Great thread topic!

I’m even more concerned about who’s driving the chariot?
Who’s in charge, and where are we going, and why? — 0 thru 9

I will be the technopope, so you can breath easy. :naughty:

Because the essential requirement for thought is a subject and an object. The object of thought need not be material, as we can think mathematical concepts that do not involve matter. — Dfpolis

You haven't established that thinking of mathematical concepts can occur without supervening on matter. You seem to simply be considering a "subject" as a pure abstraction without recognizing the subject's supervenience on matter. I'm not seeing how the fact that the object of thought need not be material is of much relevance.

So, while content may be encoded in matter, that presents more of a problem (how does the physical inform the intentional?) than a solution. — Dfpolis

The physical informs by developing intentional outputs. See this video on neural nets producing outputs that are about numerals in a visual field. Intentionality shows up at a relatively low level of neural network processing.

Aristotle used no faith based premises to deduce that God was "self-thinking thought." Greek religion at the time was pantheism. — Dfpolis

I'll leave discussing Aristotle to Fooloso4.

How is it useful to know that my thoughts supervene on celestial motions? If you take supervenience seriously, you have to take astrology seriously. — Dfpolis

With a well informed perspective on the matter, a person understands that the physical effect of celestial objects on the functioning of our brains is generally so negligible that we are justified in ignoring it. It is disappointing to receive sophistry like this as a response.

That is abstraction, not subservience. — Dfpolis

Superveniences are a class of abstractions. It's not a case of being one or the other. This from Joshua Greene might be helpful:

Supervenience is a shorthand abstraction, native to Anglo-American philosophy, that provides a general framework for thinking about how everything relates to everything else. The technical definition of supervenience is somewhat awkward:

Supervenience is a relationship between two sets of properties. Call them Set A and Set B. The Set A properties supervene on the Set B properties if and only if no two things can differ in their A properties without also differing in their B properties.

This definition, while admirably precise, makes it hard to see what supervenience is really about, which is the relationships among different levels of reality. Take, for example, a computer screen displaying a picture. At a high level, at the level of images, a screen may depict an image of a dog sitting in a rowboat, curled up next to a life vest. The screen's content can also be described as an arrangement of pixels, a set of locations and corresponding colors. The image supervenes on the pixels. This is because a screen's image-level properties (its dogginess, its rowboatness) cannot differ from another screen's image-level properties unless the two screens also differ in their pixel-level properties.

The pixels and the image are, in a very real sense, the same thing. But — and this is key — their relationship is asymmetrical. The image supervenes on the pixels, but the pixels do not supervene on the image. This is because screens can differ in their pixel-level properties without differing in their image-level properties. For example, the same image may be displayed at two different sizes or resolutions. And if you knock out a few pixels, it's still the same image. (Changing a few pixels will not protect you from charges of copyright infringement.) Perhaps the easiest way to think about the asymmetry of supervenience is in terms of what determines what. Determining the pixels completely determines the image, but determining the image does not completely determine the pixels.

It simply isn't feasible for us to discuss the physical behavior of a whole brain at the level of particle physics.
— wonderer1

True, but irrelevant to the philosophical question of how physicality and intentionality relate. To study that you need to inspect, not ignore, their relation. — Dfpolis

To think that you have done a serious inspection while ignoring neuroscience is just fooling yourself.

Since philosophers were able to discuss this for millennia without the concept of supervenience, it can hardly be necessary. — Dfpolis

Fallacious appeal to tradition.

No, because mind of God is not a human mind, but only analogous to our minds. God does not now in the same way as humans do. — Dfpolis

Do you recognize the special pleading?

Aquinas discusses this at length. You may not agree with Aquinas, but unless you know his theory, you cannot have an informed opinion.

You didn't qualify "informed opinion". I certainly can and do have opinions informed by much that Aquinas didn't understand. Why try to change the subject to Aquinas' uninformed opinions?

I almost agreed. The problem is "supervene" instead of "depend." "Supervene" is a weasel word used to avoid discussing causal relations. Like correlation, it avoids, rather than addresses the dynamics. — Dfpolis

"Supervene" is a pragmatic word for considering things from a more simplistic but useful view. For example I can usefully discuss the workings of logic gates without concerning myself with whether the logic gates are instantiated with transistors and resistors, or vacuum tubes, or relays. Logic gates don't exist without some sort of physical substrate to supervene upon, but there are contexts where consideration of the substrate details is relatively unimportant.

