• Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Paine


    ...Howell wrote in a 57-page opinion ruling.

    “Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law, , this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention."

    I hope we will be hearing a lot more such statements from the bench.
  • "Beware of unearned wisdom."
    Physically we are all able to get access to any degree of wisdom, we are all humans. — Angelo Cannata

    I find that to be an extremely questionable statement. Do you really think so?
  • Is touching possible?
    Actually, if there is strong emergence, it's counterproductive to try to define touch in terms of EM fields, but the question of emergence is an open one. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Even in this absence of strong emergence, it is pragmatic to recognize that different language/modeling is appropriate at different emergent levels. The fact that a physicist has access to a more detailed model of what is meant by touch, which is contrary to the folk physics notion of touch, doesn't seem to result in confusion on the part of physicists when presented with a touch screen.

    Even for a weak emergentists it is counterproductive to try and talk about everything at the level of physics.
  • Belief
    I think the act of pointing has a place in the definition of "slab!", for the initiate. — Moliere

    :up:
  • Belief
    In order to pick out a screwdriver you need to know what it is, and in order to know what it is you need to have an internalized definition of it. That's what a definition is. An understanding or concept of what something is. If you claim to know what something is then you have at least a nominal definition of it, and if you have a definition then you claim to know what it is. — Leontiskos

    How broadly are you defining definition?

    I'd suggest that rather than a definition or an essence, you have pattern recognition which occurs in your brain.
  • The irreducibility of phenomenal experiences does not refute physicalism.
    Well, all I can say is I disagree then. I think the photograph metaphor seems a coherent analogy of the view and that I think it is consistent with someone being a physicalist. — Apustimelogist

    As a physicalist I can say that you are correct.
  • The irreducibility of phenomenal experiences does not refute physicalism.
    Nor can we conclude that there is an real, external, physical world. — Metaphysician Undercover

    And yet, according to the Philpapers survey it seems the majority of philosophers somehow manage to conclude, what you say can't be concluded.

    External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
    Accept or lean toward: non-skeptical realism 760 / 931 (81.6%)
    Other 86 / 931 (9.2%)
    Accept or lean toward: skepticism 45 / 931 (4.8%)
    Accept or lean toward: idealism 40 / 931 (4.3%)
  • Hidden Dualism
    The sun is in the sky... physical.

    The sun is not in the sky... non-physical.

    Physical and non-physical are embedded in our mental realities.     — Mark Nyquist

    I'm afraid I don't know how to interpret your statements regarding physical and non-physical.

    Suppose I suggest alternatives for your first two sentence.

    1. It is 12:00 noon and the sun is in the sky above me.

    2. It is 12:00 midnight and sun is in the sky above someone on the other side of the world, but not above me.

    Is there a reason to make a physical/non-physical distinction between the two sentences?
  • Hidden Dualism
    It is a mistake for a physicalist to excuse the non-physical. The ones that include it will get it right. — Mark Nyquist

    You know this how?
  • Climate change denial
    Yes, that does help. Thank you for the clear explanation. — Agree to Disagree
    :up:
  • Climate change denial
    I had read that climate scientists said that a certain amount of global warming was "locked in" even if we stopped emissions today. — Agree to Disagree

    Yes. The level of GHGs in the atmosphere now, means that global warming is going to continue for a long time, even if all the human contribution to the GHG content of the atmosphere ceased immediately.

    That isn't inconsistent with saying, "Most of the warming, however, will emerge relatively quickly." A simple relevant curve is an asymptotic approach to a new temperature stability point. Consider the following graph, but with the vertical axis being temperature and the horizontal axis being time:

    Screenshot-2015-03-30-16.42.09.png

    Suppose all of the excess GHGs in the atmosphere had just been dumped into the atmosphere today. For such a thought experiment we would expect the temperature of the Earth to increase along a similar curve. Most of the increase in temperature will occur relatively quickly, with the asymptotic approach to a new stable temperature going on for a long while after.

    Of course the actual picture is more complicated, but does that help in understanding why the two statements under discussion aren't contradictory?
  • Exploring the artificially intelligent mind of GPT4
    Sure, but in that case you are not "trusting AI," which is a central premise of my argument. If we fact-check AI every time it says something then the conundrum will never arise. I don't think we will do that. It would defeat the whole purpose of these technologies. — Leontiskos

    On the other hand, humans fact checking (and challenging) AIs provides training data to the AI producers which can then be used in training the next generation. Such an iterative process will almost certainly reduce the frequency with which the latest generation AI is caught making mistakes.

    https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/05/chatgpt-introduces-new-control-features-business-version-of-the-ai-in-the-works :

