My strongest interest is in metaphysics. Here are two books that have meant a lot to me.

“An Essay on Metaphysics” by RG Collingwood. You should be able to find this free online.
“The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science” by EA Burtt.

If you’re interested in the philosophy of science, here’s a link to an article that really changed the way I think—“More is Different” by PW Anderson.

https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf

If you hang around here on the forum, you’ll find I also have a strong interest in Taoism. But we won’t go into that here.

So I was wondering, does philosophy and mathematics have anything to say about the possibility, or otherwise, of perpetual economic growth?" — Peter Gray

Welcome to the forum.

There are a lot of issues associated with economic growth. Many of them have been discussed often here on the forum. The one that strikes me as most significant is demographics. The demographers tell us that, although populations will grow over the next 50 years, after that they’ll start shrinking with a maximum population of about 11 billion and then shrinking to about where we are now.

The US birth rate is right about at the replacement level now, and if it weren’t for immigration, our population would not be increasing. Quite a few other first world nations are seeing population reductions already.

The em-dash usually gives it away like the OP of the Cellular Sentience thread. — Forgottenticket

But @Jamal just convinced me to use the em-dash in my posts. Thanks Jamal.

You claim NOMA is "baloney" but don't even try to make your case. — 180 Proof

Come on 180—you and I have both stated our positions on this matter many times before.

I agree with SJ Gould, Wittgenstein, Spinoza et al that 'religion & science' are non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), or in other words ... — 180 Proof

I’m a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould, but I always thought his NOMA formulation was baloney. It’s just a way for an atheist to seem respectful towards something he doesn’t really have much respect for. Based on your posting history here that certainly seems true about you.

“Riding the Rap”— Elmore Leonard. Best crime writer ever. Second best—Tana French.

I used it to denote stereotyping. — Copernicus

Whom am I stereotyping when I say the distinction between male and female is biological, but the distinction between man and woman is social and linguistic.

But, to the point of social realism, whatever the anchors and whatever the grounding, the man or woman is a real man or real woman at the conclusion. — Hanover

Are you commenting to me or @Copernicus? I said that the difference between male and female is a biological one, but that the difference between man and woman is a social and linguistic one. I can’t tell whether you’re agreeing with that or disagreeing. Whichever, you certainly are taking more words to do it than I did.

I don't see why. — Copernicus

Your argument implies the difference between a Norwegian and an American is biological.

If transwomen are women or transmen are men just because of cultural or habitual identity, does carrying a gun or shooting down schools make a Norwegian an American, or does loving KFC chicken make a caucasian man an African American, regardless of ethnicity or nationality? — Copernicus

Worst. Argument. Ever.

And again the conversation about sex is held mostly by men, on men's terms ... — baker

You say “men’s terms,” I say “men’s perspective”. This is a mostly male forum. Expecting anything else is silly.

I guess my question is whether the user’s understanding is genuine, authentic, and owned by them.
— T Clark

Often times it's not. — Pierre-Normand

I’ve been thinking about this. Is what I’ve written here something that an LLM might write—whether or not you think my comment was insightful.

Objectively 'sex' is masturbation by means of another body; beyond that we interpret the process of opening-closing this desiring circuit with any number of fantasies (i.e. projections), especially those which subjectively intensify (someone's) self-pleasuring experience.

Somebody is doing it wrong.

This is my experience also. — Pierre-Normand

I understand from reading your posts you have much more experience with this then I do. Beyond that you use much more sophisticated programs.

The issue whether their own understanding of the (often quite good and informative) ideas that they generate is genuine understanding, authentic, owned by them, etc. ought to remains untouched by this concession. — Pierre-Normand

I guess my question is whether the user’s understanding is genuine, authentic, and owned by them.

That was a friendly interpersonal addition and remark, which should not have distracted from the main point of the post. — Outlander

I guess I misunderstood. I thought that was the main point. I thought it was a summary of your motivation for the comments in the first paragraph.

