I quite like reading Marx as something of a metaphysician; what would metaphysics have to look like for what he's saying to be true? I enjoy reading him with that emphasis - as a social metaphysician as well as an economist.

Answering out of order:

Yeah, fair point. I'd have to dial back my use of the term, not sure how it affects the argument though? Surely without that necessity, you still cannot go from there to reify 'Saturn', simply on the grounds that it is not necessarily a model? — Isaac

Let's see if I can re-cast your argument as a syllogism.

(N1) In order for an output of a model to be real for certain, the connection between the model output (model results) and model input (what is modelled) must be necessary.
(N2) The connection between model output and model input is never necessary.
(N3) The model output is never real for certain.

If you want to undermine any connection between model output and model input, you can supply a defeating context whereby the model fails to perform in some way. Like in phantom limb;

Take phantom limb. They're not 'really' moving their arm, but their perception is telling them they are, and without contrary input, that's exactly the 'event' they'll perceive. Not what we'd want to call the real event at all, simply what they were expecting to perceive without any contrary evidence to deal with. Faced with conflicting contrary evidence the brain will make up all kinds of stories to marry the two sources, any or none of which may actually reflect reality. — Isaac

This fleshes out the sense of necessity in the above argument. If there exists some defeating context for a model; when it fails to perform, produces an output with error; then that model is not necessary.

I don't. But necessity is relevant for theories of truth based on the objects thereby referred to. To consider sense objects as simples is fine in most cases and the necessity of those simples is irrelevant. But to claim (as Davidson seems to) that those simples are all there is, universally shared... That seems to me to be making a claim for their to be necessarily that way, and that claim I think, can be refuted. — Isaac

The bolded statement there is in my mind a restatement of (N1).

Does this seem about right?

Anyway, maybe I’m not discussing what you wished to discuss in this thread? Either way I think my time would be better spent keeping my thoughts mostly to myself for now as I work my way through the text. I like the line of questions he presents even if I find the presentation wanting. — I like sushi

To be honest I think what you're saying is irrelevant to the argument.

Use value - (a use value is...) item that satisfies human wants or needs. Item considered under the aspect of human want or need satisfaction. The wants or needs a human can attempt to fulfil with the device (use value of...). These are facilitated by the properties of the object. If something can't be used for a specific purpose, it does not have that use value - it is useless for that task.

Exchange value - (an exchange value is) what a commodity trades for. (an exchange value of) What a commodity is of equal worth to.

Value - a system of valuation that gives specific values of a specific form to commodities in a network of exchange.

Also:

From what I’ve read Marx has done no more than sharpen the capitalist sword rather than offer a new means of engagement in the sphere of ‘economics’ - maybe I was expecting way too much :) — I like sushi

Value does come to cover up use value. Things are produced to be sold for profit rather than to be used. Value also comes to cover up social relationships. Commodity fetishism.

come to this forum in the hopes that I DON'T have to bean Internet jerk just to hold my own in a conversation. — fishfry

Unfortunately almost no one is cordial in argument all the time. It pays to be understanding when someone gets uppity. Though it's hard to remain understanding when someone gets uppity.

I just don't understand the insult culture around here, especially involving technical matters. — fishfry

For me it can be difficult to tell whether something's technical or not if I'm unfamiliar with it. Knowing what's relevant to what in a technical matter is part of getting to know the technical matter. In the absence of that information, or a sufficiently well explained link between the technical matter and the discussion topic, it can feel extremely patronising. I think there's a hierarchy here.

(1) Basic math literacy to general public: "They can't multiply fractions, can you even imagine!"
(2) Math education to basic math literacy: "They can't do calculus, can you even imagine!"
(3) Undergrad math education to math education: "They can't do the Gram-Schmidt process, can you even imagine!"
(4) Graduate math education to undergrad math education becomes field specific.
(5) Research math to graduate math becomes subfield specific.

It's just in case. I think you need to check your math privilege. :yum:

"Can you even imagine? They don't even understand Ito integrals..." (paraphrased discussion excerpt from the staff room)

Nope. Google bijection. — tim wood

Define $f: [0,1] \rightarrow [0,2]$ by $f(x) = 2x$

Claim: $f$ is a bijection.
Proof: We will proceed by showing that $f$ is injective and surjective.

Injective subproof:
$f$ is injective when and only when for all $x,y$, $f(x) = f(y)$ implies $x=y$. Let $x,y \in [0,1]$ be arbitrary, then assume (for conditional proof) that $f(x)=f(y)$, by the definition of $f$ this implies $2x=2y$ which in turn implies $x=y$. So $f$ is injective.

Surjective subproof:
$f$ is surjective when and only when for all $y \in [0,2]$ there exists $x \in [0,1]$ such that $y = f(x)$. Let $y$ in $[0,2]$ be arbitrary, then consider $x=y/2$. Firstly, this is in $[0,1]$ because the minimum of $x$ is $0$ and the maximum is $1$. Then we evaluate $f(x) = f(y/2) = 2y/2 = y$. Since $y$ was arbitrary, $f$ is surjective.

Therefore $f$ is injective and surjective. By definition, $f$ is bijective.

Two sets are of equal cardinality when and only when a bijection exists between them. $f$ exists (it is a well defined function (proof omitted) between $[0,1]$ and $[0,2]$). Therefore $[0,1]$ and $[0,2]$ are of equal cardinality.

Regarding the order preserving bit. This function is total order preserving because it's monotonic increasing. But the definition of bijection or being of equal cardinality does not require order preservation. There are easy finite set examples for this. An infinite set example is $f:\mathbb{R}^+ \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^+$ with $f(x) = 1/x$ - this one is a bijection that reverses inequalities (it's monotonic decreasing).

Neither of these say anything about well orders; the order above is the standard total order on the reals, rather than any well ordering. The ordering has sets which do not have a least element. (Real) sets with a least element contain their greatest lower bound (which is their set minimum) - and an interval like $(0,1)$'s greatest lower bound is $0$, which isn't in the set by definition. So the standard order on the reals isn't a well order; because there's at least one subset of it which does not have a least element.

