...it might benefit us to realise the tentative nature of many of our positions.
— Tom Storm

Can you list 3 ways in which it might benefit us, in real, daily-job terms?

For many people, "realizing the tentative nature of many of one's positions" amounts to plain old self-doubt and lack of confidence. Which are, of course, generally, bad and undesirable. — baker

I suppose it would depend on one's job. For a guru, preacher, or used car salesman it might be detrimental to recognize the tentative nature of one's beliefs. For a scientist or engineer it can be extremely valuable to be willing and able to question one's assumptions.

But Wittgenstein was quite taken by the fact that it can flip from one to other. He discusses this in the Tractatus as well, with regard to a picture of a cube. — Fooloso4

I wish I could talk to Witt about neuroscience and his thinking. From my point of view, the different ways we perceive Necker cubes makes perfect sense, and with a bit of practice I developed the ability to see a Necker cube as a 2-D image, although it requires defocusing my vision to overide the usual visual processing that tends to result in perceiving one of the 3-D interpretations.

As a bit of a tangent... Is it widely known that there is speculation that Witt was on the autism spectrum? And if so, what do people tend to think of such speculation?

If mathematics is embedded in the universe, then why don't the other animals with high intelligence such as Monkeys, Apes and some dogs make use of mathematics? Surely they exist in the universe just like humans do? Why is it that only humans use mathematics? What have humans got, the other species haven't got? — Corvus

I didn't mean to suggest that I think mathematics is embedded in the universe. I think that there are regularities to the way things occur in the universe, due to the universe having such regularities biological evolution could and did occur. Another consequence of the universe having regularities is that the sort of symbolic processing we call mathematics can have a strong correspondence with those regularities in many of the ways that we see that it does.

As far as difference between humans and chimps goes, that can only be speculative. However, one thing to consider, is that events in evolutionary history are often tradeoffs. For example, penguins seem to have traded off flying, for the better access to fish that comes with swimming.

This four minute BBC video suggests a possibility. Perhaps the ancestors of humans gave up the greater working memory of chimps, for a greater facility with symbolic thought, and differences in environmental niches determined whether the tradeoff was worth it or not.

I was addressing a philosophical question, not an electrical engineering question. — Gnomon

What you were doing was making false claims. I don't know why you would consider that to be a valuable contribution to a philosophical discussion.

Harry Frankfurt has a different name for what you refer to as "addressing a philosophical question":

It is in this sense that Pascal’s statement is unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned with the truth-value of what she says. That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false: Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.

Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit

In this sense, it seems like mathematics must be "embedded in the universe." So the question seems to be more "how did our mathematical intuitions and those of other animals emerge and did mathematics not exist in any sense prior to the first animal that possessed mathematical intuitions?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Must it be that mathematics must be embedded in the universe, or could it be that regularities to the way things occur in the universe result in it beng adaptive to have mathematical cognitive faculties?

Everyone you are disagreeing with has provided sources, with quotes. — Leontiskos

No. attributed claims to Dawkins without source or quotes, then when called on it said, "But I'm done debating Dawkins, I shouldn't have brought him up...", rather than attempt to back up his claim.

Of course, Voltage is a measure of Energy, not energy per se. — Gnomon

No it is not, as the link I provided explains.

And the measurement is expressed as a ratio between Zero now and some Potential value in the future. — Gnomon

No it is not. And this is yet another example of your tendency to assert things without knowing what you are talking about.

A battery contains no Actual Energy, only Potential Energy*2. — Gnomon

Potential energy is actual energy.

That's why you can touch both poles and not get shocked. — Gnomon

No. The reason you can touch both poles of a 1.5 Volt battery is that 1.5 Volts is too low a voltage to result in a sufficient current flowing through your skin to result in a perception of having been shocked.

You could perform the following experiment. (But don't because it would hurt and possibly kill you.) Connect 100 AAA cells in series, positive terminal to negative terminal. The difference between the voltage at the most positive end and the most negative end of the string of batteries would be ~150 Volts. Now touch the positive end of the string with one hand, and the negative end of the string with the other hand.

Sounds good to me. But how do you determine the accuracy of fit for a world model? — Gnomon

Well that's an ongoing process with too many details to try to cover in a remotely comprehensive way, but considering the results of experimentation plays a large role. An experiment can test the accuracy with which a model represents the way things occur in reality. Differences between experimental results, and results expected based on models, point to aspects of models being wrong or at least simplistic.

