangles exists (in several forms), as does mine. There's no 'The' idea of triangles. There's only yours, mine, everyone else's. Ideas similar enough for our purposes, kept that way by talking and practices. Same for tesseracts.

You can tell the difference between a triangle and a square right? How do you do that except by comparing with some ideal triangle/square? — khaled

I compare with my ideas of triangles/squares, different ones depending on the context. All, no doubt very similar to your ideas, since we share a culture, language community, biology etc.

But not the idea of a triangle/square since I've no evidence there is such a thing and plenty of evidence from developmental psychology that we use our own personal models to identity objects, not ethereal universal ones.

magma is potentially, a high grade source of limitless base load power. — counterpunch

So is absolutely any source whatsoever according to your current usage of 'potentially', which seems to include anything anyone reckons.

We need that amount of energy to spend to ... sustain capitalist growth — counterpunch

Why?

the staggering ongoing costs of constructing and maintaining such an array, and the question of recycling and replacing those panels after 25 years, to say nothing of the facilities required to store that energy — counterpunch

And the equivalent costs for geothermal are...? Let me guess, you just reckon they'd be less.

You're transparent. Ideological opposition to left wing politics (and therefore existing renewables by association) supported post hoc by a shambolic edifice of speculation.

And yes, it include a model of each word's correct spelling in terms of the one exact order of letters to be used, not some vague, ill-defined similitude. — Olivier5

OK, so talk me through the process. The people writing the dictionary access this non-physical universal concept-spelling.

a) why do they have access to it yet I have to look it up in a dictionary?

b) why does this non-physical universal change sometimes - like connexion became connection?

Your computer spell check would normally tell you. Otherwise there are resources called dictionaries — Olivier5

Are you suggesting that dictionaries are non-physical? They seem pretty physical to me. In fact they seem like they might contain exactly one of the real life physical words I might compare my attempt to in order to get it more likely to be accepted.

You don't need a memory of all the other attempts; you just need to know the one and only correct spelling of "polysaccharides". — Olivier5

I didn't enumerate the other attempts needed. If my fellow student back at college told me the 'correct' spelling was 'polysacarides', how would I ever learn it wasn't?

You actually do need to know how to write e.g. "polysaccharides" correctly in order to be understood as saying "polysaccharides". If you write it as "pauleessakorrydz", nobody will understand what you mean. — Olivier5

Indeed. So I can compare my attempt to my memory of all the other attempts I've seen and correct it until it looks similar enough to get by.

My name isn't actually "Oliver". It is "Olivier", — Olivier5

I do apologise. What disgraceful Anglocentrism on my part. Were we not only recently in this thread talking about how mental models filter what we see? I wasn't looking for the second 'i' so I didn't see it.

In my opinion, that correct French spelling does exist, somehow, as does the correct English spelling "Oliver". If correct spellings do not actually exist, thln whqp thi fruck? — Olivier5

As I've already outlined several times now, I can compare those words to the words I've learnt and see if they're sufficiently similar for my purposes. i don't require an ideal 'correct' word. As it stands, they actually are, since I know what you mean.

What about "triangle". We clearly talk about the "ideal triangle" all the time in math, not any particular triangle. — khaled

Oliver is currently 'talking about' the ideal 'A', so we clearly need a bit more than merely talking about X as if it existed for us to conclude that X exists, yes?

We can come up with properties relating to the ideal triangle, though no triangle that ever exists will be the ideal triangle. — khaled

We can come up with imaginary triangles, yes. I'm not seeing how this proves that they are the 'ideal' triangle against which all shapes are compared to determine the correct name.

___

Maybe it would help if you could tell me some properties of this ideal triangle.

The same tends to be true of universals: in practice they have hazy boundaries, and those boundaries vary across people — Olivier5

Then they're not universals are they?

Universals are a class of mind-independent entities — IEP - Universals

My ex-girlfriend wrote lowercase a without it joining at the top such that I read it as a u. Others could clearly see it as an a. Finding a bunch of A in different fonts we're all familiar with isn't going to interrogate much. Finding a bunch of corrupted A might be more telling. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah. Also context matters. What we're prepared to treat as an A depends on the context it's placed in. Take NASA's logo, for example. The 'A's are just bent lines. We wouldn't accepted that as an A on it's own, but in the context of a logo, we do. We change our treatment of the image depending on the context.