What I wanted was the meaning of ‘useless’ explained. — I like sushi

Satisfies no human want or need?

So what you want from Marx is an analysis of what it means for something to be useful. Rather than more cursory remarks regarding how something has to be useful in order for it to be sold. I can't think of a particularly good definition of use value that doesn't require knowing how "use" works.

A use value is a thing's capacity to be used for a range of activities (including biological processes, aesthetic appreciation, social lubricant...). Use values depend on the thing's material properties and the role those material properties together play in the social contexts associated with the thing.

I say capacity because a spoon in a submarine wreck could still be used as a spoon even if it is not used as a spoon now. This comes from the social function of spoons as cutlery, and our propensity to consume food which is liquid.

Maybe this will do: a use value is a thing which can satisfy human want or need. We tend to produce things which do this. We tend to produce use values.

Are there things which cannot satisfy human want or need? Dunno, humans are pretty flexible. We'd probably be better off looking historically there (as Marx says, discovering use values is the work of history) - would a powdered egg shell be of use to anyone in 20,000BC? Maybe they'd still enjoy snorting it... maybe there're social customs that would develop based on snorting powdered eggs. Who knows.

But in Bayesian terms you do. — Isaac

Not sold on this. If outputs of whatever system of belief formation we have actually were probability statements, rather than being realisations of probability models, we'd have an easier time eliciting our own priors. This is a distinction between sampling from what is most probable in realising an active perception from a model and those samples being probability statements. EG, when you sample randomly from the standard normal distribution, you get numbers between $-\infty$ and $\infty$, rather than things like the density of the normal distribution you sampled from. We don't output models by sampling from them, we output states (active perceptions) which are consistent with their generating model.

My general picture here is that we can consider people as active-perception machines. We output states (actions, perceptions, sensations, thoughts) in accordance with our current model. These states cease being models, they become events when they realise from our active-perception modelling apparatus. The model says look left (disposition) and then we look left (event).

Once you include social stuff, environmental stimuli can be speech acts, but so can model outputs. That is, we perform speech acts, we aren't just predisposed to do them. They are language events themselves rather than active-perceptual predispositions to perform them. In other words, belief is in the mind but what it concerns isn't.

Simple version - 'Saturn', 'number', 'bodies', and 'orbit' are all themselves models of something, but are not necessary models of that something, they could be other than they are. What they are is a property of your mind and so any adjustment to that model (say by observing a fourth body orbiting Saturn) that would impact on whether it is the case ('is true') that only three bodies orbit Saturn, is a property of your belief. — Isaac

We don't operate on necessities though; we don't need them. We weigh events for evidence and check them for their accord with our expectations or theories. Being true to the active perception theory here, contingency and necessity are themselves outputs of an abstract modelling procedure. Mere perceptual features and language constructs. Upon what basis do you believe that necessity is relevant at all for vouchsafing a representative connection between external stimuli and output states of active perception models? The absence of the two constructs, "contingency", "necessity" from this more primordial realm of active perception models gives me pause. In a moment of zen; how can it necessarily be the case that "Saturn" is a model of something when we cannot imbue necessity into any model output? (Not that I care about necessity much here as previously stated).

Does a stimulus constrain perceptual features associated with it? If it did not constrain perceptual features associated with it, where does all this accord come from?

That Marx pays no attention to aesthetics, artistry, human value or social relationships in terms of ‘economics’. — I like sushi

An odd claim, considering seeing money as a social form of exchange is central to the value theory.

The exchange makes a ‘product’ a ‘commodity’ and then the ‘use value’ alters to ‘Value’. If I produce art with no intention of selling it and then someone steals it from me they can most certainly sell it regardless of my personal intentions. — I like sushi

So there are two sources of profit. One is profit through exchange. One is profit through producing goods for exchange. The two unify into the operation of profit for capital. You can't produce profit through exchange without produced goods. Nor can you sell (things which have been created for private use or have no labour expended in their creation or application) without there being an economy capable of such exchange. Ultimately for Marx, all sources of profit come from labour expended in production (the creation of surplus value). He's explicit on this point in Theories of Surplus Value in his comment on Steuart:

(For Steuart) The price of goods therefore comprises two elements that are completely different from each other; firstly their real value, secondly, the profit upon alienation, the profit realised through their transfer to another person, their sale.

||221| This profit upon alienation therefore arises from the price of the goods being greater than their real value, or from the goods being sold above their value. Gain on the one side therefore always involves loss on the other. No addition to the general stock is created. Profit, that is, surplus-value, is relative and resolves itself into “a vibration of the balance of wealth between parties”. Steuart himself rejects the idea that surplus-value can be explained in this way. His theory of “vibration of the balance of wealth between parties”, however little it touches the nature and origin of surplus-value itself, remains important in considering the distribution of surplus-value among different classes and among different categories such as profit, interest and rent.

The overall picture is: you have a ledger with a piece of art in it worth x, the person you're selling it to has a ledger with x money in it. You exchange the good. You've now got x money. The other person has the piece of art. The total over all ledgers remains the same. Profit through exchange is a redistribution of value among participants, not value creative. It requires there to be a value structure to "immerse" the apparently independently produced commodity in. Once you exchange it, you establish "this piece of art is worth x".

Moreover, prices can diverge from values, and usually do. You can assign a price to things which are not products of value creative labour - like pieces of art and natural resources, so having 0 labour time embodied vs having a nonzero price.

Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it

I don't think you're studying patiently enough. If it helps, imagine the account so far as having all value coming from production of commodities for exchange. If there's some external thing - like a natural resource or a piece of art (anything which is created through private labour or is not created through labour at all) - it must be introduced to the economy through exchange; that is, it obtains a valuation consistent with the value form which is operative in the economy that exchange takes place within.