It only has to be a surprise to you in order to produce insight, it doesn’t have to be a surprise to the llm. Unless you have exceeded the rigor of philosophical understanding embodied by the best minds that the a.i. can tap into, there is no reason it can’t enlighten you. — Joshs

As I understand it, the insight is what you’re supposed to provide in your post. I don’t really care where you get it from, but the insight should be in your own words based on your own understanding and experience and expressed in a defensible way. The documentation you get from the AI response can be used to document what you have to say, but then you’re still responsible for verifying it and understanding it yourself.

What gets really funny, and endearingly so, is when you start talking about creative ideas you have about make some invention or technology, and it starts talking to you in this new-agey surfer dude type of tone. — ProtagoranSocratist

Sounds like you use it a lot more than I do, although I really do like it for a certain limited number of uses. As an example, I needed to find a new provider for my Medicare health insurance. It’s really hard to do that and to make sure that they cover your existing doctors. Neither the doctors nor the insurance companies really keep track of that in any way that’s easy to use. I used ChatGPT and it found the plans I was looking for right away.

No surfer dude though.

The main reason I would discourage its use is that the rapid development of AI, which given the unpredictability of the ways in which AI will evolve, is dangerous, is driven by profit, and is fueled mainly by consumer use. — Janus

That may be a good reason for you not to use AI, but it’s not a good reason to ban it from the forum.

Let's say I'm doing a "solo non-assist run" as far as the life I live goes. :grin: — Outlander

Which is outside the scope of this discussion.

Yet what has stayed consistent is a reference to sex and age. What we consider the age range for an adult has changed, but not that we ever considered a man as 'a female'. — Philosophim

I wasn’t addressing the question of whether a trans man should be considered a man or a trans woman should be considered a woman. My comment only addressed the fact that the answers to the question are not primarily biological, but are rather social and linguistic.

What is this question doing on a philosophy platform? It warrants a biological truth, not argumentative conclusions. — Copernicus

Because those questions have subjective answers and argumentative grounds. Biological issues are subject to experimental and empirical truths. — Copernicus

This is clearly incorrect. The difference between male and female is a biological issue. The difference between man and woman is a social and linguistic one. This is evidenced by the fact that the definitions of man and woman have changed over the years. When I was young, you had to be 21 years old to be considered a man or a woman. That has been redefined so that 18-year-olds are now seen as such.

Ah, but the thing i find unsettling is that A.I. is also dishonest, it tries to appease you. However, yes, sometimes it is better than the weirdness of real humans. — ProtagoranSocratist

But it always says such nice things about my ideas.

Yes. Insight results from thinking, which AI is incapable of doing. Noam Chomsky called the LLM's glorified plagiarism. I agree. — creativesoul

I don’t disagree, but I still think it can be helpful personally in getting my thoughts together.

I will have faith that a philosophy board will let people do philosophy. — Philosophim

That’s not always the case here, but so far I guess nobody’s complained.

So are transwomen women? Are transwomen men? No. The terms man and woman indicate a person's age and sex, not gender. Are transwomen men who act with a female gender? Yes. Are transmen women who act with a male gender? Yes. — Philosophim

Whether or not, I agree with your answer, in the past similar types of conclusions have led to threats of banning. I don’t think this question can be honestly discussed here on the forum.

The key to an intellectually productive and even enlightening experience with the a.i. is that at each step of my questioning, I am familiar enough with the material to sculpt and refine the directions it will take next. I am its guide through the brightest minds in the field. Or can’t get there without me, and it would take me a lot longer to get there without it. — Joshs

I’ve already stated I find AI to be useful in investigating specific philosophical questions. When I’ve used it for that, I’ve handled it similarly to how you describe. I ask iterative questions and guide it to get me closer to what I’m looking for. That being said, a listing or summary of a bunch of smart guys’ ideas is not the same as insight. That requires a connection between things that are not normally thought of as connected. Something unexpected, surprising. The truth is always a surprise.

