Using memes as a metaphor — Brett

Isn't a meme a culturally transmitted disease? If you are looking for the origin of memes, you need look no further than PR. They are the great purveyors of memes.

↪Brett I know it's not what your focus is but this post made me think immediately of mobile phones. I see them as a kind of drug phenomenon, passed off as a tool. Now these two categories are nto mutually exclusive. — Coben

Anything not necessary for survival can be considered a drug.

I don’t accept that for a minute. I know it makes sense if you believe that caring for someone, or loving them, is driven by some sort of desire. But I don’t. — Brett

Without fear/desire you would not get out of bed in the morning.

In Wall-E, the people become fat lazy nothings - just as you seem to fear; but in Star Trek they use their new found freedom to explore the stars (and, yes, get into a bunch of new wars). — ZhouBoTong

Wall-E is fiction and Startrek illusion. We are pretty much stuck on this ball of clay with 7 billion and rising and we'll have to deal with that. Elon Musk and any idiot that wants to can dream of colonizing Mars to face a life of misery, they have my blessing.
We will destroy civilization as we know it but the few survivors will build a nightmarish utopia filled with nihilism.

That's true, if one holds that truth and usefulness count as properties then the terms "truth" and "usefulness" are used as a means to denote different properties.
— creativesoul — Bartricks

Yes 'usefulness' is a property of truth.If the 'truth' does not contain 'usefulness'(i.e information) it can not be considered 'truth'.
Usefulness is a property of information.

Unless a statement contains information, it is totally meaningless and does not contain truth.
Truth without information has no value and therefor can not be truth.
Truth without information is not truth.

Clarifying what Buddhists believe, for instance, does not serve to justify those beliefs. — Bartricks

And a clarification [can] serve the same purpose as a justification.
You can clarify what you believe in and what you disbelieve. You can use clarification as a justification for your beliefs.
I have no idea why I am getting a line through my text.

A belief that may be false can be known to be false.
— Bartricks

Not all belief can be falsified. So, not all belief that may be false can be known to be. — creativesoul

Bartricks has problems with the English language. I suggest he take up knitting as a hobby.

as the signals that they process are not being interpreted by a conscious agent. — Wayfarer

For something to be able to react to a signal it must by definition be 'conscious' of it. The general public has a extreme exclusive concept of consciousness.
An eye that can see is conscious of light.

A photo-receptor cell is 'conscious' of light. A cochlear hair cells is 'conscious' of sound...etc
— ovdtogt
This is the mereological fallacy- — Wayfarer

It is a fallacy to believe only the (human) brain is conscious.

Which is better parallel then for the biological system producing actual qualia out of the electro-chemical sensory signals? — Zelebg

Why argue so convoluted. Our sensory organs transmit the signal by means of a biochemical electrical charge and our brains are able to interpret that signal in such a fashion that it provides us with knowledge about our environment. Don't have to make it more complicated than that.

we have no means to understand them, except..... — Mww

Do you always contradict yourself in the same sentence?

Positions are ten a penny. And clarifying a position is not the same as justifying it. — Bartricks

If you don't have a opinion on a subject how are you to philosophize about it? And a clarification serves the same purpose as a justification.

I might have knowledge yet lack a justification — Bartricks

Tell me one belief that you hold that you do not have a justification for.

Why is TV not conscious of the light on its screen? — Zelebg

The TV does not register light. The TV does not react to light.

we have absolutely no way to understand what we’re seeing about them, except by means of our own rational system. — Mww

You believe we are so different to chimps that we have absolutely no way to understand them? Well lets stop all animal research then. What a waste of time and money. Completely incomprehensible creatures.

except by means of our own rational system.
— Mww

Isn't that how we understand everything? Or do you know of another 'means of understanding'?

sometimes we can have knowledge without a justification[/quote]

So are you going to retract that statement?

Just pronouncements. — Bartricks

Yes I just make pronouncements. And if people disagree I engage with them and try to clarify my position to the best of my ability.

which is integration of the signal into something we can perhaps call qualia — Zelebg

You can call it anything you like. I call as I see it. The camera is conscious of light, the TV is conscious of the signal it receives from the camera. As simple as that.

You are talking about passively received signal/light in both cases. In that sense a stone is also conscious of light, is that what you wish to claim? — Zelebg

A stone might be conscious of light. I think it is most certainly conscious of heat, as it will expand in the heat. And it is most certainly conscious of gravity. Yes I like to view consciousness in it's broadest sense. Keeps things simple. I like simple. I am a simple person.

Just because you believe they are not justified to hold a certain belief does not mean they hold unjustified beliefs. What a solipsistic creature you are.

Yeah, I will. Just as soon as it is apparent to me, that the mental explanatory gap in an animal with 2B neural connections per mm3*, 16B in the most paradigmatically distinguishing section**, can be bridged by animals with 7B in his entire brain.
*Penrose, 1998
**Herculano-Houzel, 2009 — Mww

Yes, slicing open a chimps brain and looking at it through a microscope is so much more informative than animal studies. That is the best way to figure out how a chimp 'thinks'.

