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.

Well, it seems like you took objection to something I said, not vise versa. So if you cannot provide an argument to support your objection, then please be still. But I really wish you would provide such an argument, so I could find out why you think as you do, concerning this matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you won't find out why I think as I do, until you study special relativity well enough to know what you are talking about. So get back to me if that happens.

Have you ever done the math?
— wonderer1

You haven't provided an argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

And you haven't answered the question.

It's not called relativity for nothing. Yet it isn't hard to determine that a lot of thing are at rest with respect to my initertial reference frame and I can discuss the shape of many such things as they are in my inertial reference frame. If I, for some reason, need to calculate how they might look from a different inertial reference frame I could do so. It's not a big deal.

Anyway, why would I bother providing an argument to someone who wants to argue about something he doesn't understand? I don't see the point in doing so.

No it is not "appearance" only. — Metaphysician Undercover

Have you ever done the math?

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/691825/will-you-see-distance-contraction-inside-the-space-ship-at-near-light-speed

That the boulder truly does not have a shape is supported by Einsteinian relativity, as shape is dependent on the frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are mistaking the appearance of shape from different reference frames with each other.

It is similar to saying a pencil isn't straight because when dropped into a glass of water the pencil appears bent.

But we can't ever compare 'the real world' with 'the representation of it'. — Wayfarer

Sure we can. We just can't achieve a perfect match between our representation of the world and the full detail of the way the world is. Every day, billions of people are comparing their representations of the world with reality. Some manage to increase the accuracy of their representations.

In other words, freedom must be, by definition, impossible to explain, otherwise it is not freedom. — Angelo Cannata

This seems to suggest that the notion of freedom depends on ignorance.

Our brains model the world in ways we are largely ignorant of, and therefore our brains' modeling of the world allows us the ignorance to simplistically see our modelling of the world as causal. Furthermore, it isn't unreasonable for us to recognize that our brains' (weakly) emergent modelling of the world does, for practical purposes, play a causal role in our behavior, in light of our inability to be conscious of the complex underlying physical causality.

There's no fundamental reason why the cause of synchronised heart beats couldn't be physical. — flannel jesus

A Youtube video presenting various sorts of natural synchronization.

So much grandiosity.

:up:

Without some angel in the shell we are nothing but meaty robots, or an animal not much different than all others—just an object, like a stone.
— NOS4A2

Thereby absolving us of all responsibility as moral agents. — Wayfarer

In whose eyes?

...just an object, like a stone. — NOS4A2

There are a lot of difference between objects, and as likenesses go, "like a stone" leaves a bit out.

The energy comes from the erasure of information but is this reducible to the physics of running inputs through non-reversible logic gates? The input of energy of erasure is proportional to the energy lost as heat. This energy loss doesn't apply to reversible computation since information isn't lost. — Nils Loc

:up:

What exactly is wrong with the puddle's thought in Adam's analogy? The idea that the hole was made for the puddle is the most obvious target. But the puddle is still in the hole because of what the puddle is and what the hole is, and those seem like phenomena a sentient puddle might well strive to understand. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Going back to Wigner's argument, and considering how reasonable or unreasonable the effectiveness of mathematics is...

Our being here (from a naturalistic evolutionary perspective) is only possible because there are regularities in the universe. The theory of evolution only makes sense in a world with regularities. So the anthropic principle applies. If our thinking is the result of biological evolution, then it is not unreasonable to find that we are in a world with regularities. With that in mind, it is not so remarkable that we have found a way (mathematics) for utilizing our symbolic cognitive capacities, to discuss such regularities with some degree of accuracy.

So why think it is anymore remarkable that mathematics is in the world, than that a puddle has the shape of the hole it is in? What is wrong with the puddle's argument is that it doesn't consider the possibility of having the causality backwards.

And do puddles make holes (which, to stretch the analogy to the breaking point, puddles do indeed make potholes for themselves to collect in when they freeze, in a sort of self-reinforcing mechanism)?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, we still might want to take a closer look at the causality. Do puddles cause heat to be removed from themselves in order to freeze, or is the hole the cause of the movement of heat?