It simply isn't feasible for us to discuss the physical behavior of a whole brain at the level of particle physics. So talking in terms of supervenient properties is simply a pragmatic necessity

I have no problem saying that rational thought depends on the neural representation and processing of data. Aristotle and Aquinas both insisted that thought depended on physical representations (their phantasms). — Dfpolis

The question is, will you be consistent and agree that the mind of a god has an isomorphic dependency?

Furthermore, will you recognize that a god dependent on some sort of information processing substrate is not in itself an unmoved mover?

Since descriptions that are not grounded in reality are fictions, we need to accept that the Laws of Physics are approximate descriptions of aspects of nature. Otherwise, physics is a form of fiction. You can call these aspects of nature "regularities," but traditionally, they have been called "the Laws of Nature." — Dfpolis

One problem I see with the Laws metaphor is related to whether or not there are real physical properties of things. Does an electron have charge, spin, and mass, or do laws dictate the behaviors of things such that electrons having charge spin and mass is only an illusion.

My working hypothesis is that subatomic particles actually have properties that determine how they interact, and to add Laws on top would be overdetermination. The notion of Laws of Physics seems to fit better with the notion that we exist within a simulation rather than within a physical world.

A premise is a starting point, not a conclusion. I am happy to say that the most uncontroversial starting points can be used to deduce God's existence, but that does not make them theological in the sense of being faith-based. — Dfpolis

Why think a mind is something that can exist without an information processing substrate to supervene upon? I.e. why think that a belief that God is metaphysically possible is not faith based?

I like your posts by the way, so I don't mean to come off rude. — plaque flag

I saw what I responded to as platitudinal and surprising coming from you, so I engaged in conversational research. Don't worry about it. :cool:

That's assuming that those stories were invented (?) for the purposes that you claim. — baker

No, I tried to make clear that I'm not assuming that the original story tellers had such a purpose, and make clear that I recognize a difference between the purpose of the original storytellers, and the way religions make use of the stories.

Has it ever occured to you that those stories, even when they are in the form of descriptions or explanations, are actually instructions, statements of the norms of the particular communities that told those stories? — baker

Sure. I was a member of such a community when I was young. These days I recommend avoiding such a parochial view. There is a much more evidenced basis for understanding our natures, available to us these days.

People keep saying things like this. Where's the evidence that they really made up those stories, and for those stated purposes? — baker

The evidence is in the multitude of different mutually contradictory stories. They can all be wrong, but they can't all be right.

How implausible the stories are is evidence for them being a product of relatively uninformed thinkers.

I can see how you might have interpreted me as suggesting that the original story tellers told their stories for religion's purposes. That isn't what I intended to convey, so let me try to clarify. I probably should have put "that our relatively uninformed ancestors came up with" in paretheses. Religions (communities of religious followers) propagate claims about the nature of ourselves which are based on stories that the religion originating story tellers told.

What religion doesn't make claims about what we are?

The work being done on "self"-organization does not falsify the existence of actual laws of nature. it applies them. It is on the basis of the laws discovered today that we explain the origin and evolution of the universe and the evolution of life. — Dfpolis

This is not uncontroversial. https://iep.utm.edu/lawofnat/:

Laws of Nature
Laws of Nature are to be distinguished both from Scientific Laws and from Natural Laws. Neither Natural Laws, as invoked in legal or ethical theories, nor Scientific Laws, which some researchers consider to be scientists’ attempts to state or approximate the Laws of Nature, will be discussed in this article. Instead, it explores issues in contemporary metaphysics.

Within metaphysics, there are two competing theories of Laws of Nature. On one account, the Regularity Theory, Laws of Nature are statements of the uniformities or regularities in the world; they are mere descriptions of the way the world is. On the other account, the Necessitarian Theory, Laws of Nature are the “principles” which govern the natural phenomena of the world. That is, the natural world “obeys” the Laws of Nature. This seemingly innocuous difference marks one of the most profound gulfs within contemporary philosophy, and has quite unexpected, and wide-ranging, implications.