For me, observing the difference between experimental results and modelling (whether mental or SPICE) is routine, so admittedly it is easy for me to say, "Make use of experimentation." I don't expect it to convey much to people who don't have experience with doing so to an extent similar to my experience. However, experimentation has played a huge role in humanity's development of more accurate ways of modelling the world.

I tend to rely on Quantum Physics as the most appropriate resource. — Gnomon

QM is just one aspect of a huge scientific picture and it is only so useful. In the case of complex systems, modelling things in terms of QM becomes computationally impossible. So for practical purposes, modelling things in terms of emergent properties (while ideally remaining aware that such modelling is simplistic) is necessary. I recommend you read, or reread, Sean Carroll's The Big Picture.

What can you do when your "most accurate" model is rejected by your interlocutors, and they don't acknowledge your analytical "skill"? — Gnomon

Well, at least in some cases I can demonstrate my skill. I design electronic measurement instruments, some of which are used by NIST and other NMIs in countries around the world to cross check their primary reference standards against each other. On the other hand, it can often be the case that someone else recognizes that I'm looking at something too simplistically and what I can do is recognize the value in questioning my assumptions.

If everyone who had used the language disappeared from existence, and all that was left were patterns of ink on paper, would these patterns of ink on paper still be a language if there was no one who knew what these patterns of ink on paper meant? — RussellA

Were the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone still a physical instantiation of a language before the Rosetta stone was found and used to learn to interpret hieroglyphics?

Or suppose humanity has gone extinct and extraterrestrials come to Earth and examine the physical artifacts left behind. Should we suppose that the ETs could not possibly learn to understand human languages on the basis of such artifacts alone?

I think the history of events surrounding the Rosetta Stone shows hieroglyphics to have been language even when no one in the world understood the interpretation of the language.

The question is, if there are only two individuals, where does the sentence "bring me a slab" exist ?

It cannot exist in the space between the two individuals as some kind of Platonic entity independently of either individual, but can only exist in the minds of the two individuals. — RussellA

For example, Egyptian scripts couldn't be translated until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. — RussellA

I'd suggest that language can exist in different physical forms with no need to appeal to Platonic entities.

It can exist in the way a proposition is represented in your brain, as variations in air pressure that the assistant recognizes as "Slab!", as a pattern of ink on paper, as the absence of stone resulting from carving in the case of the Rosetta stone...

:up:

But even things within this mid-way reality are affected by the aspects of reality which are outside of it, in the extremes, so these influences are invisible to us and therefore do not enter into our representation of reality. This makes our reality, the one produced from our mid-way temporal perspective, not very accurate as a true representation, because we cannot account for these influences. — Metaphysician Undercover

We can somewhat account for such influences, and to a relatively high degree of accuracy in specific cases. Without our ability to choreograph ballets of bits, on a timescale much smaller than we can consciously perceive, we wouldn't be communicating on TPF.

I will add that, as many people have pointed out, usually in vain, the new atheist depiction of God is remote from the conception of deity maintained by philosophy of religion. — Wayfarer

You don't seem to understand that Dawkins wasn't too concerned about the people who engage in critical thinking regarding the notion of God, as in philosophy of religion. He was more concerned with people whose ability to engage in critical thinking is stunted by religious beliefs.

Dawkins often states that a 'creator' must be 'more complex' than what it creates, so if God created the Universe, he must be fantastically complex (not to mention BIG!) It's a thoroughly anthropomorphic image, much more characteristic of folk beliefs in sky-fathers than anything held by actual theologians. It is really a kind of 'straw God' argument - attacking a kind of deity that few but the most stubborn fundamentalists hold to. — Wayfarer

That is just misrepresentation. Have you even read what Dawkins has to say? You come across as a fan of Dawkins detractors, rather than as someone who has charitably read what Dawkins has written.

Do you think that the degree to which religion stunts people's ability to engage in critical thinking is not something to be concerned with?

