Again, it’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, but seeing the point of the argument you’re taking issue with - which you're not. If the contention is that a camera is the equivalent of, or the same as, the human subject I don't see anything to debate, because it's a simple falsehood. — Wayfarer

Are you just being evangelical here or can you genuinely not see the difference between something seeming to you to be the case and something actually being the case? You write as if you genuinely don't understand the concept of people disagreeing about some particular class of belief.

Okay then, you should be able to understand that such a strategy is perfectly rational. — Olivier5

What strategy? I don't see how my deciding which posts to respond to by any criteria makes all criteria equally rational.

In other words, you are making a lot of wild guesses about other people's motives. — Olivier5

An assumption is not the same as a wild guess, and nowhere have I assumed motives, it's motives I'm enquiring about.

Do you respond to each and every post, or do you make choices, like Wayfarer? — Olivier5

No, I don't respond to each and every post, and yes I do make choices like Wayfarer. What has that to do with the very specific question of taking agreement about the matter under discussion to be a prerequisite for discussing that matter?

Assuming there is such an overlap. — Olivier5

Of course.

Of course. Why would you doubt that? I'd be interested to hear the thought process of someone who holds the belief that "If you don't get it, there's no point in discussing it", who nonetheless thinks a discussion forum is the ideal platform on which to express that view. It seems contradictory to me, but i'm sure it seems consistent in some way to @Wayfarer, hence the question. I'm not going to feign a objective, third-party indifference, it really annoys me. But that doesn't render my interest disingenuous.

"Things worth responding to" is a slightly different concept from "Things I agree with". — Olivier5

Yeah. It was the overlap in this particular case which interested me.

If I see a response worth responding to, I’ll respond to it. — Wayfarer

I know, that was the point of my question. I'm wondering why you post in a discussion forum if the qualification for having a discussion is agreeing with you about the main point under discussion. Surely art or oration would be a better medium for your approach.

I see. My mistake. It's not always easy to tell which authors are mystically endowed with such anagogic knowledge. If they'd only leave their mystic auras switched on all the time like they used to in the old images, but I suppose even seers have to save energy these days.

So now you suddenly dismiss an authoritative source? — Noble Dust

Authoritative? In what way?

So now you've resorted to simply pointing out that other people thought something to be the case and if we don't agree then there's no point in discussing it.

It's a change I suppose...

No, the mind of the camera-user is what puts the photo together. They do this first and then take the photo. It's a poor metaphor until you acknowledge this. — Noble Dust

That's right. I was pointing out that your objection is misguided because the argument you're objecting to never included a metaphor in the first place.

No, the camera is a metaphor in this discussion. Read back if you need to. — Noble Dust

I'm responding to this...

the very thing which weaves all that together into a world is mind, which is not amongst those objects. — Wayfarer

A camera does not film itself; you can't see the camera on film. — Pfhorrest

No metaphors involved. Just statements about the way the world is and the ontological consequences.

It has to be fabricated by someone and then set up by someone. Cameras don't crop up in the landscape haphazardly. — Olivier5

Yes they do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#Overview

Again, you're begging the question by already assuming the two types of camera are of different stuff.

The metaphor gets you from A to B, but you have to cast it off once you reach B. This is the classical mistake of analytic thought. — Noble Dust

No metaphor. a camera taking film is not included in the world it films. It's a statement of fact, not a metaphor. It shows that not being included among the objects a device represents does not necessarily render that device of a different substance to the objects it represents.

No, the mind of the camera-user is what puts the photo together. They do this first and then take the photo. It's a poor metaphor until you acknowledge this. — Noble Dust

It's not a metaphor if you acknowledge this, it's just the matter under discussion. that's the point @khaled and @Pfhorrest are trying to make.

Wayfarer's sole argument we were given was the fact that...

the very thing which weaves all that together into a world is mind, which is not amongst those objects. — Wayfarer

This is also true of a camera taking film.

It's just an extension of the same old posts we've read a thousand times before. "Things are as I present them and if you don't see it there's no point in discussing the matter further."