Some of these implications involve accidental truths, false existentials, the correspondence theory of truth, and the concept of free will. Perhaps the most important implication of each theory is whether the universe is a cosmic coincidence or driven by specific, eternal laws of nature. Each side takes a different stance on each of these issues, and to adopt either theory is to give up one or more strong beliefs about the nature of the world.

If you reject them, you reject the foundations of cosmology, physics and chemistry. — Dfpolis

No, you simply conceive of the foundations of cosmology, physics, and chemistry differently.

But do you see how that's self-cancelling relativism ? If you argue for it, then that's just 'your' logic, no ? — plaque flag

It hardly seems like self cancelling relativism to me - just a matter of the fact that people have different brains informed about different things. If I argue for it it won't be with 'just my logic', it will be with evidence that I am somewhat informed about. Recognition of that evidence might well inform your logic.

So why think it self-cancelling relativism?

I don't know what criterion of objectivity you are referring to.

Have you read the letter referred to? It seems mostly concerned with the way the media and IIT proponents have been interacting. I don't see any reason, based on the letter, to think that the signatories would agree with your take.

My take: ‘theories of consciousness’ can’t conform with modern scientific practice, which begins with the assumption of the separation of knower and known. — Wayfarer

Do you think those "100 notable scientific researchers" would agree?

An interesting book by a 60s-70s author whose name is rapidly receding in the past: ‘The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler. — Wayfarer

I took a look at the Wikipedia page for the book, and I didn't get a very flattering impression. The title didn't sound like something which someone well informed about the thought processes of scientists would chose. There is a lot of work involved in developing intuitive faculties that can solve problems 'in the background'.

Looking into the background of Koestler himself, I didn't see any reason to think he was someone with relevant expertise.

I don't think I'll be looking into it further, but thanks for bringing it to my attention.

There is a Zen poem that says: "You cannot catch hold of it, nor can you get rid of it. In not being able to get it, you get it. When you speak, it is silent. When you are silent, it speaks." And the last two lines are the most important - ideas and concepts only complicate things. That's why philosophy is so bad at defining these phenomena - we can talk about it, but it doesn't make much sense. — Jake Mura

I think it makes a lot of sense, when I read "it" as "intuition". (or deep learning)

:cheer:

The other thought that occurred to me was that not all ways of thinking are methodical. — Janus

:up:

Some of my best work related thinking has ocurred when I'm not thinking about the topic, and possibly even while I was sleeping. It's commonly been the case, that when I'm in the shower getting ready for work, that I've recognized a way to understand or deal with some problem - an understanding that I hadn't had before I got in the shower.

This might be clearer once you have read through the PI. — Luke

Perhaps.

The don't access my mental image. Their brain creates their own mental image in response to perceiving my picture.

To argue the US cares about democracy or the people of Ukraine is laughable — Mikie

What gives you that idea?

How does your mental image inform others of anything? — Luke

By stimulating the other to develop their own mental image which is approximate to mine.

Only an approximation, because I can't create pictures with anywhere near the complexity of my mental imagery. However, approximations can easily get the message across, to someone with a mind prepared to flesh out the approximation well. Scribbles will often do well enough, under the right circumstances.

In PI 280 is it a painting of the painter’s mental image or of the stage set or of both? — Luke

I haven't read that far yet, so this is only my response and not any sort of claim about Witt's view...

I'm inclined to say that there is some degree of isomorphism between the stage set, the mental image and the picture. Seeing the stage set caused the painter to develop a mental image. That mental image played a causal role in the painter painting what he painted. I'd think this describes what it means for a painting to be "of the stage set". I'd be inclined to say it was a painting of both, but in different senses.

:100:

I don’t disagree, but I think it’s a mistake to call the mental image a picture. The mental image is not a representation and it cannot inform others. — Luke

Why not approximately inform others? I guess I wouldn't expect a painting to be anything other than an approximation of the painter's mental image.

Perdurantist. New one on me. — Mww

I'm surprised the subject hasn't come up around here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdurantism:

Perdurantism or perdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity.[1] The debate over persistence currently involves three competing theories—one three-dimensionalist theory called "endurantism" and two four-dimensionalist theories called "perdurantism" and "exdurantism". For a perdurantist, all objects are considered to be four-dimensional worms and they make up the different regions of spacetime. It is a fusion of all the perdurant's instantaneous time slices compiled and blended into a complete mereological whole. Perdurantism posits that temporal parts alone are what ultimately change. Katherine Hawley in How Things Persist states that change is "the possession of different properties by different temporal parts of an object".[2]

Take any perdurant and isolate a part of its spatial region. That isolated spatial part has a corresponding temporal part to match it. We can imagine an object, or four-dimensional worm: an apple. This object is not just spatially extended but temporally extended. The complete view of the apple includes its coming to be from the blossom, its development, and its final decay. Each of these stages is a temporal time slice of the apple, but by viewing an object as temporally extended, perdurantism views the object in its entirety.