What I've been trying (and failing), to get across in my recent posts is the idea that these things, like universals and even categories, are post hoc constructions. The are subsequent to the actual treatment or not of the image as an A. We first treat it as an A (for a collection of highly contextual reasons, many of which are subconscious), then, on reflection we tell ourselves a simpler story that this acceptance was because of some universal ideal, or category membership. In reality we're often surprised by what we're willing to accept as an A, as reading your ex's writing no doubt shows!

You were talking of ALL the As, which a concept. — Olivier5

The contents of the set {all the As} are actual 'A's.

The content of the set {the concept of the singular letter A} is itself a concept.

One is a conceptual collection of actual objects, the other is a conceptual collection of conceptual objects (with only one member).

A set is a concept, by definition. — Olivier5

I'm talking about the contents, not the set itself.

"All the other As" means the same thing as "the set of all As" which means the same thing as "the concept of the (singular) letter A". — Olivier5

How on earth do you square "the set of all 'A's" meaning the same thing as "the concept of the singular letter A"? For a start one is a set of existent things, the other a concept. One has many members, the other only one. One can be described, the other cannot. One is consistent between individuals, the other is not. One has entirely physical objects, the other none.

They're about as different as it's possible to be.

And why on earth would I be 'afraid' to think in universals? What an odd thing to accuse someone of. What harm might I be predicting could come to me if I were to think in universals?

They say things like: "is this an A or not?" — Olivier5

Right. Which, as I've just explained, does not require an ideal mental construct. It's just a façon de parler for "is this sufficiently like all the other 'A's". This can be easily demonstrated by asking people to draw the ideal 'A' and finding each will do so slightly differently, thus no universal ideal 'A' could possibly exist. Or you could ask people how they arrived at what all letter 'A's have in common and find they give a range of answers, none of which will cover the full range of letters they're prepared to accept as an A. Or you could look at the history of the letter and find it to be completely at odds with the idea of variations on a pure theme, but rather a series of random gradual changes.

Because they speak of it, thus they know the concept of the letter A. — Olivier5

I've never heard anyone in day-to-day language talk about the ideal mental concept of the letter 'A'. Give me an example of the sort of conversation you've had which includes the subject.

Most people are afraid to make an argument because they have to defend it. — schopenhauer1

What an odd thing to post on a forum that currently has 194 pages of people doing the exact opposite.

Everybody does, in actual fact, even those unaware that they do. — Olivier5

Bullshit (in the technical sense). What possible evidence could you bring to bear that everybody uses the concept of an ideal 'A' even if they claim to use alternative methods? You're just flailing. I've given a perfectly reasonable account of how one might learn to read and write the letter 'A' without a mental ideal, you've not given any counter argument, yet here you're simply declaring that everyone does it your way even if they think they don't.

demonstrated by the possibility of a prosperous sustainable future — counterpunch

But you've yet to demonstrate this. That you think it's possible without any expertise in the matter at all, is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether it is, in fact, possible.

I hope I'm saying something others are not; something interesting and worthwhile thinking about. — counterpunch

Why? What's special about your guesswork that makes it worth thinking about?

So you are allowed reasonable assumptions, and I have to prove the earth is a big ball of molten rock? — counterpunch

No, you have to prove that it's technologically feasible to extract that heat without insurmountable consequential factors.

I'm saying, using existing technologies it's possible for humankind to survive - and prosper. — counterpunch

No, you're just declaring it to be the case without any evidence presented whatsoever. I don't think anyone has ruled out the mere possibility, so you declaring it is of no consequence at all. It's the likelihood relative to other options we're all concerned about, not the mere possibility.

we could transcend limits to resources if we applied the right technologies — counterpunch

We could, yes. Or we could not. Which it is will depend on the actual facts of the matter regarding the extent to which technologies can extract sufficient energy to combat the consequences of doing so.

As an illustration, let me ask you this. You seem opposed to solar power, yes? The sun provides 37 Petawatts of energy, our global needs only amount to about 4, so there's plenty of energy there to provide all our needs. so why oppose solar? Your oppose it on the grounds of the limitations of current technology, yet when it comes to your pet theory, you ignore limits of current technology and assume we'll find a way.

It's about concepts and their usefulness, not about their existence. — Olivier5

Well no, the thread is about dualism. It's literally about their existence. If all you're saying is that it's useful to imagine a single ideal 'A' then...meh. Some people do, some don't. It's horses for courses.

What's absolutely a given is that it's neither necessary, nor foundational and so there's no cause at all to assume some second substance for it to be constituted of.

