The space between atomic particles has never conveyed information to me in the same way as a cherry pie or a bag of rocks. I've heard rumors and theories about the space between particles but a bag of rocks or a cherry pie is different from a theory or a rumor.

It would be hard to argue empty space is information. — ZzzoneiroCosm

How were humans informed of the Big Bang if not by observing space expanding? The expansion of space (the effect) is information because it was caused by the Big Bang. It is about the Big Bang. It informs us that the Big Bang happened.

Space also informs us that we are separate entities, not one and the same.

The point of falsifiability is to distinguish empirical statements from those that are not. But to then say that ‘only empirical statements are meaningful’ is to endorse positivism, which is another thing altogether. — Wayfarer

The latter sentence doesn't follow from the prior one.

All statements are empirical. Statements are about a particular view from somewhere. We are visual creatures and our language represents that. Statements take empirical forms of ink scribbles on paper and sounds in the air, that represents other empirical forms (like other visuals, sounds, feelings, etc.)

The point of falsifiability is to distinguish between provable from unprovable statements.

Any claim that can't be proven is just as (in)valid as any other claim that can't be proven.

What reasons do you have to choose one unfalsifiable claim over another? None. Evidence would be reasons why you choose to hold one claim over another, but you aren't providing any, so your claim gets ignored.

I would like to add John D. Collier's Information, Causation, and Computation and Causation is the Transfer of Information

And the way that our mainly scientific culture deals with metaphysical questions is to ignore them, bracket them out, or pretend they don't exist. Which is basically what Dennett does, and does so well that he is able to ignore the fact that he's ignoring it. (This is why his first book, Consciousness Explained, was almost immediately dubbed Consciousness Ignored.) — Wayfarer

The reason why the scientific culture ignores metaphysical questions is because their is no way to falsify the answers to the questions, which is a fundamental part of the scientific method.

It's like asking the scientific culture go out of their domain and not do science, by asking them to not ignore metaphysical pondering.

Quantity of information depends on the question
— Isaac

Bizarre! I cannot continue this discussion, because I have no idea what you are referring to. Where is the uncertainty in the content of a text? What is the question and how does it determine the content of a text? Alas, I do not want answers to these questions, I merely lay them before you as tokens of bafflement. I do not think you can reduce my uncertainty. — unenlightened

What are the questions you are attempting to answer in regards to the images with dots? What the dots represent answers a different question than what the space between the dots represents.

When I were a lad, there was none of this internet thing, we used to get all our information from books. The little local library would have a few hundred books, big university libraries thousands. Thing was, the books were nearly all different. There might be more than one copy of the most used books, but the amount of information available was counted by the number of different books. A library with a thousand copies of only one book would not be a repository of much information, in fact it would only have one book's worth. Is this controversial? — unenlightened

Now, imagine that the book is the Bible. Think about how much conflicting information has been interpreted from the Bible. The amount of (potential) information is exacerbated by our ignorance as to the origin of the Bible, and what many of the passages mean, or what the authors intended - the information they intended to convey (the actual information) vs our interpretation of what they intended to convey (potential information).

When some intelligent historian comes along and provides an explanation along with evidence as to the origin of the Bible, then the many bits of potential information collapses into just one - the actual information - that the Bible is simply a rough account of ancient history in the Middle East, and does not contain any religious information, only historical information.

As Issac and I have been trying to convey to you, information is everywhere, and it is your goal of the moment that determines what information is useful in the moment. The library has a lot of different information depending on where you look, and where you look is dependent upon your goal. The number of copies, their condition, how they arrived at the library, how may times each copy has been borrowed, etc. is all information.

Now if you want to focus on the informational content of the book itself, then yes, that library has less information than a library with a larger variety of books, but that also goes along with my assertion that information is causal. The more causation, the more information. The more diversity of books equates to more different types of causal processes that led to different effects (different books caused by different authors writing about different things).