People will only buy things they can use. Something needs to have a use value in order for it to have an exchange value. When both apply, an item is a commodity and it has value.

There can be use values produced without exchange values; or an item made which is not made to be sold for profit; like art can be in @jamalrob's take.

It would help if you described the contradiction.

He's saying so because the notion is contained within a mind and there are limits that places on what it can possibly be. — Isaac

The notion of a cat might be contained within a mind, though I'm not so happy with the vocabulary. Let's make it a bit less abstract.

(1) I have a cat. The cat meows and sits on the things. The cat is currently on the mat.

If I "Ramsify" this, this would be:

(2) I believe I have a cat. I believe the cat meows and I believe the cat sits on things. I believe the cat is currently on the mat.

Notice that (1) is about the cat. (2) is about me.

Believing that I have a cat is much different from having a cat. Believing that the cat meows is much different from the cat meowing. Believing the cat sits on the things is much different from the cat sitting on things. Believing the cat is currently on the mat is much different from the cat being on the mat.

The key difference there is that the belief is always a dispositional property of an apprehending agent towards a statement or an event (propositional attitude @Banno), whereas the cat being on the mat is a relationship between the cat and the mat. If we say that "the cat is on the mat" as an event is only a dispositional property of an apprehending agent, then the cat and the mat are both only notions contained within a mind. The cat being on the mat becomes a mental event of belief; a state of an internal model alone; rather than an external stimulus; a relationship between our internal model's processing style and external stimuli's presentation and operation.

Or, put another way, the cat being on the mat causes (or strongly probabilistically promotes) my belief that the cat is on the mat.

For Ramsey, a belief that p is a disposition to act as if p, and here speech is taken as an act. So if you hold the disjunction to be true, if someone were to ask "is it possible that there are less than 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn at the moment?", holding the disjunction to be true compels you (all other matters being equal) to answer "yes". — Isaac

I think this is the most important point: Belief is a disposition toward a speech act. I think we can agree here. From what you've quoted from Ramsey;

the ideally best thing is that we should have beliefs of degree 1 in all true propositions and beliefs of degree 0 in all false propositions. But this is too high a standard to expect of mortal men, and we must agree that some degree of doubt or even of error may be humanly speaking justified

Statements are still true or false simpliciter. "The cat is on the mat" is either true or false. Nevertheless, belief must come in degrees of probability. This implies the two notions are independent. That is, there are mental-bodily events of disposition to perform speech acts (beliefs about statements) and there are the events that those dispositions are regarding (the propositional content of the statement).

"The cat is on the mat" is true.
I believe "The cat is on the mat" with degree p.

These notions don't contradict each other; they are about different things. Events and mental/bodily states towards them. I think what should be emphasised here is that there are two models of belief operative here:

Ramsey's: Belief takes a statement and assigns it to a degree of probability (for an agent).
The other one: Belief takes a statement and assigns it to true or false (for an agent).

A logic of belief in Ramsey's would look like Bayesian computation. A logic of belief in "the other one" would look like a modal logic.

In your discussion so far, it seems you are trying to portray belief as somehow necessary for a statement of truth. In this regard, I think we can agree that an agent would not state a sincere belief if they were not predisposed to do so. But I think we can make a relevant distinction here:

For Ramsey, belief is a numerical summary of a predisposition towards a statement (interpreted as a speech act). This is about an agent that may perform a range of speech acts with different evaluations. I believe "there are exactly 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn" with degree $p_1$, I believe "there are more than 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn" with degree $p_2$.

For "the other one"; belief is a propositional attitude towards performing a particular speech act. "I believe that there are more than 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn". Namely, we believe a statement when we would state that we believe it. The criterion for having a belief here is more aligned with what speech acts we do perform than what speech acts we could. Belief in model 2 crops up when the range of possibilities of belief collapse down to only one; holding to be true; belief in model (1) is ever present and describes the range of possibilities; evaluating with a degree.

So you do have a belief, in some degree, in each of the three options. Without such beliefs you could only justifiably believe the abstract logical truth of disjunction, not the specific one regarding Saturn and its moons. — Isaac

I would not perform any speech act in that list. I withhold belief in the "other" sense. But I do have different degrees of belief in the list items. It looks to me that the best bet would be "There are more than 3 bodies currently in orbit around Saturn", but I don't have an explicit probability assigned to the statement.

Given that both accounts sever belief from truth; predisposition from event; I think the following question is the crux of the disagreement. It's something "hidden" behind the contrary notions of belief discussed in the thread.

In any case; why would my predisposition towards any of the statements in the list be necessary for there to be a given number of bodies in orbit around Saturn? At best, it's simply necessary for my speech acts and for my psychological states. My mind does not constrain the behaviour of Saturn. The behaviour of Saturn constrains my behaviour of forming beliefs about it.

"B is true :=: (∃p). B is a belief that p & p." — Isaac

I'm skeptical that beliefs can play any sensible part in a definition of truth simpliciter. Though I can read what you have written as a definition of a true belief but not necessarily a truth. Specifically, a true belief is a belief in a truth.

One reason for my skepticism is that beliefs are a modal and truths are not. For an example.

Let's take the definition that "B is true" iff "B is a belief that P and that P":

(A) There are less than 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn at the moment.
(B) There are exactly 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn at the moment.
(C) There are more than 3 bodies in orbit around Saturn at the moment.

Let P = (A) or (B) or (C), the disjunction of all three of them. P is true since it exhausts all possible cases of the number of bodies in orbit around Saturn. I will believe that P.

This entails that (A) is true, or that (B) is true, or that (C) is true. By the above definition, this entails that (A) is a belief or that (B) is a belief or that (C) is a belief. But I don't believe in any of them, I simply believe in the disjunction. Surely, then, there must be three different people who exist in order for the disjunct P to be true. If not, it would be strange that (P) could be believed but none of its elements need be believed in order for (P) to be believed (IE, one of the disjuncts needs to be true, but it doesn't seem to need to be believed in order for it to be true).