Now back to the topic of this thread: what is truth? I have provided an analysis and all you've done is pronounce. Stop pronouncing and try arguing something — Bartricks

I have given it in a nutshell. Go back and read it (if you can).

And it does not at all follow that if one believes something, one has a justification for believing it. Unjustified beliefs exist (most of yours are of this kind, for instance). — Bartricks

No-one holds a belief they would not justify to you, if you asked them to. They might not (yet) have formulated their justification but they do believe they have a justification for that belief.

So you put a camera and a tv to face each other. Tv produces light, camera receives it. Why would you say camera is “conscious” of that light rather than tv? — Zelebg

The TV is conscious of the signal it receives from the camera.
The camera is conscious of the light it receives from the TV.

You've said that beliefs that are false cannot be known to be false. — Bartricks

Dyslexia is a problem many people suffer from. Nothing to be ashamed of.

↪ovdtogt We've established already that everything you say is false or nonsense. — Bartricks

Oh dear, we are getting prickly aren't we? Isn't past your bedtime?

but can not been known to be false", but "but can not have been known to be false". — Bartricks

Okay. I think in that case. 'Can not be known to be false' would have sounded better.

sometimes we can have knowledge without a justification — Bartricks

I use 'justified' to mean 'has a normative reason to believe' — Bartricks

That means you do have to have a justification for your knowledge. Knowledge without justification does not exist. If you believe something, you will have a justification for it.

There is nothing wrong with my grammar. You might be a little dyslexic.

A belief that may be false can be known to be false. — Bartricks

Wrong. A belief that may be false, may be known to be false.

I never stated a belief can not known to be false.
— ovdtogt

yes you have:

A belief may be false, but can not been known to be false
— ovdtogt — Bartricks

You should learn to read and see that those 2 sentences have a completely different meaning.

A photo-receptor cell is 'conscious' of light. A cochlear hair cells is 'conscious' of sound...etc
— ovdtogt

What wayfarer said, plus.....(shudder) ......anthropomorphism: attributing congruence between being conscious of and being merely reactive to. — Mww

If you believe only the (human) brain can be conscious, you are applying anthropomorphism.

And if everything in Nature uses math, and if the math everything in Nature uses isn’t the same as the math we use — Mww

Maybe, maybe, maybe. So far a lot of nature seems to be running pretty nicely according 'our' math.

Science relies on the assumption that we live in an ordered Universe that is subject to precise mathematical laws. Thus the laws of physics, the most fundamental of the sciences, are all expressed as mathematical equations.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13318134-400-is-nature-mathematical/#ixzz67HS2nzv4

Hmmmm....yeah. If it can’t be proven the one was pissed because he understood “3 more than me” as opposed to just recognizing “that sorry sack of elephant droppings has got my damn peanuts”.....then it cannot be said he was doing math. Even if we grant monkeys the capacity to recognize relative quantities, which isn’t that far-fetched, we haven’t explained that his anger is because of it. Maybe he’s just selfish. Or worried what his ol’ lady will say if he don’t bring home the......er.....peanuts. — Mww

Yeah, Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe you should just read up on studies into animal psychology.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/04/monkeys-can-do-math

Being reactive to is a form of consciousness.

What is truth?
What is useful is tru(th).
What is tru(th) is useful.

There you go. In a nutshell.

Holes can't be true
Digging can't be true
Sorry you'll have to explain that to me. — ovdtogt

No I mean what makes you think I am interested in holes and digging. If you want to dig a hole for yourself be my guest. You don't have to explain that to me.

A false belief can certainly be known to be false. A lot of people believe things that we can know to be false. — Bartricks

I never stated a belief can not known to be false.

Only a belief that is not known to be false (at the time) can be useful. — ovdtogt

A belief must be useful to considered true.
A belief is considered true because it is useful.

— Bartricks

‘Survival is unnecessary’ - is this statement true or false according to Reason? — Possibility

Survival is necessary to reason.

Holes can't be true. But they can be useful. . But it can be useful. — Bartricks

Holes can't be true
Digging can't be true
Sorry you'll have to explain that to me.

Now, if a belief can be useful yet not true, then we know - or those of us who have powers of reason can know - that truth and usefulness denote different properties. Which is something we already knew, because it is directly self-evident. Deal. — Bartricks

"a belief can be useful yet not true"
A belief may be false, but can not been known to be false. Only a belief not known to be false can be useful. A belief has to be considered true to be useful. So truth and usefulness do not denote different properties.

Sometimes it is useful to dig a hole and fill it in again (for instance, let's say a crazy rich person pays people to do it - well, now there's some use in me doing it). Presumably by your lights that makes the hole, er, true? — Bartricks

Clever. Did you think that one up all by yourself?