That's actually not bad, and less hand-wavy than I thought. — Srap Tasmaner

It's very good. I love the way you are off and running with this.

I do plan on responding to your earlier posts in a more in-depth way. However, I spent all day yesterday on the forum, and my 17 year old son and I are going on a two week tent camping road trip to Yellowstone next Saturday, and I have a lot of organizing and packing to do. (I don't suppose you live somewhere between Indiana and Wyoming? It would be fantastic to be able to talk to you in person. Although I do like forum style communication a lot, because it allows for input from a wide variety of perspectives.)

Anyway, I'm going to have to limit my forum time for awhile, and clearly you are well setup to do a lot of very productive thinking without further input from me.

It's not appropriate to say that a neural net is "trained". Nor is it appropriate to say that a neural net performs word recognition. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know what you mean by "not appropriate". I take it you are expressing disapproval. However there is a large community of people in AI and neuroscience who see things differently than you do, and provided human civilization doesn't collapse, thinking in such terms is going to become more and more a matter of common knowledge.

To me it sounds like you are saying something like, "It is inappropriate to talk about riding in a car, because riding is something which is done on a horse, or in a carriage drawn by a horse.

So I'll just say that your post is an attempt to simplify something very complex and the result is a gross misrepresentation, and leave it at that. — Metaphysician Undercover

Absolutely, it is an attempt to simplify something enormously complex. Certainly it is simplistic and open to misinterpretation by people who don't educate themselves on the subject.

Here is one way people who want to know what is going on in the 21st century can educate themselves.

As I said I see it not as being a presupposition, but as a recognition of something necessary to thought and discussion. — Janus

I think you are likely correct to see it as a matter of recognition. I was discussing my ideas on that with Srap here.

I wanted to provide a social explanation for reason, but leaving it more or less intact -- and this is the aporia that Lewis ran into, that he couldn't directly link up the convention account of language to the model-theoretic account he was also committed to. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know what you had in mind regarding a social explanation for reason, but I do see there being a very strong social explanation for reason, in that logic is deeply tied in with our use of language. I speculate that logic becomes a matter of undeniable intuition as we are grasping the relationships between language about reality and reality itself. Because our intuitions about logic develop alogically when we are young, as recognition of patterns in how language relates to facts about the world, by the age we start thinking 'metalogically', those intuitions have the 'feel' of apriori knowledge.

That is very much a matter of intuitive speculation though, and not something I feel equipped to make an evidential case for. So please point out any holes that might seem obvious to you.

I expect this to sound like a strange request but... Please see here for an explanation as to why, not knowing you at all, I would find it difficult to explain. There is an important sense in which I need to know my audience in order to communicate with any meaningful degree of success.

I think that what it reveals is that the process is noy like we think it is. And I guess that's why we have different opinions about it, no one really knows how they read. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hmm. I see it is as revealing that the process is a lot like I think it is.

Trained neural nets can have a lot of 'fault tolerance', which is easy to say, but not so easy to explain. Anyway, as skilled readers we have neural nets that have been effectively trained at word recognition and automation of that recognition so that we don't need to consciously recognize each letter. I only need my trained neural nets to reveal the word in my lexicon that has the closest pattern match that also fits semantically with what I had already read.

I just bought the book, after looking at the Amazon description. But I've had a lot of time to think about this sort of stuff on my own. I do see some wisdom in you waiting awhile to develop your own view a bit more, in order to be better able to critically evaluate the book.

I will say, that what I read of the book's focus on human interaction, matches up well with my view. In fact, in discussions of free will, I've often referred to myself as an interactive determinist. The interaction part is important. Anyway, I could go on about this at length, but I'm hopeful Mercier and Sperber will give me tools for communicating about it more effectively, so I'll hold off for now.

And I'm glad Gibson bolted from Bladerunner because I loved the uniqueness of his vision.

Not everything can be made explicit. — Srap Tasmaner

Feeling some poetry...

From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, On Teaching:

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

Very very insightful, and you are recognizing things that I only recognize as making a lot of intuitive sense, as a result of you having put things in your own words. It's so cool that your background knowledge allows me to communicate with you about such things, with such productive results.