    Last week, OpenAI announced it had given ChatGPT users the option to turn off their chat history. ChatGPT is a "generative AI", a machine learning algorithm that can understand language and generate written responses. Users can interact with it by asking questions, and the conversations users have with it are in turn stored by OpenAI so they can be used to train its machine learning models. This new control feature allows users to choose which conversations to use to train OpenAI models.
  • Philosophical jargon: Supervenience
    The point is, that to be two beings there must be something which distinguishes them as one different from the other. If what distinguishes them one from the other, is "being in different possible words" then we cannot say that the difference between the two worlds is of negligible relevance, because we've already propositioned that this difference is what distinguishes them one from the other. Since being two distinct things rather than one and the same thing is fundamentally a significant difference, then it's necessarily of very significant relevance. — Metaphysician Undercover

    I was thinking I might be able to help you out of that logical straitjacket keeping you from productively considering the thought experiment. Perhaps another time.
  • Philosophical jargon: Supervenience
    Isn't it contrary to the law of identity to speak of "two" physical occurrences which are in every way alike. If they are in every way alike, they are necessarily one and the same, not "two". So the whole premise of this thought experiment, the assumption of two distinct physical occurrences which are exactly alike, is fundamentally flawed making that thought experiment pointless. — Metaphysician Undercover

    Suppose we defer consideration of a law of identity, and consider two identical beings in different possible worlds, with the difference between the two worlds being of negligible relevance to the two beings.
  • Reading "The Laws of Form", by George Spencer-Brown.
    Heh. You gotta read along with us! — Moliere

    It's been feeling too much like coming home from work to go back to work. I talk to electrical engineers all day long. :joke:
  • Reading "The Laws of Form", by George Spencer-Brown.
    I'm not seeing it. — Banno

    Ah, ok. Like I said, it was very much a guess.

    I thought there might be some relevant analogies.
  • Reading "The Laws of Form", by George Spencer-Brown.
    And fuck knows what is happening in chapter eleven, where moving out of a plane is equated with bending time... or something. — Banno

    I haven't read past the introduction, but perhaps this video conveys something of relevance?

    Very much a guess.
  • Philosophical jargon: Supervenience
    ...but one of the problems often brought forth by the substance dualist is that there is not empirical proof that brain state X always causes behavior Y because fMRI results do not show that for every instance of behavior Y the exact areas of the brain show activity. — Hanover

    Yes. fMRI is far from being a technology capable of showing "exact" areas of the brain, much less the enormous amount of dynamic activity involved in the massively parallel information processing going on in there.

    Consider this photo with motion blur and add focus blur with your imagination.

    motion-blur-people-crossing-a-street-in-a-city.jpg

    Then consider asking whether the image you are imagining is sufficient to prove that T. Clark picked your pocket.

    Wherever we might draw a line representing "sufficient data for neuroscience to comprehensively explain consciousness", fMRI scans are a long way from crossing that line. Not to say that neuroscience hasn't come a long way, or that fMRI isn't an awesome achievement for social primates like ourselves.

    On the other hand, there are lots of other avenues of empirical investigation that all seem to be pointing in the same direction. So the scientific picture might be seen as analogous to a jigsaw puzzle with the edges fully completed. Tough competition for dualists, on the empirical evidence front.
  • Philosophical jargon: Supervenience
    As with a lot of jargon, philosophical or otherwise, is "supervenience" really needed? What's wrong with "dependence?" — T Clark

    Interesting question. I don't think I've ever used the word supervenience in discussions with other electrical engineers, although other EEs certainly have to understand the notion of supervenience regardless of whether they have any familiarity with the word.

    I do think using "supervenience" is useful in philosophy however, to convey a rather specific sort of dependency. For example I might say, "My minor children are dependent on me.", but I wouldn't say, "My minor children are supervenient on me."
  • The von Neumann–Wigner interpretation and the Fine Tuning Problem
    There isn't any one mainstream theory for this. Rather, there is a constellation of widely variant theories that focus on anything from "all complex enough computation results in experience," to "certain energy patterns = experience," to panpsychism, to brainwaves, to a quantum level explanations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Seems to me the kind of situation we would expect in light of less than adequate empirical data, and all the more reason to recognize the low spatial and temporal resolution of the empirical data available at present.

    What is surprising is that, even if we could resolve individual synapses, we aren't sure this would give us an answer. That is, most theories are such that, even if we magically had that sort of resolution, they couldn't tell us "look for X and X will show you if a thing is conscious or not." — Count Timothy von Icarus

    To me it seems unsurprising that speculation in the absence of sufficient empirical data fails to yield definitive criteria for identifying the physical nature of consciousness.