I just don't see how this follows from your explanation of repetition of dots in an image. The books are different entities even though they contain the same symbols that mean the same thing. What are the different dots in the image about that says that they contain the same information? You seem to be confusing how information can be represented with the information itself.

I suppose you are saying that the sun has proved more reliable than me in the past. :sad: Or is there another difference? Every day the sun rises, and the postman delivers. I can imagine a theory or two of physics and psychology/biology that would lead me to have more confidence in the sun than the postman. But as to it not meaning the same thing to say I trust them both, I don't see it. — unenlightened

That's because trust/mistrust comes in degrees. If you don't fully trust, then logically, there is a degree of mistrust. Who, or what, do you fully trust?

To say that loss occurred during compression is agreeing with me that the information was there, but now it is gone after compression. The compressed version is not the same as the uncompressed version. So the original still has information that is removed when compressed. So again, how is it that uncompressed, ordered marks have less information than uncompressed disordered marks?

When compressing information is a lossy format, then you are essentially saying that there is information that exists but isn't useful to keep, hence a compressed version.

This is the same as saying that the information that is removed is irrelevant to the position of the marks in the image.

However, information that looks as useless as this can be useful information that has bee encrypted. I have also mentioned this in passing. — unenlightened

Encrypting information is a kind of processing information. And in processing information, you are adding information, like the algorithm used to encode and then decode the encryption. The encrypted scribbles (the effect) would then be a causal interaction between the original information and the encryption algorithm (the causes). The encryption would be about both, and therefore be more complex than just one of the causes by themselves, and therefore have more information than just one of the causes by themselves.

In other words, the symbols refer to the information of which none of it was lost, because when decoded all the information is there.

In data compression, the actual information does not change, but the internal representation of the information changes.

It therefore rejects the idea that games must have necessary and sufficient features. — Luke

Which is to say that "games" is a meaningless scribble as it doesn't represent or invoke any necessary and sufficient features other than the scribble itself.

You are incapable of thinking your arguments through before posting.

You're simply talking about types (useful vs useless) of information, not quantity of information. Information is only useful for some goal. If you don't possess that goal, then that doesn't mean that the information doesn't exist, only that the information isn't useful for that purpose.

That was a longish post for me. How much information did it convey? My feeling is that repeating myself does not add to the information. But If anyone disagrees, then I refer them to the two wiki pages I linked to earlier, where there is a formal and quantitive argument laid out with references. — unenlightened

It certainly contains more information than this:

sdp m-0w3r] sfd'gmp nAWE(0b7rb[ asid
vp dsfg sd
rgsdfh dfghjt-r9hume5[po6iu
sufyumw4-5t9nme
sdfgh s

What information does the above disordered post contain that isn't possessed by your ordered post?

Methinks Harry’s posts would be considerably better if he really was a Hindu. :grin: (I suppose that is ad hom, but I’ve put with a lot over the years.) — Wayfarer

Methinks that unenlightened posts would be considerably better if he really was logical.

To make it intuitive, to the extent there is order, there is repetition, and whenever there is a repetition, it can be abbreviated to 'and so on'.

Repetition gives the same information twice. Repetition gives the same information twice.

=

Repetition gives the same information twice. *2 — unenlightened

So the ordered image has twice the amount of information of the disordered image?

Why does repetition give the same information only twice? It seems to me that repetition could potentially be infinite.

Information density is the measure of disorder. Information in this example is not the pixels, but the arrangement of the pixels, not the things, but the arrangement of things. — unenlightened

Both images are an arrangement of things.

You still haven't come close to showing how the disordered image has more information than the ordered one. If anything, you have shown the opposite.

Come back when you have the faintest idea what we're talking about. I won't be holding my breath.

Hint: an image is what it is. It has no potential, and the information content cannot change except by the destruction of the image. — unenlightened

Come back when you know how to read.

Destruction of the image is a causal process, so yes that would change the information content.