I suspect I'll have more to say after I've had some time to reread and cogitate more on your response, but I wanted to say that much for now.

I want to bring your views into alignment with mine, and that's why I make arguments in favor of my belief. — Srap Tasmaner

I have an atypical perspective on communication and strategies for communicating and I don't know how likely it is that I can convey much understanding of it, or that others will be able to make use of it. However, I'll give it a shot.

It seems that for me an aspect of being on the autism spectrum, is a lack of a model for 'the generic person'. This manifests as me tending to be very quiet IRL around people I don't know, because I tend not to see clear ways to express myself without some specific knowledge of the other person's way of looking at things.

I think an aspect of how I have learned to cope with autism is to be somewhat hyperattentive (in some regards) to what individuals say, and what that tells me about how that individual thinks about things, and (to some degree) what 'subconscious hooks' in their thinking I can make use of in conveying things to them. IOW, to have much ability to communicate fluently with someone I need to know something about how they specifically are likely to connect the dots.

For example, because of our exchanges in the past, in talking to you I can refer to Capablanca as making use of the subconscious/intuitive hooks of other expert chess players, to convey an understanding of a particular endgame, by setting up the relevant chess pieces in a particular way. An aspect of communication for me is a sort of planting of seeds in people's subconscious, such that an intuitive recognition might occur at some point. I see it as analogous to Capablanca setting up the chess position. If you had not written the things you did about Capablanca I'd guess that I wouldn't be writing this, because I would not know how to convey what it is I'm trying to convey to you.

Inasmuch as I'm talking about a communication strategy, I'll point out that it is often a long game strategy where I'm not expecting to have much impact on a person's thinking in the short term. In many cases I don't have much expectation of seeing results, because I'm relying on the other individual's life experience to fill in the 'intuitive dots' and perhaps result in an epiphany at a later date. I don't even expect people to recognize that I've set them up to have whatever epiphany they might have.

I've seen plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of this style of communicating in changing people's intuitions to some degree, though I'm not going to present the evidence because it would be too much like presenting psychological case studies of people I care about. Besides, if things work as I think they do, I think it likely that you will develop a recognition of how this style of communicating can be effective without anything additional from me.

and I have both been frequent posters on another forum for a long time. So I replied to him:

1) with the assumption that he had relevant background knowledge about my perspective that I didn't need to elaborate on.

2) with knowledge of his specific background that led me to think a succinct response might be sufficient.

Where you live is, in part, your perception of that light right now. — Ø implies everything

Right. My point was that there are complicating factors, in translating between an external world scientific reference frame and one's subjective seeming reference frame. Do you agree?

I suspect other members might have a very different impression of my tendency to politesse... — Isaac

LOL

If you have any particularly edifying examples, I'd be interested in taking a look. (But maybe PM?) I have autistic standards of politesse myself, so to me you seem fairly circumspect.

People don't like psychology as rule. I think there's something immediately offensive about someone claiming to know how you think. — Isaac

It does seem to be an acquired taste, and some psychologies make acquisition much less likely. Still, there are those times when you can lead someone to a more accurate understanding of their own nature and change the rest of their lives for the better.

I'm more keen to just learn how different people respond to interrogation, that's my wheelhouse really (one of them, anyway). How people defend and attack beliefs in a social context - the rules of engagement, the tactics, the impacts... that sort of thing. — Isaac

This has been a big interest of mine for a long time as well, albeit from a strictly amateur and eclectically educated perspective in my case.

It's a rare thing that a thread addresses this directly as this one has, but really, there's more meat to found on the ones that are talking about something else. — Isaac

I think I know what you mean. People behave in more informative ways in other contexts.

That said, if you have a specific question, I'm happy to risk it, but fair warning, the answer will be about narratives and won't mention Freud once, unless in place of an expletive. — Isaac

I'm really enjoying participating on TPF, and I've already received a warning for bringing up a psychological topic, so perhaps later in a different context.

That's a shame, because what was an interesting conversation we here having seems to have fizzled out... — Isaac

Do you think the fizzling might be somewhat a consequence of excessive politesse on your part?