    Would you elaborate on why you find the situation surprising?
  • Solution to the Gettier problem
    When a thing is exactly the same as a duck from all external appearances including
    a blood test of DNA, then you can tell it is actually a space alien when it telepathically
    invades your thoughts screaming that it <is> a space alien.     — PL Olcott

    When you believe that there is an alien, disguised as a duck, screaming into your head telepathically, there might be deeper epistemic concerns than Gettier problems.
  • The von Neumann–Wigner interpretation and the Fine Tuning Problem
    And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    I had overlooked this until
    ↪T Clark
    excerpted it.

    Googling around, the smallest estimate of neuron count per fMRI voxel that I found is ~10,000. Mr. Spock would see our current fMRI technology as working with stone knives and bearskins.

    If we were approaching the ability to resolve all the individual synapses in a brain we might be approaching sufficient resolution, but we are a long long way from that sort of resolution, and that's only talking spatial resolution. The temporal resolution of fMRI leaves much to be desired as well.
  • Climate change denial
    Non-biogenic methane is a different issue. — Agree to Disagree

    I suspect that when I went back to university to do a 2nd degree you were probably still in nappies (or if you are American, still in diapers). — Agree to Disagree

    Seems kind of silly to think that matters much in this discussion, when you are constantly demonstrating that you are a pretender to scientific understanding. Does, "Hesperus is Phosphorus", help?
  • The von Neumann–Wigner interpretation and the Fine Tuning Problem
    Notice how close this is getting to the dictum of classical metaphysics - that ‘to be is to be intelligible’. — Wayfarer

    What is the danger of getting close to the dictum?
  • What is Logic?
    Plus, paired with findings that give rise to the popularity of computational theory of mind, the view of computation as something that only occurs in sentient consciousness starts to get a little wonky. Presumably, I am computing if I am not a math wiz and have to consciously think about the steps involved in summing some list of figures. But then am I not computing if the entire process happens unconsciously and I just know the outcome by glancing at the symbols? Do I compute when I consciously try to read French, but acomputationally experience when the meanings of English words fly into my awareness with no conscious effort? If unconconcious computation is possible within a human, it seems harder to justify it not existing outside the mind. But then knowing the answer to 3+7, 2+2, etc. doesn't seem to require anything conscious or intentional on our part. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    :up:
  • God and the Present
    I think it might be the case that experience is special.
    — chiknsld

    Do you mean "special" in the sense of special relativity?     — Benj96

    Or maybe, the life experience through which information gets into our brains is special?
  • Climate change denial
    It’s the effect of propaganda…or pure stupidity. — Mikie


    Or both. It doesn't seem to require much intelligence to be a propaganda parrot.
  • Climate change denial
    Methane oxidizes to CO2 after about 12 years. — frank

    Thanks. That gives me a clearer picture of what is under consideration.
  • Literary writing process
    Since I know the outline, it is easy to know where each new sentence should go. In this way, bit by bit, I fill out the story, until I feel all the gaps are filled. — hypericin

    Not someone with any literary writing experience to speak of myself, but I find that fascinating. I have a hard time imagining myself writing in such a way at the sentence level. I would love to learn more.

    If you don't mind me asking... Do you think it is a matter of artistically focusing on crafting your language at the sentence level as an aesthetic choice, or would you describe it differently?
  • Climate change denial
    Now we'll add a cattle farm in Mexico, and it's truly net zero, which means that after 12 years, its output is entirely absorbed by its input. — frank

    What is the proposal for how atmospheric methane is absorbed by the farm? As I understand it, plants don't make use of atmospheric methane as they make use of atmospheric CO2. (Although some species of bacteria metabolize methane.)
  • A Case for Objective Epistemic Norms
    1. Intuitions (i.e., intellectual seemings): one ought to take as true what intellectual strikes them as being the case unless sufficient evidence has been prevented that demonstrates the invalidity of it. — Bob Ross

    I have a more complicated perspective on intuitions.

    Intuition is foundational to our thought and taking intuitions as true is something we do as fast thinking on autopilot. Being creatures that sometimes need to act quickly in emergencies, we sometimes need to act on intuitions without questioning them.

    That said, there is a lot of epistemic value in questioning/testing intuitions when we have the luxury of doing so, because over the long term our intuitions can evolve to new and better intuitions as a consequence of such questioning/testing.

    Another way of looking at intuitions, is as being the conclusions we jump to, and I expect we all have experience with jumping to wrong conclusions and can recognize value in reducing the frequency with which we jump to wrong conclusions.