I have no objection to the position, but why keep posting it on a discussion forum?

please be careful or the mods may decide to revert me back to zero. — Jack Cummins

Now that would be interesting. Likes removed because they're not 'real' likes. I would be solidly in favour of the whole enterprise if, in addition to seeing what groups people form, we get to see meta-judgements about how 'real' those groups are.

We’ve been exposed to simple arithmetic since Day One, practically, so we don’t notice the fundamentals anymore. That 2+2=4 is a given, but it is merely the empirical proof, a euphemism for experience, that the logical inference “these things conjoined with those things makes a greater thing than either”. — Mww

Bad example because of the ambiguity. Logial inference is still something one 'senses' and so empirical, is the point I was making. Have you never thought something logically follows whilst another disagrees? You 'sense' it's logically valid, another senses it isn't.

Guy calls this thing a table. Some other guy comes along, miniaturizes him, takes him way down deep into the table, guy finds nothing but mostly empty space. Does he think his table isn’t what it seems? No, he does not, for he is no longer cognizing the table, but only that which occupies the space relative to himself, which quite obviously does not include his pre-conceived table. — Mww

I don't agree. You've limited the models to instantaneous experience, where models are really about expectations. My previous model of the table as solid contain in it an expectation that if I were to be miniaturised and travel into it I would be somehow 'swimming' in table, much like treacle or maybe set, unable to move, as if in concrete. That model changes when I'm taught about atoms. I have a different expectation, my story changes.

the judgement arising from them does not conform to them, the judgement is contradictory. — Mww

...which is a type of thought, no? Hence...

“...I can think what I please, provided only I do not contradict myself....”
— Mww

So... is the thought that some thought is a contradictory thought subject to the same restrictions? — Isaac — Mww

Interoception. Interesting concept. I never heard of it. Care to elaborate? — Mww

It's the sense of one's internal states. Like looking inwards.

I normally have a blanket ban on 'I agree' type posts (I'm a stingy bastard when it comes to praise), but have to say you've selected an excellent set of principles and reasons for them.

Money equal to a living wage is therefore an essential, not a perk, and all because of nothing less than a historic great theft of lands from the people who lived on them to a minority of (let's be honest) slave owners. — Kenosha Kid

and...

Prisons don't work. Most of the people in them have mental health problems. Throw it away and replace it with a system designed around therapy, with the inmate's access to society dictated by their ability to cope with it, not by their crime or a sentence. — Kenosha Kid

...particularly.

In most cases, voters are better people than politicians, and now we're technologically in a good place, I think more democracy is a good idea. — Kenosha Kid

One idea I floated once was continual mandate requirements. There's no elections anymore, the government in power remains in power until any time its mandate drops below 50%. We each have an app by which we can remove our mandate at any time. The idea is to both increase democratic involvement, but avoid the lack of long-term strategic policymaking that regular elections promote. Governments would also be more wary of doing unpopular stuff mid-term. Possibly might bring about daily changes in government and be an absolute disaster, of course.

Integrated recruitment — Kenosha Kid

Brilliant idea, like UBI but for livelihoods.

---

So, to complete the set (for me), I'm going to add my own number 1, but a really contentious one.

1. Stop treating children like second class citizens. Children should have the same rights as adults. That means neither parents, teachers nor anyone else gets to tell them what they can and can't do any more than they would with an adult. Children are neither pets, nor dolls, nor slaves and should not be treated as such. Nor are they idiots who'll jump off a cliff if they're not told not to (Yes, I raised my own children this way, and yes, they're fine). At the risk of inciting the hatred of every parent here, if you think your kids are likely to do something monumentally stupid if left without instruction you should ask yourself where they got the idea from.

There. That should do.

Probably communists or some sect of paedophile cannibals. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah. Last funding meeting I attended was absolute carnage. After you've sacrificed your third virgin though it all gets a bit work-a-day...

If I understand you right, that's basically what explainable AI is supposed to do: use Bayesian inference to give a likely cause of your output. Which is fine, because at no point is the system actually giving a description of its own state. Funnily enough I was chatting to my new boss about doing exactly this. — Kenosha Kid

Cool. Maybe there's more mileage in it than just a theoretical possibility then. If AI can do it, it should be a walk in the park for wetware.