What the image is is a relationship between its effect of an image and what caused it to be an image. There are many potential causes but only one actual cause.

Why don't you show exactly what is the information that is missing from the ordered image that exists in the disordered image.

Order and disorder are simply different views of the same thing - one view with a causal explanation and one view without.

. A disordered system contains more information than an ordered one.
— unenlightened

Yep. In the below, the second, asymmetric ('disordered') organization of dots contains much more information than the first ('ordered') arrangement of dots. — StreetlightX

Potential information is being confused as actual information here. When the information is predictable then disorder resolves to order, but that is only done once the pattern is explained - the relationship between the pattern and the cause of the pattern. Until it is explained there are many potential causal relationships, therefore it may seem like there is more information, but that is like thinking that you have multiple choices when making a decision, but all of those choices aren't actual outcomes, only one becomes actual.

Some system has more information than another if it has more causes involved with it than another - kind of like how iron has more information than hydrogen because there were more causal processes involved in the creation of iron over hydrogen.

First of all, I think all of this is quite true, so I'm not objecting to the basic principle. But what bothers me a bit, is the introduction of 'information' as a metaphysical simple - as a fundamental constituent, in the sense that atoms were once thought to be. — Wayfarer

So - I'm totally open to the notion that 'information is fundamental', but it seems to me to leave an awful lot of very large, open questions, about what 'information' is or means or where it originates.

So when Dennett says, 'oh yes, I'm a materialist, all that exists is matter and energy - and information' - then is he still a materialist? It seems like a very large dodge to me. — Wayfarer

"Consciousness" and "mind" are also terms that leave an awful lot of very large, open questions, about what "consciousness" and "mind" is or means or where it originates, yet idealists claim it is fundamental.

I don't know what Dennett could mean by "materialist" other than meaning that everything is causal. When we talk about "information" we are talking about causal relationships. Effects are about their causes, hence effects carry information about their causes. In providing explanations, we are providing causes to the effect we are explaining.

Tree rings carry information about the age of the tree, not because some mind came along and observed the tree and projected the meaning into the tree rings. The tree rings arose as a result of how the tree grows throughout the year, independent of minds. It is only based on observations of how the tree grows over time that we learn what kind of information the tree rings carry - or what they are about, or mean.

The mind is just another effect of the world, hence it is about the world and informs of the world. Minds are also causes of effects in the world, hence things like written words means, or informs us of, the user's idea and their intent to communicate them.

One can even find information in the use of words other than what the words mean, like how skilled the user is with the language, where they are from in the case of hearing their spoken accent, etc. So information is wherever one looks, or applies their view to some level of the causal chain.

So information isn't necessarily a "thing", but a relationship between things - cause and effect. In this sense, information is fundamental.

Exactly. Order and disorder would be based on some view (larger scale vs. smaller scale).

It is almost as if you are saying that because there is a lot of distrust in the world, there cannot also be a lot of trust. — unenlightened

Well, yeah. That sounds logical.

If distrust is the absence of trust, then yes, more distrust equals less trust.

So you tell me, Unenlightened: how much trust vs distrust is in the world, and how would you know?

Do you guys not walk down streets or buy stuff in shops? Of course you all do. So at every point you put your trust in others. You are playing at the sophistication of mistrust for rhetorical or egotistic purposes. Stop it now, because this a is rather serious matter that requires some thought and a rigorous honesty. — unenlightened

You're confusing trust with expectation. Trust is analogous to faith. Expectations are strong beliefs in what will, or is suppose to, happen based on prior experience or knowledge.

Is it that we trust our milkman, or have an expectation that he will follow the law, and not poison me? In poisoning me, is he not ruining his reputation with the rest of society? Will anyone want to buy his milk if they know that there is a possibility that it could be poisoned? Because of these factors, I expect the milkman to not poison me.

If there were no laws, and no consequences to the milkman's actions, then I would have faith, or trust, the milkman won't poison me.

