Again, cut to the chase please. — I like sushi

It appears to me that playing this silly game is Corvus' whole point with this thread. Why would he want to cut to the chase?

I dont understand the problem. — AmadeusD

That's ok. My question was directed @Gnomon.

Materialists like to belittle the "Hard Problem" by implying that philosophers... — Gnomon

Do you understand that "materialist" is not a distinct category from "philosopher"?

Your writing frequently suggests that you don't understand this.

However, it is an odd shoe-horn to then ask how well language makes truth-conditional statements, or if that is even the real function of language. Rather, the biology recenters these debates away from truth-finding, and more about evolutionary-biological, species-apt theories. — schopenhauer1

I'm late to this discussion and haven't looked into what other responses there may have been to this. So please excuse me if this is redundant.

Having spent some serious time thinking about and debating against Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), I think a strong case can be made for human linguistic ability being evolutionarily adaptive, on the basis that it does provide humans the ability to communicate truths to each other. Undoubtedly partial truths, but a degree of truth that has historically been adaptive for humans. I think I would say that biology does recenter, and in the process expand the fields of knowledge that are relevant to the discussion. However, I'd emphasize that that is far from saying that humans commmunicating truths is out of the picture, given naturalistic evolution. (As Plantinga suggests.)

The obvious alternative is to follow Alfred North Whitehead in 1919-1920, and abandon classical Euclidean topology for a 'point-free topology' that refers only to extensionally interpretable "blobs", namely open-sets that have a definite non-zero volume, whose intersections approximate pointedness . Then it might be possible to extensionally interpret all such "blobs" in relation to a fixed basis of topological description in a more constructive fashion, meaning that extensional ambiguity is handled directly on the logical level of syntax, as opposed to on the semantic level of theory interpretation. — sime

Very interesting post, although I don't have enough mathematics background to follow all of the details. Could you provide a link to a 'Blobs for Dummies' article?

As best I can tell, the notion of "essences" doesn't refer to anything, and the use of the term often seems a matter of feigning knowledge where recognizing ignorance seems more warranted.

I'm not really interested in arguing the point though, and I just wanted to point out that there is relevant knowledge to be gained.

Carry on.

So specifically, I am searching for arguments, preferrably complete, even more preferrably in syllogistic form, for the belief that the self persists. Otherwise, I will remain in doubt, and in absence of any evidence of permanence, I will default to the position that it does not stay at all, and that we are constantly as always dying, as the comic posted in the first page depicts. — Lionino

What is relatively persistent, by comparison with with most cells of bodily organs, is neurons and the neural networks structures that supervene on them.

As a brain develops, young neurons strike out, seeking to form synaptic connections across brain regions, Harris said. If they fail to make those connections, they “commit suicide by consuming themselves.” And even if they survive this first cutthroat wave, they can “get pruned, like plants.”

In the first trimester of pregnancy, neural growth is exponential: about 15 to 20 million cells are born every hour, Harris said. Only about 50 percent of these original cells survive. If, for example, there are too many of one type, causing an imbalance, the excess will die off. Or, if some seem to be serving a pointless task, like those attending a shut eye, they’ll move on. Why waste precious neurons?

After the early period of growth, suicide, and pruning comes to an end, adult neurons survive for a lifetime. And unlike those of a cat, they remain malleable for several years. This is one reason kids are especially adept at learning new languages, and why procedures to correct neurological dysfunctions, like a lazy eye, have higher chances of success early in life.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/05/a-tour-of-the-growing-brain-complete-with-upside-down-vision/

Notice I asked the additional question, why the emphasis on animal welfare? Is that part of your programming? — Wayfarer

Good questions!

I would be surprised, if even without the ethical biasing, ChatGPT would have come up with an accurate answer. I suspect something like what @Jonathan Waskan is suggesting would be required, to result in the ability of a more advance AI to recognize that a jack-o'-lantern isn't particularly problematic for a mouse.

What I'm most curious about is what deep learning will develop when an AI is embodied in a sophisticated robot body. (With learning developed from observing and exploring the world.)

If anyone desires it, I can tie this in to grade-school mathematical reasoning—explaining how mental matchsticks and the like can keep arithmetical, algebraic, and geometrical LLMs over their targets—but for the moment, my bet has been placed. — Jonathan Waskan

I'd be interested in hearing more details of your hypothesis if you have the time.