“...I can think what I please, provided only I do not contradict myself; that is, provided my conception is a possible thought, though I may be unable to answer for the existence of a corresponding object in the sum of possibilities....” — Mww

So... is the thought that some thought is a contradictory thought subject to the same restrictions?

How would I trust my knowledge, if there were external influences on it not included in the constituency of the system? — Mww

Seems a bit extreme, but fair enough, life's rich pageant and all.

It is the case that sometimes third-party investigations reveal a physical discrepancy in the mechanics of the system, and sometimes even a rational article the system hadn’t presented to itself, re: “I never thought of it that way”. Even so, when presented with this missing piece, the system must still incorporate it into the compendium of its extant conditions, re: its relevance must still be understood by the system. If it isn’t, it has no power and thus cannot amend the system. — Mww

It's surprising how few people I speak to get this aspect of cognitive science, bonus points. I agree with the importance of understanding the evidence within the context of the narratives you have. It's 'objective' origin doesn't lend it any special status, it has to fit into the stories we tell just like any other insight.

There is absolutely no empiricism in cognitive metaphysics, it being entirely a rational study under the auspices of logic alone. — Mww

I disagree. What seems logical to you is an empirical finding from interoception. You find it logical that 2+2=4. That's not different than you finding the rocks are hard or roses smell sweet.

Hence.....for the duration of such temporality, their being missing has no affect. But I see your point. — Mww

Likewise.

I don’t care that there is something (chaotic signals); I want to know if that something is this or that (red, or, bacon, or, gunfire). — Mww

But surely it is either given that it is ("if it seems to me to be bacon then it is bacon") or you accept that things can seem some way yet turn out to be another. If this can be true of perception, then why not introspection? Or, answering my own question, are we back to 'any theory I can rationally maintain'? If so then my issue would be with holding the label 'rationally-acceptable (to me)' to be anything more than an empirical property of some thought. No different to sensing your toe is in pain after stubbing it.

What is "Honey-Do time"? — Isaac


Honey, do take out the trash, please?; Honey, do mow the lawn, please?; Honey, do the dog-poop pickup, please? Etc, etc, etc......... — Mww

Love it!

if all of them gave some thought to what they are doing instead of running around like headless materialist chicken, they would make faster progress. — Olivier5

Well, I'll send as many as I can on to you so you can instruct them in 'The Way' and save them from their unenlightened chaos... hang on, I've heard this story before somewhere...

even in this ideal situation, all you really get at the end is something equivalent to the state of the first subsystem. You'd still need to report on that somehow which is supposed to be subsystem 2's job. — Kenosha Kid

But what about inference? If a given subsystem only has the data that it has read the state of a prior system which itself had previously read a prior system, would it's Bayesian prior not be that it itself was in such a chain, having no cause to infer anything else? I guess I'm still not clear on why a system can't have inferences about itself. It can't confirm them, obviously, but I don't see anything intrinsically stopping it's own function and identity being the subject of one of it's algorithms, it would just have to infer the answer from outside data.

The map idea is the closest, since it reports on the function of the system as a whole, which is how cacheing works anyway. — Kenosha Kid

Yes. Despite my theoretic fancies above I think this is still the most likely way interocepted reporting of brain activity is done. The working memory is delivered a précis of what just went on in the same way as memories are delivered, which would be much more like your map example. I still think, though, that the working memory could infer its own role from the input data and reports of the output without needing access to its own workings.

There's these no-go areas with no obvious reason to not go there, in fact really compelling reasons to go there. — Kenosha Kid

Religion, and pride. Probably.

I think there's something intrinsically private about the workings of one's brain. Subjects I've worked with have definitely fallen into two distinct camps when we disseminate results. Either "wow that's interesting" or a non-committal grunt which I've taken to mean "how dare you get inside my head". I worked primarily with belief formation. You can imagine how well that goes down sometimes.

Then again, there's also the 'expertise cost' effect. It's a hell of a lot easier to become an expert in some psycho-woo than it is to become an expert in neuroscience. I'm sure you must get the same in physics. Without a bit of discipline you've got two routes open to you - study like hell for eight years, be tested, fail, tested again, finally prove your worth and make it past your PhD, or... sit in your armchair eating crisps and spout whatever you happen to reckon because "it's all speculation anyway init"

It's not that you disagree with me, it's that what you're saying is not amenable to reason. — Wayfarer

That is a disagreement, obviously. I'm clearly not going to hold a position I think is unreasonable.

