me the first one seems like barely suppressed or symbolic violence and is striking but not beautiful, especially linked with Rossini's music, so well associated for some of us with the urban violence in A Clockwork Orange. And clowns are creepy. — Tom Storm

It surprised me that you said violence, that never crossed my mind. Now that you say it, it makes sense. For me it was just joyful. I find myself moved by big public works of art. Things that get in the way and change the way people think about their everyday world and lives. I've always loved Christo's stuff. For me, that's art that doesn't need an expert to explain it. I can feel it in my bones. Apparently people in the locations where the commercials were filmed really enjoyed the process.

A couple of wonderful, beutiful adds. I think they're from the early 2000s. Neither is made with computer generated images.

Two biographies:

The eclipse of Yukio Mishima, Shintaro Ishihara

The last words of Yukio Mishima, Takashi Furubayashi. — javi2541997

[joke]I've decided you won't be allowed to read any more Japanese authors, especially Mishima. I think they have a bad influence on you.[/joke]

I take it for granted that Christians are vicious, vacuous, shells of human beings who actively ruin everything around them when they are not busy raping children or defending those who do. — Streetlight

Funny. I think what Streetlight, whom I still mourn, said is more defensible than what Hanover did. It's true. The Catholic Church, including leaders at high levels, allowed the sexual exploitation of thousands of vulnerable children, then helped their rapists, who also included high church leaders, avoid facing the consequences of their actions. I can't imagine a more horrible betrayal.

I wouldn't have said it the way Streetlight did, but his anger and disgust were justified.

Also, ask her to describe a route, say out of the house to the nearest post box?

And what happens if she were to draw (the post box, say) from memory? — bongo fury

I don't talk to her often. Next time I do I'll ask.

"Creepy"? — 180 Proof

Ok, ok. Just let us know what you think once you've finished.

I don't agree. — Baden

I'm not surprised. The forum and it's leaders allow, promote, disrespect for religion and religious belief in a way that would never be allowed for any other group. The forum means a lot to me, but I think this attitude, policy, is shameful.

I love Clarky — Noble Dust

Aw, shucks.

Except I'm not. — Hanover

Explaining why you feel entitled to express bigoted beliefs is not the same as not expressing them.

You and I are not getting anywhere and won't. I'm going to leave it at that.

Check out her wiki — 180 Proof

I took a look. Sounds pretty creepy. Set me straight if I'm wrong.

There are always radicals, but my concern is official group doctrine. It does seem the Sunnis may separate themselves from the Shia here, leaving their problem not a moral one, but a PR one in that the distinction in position is not known by many. — Hanover

I've changed my mind. I think you are engaging in religious bigotry. Also hypocrisy. If you were talking about black people, women, or gay people, I don't think your abusive diatribe would be allowed on the forum. I don't think you would allow a discussion like that on the forum yourself.

Regardless, the 1/6 events were not carried out in the name of religion, but were the result of a political ideology. I do condemn those in the Republican party who have either supported those acts or claimed them part of their ideology. — Hanover

You added this to your post after I had already responded.

As you say, for most people the events were not performed for religious reasons, but some white nationalists I have read about participated with explicitly religious motivation.

Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "mental Image"? I can visualize quite complex structures and maps, but it is not like staring at an actual static picture or map or an actual object. How is it for you? — Janus

I definitely have a "mind's eye," i.e. I can see visual images unrelated to any current external stimuli. I have visual memories, imagination, insights, concepts... A few times I've had a wonderful experience. Suddenly I'll get a flash of a visual image, e.g. one time I was feeling deeply at peace when from nowhere I got an image of a horse pulling a plow. In five minutes I wrote a poem describing the horse's experience that perfectly expressed how I was feeling. As they say, the poem wrote itself. It's one of my favorite things I've ever written. I have no idea where the horse came from. I don't hang around with horses. I had no recent experience with horses. I'm not a farmer. Magic.

But no, like you, I don't see detailed images. I generally can't pick out details.

No, you just try to divert with by chastising me for covert bigotry, but at best you've presented a Tu quoque ( — Hanover

It was not my intention to imply your post is bigoted any more than yours implied that Islam is a violent religion. I was implying that your example is misguided. Yours is generally a voice for moderation but I think you were immoderate here.

Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, — 180 Proof

Sounded interesting, so I looked it up on Amazon. Here's from the spiel there:

The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories.

That certainly is...provocative. Any thoughts so far?

Was the attack on Salman Rushdie consistent with mainstream Muslim theology? — Hanover

Was participation by white Christian nationalists in the events on January 6 in Washington DC consistent with mainstream Christian theology?

As is common in situations like this, the question asked is more telling than the answer.

That paper reads like something out of the 1970s. It is the opposite of a biologically realistic or embodied approach — apokrisis

Alas. I'll keep trying. Thanks.

@apokrisis

As you suggested, I am reading "The User Illusion." I'll let you know what I think. In the interim, I've just finished reading "A Standard Model of the Mind: Toward a Common Computational Framework Across Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Robotics," included in AI Magazine from 2017. Are you familiar with it? Here's a link:

https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/2744

The article covers cognition in a way that seems consistent with the way you have been describing it. It is clear, well-written, and interesting. I had never thought about thinking in that way before. I don't want to get into any kind of in-depth discussion now since I don't understand it well enough, but I think I understand the overall approach reasonably well. I have some preliminary thoughts:

I think calling it a "standard model" with a specific reference to the standard model in physics is a mistake. Not because it is necessarily inaccurate, but because it is presumptuous. It seems to somehow claim that cognitive science is established at the same level as particle physics. I think that will undermine the credibility of the approach to people outside the field. I recognize that is not a substantive criticism.

The model presented in the article is in no way set up as an alternative to or in contradiction with any other way of looking at mind. It was just a straightforward presentation. That increased it's credibility for me.

The kind of approach described in the article seems to me to be at a different hierarchical level of organization that that described by Pinker. It focuses on processing rather than human behavior. That's not a criticism. I had never considered the structure of how exactly brain activity becomes the mind. It was eye-opening. Because the approach was at a different level than that described in Pinker, I don't see any obvious contradiction, although the article did say:

...the programs and data are ultimately intended to be acquired automatically from experience — that is, learned — rather than programmed, aside from possibly a limited set of innate programs. Cognitive architectures thus induce languages, just as do computer architectures, but they are languages geared toward yielding learnable intelligent behavior, in the form of knowledge and skills.

And:

In simple terms, the hypothesis is that intelligent behavior arises from a combination of an implementation of a cognitive architecture plus knowledge and skills. Processing at the higher levels then amounts to sequences of these interactions over time. Even complex cognitive capabilities — such as natural language processing... and planning — are hypothesized to be constructed in such a fashion, rather than existing as distinct modules at higher levels.

Beyond that, the article had very little to say about language.

Anyway, really interesting. As I said, I don't think it will be fruitful to go into a lot more detail. I have more reading to do. I would like to know if this article does match the approach you have been presenting.

How is the symbolic different to what I used?

Kp ∧ ◇¬p — Michael

Sorry. I'm not very good with logical symbols. I guess I misunderstood. We can leave it at that.

I'm not saying that it's a contradiction? I'm just explaining that p → □p is not a valid inference. — Michael

Agreed. Here is where I get confused:

The implication of this is that if p is not necessarily true then I can know that p is true even if it is possible that p is not true. — Michael

I assume we are operating under Justified True Belief rules. Given that, I don't think your statement is true. A true statement would be "p is true, even though it could have been otherwise."

The implication of this is that if p is not necessarily true then I can know that p is true even if it is possible that p is not true. — Michael

I'm a bit lost, which is not unusual when we get into more formal logic. I can see two possible meanings for "it ain't necessarily so," 1) it is not logically required that it must be true and 2) there is some doubt about whether it is true. I would have thought that 1 is the proper meaning. If so, then there is not contradiction between "it is true" and "it is not necessarily true."

I don't know if you are aware, but there is a thread on the front page - "Currently Reading." If you post book recommendations there, more people will see them. Here's a link:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/22/currently-reading

Thinking (happens), therefore thinking exists. — 180 Proof

At most, IME, Descartes only "proved" cogitatio fit, ergo cogitatio est, not that "I exist". — 180 Proof

I think, therefore my thought exists (Is that right?)
If my thought exists, I exist
Cogito ergo sum

Cogito ergo sum
If a person with Cotard's syndrome doubts she exists, she thinks
Therefore, if I think I don't exist, I exist.