But I don't see panpsychism as a problem - just a mistake, generated by the philosophical fondness for exaggerated generlization. — Ludwig V

:up:

How do I know that I am perceiving a physical thing in a real world and not just dreaming or hallucinating or being tricked by an evil scientist who has my brain in a vat and is stimulating my visual cortex with nanomachines?

This question seems relevant to the discussion. — Michael

How do you know?

Don't you think that might be asking a little too much? It seems to me that Ockham's Razor suggests it's fairly reasonable to chop off the evil scientist as unparsimonious.

Anesthesia seems fairly direct.

...while Mind is "unrealistic" in the sense of literally intangible & immaterial, hence not something you can directly manipulate for real-world purposes. — Gnomon

Sounds like something, that someone who didn't want his attempts to manipulate people's minds to be recognized as such, might say.

What makes you think that minds can't be manipulated for real world purposes? Do you actually believe that?

As I made clear in the OP, I am not denying the existence of the world at all. I am interested to see the arguments and logical reasoning on what reason or ground our belief in the existence of the world is based.

Could it be only reasoning? Or could it be some other mental events and activities? Or as Hume says, could it be our customs, habits and instincts to believe in the existence of the world? — Corvus

It involves other aspects of cognition the development of which are a prerequisite to our being able to engage in logical reasoning. For example pattern recognition:

In psychology and cognitive neuroscience, pattern recognition describes a cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory.[1]

Pattern recognition occurs when information from the environment is received and entered into short-term memory, causing automatic activation of a specific content of long-term memory. An early example of this is learning the alphabet in order. When a carer repeats ‘A, B, C’ multiple times to a child, utilizing the pattern recognition, the child says ‘C’ after they hear ‘A, B’ in order. Recognizing patterns allows us to predict and expect what is coming. The process of pattern recognition involves matching the information received with the information already stored in the brain. Making the connection between memories and information perceived is a step of pattern recognition called identification. Pattern recognition requires repetition of experience. Semantic memory, which is used implicitly and subconsciously, is the main type of memory involved with recognition.[2]

Pattern recognition is not only crucial to humans, but to other animals as well. Even koalas, who possess less-developed thinking abilities, use pattern recognition to find and consume eucalyptus leaves. The human brain has developed more, but holds similarities to the brains of birds and lower mammals. The development of neural networks in the outer layer of the brain in humans has allowed for better processing of visual and auditory patterns. Spatial positioning in the environment, remembering findings, and detecting hazards and resources to increase chances of survival are examples of the application of pattern recognition for humans and animals.[3]

There are six main theories of pattern recognition: template matching, prototype-matching, feature analysis, recognition-by-components theory, bottom-up and top-down processing, and Fourier analysis. The application of these theories in everyday life is not mutually exclusive. Pattern recognition allows us to read words, understand language, recognize friends, and even appreciate music. Each of the theories applies to various activities and domains where pattern recognition is observed. Facial, music and language recognition, and seriation are a few of such domains. Facial recognition and seriation occur through encoding visual patterns, while music and language recognition use the encoding of auditory patterns.

It shows that the ability to infer images from brain activity doesn't really amount to 'mind-reading' (impressive though it might be.) — Wayfarer

I don't see a good reason to look at it in a binary way. It makes sense to me to see it as an impressive but limited degree of mind reading, just as it involves an impressive but limited degree of brain reading.

I suspect most philosophers wouldn't touch the subject, because it's so closely associated with *pth! pth!* icky girls. Beyond sexual attraction, one of the strongest human bonds is between mated pairs, and one of the fiercest kinds of love is maternal. I think they just didn't want to sully their grand theories with the feelings of and toward women. — Vera Mont

:lol:

For me the attribute which is often left out is how love makes you feel. Ineffable, subjective, a bit of a qualia problem and therefore for some people, intangible or BS. — Tom Storm

That is a good point. The ineffability makes it problematic to try to encompass it with language.

There is also variation in people's capacity to feel love. I've dealt with psychopathic people who just didn't get love, and like all of us, interpreted others from the context of their own subjective experience.