LLMs now routinely write clear and flowing prose. — Jamal

For me, it’s not a question of clear and flowing, it’s a question of insightful. My experience with using AI myself is that it produces lots of surface without much depth. Lots of rounded corners with nothing that will cut.

Banning A.I. is banning background research that will become built into the way we engage with each other. — Joshs

I disagree with this. I was toying around with a bunch of disparate ideas that seemed related to me. I used chat GPT to help me figure out what they had in common. That seems like a legitimate use to me. I use a thesaurus when I can’t think of the right word for a particular idea. I use quotes when I want to add legitimacy or clarity. AI feels like the same kind of tool.

I think, given the dangers of AI, and the ways in which prominent members of this site have used it to make themselves look smarter than they really are, that its use should be banned altogether on this site. — Janus

I guess I’m naïve or maybe just not very perceptive, but I haven’t recognized any posts definitely written by AI. There have always been enough overblown and oratorical but poorly thought out OPs and posts here on the forum even without AI that I don’t know how easy it is to tell. Perhaps it would be helpful if people called them out when you see them.

And AI agrees. :razz: — apokrisis

A little snotty irony is always appreciated

I was drawn to this topic by conversations with so-called preachers (not necessarily Christian ones, but any kind). They say, "You must do this, because I'm a wise man and have learned the truth." When you ask, "What if I do this and it doesn't work?" Silence ensues, or something like, "That means you didn't do what I told you to do/you didn't believe/you weren't chosen." — Astorre

As I said, I am not familiar with preachers or preaching of any sort beyond what I’ve seen in church when I was a kid. I guess all I would say is that it doesn’t have to be the way you described, even if it often is. That’s certainly not the way Lao Tzu, purportedly one of the founders of Taoism, did it in the Tao Te Ching.

I think the topic is at least thought-provoking. — Astorre

I agree.

Consciousness is a passive byproduct, a kind of “ride-along” to the real causal story that takes place in the material world.

Once we grant this setup, we immediately encounter the problem of psychophysical harmony. Why is it that our conscious experiences are so perfectly aligned with our physical and behavioral states? Why does seeing a red apple correspond to the experience of redness rather than the feeling of pain or a random hallucination? Within epiphenomenalism, there is no causal reason for this mapping to be so orderly. The physical world could just as easily have produced any pattern of conscious experiences, or none at all. The fact that our inner experiences match the external world so precisely seems like an extraordinary coincidence if consciousness has no causal role. — tom111

I don’t think there’s any doubt that our consciousness has an active role to play. This is from “Feeling and Knowing” by Antonio Damasio.

…consciousness is an enriched state of mind. The enrichment consists in inserting additional elements of mind within the ongoing mind process. These additional mind elements are largely cut from the same cloth as the rest of the mind—they are imagetic—but thanks to their contents they announce firmly that all the mental contents to which I currently have access belong to me, are my thing, are actually unfolding within my organism. The addition is revelatory. Revealing mental ownership is first and foremost accomplished by feeling. When I experience the mental event we call pain, I can actually localize it to some part of my body. In reality, the feeling occurs in both my mind and my body, and for a good reason. I own both, they are located within the same physiological space, and they can interact with each other. The manifest ownership of mental contents by the integrated organism where they arise is the distinctive trait of a conscious mind.

Faith is neither knowledge nor conviction. It is a leap into the void, without guarantees. Faith is risk, trepidation, and loneliness. Оtherwise there would be no sacramental act, but simply conviction. Faith is not knowledge, for if a person simply knows, they have no doubt. Faith is, on the one hand, imperfect certainty, on the other, intention, and, on the third, a constant feeling of uncertainty. Any attempt to convey the content of the concept of "Faith," in my opinion, seems speculative, because it is a feeling that becomes a judgment when expressed in words . — Astorre

I’ve been thinking about faith recently. It certainly isn’t something that gets a lot of respect here on the forum. The forum is full of people who consider themselves rational and that consideration leads them to atheism. They tend to be condescending and contemptuous of people who profess faith. As I’ve come to see it, this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what “faith” means.