The situation gets a bit worse:

(1) There are 0 bodies in orbit around Saturn.
(2) There is 1 body in orbit around Saturn.
(3) There are 2 bodies in orbit around Saturn
...
(n ) There are n bodies in orbit around Saturn.
...

Continue on for all natural numbers. Then the disjunction (1) or (2) or ... is true and believed, but the beliefs are mutually exclusive. Then there are arbitrarily many believers? Or do all these believers necessarily not believe that the list elements (1)...(n) are mutually exclusive?

I think the root of these pathologies is that belief doesn't distribute over disjunctions (a consequence of being a modality). If you make belief a component of truth, then belief in some sense must distribute over a disjunction.

As for beliefs necessarily being probability distributions assigned to sets of statements, this is also quite contentious, there's no probability distribution that assigns indifference to the list (1)...(n) even when there is no information about (1) to (n ) (equal mass assignments either are all 0 and so the measure doesn't sum to 1 or equal mass assignments sum to infinity).

Eh, fair, I'll delete the comment. :up:

One argument for panpsychism springs from the idea that consciousness does not admit of degree. — bert1

Insofar as the whole of existence is a heap due to the paradox of the heap? Dunno this argument.

Just curious, does Marx ever bother to mention aesthetic value or something like it in Das Kapital? — I like sushi

I imagine it would be part of use value.

But the "information-processing" part in general doesn't suddenly spring into being; everything all the way down is capable of processing information, at some level. — Pfhorrest

Two accounts:

(A)

So - phenomenal consciousness is defined as independent of access consciousness. These are conceptual distinctions.

But:

Observations:
Phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness track each other.
Access consciousness comes in degrees.

Conclusions:
Therefore, phenomenal consciousness comes in degrees.
Therefore, panpsychism + no explanatory gap + no p-zombies.

The counter argument (@180 Proof) seems to be:

(B)

Observations:

Consciousness (Phenomenal consciousness and/or access consciousness) tracks reflexive information processing.
Reflexive information processing comes in degrees.

Conclusions:

Therefore, a conceptual distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness is useless. There's only one aspect of consciousness, which when present in a large degree, seems to yield phenomenal consciousness ("what is it like" states). Therefore no p-zombies, no explanatory gap, but also no panpsychism (maybe).

It looks to me like the difference between (A) and (B) arises solely through propagating the conceptual distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness through the same evidence; the argument is really over whether the distinction makes sense in light of what we know about consciousness. Is there one construct (functionality alone, account B) or two (functionality and phenomenality, account A)?

Just wanna give credit where credit is due, you've made excellent posts this thread.

A dollar is an abstraction, though — frank

As are laws, countries, economies, cultures, people, love, justice...

Drop the neuroscience for a bit. — Banno

:point:

The sin Davidson is castigating is that of thinking we can not talk about dollars, but only about economic models of dollars. — Banno

:up:

That's very similar to the point I'm making. Theory ladened perceptual features are still about their content; they are a relation between a body and an environment. Economic models of dollars are about dollars; they are relation between a mathematical abstraction and dollars.

Original argument is stupid crap. What's ownership in the Treatise?

Ownership: The exclusive power over and responsibility for a physical item and or phenomena.

To find rightful ownership over a thing or a phenomenon we must discern where it came from in the most feasible sense.

Person A conducts action to procure gold from a mine which has no prior claims to it and there is no established agreement in which Person A agrees to procure the gold in exchange for something else with another person.
|Conclusion: Person A is the sole entity which procured and claimed procurement of such gold and thusly possess a rightful claim to it.

Whoops I seem to have found one of those widely occurrent natural phenomena, the gold mine and used my free will (which no one else had anything to do with) to get some gold out of it with a tool I used my free will to use and hey wait how did this fucking gold mine and tool get here before I did Jesus fucking christ on a bendybus how in the hell do you write 87 pages of this dreck.

I wrote a synopsis of Friston's general approach outlined in the linked paper here. In terms of how they relate to external events/the environmental stimulus, a rough picture is:

The external stimulus behaves in way $\gamma$ (say light frequencies reflecting off an object) which impress upon us in ways $\theta$ (say light frequencies and intensities we're visually sensitive to in the context of the environment). We have a causal model of our environment (broadly, "this (situation) comes from that (expectation of action effects)") that relates our actions $\alpha$ and these impressions $\theta$ into the total causal model $f(\alpha,\gamma)$. This represents how we interpret and act in an environment.

In terms of how we use this information, we map $\gamma$ to $\theta$ through bodily constraints. $\theta$ is what our mind/body uses as distinct information sources in our environment; they are environmental parameters (where stuff is, luminescence, light frequencies, item topographies for touch, heat sensitivity, bodily proprioception etc) as they impress upon us perceptually; as we perceive them. They filter our environment and condense information in it into actionable perceptual chunks.

We then map $\theta$ to environmental/action/self model samples that represent all possible information about $\theta$; this represents what perceptual features arise in our experience that are consistent with (and most probable in) our model of what our experience should be.

There are different "models" here, and the term is used loosely in the discussion so far. The relevant distinction I believe is one between $\gamma$ and $f(\alpha,\gamma)$, which is roughly $\gamma$ being "the causal structure of reality operating in our environment right now" to $f(\alpha,\gamma)$ being "our bodily capacities for being influenced by it insofar as they are perceptible" (consider that we react to alpha radiation on a cellular level, but can't sense its presence unaided).

Personally, I think that "The cat is on the mat" is indeed true when the cat is on the mat, and the model we have is an interaction with our environment that reveals some of its structure; in particular it can reveal that the cat is on the mat. It doesn't just reveal that "I perceived that the cat is on the mat", or that "The cat is on the mat with respect to my model" in usual circumstances our causal model of our environment is informative about how it works, it establishes all three (when in a context that perception is sufficiently reliable). The cat really is on the mat, it's also modelled as being on the mat, it's also perceived as being on the mat. It being modelled as being on the mat or perceived as being on the mat is not sufficient for "the cat is on the mat" being true. The only thing which is both necessary and sufficient for "the cat is on the mat" being true is for the cat to be on the mat.