I think that Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene provides an excellent explanation as to how complex social relationships, like altruism and cooperation, are established. It explains how many of our cognitive features and skills developed as a means of "tit-for-tat" strategies and finding better ways of cheating and detecting cheating in others and holding them accountable.

With all this "trust" in the world, one wonders how there is so much racism (distrust of others with a different skin color), xenophobia (distrust of others with a different ethnicity or nationality), sexism (distrust of others with different private parts), homophobia (distrust of people with different sexual orientation or gender identification), or at least that is what this "left-leaning" forum has led us to believe.

Just look at the level of distrust between different political parties today.

How much power someone is willing to give up is subjective,
— Harry Hindu

Well no Harry, the whole premise of this thread is that it is not subjective and there is no choice. Every aspect of modern live relies on other people behaving responsibly, as a matter of life and death and this is inescapable. I have already given many examples of everyday life that require trust, because everyday folks have each other's life in their hands giving injections, footing ladders, driving vehicles, building houses. The government merely conducts this orchestra of mutual trust. These are facts, not subjective at all. — unenlightened

The whole premise of this thread is wrong.

How much power someone is willing to give someone else over them is subjective. It is why we have different choices of political affiliations. If there were no choice then why do you berate people for their political choices on this forum?

It seems to me, that if there were no choice (your premise), or that some type of government is the best for everyone is subjective (my premise), then it would be a waste of time discussing politics in the first place, just like it's a waste of time discussing religion. :roll:

If there was trust money wouldn't be involved. It's a contract, and people that trust each other don't need them. — neonspectraltoast

And we wouldn't need a police force or laws if we trusted each other.

All one needs to do is go back and read previous unenlightened threads to see how they don't trust Trump, conservatives, whites, or anyone that disagrees with them.

too much power
— Harry Hindu

How much is too much? My milk provider has the power of life and death over me, because I drink the stuff without testing it. Think bus driver rather than supreme leader. — unenlightened

Exactly. It's subjective. Some people give some of their decision-making power to others because making decisions is hard for them. How much power someone is willing to give up is subjective, so how much power a government should have is subjective and therefore shouldn't be imposed on others who can make most of the decisions for themselves. There is no government that one size fits all. That's the whole point.

This fragmentation is the goal for anarchism, being composed of people who have no trust in government.
— Metaphysician Undercover

Nonsense. I have already outlined the obvious, that trust is destroyed by untruth and deliberate betrayal such as terrorism. Do not buy into the myth of the bomb-carrying anarchist. It is the fascist, the fanatic and the totalitarian who seek to destroy trust. Anarchy depends upon it absolutely. — unenlightened

Then who we distrust is people with too much power over others. Do you trust others to make your life's choices?

Trust is a universal force analogous to gravity.
— unenlightened
Highly speculative but deliciously quotable. — Zophie

A deepity.

We agree that an object has a location at a particular time.

We agree that the location does not change at an instant.

Where we disagree is that there are those amongst us who are happy to ascribe a velocity at a particular time, and those who are not.

What is hard to see is how those who do not ascribe a velocity at a particular time can do any basic mechanics.

It's the 0.9999... = 1 denialists, hard at work again. — Banno

Then 1 does refer to things, like velocity and time. Glad to see that you finally see that I made sense, Banno.

Now, the question is, does speed and time exist as something other than a concept, or as a potential, not an actual, like infinity?

What is an instant? Think about what an instant looks like to you and then what an instant looks like to a cold-blooded lethargic lizard. That cat is moving at a relative speed (velocity) of 15 mph to your eyes, but to the lizard, it's movement was instantaneous.

In talking about velocity, we are talking about the relationship between a certain change in location relative to something else during a certain time. Velocity in miles per hour is how many miles (the relative) something moved during one hour.

Now, if the lethargic lizard could measure velocity, while the velocity of the cat would be instantaneous to the lizard and take time to you, the change in location of the cat relative to the length of a mile will still be proportionally the same. So while our perspectives of time and velocity may be different, the proportional relationships stay the same.