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/technical/technical.html:

While the recommended maximum depth for conventional scuba diving is 130 feet, technical divers may work in the range of 170 feet to 350 feet, sometimes even deeper.

https://www.saltwatersportsman.com/story/gear/how-to-choose-the-best-fish-finder-frequency/:

“Low frequency is practical to depths of 2,500 feet,” Cushman says. “Its booming signal makes this a good choice for fishing wrecks in excess of 350 feet, West Coast rockfishing, deep-dropping and daytime swordfishing.” The wider beam angle of a low-frequency model such as the B175L 1,000-watt chirp-ready transducer (about $1,100)—which ranges from 32 degrees at its lowest frequency of 40 kHz to 21 degrees at its highest of 60 kHz—lets you search a wide swath for fish, which proves especially helpful when offshore game like marlin, wahoo and tuna are holding deep.

Clearly you don't know what you are talking about.

This would hardly be the technological challenge you make it out to be. The depths at which the pipeline was damaged are within technical scuba diving range. The pipeline is likely easy to spot on a modern 'fish finder'. GPS controlled autopilot makes holding a position relatively simple...

For example, a AAA battery has a potential voltage of 1.5V, but until it's plugged into a complete circuit, that potential is not realized. — Gnomon

Bzzzzt!

Aristotle is probably not the best source, regarding the nature of batteries. Also the subject was potential energy. Voltage is not energy.

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/dccircuits/electrical-energy.html

How so? — NOS4A2

I'd use "characteristic" rather than "feature", but we are evolutionarily inclined to be somewhat xenophobic. You might call it an aspect of monkey mindedness that humanity has to deal with.

:100:

There is a philosophical tradition (which I am not totally unsympathetic to) which "answers" questions by consigning them to meaninglessness. It's convenient enough, for all these seeming imponderable questions to be mere misuse of language. We can move on with our life. But what does it mean for these questions, seemingly so full of meaning, to be in fact meaningless? — hypericin

Perhaps it means that your brain is intuitively projecting meaning onto the question, despite where your more consciously reasoned thinking points?

Can this even be, if meaning is in my head? — hypericin

To me it seems to me like a good example, of meaning being in our heads.

I read about half way through "The Grace of Kings" but lost interest, largely due to the poor characterization. The book might have a lot of merit, as the sort of retelling it sets out to be, but the characterization was too discordant for me.

Similarly, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment lost me, due to the psychological implausibility of the characters.

If one takes away the possible forms of their experience and we do not accept claims indistinguishable from the imagination (no matter how plausible), then there is nothing intelligible left: there is nothing to be said about the world in-itself.
— Bob Ross

Again, correct. We can only know of the world in-itself through logical limitations and consequences. Namely, some "thing" must be there. But beyond that, everything is a model we create that attempts to represent what is there... — Philosophim

Why only, "through logical limitations and consequences"? Could you elaborate?

I'd be more inclined to say, that we can only know the world through our nature, and the nature of other people, including the imaginitive thinking of our intellectual ancestors who managed to point the way towards having a more accurate view of nature, and... and... and...

Is that contradictory?

OK. What kind of philosophical world model, based on what kind of scientific evidence, are you willing to accept as Real? Is that less confusing --- or more? — Gnomon

Well, I find it to be a matter of skill in considering things, to be able to look at things from different perspectives, so I'm apt to apply the sort of modeling that seems most usefully accurate for what I am considering, whether that be particles, or fields, or whatever. It doesn't make much sense to call a model "Real" though. It makes more sense to me to consider the degree to which a model is accurate, and not confuse the model for that which is being modeled

Your cat looks pretty ferocious.

I think the problem with the answers that brains give though is they are finely contextualized by different personal histories, individual differences in brain structure, noise etc. What people learn and the information they store is probably different for everyone, but in places like academia we want to remove all ambiguity. The side effect of neat clean concepts is they lose all the fuzzy non-linearity which makes them exceptionally good at being used in real life. — Apustimelogist

:100:

So, if people like this emerge and write about it, would we even be aware they exist, would we even consider their work? Or are we stuck with slow changes? And by slow changes, I mean derivations from the main method that don't challenge it to the core. — Skalidris

Everyone is working with whatever set of intuitions that they have, but people are diverse. Wouldn't we expect some to catch on more quickly than others, due to some people having intuitions more compatible with recognizing the merit of the new idea?

To answer the OP...

Psychotherapy?

When the best psychotherapists are AIs, we might be doomed.

So, what kind of evidence are you willing to accept as Real : physical/material Objects, or mathematical/immaterial Fields? — Gnomon

You seem to be confusing evidence with ways of modeling things. Your question doesn't make much sense to me.