In terms of the models, any individual's perceptions and actions are not causally separated from their environment; the way we parse an environment's causal structure has bodily constraints, and it need not faithfully represent any particular aspect of the environment's causal structure. We generally perceive environments in ways related to our concerns. We learn to see; so our perception is historically structured as well as bodily constrained as well as contextually informed.

In terms of "The cat is on the mat", I could say that after perceiving that the cat is on the mat. In terms of my perception, "The cat" is a perceptual feature; but perceptual features in usual circumstances are informative relations between environmental stimuli and action-perception chains (expectations and memories, protentions and retentions if you're feeling phenomenological about it); the perceptual feature is had by the perceiver, but it is nevertheless a relationship between perceiver and perceived. The presence of "the cat on the mat" as a perceptual feature is strong evidence (in usual circumstances) that there is indeed a cat on the mat, but the presence of the perceptual feature's evidentiary status with respect to the claim "the cat is on the mat" does not imply that "the cat is on the mat" is true if the perceiver sees it there. It's true only when there is a cat on the mat.

The models Friston talks about are like evidence accumulation machines given a particular set of expectations of how stuff works and what we can do; we perceive and act in order to minimise the difference between what we expect to happen and what is happening. Action tries to normalise the environment given a perception of its structure (in terms of perceptual features), perception tries to normalise proposed actions given expectations of environmental development (in terms of self modelling internal states, sensations etc). We store and are influenced by previous states on all levels; past actions influence future ones. Altogether, this paints a picture of us as a process of coming into environmental and bodily accord given goals and an environment and a body which we have partial access to and represent those accessed parts with some errors.

On my reading, this requires a distinction between what we expect to happen and what is happening, even if that distinction itself is something the model has purchase on; we adapt to minimise to these discrepancies. The discrepancies don't just come from our models, they come from our environments not being in accord with our models insofar as we are sensitive to the environment and our body.

One way this might interface with the current debate is that the model we have adds nothing to the truth conditions of "the cat is on the mat", Friston's account is a highly sophisticated rendering of what it means for perception to be embodied and active and model based and how this might operate neurally; that is, Friston's account spells out a scientific theory of how our perceptions and actions are theory ladened (even down to the level of perceptual features). I don't think it problematise the notion of the truth conditions of statements at all.

@Isaac and I had a similar "realist vs anti-realist" (though I think we're both different flavours of realist, really. I suspect Isaac of some kind of hidden anti realism, Isaac suspects me of some kind of hidden naive realism, was my take) discussion regarding Friston's work in that thread.

Davidson says "...something is an acceptable conceptual scheme or theory if it is true" I thought it a simplification to allow a wider view, but since it is one the author uses too, that seems a reasonable endorsement to use it, no? — Isaac

Aye. I saw that in the paper. I couldn't really tease out how a conceptual scheme could be "in the large part, true" other than thinking of it has an interpretation of sentences, where the interpretations happened to be true in most cases. It confused me because I don't know how to flesh out the distinction between a conceptual scheme assigning theory-ladened empirical content on a sentential level (which Davidson rejects) and whatever Davidson's attacking. (will find the quote later, have work now)

Without an idea of conceptual schemes, models, predictions, expectations... We simply would have to discard the last two decades of cognitive science. — Isaac

This is how I'm thinking about it.

For the purposes of the paper, one of these things is not like the others. Models/predictions/expectations are components of non-reductive empiricism (something Davidson expects to be true); we have different processes of interpretation based on our histories. Imagine these processes of interpretation as ways of interacting with the world (active model dependent perception). These ways of interacting with the world have propositions associated with them or generated in accord with them.

I think the crucial distinguishing feature for the purposes of the paper is that different processes of interpretation don't decide whether a given interpretation of a string is true or false.

"I spoke to Jule last Thursday" is true. There was an event that happened. I was there. If for some reason I did not believe it or forgot it; if I interpreted the world in a way where "I believe "I spoke to Jule last Thursday" is false" applied to me, that belief would be false. Why? Is it because I interpreted the world differently that the statement is false? No, it's because I really did speak to Jule last Thursday!

The operation of a conceptual scheme is contrary to this, I think Davidson construes them as working like:

""I spoke to Jule last Thursday" is true" depends partially upon the operation of the conceptual scheme in play. It makes what happened depend upon the perspective it is viewed from. The following would be the case if I judged that I did not speak to Jule last Thursday. "I think I did not speak to Jule last Thursday" where "think" ranges over conceptions generated in accord with whatever active perception<-> conception account you like. It could be the case that I indeed did speak with Jule last Thursday and did not think I did.

It's a tight needle to thread, but I think it's worth threading. We can have theory-ladened perceptions without conceptual relativism (due to conceptual scheme differences); at least, we should be suspicious of going from one to the other.

Conceptual schemes arise from organising content (phenomena). It doesn't matter how the content is obtained. — Isaac

I think that's about right, at least on how Davidson's using "conceptual scheme". It might also be that a conceptual scheme is implicated in how content is obtained (like the paradigm shift example).

The truth of any scheme can therefore be expressed because it is a matter of language and we've just established that all schemes are translatable. — Isaac

I'm not certain that a conceptual scheme can be true or false, for the purposes of the article, in terms of sentences it's part of their assignment of meaning to sentences (the form the content inhabits) rather than how sentences are true or false given a meaning assignment.

The stuff with T-sentences undermines this wedge between meaning assignment and how sentences are true and false.

I guess I didn't understand why you said this: — frank

Oh, that post was motivated to get the discussion back on what I see as the central issue. The scheme-content distinction. The "red herrings" I highlighted are only of importance because they show up in the thread, and aren't really addressing what I see as the central issue in the paper.