But do you trust Google? — unenlightened

Google is just a search engine that provides links to trustworthy, or untrustworthy information. It's not so much should you trust Google, but should you trust the sites that Google provides as a result of your search? Do you trust your own site-searching skills, and use of keywords, to find the right information you are looking for?

Do you trust Google? Should you? is there any way of checking Google? Is there any way of holding Google to account? — unenlightened

The same can be said of all the philosophers that are constantly quoted on these forums. The way Witt is quoted on this forum, it would seem that he would be the most trustworthy of all philosophers. :chin:

It's really difficult to see, but there is a variation of 0.111... cm. in the size of the apples.

I've never read much of Harry's stuff (on the suspicion that more is less) but, for the second time this weekend, I do applaud him for going against the flow, and I must say I can't understand how people would so miss the point, and would take the above rhetorical question as anything but a defense of mathematical practice against philosophical over-thinking. He was just saying, see how the fact that we can divide one by 3 despite the potentially infinite recurring decimal (Achilles can catch up) means we don't have to (in this case anyway) take infinity as a thing.

Wasn't he? — bongo fury

Thanks for the excellent clarification.

When we use a calculator to divide 1 by 3, we get 0.333...

Try as we might, we can never put the 1 back together again with evenly divided thirds in the calculator, because it would require you to enter an infinite amount of 3's after the decimal, yet we end up giving 's divided apple to just one person, is that person missing any of the apple?

6/3=2

Again, a major problem in philosophical discussions is exhibited. — jgill

Yes, but you seem to be ignoring what I said. If what you and I both said is true, then how do we reconcile our opposing, but true, viewpoints? I was hoping for something like this but while pointing out the problem you failed in trying to solve it.

So basically, if you have 6 apples and three people, then the number of apples divides equally, but try dividing one apple evenly among three people.

Numbers represent potentials, not actuals. Why does dividing things by three, into thirds, create an "infinite" number of threes after the decimal point, as if we can never get to an actual third of something?

I don't know where you get the idea that "true wisdom comes in questioning everything," I don't agree with that either. — Sam26

"The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing." - Socrates

Sure. But that fact that someone can add one to any number does. — Banno

No, that just implies you can add one - a finite value - to any number - another finite value. So where does one get the notion of infinity from when you are starting somewhere in using numbers to count and then simply adding one to where you started.

The notion of infinity comes when contemplating things not just with no ending, but no beginning as well - like a circle or the visual feedback loop that you observe when looking in mirrors positioned in opposite sides of the room.

You keep confusing potential infinity with actual infinity.

So you should only boycott countries that engage in racism...nothing else warrants a boycott. The Chinese can bang people up just for being gay , muslim or pro-democracy, the liberal left is alright with that. — Chester

My point was that China is one of the least diverse countries in the world, and in which citizens have fewer freedoms and CHOICE, like women getting to decide if and when they want to have a child or not, yet the left gives the country a pass over more diverse countries and more CHOICE.

This is just more examples of how politics warps your brain and skews your perspective of the world. Politics is no different than religion.

You should start your own thread on why questions should be considered propositions. The question is settled for me, I'm not going to debate it. — Sam26

If it were settled for you,, you'd be able to answer these questions. True wisdom comes in questioning everything - in never being settled until all posdible questions have been asked and answered. It seems to me that you are just covering your ears and closing your eyes and screaming,"lalalalala, I can't hear you!"

It seems that lately, a lot of threads on this forum are started as a means to proselytize, not to engage people in any meaningful debate or to learn from others. What a shame.

It's simple; The S.African government had an overt, declared racist policy. It wasn't an aberration, it was the way politics was conducted from top to bottom. Such a situation does not apply to China, and that's why people of the left like me, who participated in the boycott of S. Africa, would not participate in a boycott of China — unenlightened

Hypocrisy.
It is kind of difficult to be racist when your whole country consists of one race. But then the final outcome of unfettered racism is that there only be one race in your country.