I subscribed to the Journal of Consciousness Studies for three years and was disgusted by the poor quality of the work. It's not an area of study but a club for people who need to get published. — FrancisRay

There is a matter of perspective here. You should have seen the state of things 36 years ago, when I started looking into the subject. The progress in understanding since then has been substanantial. Considering the complexity of the subject under study, the technological difficulties in gathering detailed information, and the (IMO) warranted ethical restrictions faced by researchers, I'd say we social primates are doing pretty good.

The notion of knowledge being contaminated or distorted by human subjects seems absurd given that we are speaking about human knowledge. — Janus

:100:

But isn't it exactly the same as we all (?) do when we memorize the standard multiplication tables and recall what 12x11 is. — Ludwig V

Yes, it just seemed relevant to me to point out that there are a variety of mathematically legitimate ways that can yield correct mathematical results and therefore it seems weird to me to focus so, on whether some particular rule was used in some specific case. So I brought it up in hopes of getting a better idea of what Kripke was trying to get at.

(Incidentally, how do you deal with 2 to the power of 35? — Ludwig V

With a calculator. :wink:

Many famous scientists in history were not atheists or anti religious as your quotes... — Corvus

About those 'quotes'...

Wikiquote says the one attributed to Heisenberg is misattributed.

The second 'quote' has no attribution and Google doesn't seem to recognize it.

Finally, Einstein also said:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.
Gutkind Letter (3 January 1954), "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear". The Guardian. 13 May 2008. Wikiquote

I am an old earth guy but I don’t believe in Speciation. — Isaiasb

Then in your case, isn't the answer to your title question, "Somewhat, yes."?

Can it be by accident that all birds, beasts, and men have their right side and left side alike shaped (except in their bowels), and just two eyes and no more on either side of the face, and just two ears on either side of the head, and a nose with two holes and no more between the eyes, and one mouth under the nose, and either two fore legs or two wings or two arms on the shoulders and two legs on the hips, one on either side and no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an author?

From the evolution of tetrapods.

Are you a young earth or old earth creationist?

Thanks for taking the time. I'm reading PI right now, but haven't gotten that far.

Insightful stuff.

other rules like quus. there are probably a multitude of them which are consistent with all of the addition you have ever done so far in your life and you can't rule them out. — Apustimelogist

Does Kripke question the extent to which consciously following a rule even applies?

For example, having worked with digital logic a fair bit, I have all the powers of 2 up to 2^13 memorized and if I see 2048 + 2048 I simply recognize that the sum is 4096 without following any step by step decimal addition rules.

What is supposed to be the significance of arriving at sums via different cognitive processes?

Our language allows "the" to modify "event," thus indicating the latter is a noun i.e., a thing. Does this syntax present a fallacy? — ucarr

I wouldn't call it a fallacy so much as being an aspect of the way our brains model the world in simplistic manageable chunks. I suppose it creates the potential for false analogy fallacies, but off the top of my head I can't think of relevant examples.

Gore Tex patterns.



Rather wooish of that article to treat the superficial similarity between inflated/stretched matter and biologically grown brains as more than the superficial similarity that it is.

Given the speed of light, the cosmos would make for an awfully slow working brain.

So it remains that "God is truth" and such aphorisms do not convey factual information. Theology, taken literally, is nonsense. — Banno

Worse than nonsense, I think, if it results in not being able to make a distinction between God and truth.

You imply events are not things. Why aren't they? — ucarr

Pragmatically speaking, distinguishing things and events as different ontological categories is extremely valuable, and this is so strongly intuitively obvious to me I'm not sure where to begin.

Perhaps it is events all the way down, and our seeing 'things' is just a matter of the way our brains represent events, due to it being (arguably) evolutionarily adaptive for our brains to be as they are.

Seeing events as things is just something our brains do, the science of which can be understood to a substantial degree. So seeing things is an aspect of how we are able to be rather long lasting events.

Picking one example, I say we don't customarily measure the volume (as distinguished from intensity) of our emotional states. Nonetheless we regard them as indisputably real. For this reason, the robust discreteness of scientific truth does not cover the entire spectrum of essential human experience. — ucarr

Perhaps periods of time in an emotional state are more reasonably understood as events than as things? I'd say that from such a perspective our inability to discuss the volume of an emotional state becomes a non-issue. Furthermore, apropos to discussing events, the duration of time spent in an emotional state is a meaningful measure.