I'm not sure anyone can do better than "I think therefore I am." I'll take a shot at something more in line with my way of thinking. This is Stephen Mitchell's translation of Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

It strikes me that what Descartes wrote in 1640 has a lot in common with what Lao Tzu wrote 2,000 years earlier.

I must say though, I was able to get through it much more easily this (second) time round only because I was reading on an iPad, so I could look things up. Even a regular dictionary isn’t sufficient, because the lexicon makes use of many archaic words, so it was essential to have easy access to the web. — Jamal

I love paper books, but now I find myself tapping on words I want to know the definitions of or get more information on. Turns out that doesn't work. So I mostly stick to my Kindle. It has changed the depth of my reading experience. Sometimes I'll look up a word or place and then go off on a tangent for 15 minutes, looking at maps and photos, following a Wikipedia trail off into the sunset. Love it.

My states of mind, my thoughts and sensations, are phosphorescently present for me, infinitely intimate. I can no more be wrong about what I mean by a word or how I see a patch of color than 2 + 2 can equal 5. And so on. — Pie

I hope this is relevant.

I once started a thread called "You don't need to read philosophy to be a philosopher." Turns out I was at least partly wrong. You may not need to read books, but you at least need to watch videos.

Philosopher Fredrick Copleston was interviewed by Brian Magee on Schopenhauer's philosophy. He said that Schopenhauer carried on Kant's examination of the unknowable thing-in-itself, nomena. Schopenhauer wrote that there is no way we can directly experience noumena. He qualified that somewhat by saying that the only place we can approach such an experience, though partially and imperfectly, is through our personal experience of ourselves - each of our "phosphorescently present," "infinitely intimate" personal experience of ourselves.

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A preacher once said that gays are mentally ill and God will punish them forever in hell. — Art48

Perhaps some preacher somewhere said that, but I doubt it is the position of any conservative church. For them, I think homosexuality is a sin, not a mental disease.

It amazed me when I read she didn’t realize herself until she was in her sixties! — javi2541997

I guess if you've never had it, you never know you don't. I'll ask her.

This is simply the way that ‘rational’ has been used when it comes to framing the debate between innatism and behaviorism. — Joshs

Yes then, Pinker is a "rationalist" in the sense you are describing. He believes "knowledge is part innate and part experience." You don't believe that? You don't believe that there are innate mechanisms that make acquisition of language possible? Doesn't the fact that there is only a limited time in childhood during which people can learn language, indicate there is probably an innate mechanism for learning it?

What is the source of the quote you provided?

Does she see mental images of the things in front of her? — bongo fury

Yes, she sees fine, but her memory and imagination do not include visual images.

Yes, I live in the heart of Mordor so I know it's all true. — Jamal

I think our late friend Streetlight would disagree with you about where that is located.

It understands the language of pictures, in which black pictures refer to unlit events and colourful ones to lit events. Whereas a zombie, however it deals with what it sees, is like the Chinese room in failing to appreciate the reference of symbols (here pictorial) to actual things. — bongo fury

This is a bit of a non-sequitur, so feel free not to respond.

I have a friend who has no minds eye. She does not see visual mental images. She didn't even realize this herself until she was in her 60s. Next time I talk to her, I ask about what that experience is like.

I find it hard to understand what the nuances of difference are between 'innate capacities for complex cognition' and an 'innate , and therefore universal , computational module'. Sounds like different language for a similar phenomenon. — Tom Storm

I had a similar response, especially because the sources I referenced focused on mental processes with a limited range, not a full explication of human cognition.

An innate language module of the Chomskian sort specifies a particular way of organizing grammar prior to and completely independent of social interaction. Lakoff’s innate capacities for cognition do not dictate any particular syntactic or semantic patterns of language. Those are completely determined by interaction. — Joshs

As I wrote in a previous post, Pinker has specific, referenced responses to those criticisms. I don't know the counter-arguments so I have a hard time judging.