I'm very grateful for any time that you spend with my questions, and I hope that you have a fun time interacting with strangers interested in your work on the internet. At the very least, on behalf of my co-questioners, I do hope you find us not too frustratingly uninformed.

Question synopsis

In an ideal world, what take home messages would you like the general public to have from the Extended Synthesis?

Motivating context

It seems to me that the most common intuitions about evolution and the role genetic inheritance play in it are:

(1) An organism's structure follows entirely from its genetic code in a reductive way. Examples; if you "have the gene for running" you can become Usain Bolt. Conversely, "if you have autism, eventually scientists will understand just how this occurs in the genome and be able to treat it".

(2) Individual centric "strong prey on the weak" bastardisations of selection. Examples; far right ideologies of racial supremacy and justifications for suffering in the third world. Appeal to "survival of the fittest" when looking at company success/failure in markets.

If I have read correctly, The Extended Synthesis is a research programme you have championed in evolutionary theory that seeks to update the central tenets of evolutionary research to be more expansive. In particular, as a research programme it seeks to raise awareness of the important roles non-genetic (as in, not regarding gene sequences) heritability, organismal development and a variety of organic units being subject to selection at once play in understanding evolution.

To my understanding, the Extended Synthesis seeks to highlight the central importance of phenotypic plasticity epigenetic effects , the evolution of evolvability , and multi-level selection to our understanding of evolution.

I hope I am not wrong in saying of the first two (phenotypic plasticity and epigenetic effects) that they are examples of ecological and bodily context sensitivity of the operation of a genetic code; that is, organismal development is context specific and this is relevant to how heredity and selection work. And in the latter as selection acting (differentially) on more types of organic units than is usually envisaged, and on more capacities of organic units (like their capacity for evolutionary adaptation), than just genetic information. That is, how evolution itself works is context specific and need not focus solely on changes in the genetic code as the singular causal locus of evolutionary change. Broadly construed, it seems to me the Expanded Synthesis wants to highlight the context sensitivity of the units of evolution and the role the variation in developmental context plays of those units.

It seems to me that these effects play a role of highlighting the contextual or ecological sensitivity of evolutionary mechanisms; not just the ecological sensitivity (niche stuff) of reproductive fitness as is more well known. Moreover, they make reductive explanations based on bastardisations like in (1) or (2) not just specious, they are almost unthinkable from (what I understand as) the perspective of the Expanded Synthesis. This role the Expanded Synthesis could play in demystifying the public understanding of evolution by highlighting the various ways it is context sensitive is what I would like to ask you about.

Well, firstly, I suppose I should ask if you believe that heightened awareness of the Expanded Synthesis would demystify the public understanding of evolution?

Given that, I would like to ask the same question in three ways. What changes would you like widespread knowledge of the content of the Extended Synthesis to have on the public understanding of evolution? What should we garner from it, and how should it inspire what questions we ask and answer using it? What transformation of the understanding of evolution would you like the Expanded Synthesis to bring among the general public?

Follow up question

To what extent do you think great emphasis on the central dogma in biology research, science journalism and teaching has lead to the reductive understandings of evolution and genetics the general public has?

Look back at Moliere's posts. He did an excellent job of explaining the role of vantage point in Davidson's argument. A person who claims incommensurable conceptual schemes is assuming a vantage point she couldn't possibly have. — frank

That's part of it, yeah. Didn't see @Moliere's equally excellent second one. Were you informing me of Moliere's excellent posts because you wanted to criticise something in my posts or because you thought they were worth a read more generally?

There are a lot of things we can get hung up about here.

One is whether conceptual schemes only cash out in effects on language use. This is a red herring, all that matters for Davidson's argument is whether incommensurable differences in conceptual schemes necessitate irreconcilable differences in language use. Absence of necessary evidence implies evidence of absence.

We could look at different procedures that generate conceptual schemes; maybe they are discursive like in Sapir-Whorf, maybe they are only partially linguistically mediated like in @Isaac and @creativesoul's proposals, maybe the differences in are in pre-conceptual styles of embodiment like in @frank's recent post. Of any such account; we can ask if the differences implied between incommensurable conceptual schemes entail irreconcilable differences in language use; we can re-ask the central framing device of the paper.

Another thing we can get hung up on is the role of the theory-ladened-ness of experience plays in establishing differences in conceptual schemes; people bring different theories to their experiences and act accordingly. Davidson acknowledges the theory-ladened-ness of experience and still attacks the notion of a conceptual scheme. He is writing to an audience of enlightened empiricists who no longer believe in the first two dogmas of empiricism; reductionism (brute facts and rules of composition thereof; anti-theory ladened accounts) and the analytic-synthetic distinction.

The new dualism is the foundation of an empiricism shorn of the untenable dogmas of the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism shorn, that is, of the unworkable idea that we can uniquely allocate empirical content sentence by sentence.

If we're still thinking about how our perceptions are model influenced - theory ladened, then we're actually in agreement with Davidson here! He still wants to rebuke the idea of conceptual schemes while admitting that experience is theory ladened.

Another thing we can get hung up about is the distinction between a conception and a conceptual scheme. Do people have differences in conception of the same phenomena? Yes. Are these differences in conception sometimes very hard to spell out, analyse, or even notice? Yes. In practice, will we be able to come to accord with someone who has a radically different conception every time? No. These are also red herrings, for the purpose of the paper's argument anyway. We need to focus on the modality associated with translation and with being incommensurable in the paper.

The translation procedure conceived of in the paper is not a literal act of translation or explication, it's an abstraction of translation that exists when and only when two conceptual schemes are (at least partially) commensurable. The context of translation is always aligned with what is possible, not what is probable actually. Incommensurability, then, is the absence of this abstract link; when it is impossible in principle to translate some language use from one user of a conceptual scheme to another holding a different scheme.