The use of "endure" and "perdure" to distinguish two ways in which an object can be thought to persist can be traced to David Kellogg Lewis (1986)...

As you noted earlier, that mental picture might change, so how could you establish whether or not the physical painting matches it? — Luke

I would expect that in painting the picture he'd likely recognize inaccuracies to the way the painting represents the mental image and recognize that the painting is not the mental image.

:up:

I too would be interested in hearing more along those lines.

….about things affecting themselves…
— wonderer1

I wasn’t being so general, meaning only the self by my comment. See below, if you like. — Mww

From my perspective it seems fairly obvious that we affect ourselves. For example, I realize that there is something I am interested in knowing more about, and I study and become more knowledgeable. Is that not affecting myself?

Now I take a perdurantist view towards personal identity, so I would think it somewhat more accurate to say my past self affects my future self. But regardless of that, is not voluntarily learning affecting the self?

t’s almost incomprehensible that there must be that which is affected by itself. — Mww

I don't see things being affected by themselves as being incomprehensible at all. Can you elaborate on what seems almost incomprehensible to you about things affecting themselves?

Intuition may be considered as sensation groping for words to describe itself. — Vera Mont

:cheer:

Gnomon, I'm not going to spoon feed you. You can look up an explanation of "bit" on Wikipedia, just like anybody else.

The context in which we are having this discussion is you having said:

And the fundamental element of Information theory (bit) is itself a mathematical ratio : a percentage ranging from 0% to 100% — Gnomon

I recommend you look up "bit" on Wikipedia in order to stop making a fool of yourself when talking about Information Theory. Better, yet would be if you stopped talking altogether about your new age religion, as if it is in any meaningful way related to Information Theory.

I mean that if a society did not have a military, in that time of raping, pillaging, looting, indiscriminate killing, and fighting for resources to survive, then that society would be destroyed.

Military was necessary for society —> society would have been destroyed without a military, other militaries would destroy them — ButyDude

So are you saying it was a matter of pragmatic necessity? What primates felt they needed to do at the time?

Do you not know what “necessary” means? — ButyDude

I don't know what you mean by the word. Perhaps reading the following might help:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-varieties/

I mean that for that society to exist, a military was necessary, and because the military determined the state’s existence, access to resources, prosperity, etc., men had claim over wealth and power in society. — ButyDude

You are using "necessary" to explain what you mean by "necessary"?

I guess it is time to move on to circular reasoning.

I am not taking a Catholic stance on this, the necessity of patriarchy in past societies. — ButyDude

You didn't answer my question. So I don't know what you mean by "necessity". Do you?

I would say that it was necessary many times for many societies.. — ButyDude

In what sense do you mean "necessary"?

Do you mean it in the sense of it being a matter of physical determinism? That would be an unusual position for a Catholic to take.

Do you mean that it's God's plan that his children war on and rape each other?

Something else?

Give me genuine feedback on my argument. — ButyDude

OP stands for Original Post - the one you started this thread with.

Have you looked into what constitutes a naturalistic fallacy? While you are at it you should look up appeal to nature.

Then, go back and look at your OP and see if you can recognize the ways that those fallacies apply.

That's a lot of yammering to say that you still haven't learned what a bit is.

If it is that bad, it should be easy to disprove. — ButyDude

Why would you think that? Showing you the problems would require you learning a lot.

The naturalistic fallacy would be one place to start.

And the fundamental element of Information theory (bit) is itself a mathematical ratio : a percentage ranging from 0% to 100% (nothing to everything) — Gnomon

Oh my Gelos. Seriously, you have no idea what you are talking about, and I just got off work, so I'd appreciate it if you could take care of that yourself.

Quite blustery, but demonstration of more accurate understanding of Special Relativity is what I was hoping to see. So like I said, if you can provide that, get back to me.