While the concept of instinct is so general as to mean almost anything, — Joshs

That doesn't seem true to me from what he wrote in "The Language Instinct." He quoted William James' "What is an Instinct." James defines instinct as stereotyped behavior which is triggered by specific environmental stimuli, is genetically transmitted, and generally is active only during a limited period of time, after which behavior is influenced by experience. I had never thought much about it before and I found that really helpful. He also quoted Darwin as writing "Human language is an instinctive tendency to acquire an art."

In other words , there is a ‘rational’ logic of grammar , and this rationality is the product of an innate structure syntactically organizing words into sentences . In this way, Pinker and Chomsky are heirs of Enlightenment Rationalism. Chomsky has said as much himself. — Joshs

I saw very little in "The Language Instinct" that dealt with language as a rational process. I don't see that the fact the grammar is structured is the same as saying it is rational. There was little discussion about the mechanism that generated similar grammars in all human languages. One thing that struck me as unconvincing about Pinker's argument is that he claimed that the underpinning of language is an unconscious language he called "mentalese." I don't see why there needs to be another system of symbols beneath the languages themselves. Certainly my opinion is based on very little except introspection, which is suspect in this situation.

My quote from Lakoff was intended to show that embodied approaches to language tend to reject Pinker’s claim that innate grammar structures exist. They say there is no language instinct , but rather innate capacities for complex cognition , out of which language emerged in different ways in different cultures. — Joshs

Pinker gives specific explanations and references specific studies to support his positions that made sense to me. I don't know the arguments on the other side in order to be able to judge.

There are a ton of books I could recommend. Some are even quite fun like Tor Nørretranders 1991 book The User Illusion. — apokrisis

Thanks. I'll take a look.

When was it written? — apokrisis

To start, I want to make it clear you are doing exactly what I asked for in the OP. As I wrote:

I’d like to discuss what the proper approach to thinking about the mind is. — T Clark

That's what you're doing and I appreciate it.

"The Language Instinct" was written in 1994, but was republished in 2008. I guess I assume it wouldn't be reprinted if Pinker didn't still stand behind it.

I've learned a lot from you over the years. For example, more and more often I find myself thinking about constraints from above as being as important as synthesis from below in all sorts of situations where there is a hierarchy of effects. I never would have been able to grasp that, even as much as I do, if I hadn't worked first to try to understand the bottom up way of seeing things.

Ditto with what we're talking about here. As I noted, I have a hard time buying the semiosis argument. It sounds and feels too much like the whole mathematical universe schtick - mistaking a metaphysical metaphor for science. Maybe I'll come around eventually.

Obviously you know more about this than I do. I don't think you're wrong, but I don't understand about 80% of what you're talking about. I won't be able to figure it out by just listening to you and ignoring what other people say. You pissing on Pinker and others like him doesn't make your arguments more convincing.

Let me try again in even simpler terms using the concepts of computational processes. — apokrisis

Well, I've read your post three times and still don't know what to make of it. It's not all that unusual when I'm dealing with you. The main problem is that I don't know how to incorporate what you've written into what I've said previously or vise versa. I probably need to do some more reading before I'll be able to do that.

the Romantic and Enlightened conception of humans as Cartesian creatures. Half angel, half beast. A social drama of the self that you can't take your eyes off for a second. — apokrisis

That doesn't sound like anything I read in Pinker's book.

I dont think Pinker’s approach is strictly compatible with Damasio. — Joshs

I don't think there was any conflict, or even much overlap, between the ideas of Pinker and Damasio that I wrote about. Pinker didn't really talk about reason at all in "The Language Instinct," just language. I didn't see anything I would characterize as "Enlightenment rationalism." I haven't read his other books. I focused close in on one subject in Damasio, the proto-self, because I specifically wanted to avoid talking about consciousness. So I didn't address his thoughts about reason. Even if there were conflict, I was never trying to provide a comprehensive, consistent view of mind. I tried to make that clear in the OP.

I appreciate you providing Lakoff's comments, although not much of what he has written seems to have much to do with language. As I noted, there is little discussion about reason in "The Language Instinct," and what there was wasn't included in the part I wrote about.