How could it ever be proven that 'an idea of pain' and 'a pain' are different things, to one prepared to deny it? — Wayfarer

Show the existence of one without the other. If every time I experience a pain, some particular pattern of neurons fires in my brain what possible reason would I have to refer to them as two separate things? If each time I see my dog, I smell my dog, I don't go around assuming there are now two entities - the smell of my dog and the sight of my dog. It's one entity which can be detected by either smell or sight. Pain is one thing which can be detected either by interoception or fMRI (for example).

No, it wouldn't cause you difficulty, it would cause you pain. But apparently that can also be denied — Wayfarer

Who's denying it will cause me pain?

Even when you deny the reality of your own thoughts — Olivier5

Where have I denied my own thoughts are real. Honestly, this is getting ridiculous both of you. I don't deny the existence of something by denying your preferred exposition of it's properties.

The role of neuroscience is not and can never be to replace minds with another "realer" reality. — Olivier5

Who said anything about replacing minds? There's this common theme here where a person cannot take a physicalist position on anything without being caricatured as a guileless member of some cult trying to turn us all into machines. The question cognitive science is trying to answer is that of how the mind works (neuroscience is trying to answer the question of how the brain works). It is a question without a current answer, no-one is 'replacing' anything, we're filling in gaps. Are you claiming that you already know how your mind works, do you think your own guesswork is somehow privileged and should be sacrosanct?

It could be that our two brains work as mirrors to one another, thus creating a mise en abyme called consciousness. — Olivier5

It could be, yes. If only there were thousands of highly trained individuals who had decades of time and experience to put to finding out via careful experimentation that they could then publish in a series of papers and books so that people like you could read them and find out...

But a scientist must believe in the capacity of the human mind to understand something. — Olivier5

Of course. Again, I don't see anyone denying this.

Any actual real life tangible evidence that I don't have to take on trust? — Protagoras

Yes. Do the experiment. The method statement is quite clear.

Well, if yet make the distinction between felt pain and the concept of pain, there’s really no point discussing it. — Wayfarer

So basically if I don't start out agreeing with you there's no point in discussion. Interesting approach.

A scientist who doesn't trust the human mind's capacity to understand the universe would drop science altogether — Olivier5

Why? In fact, this is disingenuous because I see it's already been asked and answered. A scientist does not have to trust all thoughts in order to trust any thoughts. They do not have to assume all the universe is understandable in order to assume some of it is.

As such there's absolutely no reason a scientist is compelled to trust their first feelings about their mind.

You can't say 'oh, there it is, what is that, I will go and look at it.' It's not an object of cognition, but the subject of experience. — Wayfarer

Of course it's an object of cognition. I have a model of what it is and how it works. I can examine that model and check it against other models such as my model of the substrate I assume it is within (neurons).

When you have a thought, an experience, a sensation, this doesn't occur to you as an object, obviously. If a rock hits you, then the rock is an object, but the pain it causes you is not an object. Isn't that obvious? — Wayfarer

Not at all. I can model the pain as an activity in neural circuits. It's seems quite clearly like an object to me.

And you can't say 'well, that pain I feel is actually not pain, it's really the firing of c-fibres.' — Wayfarer

That's what pain is, from one perspective.

Let someone fasten a paperclip to your earlobe and have you say that. — Wayfarer

I don't see why that would cause me any difficulty.

Pain is irredemiably first-person. You can't see pain, or weigh it or measure it, only feel it, and only you know how bad that pain is. — Wayfarer

No. Other people can know how bad my pain is, as well as measure it. I can't think why you would image weighing it has any bearing on the matter, but it definitely can be measured.

You are quite good at avoiding questions. I repeat: Are you denying the reality of your subjective feelings? — Olivier5

That they exist? No. That they give me an accurate model of reality? Yes. I see no reason at all to believe that prima facie.

Consider that, if you cannot trust the reality of your feelings, you cannot trust the reality of your thinking either since thinking is in part feeling, sensing, etc. — Olivier5

Yes, that's right.