Those who have read my posts here on the forum know I have a strong interest in Taoism. I think faith is similar to what Taoists call “Te,” which is sometimes translated as “intrinsic virtuosity” and which I sometimes think of as our true natures, our hearts. This is a quote from Ziporyn’s translation of the Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi). I’ve used it many times here on the forum.

What I call good is not humankindness and responsible conduct, but just being good at what is done by your own intrinsic virtuosities. Goodness, as I understand it, certainly does not mean humankindness and responsible conduct! It is just fully allowing the uncontrived condition of the inborn nature and allotment of life to play itself out. What I call sharp hearing is not hearkening to others, but rather hearkening to oneself, nothing more.

The preacher supposedly doesn't teach, but testifies. He doesn't impose; he simply shares his experience. This is personal testimony, not preaching in the traditional sense.

But then: The testimony itself is already public and therefore becomes an example, an instruction, a guide. — Astorre

I don’t know much about preaching or how preachers see their vocation, but this description doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t think saying “Here’s what I’ve experienced. You can pay attention and see what you find, experience, inside yourself” is necessarily an instruction. Someone may show you a path, but you have to walk it yourself.

Sex isn't "bad" but it is always violent.

Silly. I’ve made love at least [deleted] times and this doesn’t match my experience—or my partner’s. Perhaps someone couldn’t get a date to the prom.

Fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and other maths of complexity do a good job of modelling physical processes over all scales. A vortice is a vortice from the level of a Bose-Einstein condensate to a black hole accretion disk. — apokrisis

That’s why I said “usually.” As I understand it, engineering mechanics is the science of phenomena that can be constructed using the principles of lower levels of organization.

If you want to discuss pre-biological "evolution," you're not going to be looking at how biological systems moved from bacteria to complex beings, but how chemicals interacted over time to change into biology, but that's not what we call "evolution" and it creates a host of issues that cannot be answered through looking at the fossil record. — Hanover

Book suggestion—“What is Life— How Chemistry Becomes Biology” by Pross. It doesn’t contradict what you’ve written, but provides more detail and explanation.

But the truths of mathematics seem a little more robust than ordinary truths. 2+2=4 is true in all possible worlds, but "all ravens are black" might or might not be true. If mathematics was on par with ordinary propositional sentences, why would there be different categories of truth? — RogueAI

Yes, many disagree that mathematics is a language. That doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t emerge out of physics. It is my understanding that it emerges, if that’s the right word, out of counting.

My problem with the concept of emergence is that it does not seem to be an explanatory concept that provides us with a mechanism for moving from one level of reality to another without presupposing the already established levels of reality. And if it has no explanatory power (reconstruction rule), then I do not understand why anyone would choose physicalism as a general ontology of the world. — JuanZu

The idea of emergence is descriptive. It tells us that each level of scale or organization has its own scientific principles and phenomena. Usually you cannot use the principles of one level of organization to predict—construct—phenomena at another level. That’s all it is. That’s all it does. It’s not magical. I don’t know what that says about physicalism.

For example, how do we explain Pythagoras' theorem with the concepts of physics? Emergence should explain how we move from talking about mass, particles, velocity, momentum, etc., to talking about numbers without presupposing knowledge of numbers as sui generis entities. — JuanZu

I don’t think anyone claims mathematics of any sort emerges from physics. Mathematics is a language that describes the world. That’s it.

It does... In terms of deontological individualism. — Copernicus

It doesn’t seem that way to me, but since neither of your options match my understanding of morality, no need for us to take it any further.

It is not about practical reasoning. If you were given a choice, a hypothetical scenario, or should I say, imperative, what is your preferable choice? — Copernicus

All other things being equal, sure, I would pick the action that lead to the least number of deaths. I don’t think that has anything general to say about the two moral options.