Ain’t that the truth!! Some do it more than a others, the most prevalent, I would guess, being the long-ago story embellishment......“Damn thing was THIS big, I swear, then the line broke and he was gone!!!”....which relates to purely personal aesthetic judgements whereby the ego satisfies itself. More serious are occasions of rejecting empirical evidence in dispute with personal prejudice, which relates to discursive judgements whereby the ego finds its satisfaction from outside itself and maintains it at all costs. As Paul Simon says, “Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, mmm, mmmm, mmmmmm”. — Mww

I was talking about subconscious processing, so we're not talking about the ego, but rather about how to deal with aberrant data. Your sensations are imperfect, noisy (in data terminology) and cannot themselves distinguish context (is that a shadow or a change in the colour of the actual object?). As such they present a lot of extraneous and contradictory data to the cortices responsible for modelling it. To deal with that the higher cortices will simply suppress signals from the lower ones which do not match the model of what they're expecting to be there. What's more, they'll send instructions back to the muscles controlling, say, the eyes to get them to look at the places most likely to confirm the model.

I think ego preservation is a slightly different matter...but maybe there's a link there.

the simplest, easiest to recognize error in metaphysical cognitive systems, is the LNC. — Mww

At the rational level, maybe. the brain processes thousands of totally contradictory models at any one time quite without trouble. It's our conscious awareness that seems so obsessed with not holding contradictory beliefs. I've never quite seen the obsession myself. I mean a) it doesn't really help much because the main thing you want to know is which belief is true, not simply the fact that they can't both be, and b) unless you're absolutely sure about the answer to (a) it's more efficient to have one system believe one proposition and the another believe the other, thus spreading your risk.

we cannot have a cognition without its judgement, in accordance with the metaphysical system — Mww

But, being recalled post hoc, we have no way of knowing what that judgement actually is, only what we later recall it to be. I don't know how old you are, but at my age I can't always remember what I was saying in the middle of saying it. I don't have much faith in my accurate recollection of judgements.

When I think, “every good boy deserves favor”, am I referencing a judgement, or a cognition? — Mww

Depends how much stock you want to put by neuroscientific experiments. Try removing someone's hippocampus and see how much of the information from their senses they're able to rationally judge, yet they're still able to act appropriately toward objects and navigate a room.

pure reason makes available “existence”, “possibility”, “necessity”, “causality”, “community”, and exactly seven other similar conceptions, as fundamental grounds for the possibility for the subsequent inferences a component makes on an input from an antecedent component. — Mww

There was a study done by Peggy Sears many years back comparing probability judgements of contradictory sensory inputs to the probabilities worked out using Bayes theorem. She found a remarkable correlation. I wonder if these 'grounds of reason' might be something similar. Our vocalisation of the processing elements carried out by various neural networks.

My system agrees without equivocation. Remember I mentioned a few days ago we are not conscious of parts of the whole cognitive system. My conscious rational system is the part that thinks about the phenomena given from sensation, but never about the sensation itself. In effect, thinking has no access to sensibility, but is only conditioned by it. Such is the speculative representational system writ large — Mww

This is good, it explains a lot of the confusion I had about the extent of your metaphysical analysis of thought. You're talking about what I'd call higher level processing, where we review phenomena as given and create meta-models which feed back to the cortices developing those phenomena. I really do think that within this specialised region of mental activity it may well be just...

the methods be different, but the results the same. — Mww

Thanks for sticking around, valiantly scaling The Great Wall of Text, and especially for showing another point of view. — Mww

Likewise. It's been a pleasure.

If you refuse to value the opinion of someone who is clearly interested in, and knowledgeable about — counterpunch

You given nothing to indicate the underlined. Everything you say might be nonsense for all we know because you refuse to cite anything.

I could, I suppose - produce a list of links you wouldn't even click on, never mind read - and allow you put me to work merely for your amusement. — counterpunch

What makes you think we'd be a) interested enough that your posts are worth your while writing yet b) not interested enough to read papers on the subject. You must have a very high opinion of yourself to consider you might hold our attention in a way no other source could.

You presume? Why not produce evidence? You demand evidence from me, while allowing yourself license to presume someone has already looked into it? — counterpunch

Because its a reasonable assumption. I really shouldn't have to explain this. To posit a world where no one but you has thought of a brilliant solution to global energy supply is a fantastic claim, definitely requires support. To assume a world in which at least one of the many thousands if scientists whose job it is to look into these prospects has, in fact, done just that, is not a particularly fantastic claim and needs reason to doubt it, not to hold it.

the basic idea of harnessing the heat energy of the earth, at high temperatures and on a very large scale, is kinda obvious — counterpunch

Then why do you think none of the scientists whose job it is to look into this sort of thing have arrived at the same conclusion you have?