If you cannot trust the reality of your thinking, you cannot trust science. — Olivier5

Indeed.

How come do you trust science so much if you don't trust thinking? — Olivier5

Because it's got a methodology that produces some reliably useful models. I'm not getting the point you're trying to make. There's a difference between trusting a feeling prima facie and continuing to trust it in the light of other feelings to the contrary. You seem to assume it's either all or nothing.

T1 - I have some feeling about how my mind works.

T2 - I do some science (or read some). I now have some new feelings about how my mind works which seem to tie in better to other feelings I have about the world.

T3 - I now have a new feeling about how my mind works.

I trust science because it generally delivers better 'tie ins' at T2 than other methods. The process seems painfully simple to me, I'm baffled as to why it causes such consternation.

All the things you mention are objects. You have an I-it relationship to them. — Wayfarer

Yes... and? I'm not seeing that as a compelling reason why they can turn out to be other than they seem but my mind can't. All you've done thus far is point to a difference, you haven't explained how that difference causes the effect I'm asking about.

How could the reality of the subjective feeling be anything other than the reality of the subjective feeling? — Wayfarer

See above. That things are sometimes not as they seem to be is taken as a matter of course these days in all fields of science... Why would your mind be any different? Why is it immune from turning out to be other than it first seems?

I don't think anyone denies this. — Isaac


You'd be surprised. — Olivier5

Examples?

Are you denying the reality of your subjective feelings? See point A above. — Olivier5

Why would I be?

I have a subjective feeling the earth is a flat plane which goes on forever. Scientists tell me it's round. Great, now we can navigate.

I have a subjective feeling the table is made of solid matter. Scientists tell me it's actually all quantum goings on and wot not (I believe I've got I got the technical terms correct there @Kenosha Kid?). Great, now we can quantum compute.

I have a subjective feeling my consciousness is really special, consistent and impenetrable to investigation. Scientists tell me it's actually just neurons firing. All hell breaks loose.

That's the matter I find interesting.

You asked a question: why is the mind so hard to understand, and I answered you. Now you say that you are in agreement with my answer. — Olivier5

No, mistaken on both counts I'm afraid, my fault. I did not ask "why is the mind so difficult to understand?" I asked why we find it so hard to accept that our subjective feeling of it might be different from the reality of it.

And I did not agree with you that the mind cannot examine itself, I said we all already knew that you thought that.

Sorry for not having been clearer on both fronts.

A prerequisite, I would think, is for the mind to acknowledge itself... — Olivier5

I don't think anyone denies this.

Not at all. A metaphor is simply an illustration, a comparison. It is not to be taken literally.

Do I really need to explain such ultra basic literary notions? What's wrong with you brains? — Olivier5

Nothing in that prevents it from begging the question. The likening of the mind to the eye in your metaphor, without @khaled's objection, only works if you already assume that the mind is something that cannot examine itself. Hence all you've said it that you think the mind cannot examine itself. We knew that. We're trying here to present arguments either way, not just remind everyone what our current beliefs are.

The eye cannot see itself. — Olivier5

But my eye can see your eye and vice versa. Then we come to the astonishing discovery that we can study eyes. — khaled

Exactly. I was going to say use a mirror, but the point is the same.

It was a metaphor... :groan: — Olivier5

Then you begged the question.

Yes, I completely agree with this but it also makes me think we're speaking at cross purposes. — Kenosha Kid

Probably.

I was talking more about what precedes that: System A*'s lack of knowledge about itself or the causes of System A's outputs. Yes, it's undoubtedly a cause of rationalisations, of narrative-building, but the absence of information (expressed by those you disapprove of as the immediacy of qualia) are examinable. What we don't know about our phenomenology invites either curiosity or rationalisation. — Kenosha Kid

OK, I can see that, but see my next post, I think there's stuff system A* can infer about system A, including it's own role.

We were supposed to be going to see Derren Brown tonight. My girlfriend bought me the tickets for my birthday last year but it was cancelled due to Covid. — Kenosha Kid

Or was it...?

Turned out, it's this date next year. — Kenosha Kid

Or, will you get home and find it's already this time next year...?