That's finitism I believe. — frank

Only that our thoughts are finite. We don't know if the universe is.

But then this brings up how our thoughts relate to the world. In thinking about infinity, do we really need to have infinite thoughts? In thinking about some thing, whether it be an apple or infinity, do our thoughts ever exhaust what it is that our thoughts are about? Is it preposterous to assert that in thinking about an apple, you exhaust everything about apples, and the same about infinity? If not, then is it necessary for thoughts to exhaust everything about some property or object to still be about those properties or objects? Even though our thoughts of apples might not exhaust everything that makes an apple an apple, apples still exist, right? So could it be the same case for infinity - that our thoughts about infinity don't necessarily need to infinite to be about infinity. It seems that is what thoughts are - a model of what it is that we are thinking about, and models don't exhaust what it is that is modeled, but still have a (causal) relationship with what is modeled.

Now, if you could offer some examples of "language use" where words and numbers are not used to inform or communicate, and does not equate to just making scribbles and noises, then I would be interested in talking about those cases.
— Harry Hindu

When I'm at home alone, playing a game and losing, I often shout out "for fuck's sake". I'm not informing or communicating with anyone. It's an expression of frustration, much like laughing is an expression of happiness and crying is an expression of sadness. I wouldn't say that any of these expressions point to or are about anything (in the sense of reference). They may indicate something, but that's not quite the same thing – talking fast indicates that I'm in a hurry, but that doesn't mean that my words refer to the fact that I'm in a hurry. — Michael

Right, so in your example, you'd be just making noises with your mouth.

Like I said, any instance where you aren't using words to refer to something, or to inform you of something, then you're just making scribbles or noises, but then making scribbles and noises are themselves about, or can inform someone of something.

If I can determine that you are in a hurry by the way you speak, and not what you said, then if you had said, "I'm in a hurry" wouldn't that have been redundant being that you communicated you being in a hurry by the way you spoke? We often communicate without knowing it using body language. Talking is just another form of body language, of what certain bodily behaviors can be about. With words, we've simply added another layer of aboutness. Not only can I determine that you are speaking, and that you understand English, but your words are themselves about other things - another layer of meaning. I could tune out what you are saying and focus on your lingo and use of the language if that were my goal. Information is everywhere and is causal. The information I can ascertain from some effect (like your typed words) is the relationship that effect has with all the causes that lead up to it (like what you know and your understanding of the language you are using), it just depends on which set of causes we are focusing our attention on at the moment.

So if numbers are an aspect if counting, and one cant count to infinity, then finitism.
— frank

That's a bit too fast, but in being wrong, might be the gist of what is going on. It's worth talking to a child about infinity to see the change in thinking as they realise that for any number they construct, someone can make a bigger one; they say "a squillion billion", you say "a squillion billion plus one". Then the confusion when they begin to realise that "infinity plus one" is still infinity. The game changes before them. — Banno

The fact that someone can add one to some number in no way implies some notion of infinity. If anything, adding one to some number just produces a finite sum, not an infinite sum, hence my mention of Aristotle's actual vs potential infinity. Potential infinity is an idea that can never be realized as actual infinity.

"Infinity plus one" is incoherent. Infinity would already include all the ones, twos, threes, - everything. So by adding one to infinity implies that infinity wasn't infinite in the first place.

We are not talking about meaning, but whether the sentence can be said to be true or false. A question just isn't considered a proposition that asserts that something is or is not the case. — Sam26

It seems like you're taking about the meaning of true and false.

Something that is the case would be considered the truth.

Just because it is considered that a question doesnt assert something is the case doesn't mean that there isnt a case that can't be asserted by someone asking a question. I have shown that it does - that you can still use the question as a premise for determining truth - that the person is ignorant of something.