    I'm a big advocate for honing one's intuitions, and leaving that honing to other people's presentation of contradictory evidence seems excessively passive to me. An ability to refine one's intutions over time seems to me to be fairly crucial to philosophy and science, and inability to learn from philosophy and science looks looks to me as if it is strongly tied to an inability or unwillingness to question one's intuitions.
  • Solution to the Gettier problem
    This causes all synthetic expressions of language to be rejected
    as knowledge.     — PL Olcott

    You seem to have a weird notion of causality to me. Nothing is causing me to reject synthetic expressions of language as knowledge.

    Maybe you can rephrase that?
  • Solution to the Gettier problem
    Gettier cases prove that a reasonable approximation of knowledge
    sometimes diverges from actual knowledge.     — PL Olcott

    Isaac Asimov's essay, The Relativity of Wrong, might be of interest.
  • Hidden Dualism
    I see lots of examples of science gaining some grasp of cognition and psychology in your list but none that indicate an understanding of consciousness. — FrancisRay

    If you don't see cognition and psychology as significant aspects of consciousness, then I don't know what you are referring to with the word "consciousness".

    We know a bit about anesthetics, as you say, but this tells us nothing nothing about consciousness. — FrancisRay

    That looks like black and white thinking to me. Why think that knowing a bit about the effects of anesthetics doesn't tell us a bit about consciousness. Why think that consciousness is something that might be well understood without knowing all sorts of bits?
  • A Method to start at philosophy
    Did anyone in this discussion indicate or imply that this isn't true? I don't think so. — T Clark

    Not that I know of, but I saw Tobias' point as worth emphasizing.
  • Enlightened Materialism
    So, an appeal to evolutionary theory. But that is not really a philosophy, even though it's often taken as such - it's a biological theory, and viewing motivation solely through that lens is biological reductionism. — Quixodian

    Well, I'm glad I don't view motivation solely through that lens. It's important to be able to consider things from a variety of perspectives, and to lack the ability to look at things from an evolutionary perspective is is to be intellectually impoverished.

    'People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. — Quixodian

    Sure. There is no incompatibility between being informed about our evolutionary history and recognizing the existence of altruism, as is illustrated (in several ways) by this love story/obituary written by Jerry Coyne - author of Why Evolution Is True.

    On the other hand, understanding that there is variation in people's neurological wiring resulting from humanity's evolutionary history helps in understanding psychopathy, and that there is only so much that nurture can do.

    This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. — Quixodian

    Do you know through experience with having the sort of knowledge of evolutionary psychology that you are referring to, that it does not help "at all"? That is not my experience.
  • A Method to start at philosophy
    I think your opinion of what it takes to be a philosopher is a bit high-falutin. — T Clark

    Perhaps, but I think
    ↪Tobias
    brings up an important point with the following quote, in that developing skills at communicating about philosophical topics requires relevant skill developing social experiences including exposure to unfamiliar ways of looking at things.

    An objection you could then make is: "But what if someone plays out all the arguments in their head?". I would then say "That is nigh impossible to do, because it requires a brain that would outmatch all these brains that one could bring into play when one would conduct philosophy in a social group". That is why also philosophy was developed in conversation with others. — Tobias

    I.e. two heads are better than one.
  • Solution to the Gettier problem
    I don't think it necessities omnipotence for knowledge. For example, the Dude in the Big Lebowski knows "he's had a hard day and he fucking hates the Eagles man." He can't be wrong about this because his knowing he hates the Eagles necessitates that it is the case that he hates the Eagles. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    I can't pragmatically argue with that. :up:

    Though it is inconceivable that someone could hate the Eagles. So I suspect The Dude might be a fictional character.
  • Solution to the Gettier problem
    Unless at least one mind has a belief B about subject S such that the justification of this belief necessitates its truth then B is not an element of {knowledge} because no one knows it. — PL Olcott

    I am skeptical towards justificationism/foundationalism. It looks to me like human attempts at justification are always built on intuitions which are not in themselves logically justified. (Which is not to say that intuitions cannot be extremely reliable.)

    I think that in the strictest sense the, JTB definition of knowledge would require a sort of intuition free omniscient ability to construct logical justifications that is not available to social primates like us. Which is not to say the notion of human knowledge is something we should toss, but that we should recognize that JTB is insufficient as a way of understanding knowledge.
  • What is Logic?
    I'd love to have a go at it, but I too find it daunting. A logician, a mathematician, and an electrical engineer would be useful contributors. Anyone? — unenlightened

    I read the prefaces and the introduction, and I'm an electrical engineer who would be happy to contribute to such a thread if I saw a way to do so. I'm not sure I'm willing to make the time commitment of reading the whole book, although sufficiently interesting contributions from other posters might compel me to do so. :wink:
Home » wonderer1