Even if they inhabit the same world or share in the same forms of life. Even if they use language in similar ways, and are partially understood by each other, an incommensurable kernel may persist. Under these circumstances; shared lives, worlds, languages; what device ensures the distinction between commensurable periphery and incommensurable centre of two schemes with partial overlap?

The scheme-content distinction.

Meanings gave us a way to talk about categories, the organizing structure of language, and so on; but it is possible, as we have seen, to give up meanings and analyticity while retaining the idea of language as embodying a conceptual scheme. Thus in place of the dualism of the analytic-synthetic we get the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content. The new dualism is the foundation of an empiricism shorn of the untenable dogmas of the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism shorn, that is, of the unworkable idea that we can uniquely allocate empirical content sentence by sentence

Shared lives, worlds, languages, experiences are mere content that is apportioned by and partakes in a conceptual scheme. They are in the relation of conditioned data (content) and conditioning fact (scheme).

If we take a sentence like; "The cat is on the mat" -if it was true, would it be true without the conditioning of a conceptual scheme? Davidson would like to say yes!

Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true.

Our experiences don't make the world a certain way; they give us evidence. The world will be as it is irrespective of the contours of our conceptions of it, and we don't need to add anything to a statement in order for it to be true. This is to say, the conditioning operation of a conceptual scheme upon its content adds nothing to the truth or falsity of its associated propositions.

If you had a supplementary theory that tied truth conditions of propositions to their meaning, like Davidson does, this would go a long way in undermining the scheme-content distinction; as the conditioning operation envisaged by the scheme upon the empirical data does absolutely nothing; and an operation that does nothing is irrelevant.

Doubt any thought process that leads you to believe your thinking is globally unreliable. Either that thought process is reliable or it isn't, if it's reliable then there is at least one reliable thought process; if it isn't reliable then the claim that your thought process is globally unreliable is unreliable.

We always have to rely on something to get going in a process of reasoning; but relying on how things are is only one part of our thoughts and actions. Instead I believe that the more interesting properties of thought processes are to what degree they enable discoveries and dispel distortions; to what degree the process of thought is productive.

As a rough rule of thumb, a thought process tends to be productive when:
(1) It is genuinely interested in a subject matter.
(2) It takes care to stay relevant to a subject matter.
(3) It is aware of its own limitations regarding the scope of its consideration of the subject matter.
(3a) global doubt can't be aware in this way, it ranges over all thought, belief and justification as if that
were all there is. It suspends connection with any subject matter while remaining connected with itself; a performative contradiction. Beware of greedy operating principles; framing devices, methodologies; they
have a habit of transforming the subject matter (generating irrelevancies) rather than interacting
with it (generating relevant thoughts).
(4) Its operating principles can be checked to see if they are helpful in dealing with the subject matter.
(4a) global doubt can't check any operating principles, except that it can't check them. It is entirely
unproductive.

The idea would be to see exactly what you were intimating about "beeb" and "boob", whether there were attractors which, once a sufficiently large error triggered a move to, were reluctant to leave. — Isaac

I'd be interested in hashing out an experimental design with you at some point if you'd be interested.

what was the actual thread topic again?). — Isaac

Boring. It was boring.

, but, it's still a word, it's been constrained by the morphological field of language, not by the actual individuals. — Isaac

I've done some free time coding looking at equilibrium distributions of random variables on dynamical random graphs; in these contexts the initial state ("what was said at the start of the game of whispers") don't matter, what matters for the equilibrium state is the action (the whisper mechanism) that iterates the random variables (the words) associated with each node (the people) and the architecture of the connection of the graphs (who speaks to who).

I dunno how this would relate to strings being passed around graphs, as I've just used numbers. I imagine that it's possible to think of the space of strings as a metric space under a string distance metric (like letter mismatch count in a simple case), and the "whisper action" takes an input string (say "poop") and outputs a string "say "boob") with probabilities as a decreasing function of the distance metric.

I have an intuition that strings are "sticky" in the whisper action in a way numbers aren't typically: if an input whisper was "boob" and then the output whisper was "beeb", the back transition is equally as improbable as the forward transition, but still possible, so after an improbable transition (mishearing oo to ee), the whispers are likely to stay closer to "ee" sounds in the middle of the word for a while.

Edit: Could probably say the same thing about "large jumps" in a continuous quantity when the action is sufficiently a "local jump". Dunno how good this intuition really is. I'm imagining that it comes from the state space of strings being discrete? But how sticky it is is ultimately just a question of how "heavy tailed" and "has most of its mass close to 0 distance changes" the transition kernel would be.

I don't know if I'm just over-thinking it, but it seems possible to see these variables as 'hidden states' because none of us directly know what their causes are (we didn't deliberately make them), but they are nonetheless entirely created by the social group trying to infer what they are. — Isaac

We can probably do something like that; say there are two different whisper actions, ways that people pass words around the social network with some error; we could say that two different whisper actions are equivalent on a set (of string space) A with degree p when and only when the union of the attracting sets has A in proportion p.

Like if we imagine two dynamical systems tracing out the letter "o" in space close to each other with some error, so that the overall evolution looks a lot like the number "8" (one "o" above the other"), the bridge in the middle of the 8 would be an A and the proportion p would be the total area of the part of the union of the attracting sets around the bridge between the upper and lower components of "8".

A has a random variable associated with it, I( A ), the indicator function on the union of the phase spaces on the dynamical systems that is 1 when the current point of both is within A and 0 otherwise. This is a "hidden state" being "partially explored" by the "measurement process" of the tracing states, but so would be any random variable associated with the union of the phase spaces.

Interpreting this causally would be difficult. The overall causal structure is embedded in the dynamical system actions; transition probabilities on states; rather than random variables defined as summary characteristics on the states.

nested Markov blankets and how they can be used to create wider network models — Isaac

I guess fundamentally the point of relevance is that humans are not just recipients of hidden states, we are creators of them - active perception both interfaces with present and creates new states.