The point is that the question "Who is the third president of the United States?" is not a true or false statement/proposition. It doesn't make sense to say it's true or false. All you're doing is drawing an inference based on the question. That inference, may be true or false, but you're changing the sentence in order to do that. — Sam26

I'd just be changing the scribbles, not the meaning.

Demands and requests are asserting your intentions. Saying "Please be seated" and "Keep quiet" is just shorthand for, "I would be pleased if you would be seated" and "I want you to keep quiet".

Does "Who is the third president of the United States?" and "I don't know who the third president of the United States is." mean the same thing, just different scribbles?

Keep in mind that statements or propositions are all sentences. However, not all sentences are statements or propositions. Consider the following examples:

1. Who was the third president of the United States?
2. Will you please be seated.
3. Keep quiet!

Each of these are sentences, but none of them assert that something is or is not the case. — Sam26

It seems that we can assert that something is the case in each of these examples:
1. That the person doesn't know who the third president of the United States is.
2. That the person wants us to be seated.
3. That the person wants us to keep quiet.

Perhaps I should clarify: objective form of transmission refers to the general kind of transmission it is, whether written, spoken, signed....stone cairns....whatever. The content of the transmission, whether words, sounds, motions.....whatever, will have its particular form in my faculty of intuition, depending on my experience with them. But yes, in any case, I access that content in whatever the form....kind.... of its transmission, subjectively, as I do with any perception. — Mww

It seems to me, that when communicating, how we observe the rules of the language we are using must not be subjective or else we'd be talking past each other or never understand each other. Your experiences with a particular word beyond how you learned how to use it grammatically, or what it refers to, is irrelevant to the situation, which is talking about some state-of-affairs that is the case for everyone whether they agree with it or not (informing). And that if the state-of-affairs you are talking about is your own pondering without any conviction in the statement, you'd use phrases like, "It seems to me", "I believe", "In my opinion", etc. to inform others that you are referring to your mental state and not some state-of-affairs other than a mental state.

So if we're using the same rules when using these scribbles, then there is no subjective view of the rules. You know when subjectivity comes into play when we stop understanding each other.

This is correct, hence my clarification. The form the transmission takes has to do with what the transmission becomes (phenomenon, in my mind), the form the transmission has, has to do with what kind of object it is (words, sounds, etc., in the world). — Mww

Not only that, but what kind of object is perceiving it, and we are both similar objects, so it stands to reason that there would be similar perceptions of the same object. What the scribbles mean has to do with the rule of the language, and if we both have the same rules, then we are both interpreting the scribbles the same way. I certainly don't claim to know everything about the English language and it is my native language, and I think you would agree the same for you, and that we both may know something that the other doesn't about the English language, so there are bound to be instances where miscommunication occurs.

Don’t neglect time here. Even a strict physicalist must acknowledge a time delay between the stimulus of sensual contact and the operation of the brain in relation to it. Just because there are pre-existent neural pathways for some particular experience doesn’t negate operational necessity. Philosophically as well, each and every object of perception runs exactly the same gamut of theoretical cognitive procedure, whether there is extant knowledge of it or not. The brain, the hardware, is predicated on the laws of Nature; pure reason, the software, is predicated on the laws of logic, each legislative in their own domain. — Mww

I agree with everything up to the last sentence. It is a causal process, and that is how I have explained it, but doesn't that mean that similar causes have similar effects? Our similar backgrounds (we're both human beings with similar sensory organs, developed in the same culture, learned the same language, looking at the same object) should lead to similar outcomes in perception and interpretation or else we wouldn't be able to communicate as successfully as we have so far. I mean look at all the scribbles on this screen. What would you say the success rate is in both of us interpreting them the same way so far?

As far as the last sentence goes, this is a point where I don't understand you're use of scribbles because it seems like a contradiction (misusing the rules of logic, not necessary the language). If the brain is a predicated on the laws of Nature (why the capital N?), then why not pure reason, if that is what the hardware does. If your stomach is predicated on the laws of Nature, then why not what the stomach does - digest food?