I'm still waiting for Derren to come on the radio and demonstrate that the whole of the last few years has been a massive trick. "Did you all really believe that Donald Trump could become president of the US and then preside over a viral pandemic that's straight out the plot of at least six post apocalypse films?... Even I thought I'd gone too far on this one..."

Not that hard to imagine, that given sufficient methodological reduction from some undeniable reality, we can actually arrive at some example or other, that represents our cognitive system, such that all the above is explained. Explained but not proven. — Mww

Yep. The only difference then between this metaphysics and cognitive science seems to be that that we make the assumption all this happens in a brain (a good assumption, I think). Once that assumption is made then "my V4 region fired when I looked at that chair" becomes no less a piece of the puzzle to reflect on than "I thought of my old schoolmaster when I looked at that chair". Having established the link between the mind and the brain, all activity in that system (thoughts and signals) becomes a piece of the puzzle. There's no reason I can think of to rule out one source of data.

It doesn’t, insofar as they are both post hoc. Yours is post hoc from an external perspective, mine is post hoc from my own internal perspective. — Mww

Understood.

Which is exactly the problem. I don’t want data contributed exactly because it isn’t part of the process. — Mww

Why would it matter? We've just established the investigation is post hoc, so externally derived data about it isn't going to disrupt the process we're investigating, that's already happened and we're simply gathering data about it. Memory is one source, fMRI scan might be another.

Metaphysics is not and never was a science, hence cannot be examined scientifically. — Mww

Not seeing the link. Something's not being a science doesn't seem to me to have any bearing on whether science can investigate it. Sports aren't themselves a science either, but science investigates them.

Then you are only conscious of the the representation of the transfer, and infer the correspondence between them. — Mww

True, good spot. True also of your thoughts though. As we've established, your investigation of them is post hoc. So you're being delivered a representation of what went on, not what actually went on.

It is indubitable that whatever is in our heads is not the same as whatever is in the world outside our heads. Doesn’t matter what is, only that what is here is distinct from what is there. — Mww

True, but that gives you the existence of box 1. It does not give you that it is connected to a chain of boxes which ultimately lead to box 9. It's logically, equally possible that there is merely box 1 and box 9 and no connecting boxes at all. To conceive a connection you must, in some way, have examined 'the system' because it is only via the system that they are connected at all.

If you look back, you will find I don’t use the term “mind”. As far as I’m concerned, in the context of this discussion, all I need to talk about is the human cognitive system and its constituency, which cannot include mind. Even if we say the system is metaphysical, and “mind” is metaphysical, doesn’t mean they are the same thing. — Mww

I read this the requisite three times...still nothing I'm afraid. Any chance of a re-phrasing?

I am aware of the external world simply from being affected by it. — Mww

If I knocked you unconscious and then shaved your eyebrows off you would have been affected by the outside world but not aware of it. It doesn't follow that you are aware of all that you are affected by. So it isn't 'simply'. Some intervening factor must be involved to distinguish the eyebrow removal whilst conscious from the same even whilst unconscious.

I don’t need mind to tell me there is something in my visual field. — Mww

You absolutely do. Absent of a mind all you have is a chaos of staccato signals, which tell you nothing, not even if there's something. The mind even has to contend with 'noise' (random neurotransmitter release, axon channel leakage...). We can't even tell the difference between external sources and internal sources of signalling without a mind to do some speculation and hypothesis testing.

Honey-Do time, doncha know. — Mww

I'm not sure I want to know, but curiosity won...What is "Honey-Do time"?

Another possibility: you could have say a ring of subsystems each examining the system on the left. Every subsystem will be examined, but none has a picture of the whole, nor can you get any information out of it without introducing another subsystem which isn't being examined. — Kenosha Kid

More on topic this time.

What would be the case if part of the information each step received was the fact that it's neighbour had been studied by the step to it's left and will be studied by the step to it's right. That doesn't defy any self-study because this still all counts as information about the previous step. If also it were to learn that the previous step learnt this about the step before that... Then let's say one of the algorithms in a step was to make a Bayesian inference about where its data came from and went to... Would it not derive the exact system you described despite being a part of that system?