We're discussing here a system which is trained by recognising responses and inferring similarities between them and further responses, and which by so doing can re-construct images from neural activity. But there are much more subtle elements of mental operations which I don't think could be susceptible to such a representation - basic ideas, like 'the same as', or 'greater than'. Of course even simple calculators can recognise such relationships between numbers, but the general idea, which a human will understand without any particular difficulty, would be impossible to represent pictorially - so how could be be captured by those means? And the mind is constantly using those comparisons and judgements in its activities. — Wayfarer

I certainly agree that there are a lot of limitations to what can be learned with the current state of the art. MEG (the technology used by Meta) has much better temporal resolution than fMRI, and in some respects, better spatial resolution than EEG, but still has a lot of limitations in its ability to capture the details of what is going on in our brains.

Furthermore, the results described in the video were a function of what data about brain activity could be correlated with a limited amount of linguistic thought over a fifteen hour period. Absolutely there are subtleties to our thought that aren't captured in such a process. I don't see "greater than" as particularly problematic for such technology though, since it is easily linguistically expressible. It would depend on whether and how the topic of "greater than" came up while gathering the AI training data.

Certainly, there is a lot more going on in my mind than I can put into words, and I assume that is true for all of us. I wouldn't expect such a technological process to 'know' my subjective experience in detail. Still, for someone with Broca's aphasia, this sort of technology could be life changing if it can be made suitably portable.

BTW, I explained to wonderer1, who argued against you, by saying "these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking you are constantly crusading against", that being against physical thinking is irrelevant to questions rergarding technology, but he didn't bother to reply. Most probably he undesrstood that he was wrong and doesn't want to admit it. — Alkis Piskas

Well, if you really want to know, you advertise that you are a pretender, and an aphorism about teaching a pig to sing comes to mind.

For example:

I think the argument can be made that there is a physical aspect to them. What is not physical is insight, grasping the relations between ideas, and understanding meaning.
— Wayfarer

Well, they consist of energy and mass, but not of the kind we know in Physics. Yet, this energy and mass can be detected with special devices, e.g. polygraphs. (I have used such a device myself extensively. Not a polygraph.)
This detection is possibe because thoughts affect the body, as I already said. And in this way, we can have indications about the kind of thoughts the subject has --from very "light" to quite "heavy", their regular or irregular flow, their abrupt changes, etc.-- but not of course of their content. — Alkis Piskas

Scientology?

I would like you to imagine a world in which there are no minds. You will imagine our world as it exists minus the minds, and you will use the knowledge we have ( intentional content ) to infer what would be true in such a world, depending on whether you are a direct/indirect realist or irrealist and your metaphysical commitments to what exists independent of the mind

But hold on.

All you did in this thought experiment is imagine a mind less world from a world in which there are minds and languages. In other words, you mentally allocated to the world which had no minds with your mind to describe it. — Sirius

Sure, I can't imagine without using my mind.

Using your mind to describe a mindless world ( in which a mind doesn't exist ) is a wrong step. — Sirius

Then why did you ask me to make a wrong step?

(I know, I know, that's how the presuppositionalist game is played.)

1. True statements can only exist as cognitive content — Sirius

That (which exists as pixels on a screen) is not a true statement?

"Prove" is an ureasonable standard. We should look at where the evidence points though.

That science is capable of amazing achievements and discoveries, but science is also a human endeavour. The mistake of physicalism is to treat humans as objects and to forget (or even claim to eliminate :lol: ) the subject to whom the objective domain occurs. — Wayfarer

You say this sort of thing a lot, but then the effectiveness of physicalist thought about minds is shown in your OP.

Which is all to say, I find compatibalism more convincing because the evidence for strong emergence seems far more convincing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What evidence for strong emergence?

I turned 70 this year, and again I’m thinking what an amazing time it is to be alive. Even despite the perils and obvious doomsday scenarios. I think this augmented intelligence technology - that’s what I like to call it - is an amazing phenomenon to witness first hand. Hey my grandkids don’t even know what currency looks like - when I was a kid my grandparents cooked on a woodfire oven and our milk was delivered in a pail. In the old Stone Age, it took half a million years to slightly improve a flint ax. The rate of change is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Even my adult son is a bit daunted by AI - he finds it threatening - but I’ve been engaging with ChatGPT since the day it came out. It’s truly an amazing time to be alive. — Wayfarer

What are your thoughts, on the fact that these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking that you are constantly crusading against?

The technology used is not fMRI or EEG.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a functional neuroimaging technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain, using very sensitive magnetometers. Arrays of SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) are currently the most common magnetometer, while the SERF (spin exchange relaxation-free) magnetometer is being investigated for future machines.[1][2] Applications of MEG include basic research into perceptual and cognitive brain processes, localizing regions affected by pathology before surgical removal, determining the function of various parts of the brain, and neurofeedback. This can be applied in a clinical setting to find locations of abnormalities as well as in an experimental setting to simply measure brain activity.