I bring this up in order to prevent the assumption that as soon as I see your words I know what you mean by them. In fact, all I know immediately, is that there are words, which in and of themselves, for they are merely objects of perception, tell me absolutely nothing about your intentions in the employment of them. — Mww

Are you sure that you know immediately that they are words? That was something you had to learn, and the fact that you and I both interpret the scribbles as words says something about how similar our cognizing is. Now, that extra step of then interpreting the word means that now that you have interpreted the scribbles as words rather than some random marks, your cognitive faculties go about referencing the rules for the language, which are the same rules I learned. Like I said, there are going to be some differences in our knowledge of the rules, hence there will be some misunderstandings, but those are a rarity in most everyday uses of the language and only seems to be exacerbated when discussing things like religion, politics and philosophy, where logic is often disregarded and word salad is always on the menu.

You’re not cognizing the rules of the language; you’re cognizing the content of language according to rules. This is why theories of knowledge are so complex, because even though all thought is considered to be according to rules, doesn’t mean each instance of it will obtain the same knowledge. It should, but that isn’t the same as it will. Ought is not the same as shall. All thought according to rules can do, is justify its ends, but it cannot attain to absolute truth for them.

The boundaries can be blurred, for sure, but context helps with clarity. They are both qualities, but sometimes what they are qualities of, gets blurry. Subjectivity is pretty cut-and-dried, I think, but objectivity isn’t just about objects. — Mww

If the same knowledge wasn't obtained, the the same rules weren't followed. We would both be following different rules. Like I said, any rules you learned other than what a word refers to is irrelevant to the process of communicating, which is what words are for. If you learned that a particular word, or heard a particular word frequently during a stressful time in your life, you may associate a negative connotation with hearing or seeing that word, but that has nothing to do with what that word refers to. That would be an instance where you are confusing two different sets of rules - what the word means (how your reason interprets it) and how you feel about the word (how your emotions interpret it).


Think about computers. When computers don't use the same protocol in communication, communication fails. The rules, or protocol, matters, and is what syncs the computers. The fact that they are different pieces of hardware is irrelevant to the fact that they are running the same software and using the same protocols.

If it is a pointer, it can be used to point to anything.

Which seems odd. — Banno

Only odd if you were the only being in the universe. You wouldn't be using pointers because there would be no need to point to things if you were the only being in the universe.

The fact that we live with others that have views of the world like we do, but might have false beliefs, or missing views that you have, gives us reason to point to things to inform, to communicate. But we have to agree on the pointers to use and what they point to. Different cultures use different pointers to point to the same thing, which is what we are translating when translating languages - what the pointers are pointing to.

Sometimes we do talk about infinity. When we do this, we are using finite objects - ink marks and sounds.

So...? — Banno

I'm not following this at all. Are you claiming that we do not talk about infinity? OR that such talk is no more than sounds? — Banno

Language can be about stuff. It's just that it can do other things as well. This in contrast with what might be Harry Hindu's view - it's hard to tell - that language is only about... — Banno

I would argue that language being about stuff is language's primary, if not it's only, function - to inform, to communicate. I would also say that our concepts are what language is about and our concepts are either about the world or aren't (objective or subjective), and that sometimes it is difficult to impossible to distinguish between the two.

So, we can talk about infinity like we can talk about God or talk about Queen Elizabeth. When it comes to "infinity" we're not sure whether it's only a concept or a fundamental feature of reality (or potential vs. actual infinity as Aristotle put it) just as we're not exactly sure if "Big Bang" refers to any real event that occurred before the existence of beings to conceive it and use scribbles and sounds to refer to it.

Now, if you could offer some examples of "language use" where words and numbers are not used to inform or communicate, and does not equate to just making scribbles and noises, then I would be interested in talking about those cases.