Obviously we've no free-energy incentive to model anything more than one node outside the Markov blanket, but maybe, like with so many evolutionary traits, we've gone into overclocked mode with our inferences? — Isaac

It might also be that we can create states that are sensitive to hidden states outside of our Markov blanket! So there might not just be "one blanket", and it becomes activity and history dependent. We might be able to engage in actions, like reasoning and concept creation, that let us "peer beyond the veil" of our immediate bodily constraints, and internalise those concepts and practices to learn how to sense and act inferentially in new ways.

If I looked at a graph I'd be able to interpret it in some way, if I showed the graph to someone 10,000 years ago; they'd have no idea.

So we have a distinction between stuff, and language as sorting that stuff by organising it. Conceptual schema would then be the sorting. — Banno

I think this is about right, but I think it misses an elegant bit about the argument. We don't need to know precisely how conceptual schemes work so long as they place necessary constraints on language use. If you can look for the necessary indicators that would be there in language use if conceptual schemes differed wildly, then you don't need to talk about conceptual schemes in general, just about how they should impact language use if they're there at all.

So "language use including interpretation thereof not behaving like there's a scheme-content distinction" is the proposed defeater of "there are wildly varying conceptual schemes that lead to untranslateable sentences between agents that use/have those schemes".

The discussion could be more broad, but it need not be. It's like... propositions and sentences as a minimal worked example.

I'm full of the most awful cold at the moment so that might be to blame for my mental fog, but, if you've time, I think I might need you to lay out (C) in a little more detail for me. — Isaac

Not( Paper => (C) )

out of garbled logic

is

The paper doesn't impact the question:
Are there hidden states which we don't access through the sensorium (through innate bodily capacities) which we access through other (ideational, tool based) means?

We don't have a sense for alpha particles. But we have geiger counters and know about radiation.

I pointed this out because:

(Perception model) to (Inherent constraints on the thinkable/knowable)

is all too common.

wouldn't radiation still have a function with regards to its causal relationship with environmental states? — Isaac

I think the paper is silent on whether the hidden state vector $\gamma$ is a complete specification of a body's causal relationships with its environment. Stuff like radiation existing makes me doubt that it would be; if Friston's model is right, it's always been; we've always been radiation sensitive, but for most of our history we've not known about it, understood it, intuited it, or been able to detect it.

It's not an error because the pattern is there, it just doesn't exhaust the possible number of patterns which no less error value. — Isaac

I do think we agree on most things here. I think we have differences in intuition on the relevance of structure on the hidden causal states; I think we're interpreting "hidden" differently.

If we aggregate perception and sensation as a single construct;, a causal diagram here (ignoring time) works like:

External states -> Perceptual states
Perceptual states -> Promoted Actions
Promoted Actions -> Perceptual states
Perceptual states -> Internal states
Internal states -> Promoted Actions

This is just writing down all the arrows in Box 1 in that paper. You can read X -> Y as "The distribution of Y depends on X when everything else is held constant". If I've read it right, these are all random variables.

We also have:

Hidden states *-> External states
Hidden states *-> Perceptual states

But these are arrows of functional dependency, we have some function f and some function g that encode how hidden states act as environmental stimuli (like how only the "error" is stochastic in usual linear regression, the trend is the deterministic signal the error is the random noise). We could think of f and g as innate (anatomy level) tendencies of our sensorium, and these innate tendencies have limits; we don't see IR light, but we feel its heat. f and g could be deterministic functions of the hidden states.

If we make the external states and perceptual states random variables of the hidden states, we end up with the causal graph:

Hidden states -> External states
Hidden states -> Perceptual states
External states -> Perceptual states
Perceptual states -> Promoted Actions
Promoted Actions -> Perceptual states
Perceptual states -> Internal states
Internal states -> Promoted Actions

In this graph, the vertex set of (internal states, actions) is d-separated (Markov blanket) from the node (hidden states) by the vertex set (external states, perceptual states). But (external states, perceptual states) are not separable even in principle from (hidden states).

What does this entail?

(1) External states and perceptions are causally related to hidden states.
(2) External states and perceptions are partially causally driven by the hidden states (and partially causally driven by our actions, and the error terms in both).

What does this not entail?

(A) Any realisation of a perceptual state is causally driven by a specific, given realisation of a hidden state (phantom limb stuff stops this)
(B) All environmental states relevant to the organism's functioning are arguments of f or g (radiation stops this).

Crucially, it also does not entail:

(C) Any derived phenomenon from this model if it is true (like concepts, thoughts) cannot be partially causally dependent upon some hidden state which is not a function argument of f or g. (radiation here again)

I think we can disagree on the consequences of the paper because we're actually disagreeing about (C) (or something about the relationship of the paper to C)!

If biology is acknowledged as a factor in gender expression, then the existence of transgender people makes so much more sense. — Roxanne Kelly

Broadly "biology" would have something to do with it, probably. Gender nonconformity in children is a thing. It spans cultures and epochs. There are people that don't fit "penis = who I am" or "vagina = who I am" as social archetypes. This isn't surprising, at least it shouldn't be. Questions about what biological factors influence gender nonconformity are useful.

But (and this is a big but), this influence should not be treated as a causally reductive. We're not dealing with something like "the ebola virus causes the ebola disease" or "having no legs makes you unable to walk unaided" or "daddy didn't beat sonny enough so the kid became a sissy", we're dealing with observations of humans as a result of natal hormonal environments interacting with humans interacting with social groups interacting with family units interacting with societal tropes interacting with systems of punishment and praise... It's complex in the sense that it would be a miracle if there was just one thing going on; if there was one type of cause, and that this cause could be called "biology" when we already know it's not just that.

We don't think things like economies are reducible to anatomical characteristics, why should we think that other systems of social relation are? We just don't think like "The reason that the price of tuna just increased is because people have stomachs", and we shouldn't, it's stupid,

What is your opinion on the role of the Hegelian dialectics in this first part where Marx deduces the category of money? — waarala

(The) method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
— Marx