Also, I wonder what kind of jamming hats people could wear to thwart it? — RogueAI

I suspect carrying a cellphone around might be sufficient, (or could be made sufficient). However for those who prefer a lower tech solution, that link I posted says:

Since the magnetic signals emitted by the brain are on the order of a few femtoteslas, shielding from external magnetic signals, including the Earth's magnetic field, is necessary. Appropriate magnetic shielding can be obtained by constructing rooms made of aluminium and mu-metal for reducing high-frequency and low-frequency noise, respectively.

So layered Mu-metal and aluminum would do the job. Mu-metal is nice and shiny and corrosion resistant, so you could be stylin.

The only common ground that actually functions as a universal objective fact, is our biology, our human nature. This has to be the foundational ground that guides our moral thinking, from which we extrapolate ideas about what is "good" and "bad" for us. Only by accepting this can we start to form principles to live by and moral principles to be discussed about.

And it's this that I mean is measurable. Our human nature exists as an objective thing, and it is measurable. Anything disregarding this foundation when trying to produce moral facts fails. — Christoffer

I broadly agree with what you are saying in this post. However, I think that saying that our human nature functions as a universal objective fact, ignores genetic variation between individuals. Isn't it more realistic to think that we have human natures with, similarities, but also differences? How do you avoid creating a Procrustean bed?

Here's a link I posted awhile back in The Post Linguistic Turn thread, which discusses the original research discussed in the OP video. From that earlier link:

Decoding worked only with cooperative participants who had participated willingly in training the decoder. If the decoder had not been trained, results were unintelligible, and if participants on whom the decoder had been trained later resisted or thought other thoughts, results were also unusable.

Some things are really hard to miniaturize, and I'm betting this is one of them. — RogueAI

Yeah, for now at least, you need a specially shielded room to do MEG.

So, you see the concern and validity of my argument I'm sure. — Outlander

Sure, just pointing out that we don't need tinfoil hats just yet. :wink:

You could potentially offer to give someone a ride and have the roof or seat of your car equipped with non-contact "brain sensors... — Outlander

It is worth noting the 15 hours that subjects spent in a scanner before the AI that was used had sufficient training data on the individual to be able to decode that individual's thoughts. Without the AI having been trained to form correct associations, between a specific individual's brain activity and what the individual was thinking about, the system can't decode thoughts.

Demonizing those who understand things differently than you. Nice.

The key feature of the modern worldview is the mechanistic model which, because it has rejected the Aristotelian principles of final causation and substantial form... — Wayfarer

I'm inclined to see evolution of scientific understanding as having resulted in recognition of "system structure" as playing a role analogous to that of "form" for Aristotle.

In the case of final causation, it is more a matter of 'having no need of that hypothesis', and Ockham's razor, than it is a matter of rejection.

↪wonderer1 smallism is probably the majority view of most people in the hard sciences - if I'm interpreting what it means correctly.

"Smallism" to me looks pretty interchangable with the statement "there's no strong Emergence", or in other words "all macroscopic phenomena are the direct consequence of microscopic phenomena" — flannel jesus

I'm skeptical that most people in the hard sciences would disagree with the proposition, "What happens at the microscopic level is a function of the context provided by a larger physical system." Do you think otherwise?

Is "smallism" a view that anyone actually endorses?

:up: :up:

I don't know the background motivation of the OP... — sime

Me neither, but I want to consider a pragmatic motivation for a compatibilist perspective.

A person can recognize that we are physically determined systems, and recognize that we are systems that develop probabilistic anticipations of future events. Furthermore, it's rather pragmatically valuable for machines like us to discuss such anticipations. (To get a job, to get married, to get to the moon, to end global warming, etc.)

It seems to me there is a pragmatic value, for the sort of machines we are, to being able to communicate in simplistic terms of free will, and as we are able, modify what we mean by "free will" to be more accurate.

IMO, Peter Tse, in The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation, does a good job of pointing towards a more accurate understanding.

This isn't inconsistent with Hume saying that "of course we still end up using inductive reasoning, because we sort of have to." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or 'a more scientifically updated Hume' saying, "of course we still end up using the deep learning in our neural networks because we sort of have to."