I suspect that as a psychology professor you have insight into the topic of the OP that you haven't brought up in the thread. (And I understand there may well be ethical standards for someone in your position, and abiding by such standards requires limiting what you say.)

Thoughts?

Semantics? — Pantagruel

Or frame of reference, which I suppose is pretty close to the same thing.

Yet Trump claimed that the only way he could lose was if the election was stolen. How could he possibly know that? He couldn't. It wasn't a belief, it was a strategy. — GRWelsh

:up:

Of course, the subject of neuroscience is the human brain, and humans are subjects, but that it not the point at issue. — Wayfarer

The point I was addressing was the falsity to your claim that, "I agree with Chalmers, on the grounds that objective physical sciences exclude the first person as a matter of principle."

It seems that went over your head, but now that I am pointing it our more explicitly, can you recognize the falsity of that statement you made? Do you recognize that you are not well qualified to speak of "the principles of science"?

The bet which was the subject of the OP was placed in 1998 between David Chalmers and Kristoff Koch as to whether a neurological account of the nature of experience would be discovered in the next 25 years. — Wayfarer

People make dumb bets. If I had been there I would happily have bet ten cases of wine on Chalmer's side. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Chalmers was right on the occasion when the bet was made.

BTW, people use "OP" here in a way that I haven't been able to clearly grasp the referent of. I think of "OP" as an acronym for "original post" referring to the initial post in a forum thread/discussion. However, some people use "OP" in ways that clearly do not fit with my understanding; your usage for example. What I consider to be the OP wasn't about the bet. It was about a "Nice little roundup of the state of consciousness studies"... ..."Over at Vox Future Perfect."

Have you read the original Chalmer’s paper? — Wayfarer

I haven't read this thread closely enough to know what paper you are referring to. Can you provide a non-paywalled link?

If someone reads a passage very quickly, and mixes up some words so that there is misunderstanding, can this really be called reading it? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see any good reason to look at it in black and white terms. I don't see reading as defined by not making any errors. Consider the varying interpretations people have of literature. Do you think all people who read a piece of literature have the same interpretation? Does it seem likely that lexical errors play a major role in the variance of interpretations?

If you read the article, it's all a hoax anyway, there was no such research. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I read it and found the additional text samples interesting as well. Regardless of the hoax, it is still interesting to consider what text samples like that can reveal to us about our thinking.

But physical sciences don't exclude the first person as far as I can tell.
— wonderer1

There is the presumption that their findings are observer-independent i.e. replicable by anyone, They’re ‘third person’ in that sense. It’s an implicit assumption. — Wayfarer

I suppose I should have asked where you draw a line between physical sciences and ~physical sciences, and why?

Neuroscience certainly is a physical science, and doesn't exclude the first person. Do you disagree?

I checked your link. Notice that each letter still needs to be there. Luke says reading occurs as a temporal order, I disagreed. Your link seems to support my position. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe we just experience it differently. It is clear to me that I have no need to be conscious of every letter in order to grasp the intended content. My brain yielded pattern recognized words, largely despite the 'brokenness" of many of the words. I can't say that I know what it is like for you though. I thought you might recognize that you didn't need to be conscious of every letter to understand the content.

Would you say that for you it was like solving a sort of logic puzzle to determine the following content?

am very sure that I am conscious of each letter in each word, or else I would misread the word. Are you sure that you are not conscious of each letter in each word? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'd ask you to look at the following link.

https://www.sciencealert.com/word-jumble-meme-first-last-letters-cambridge-typoglycaemia

If you perceive an event unfold, like an arrow being shot at a person, if you are really fast it is possible to "intercede" in the future of that event. — Pantagruel

Right. I think that an important aspect of what our minds are 'evolutionarily for' is interceding in events in the future, so presenting a model with representations of the future to our minds is what our brains do. So us having multiple possible futures being represented in consciousness makes intuitive sense to me. However, I see that as different from consciousness being in the future.

Does that make sense?

Personally, I am exploring the idea that, while objects may have a temporal position, consciousness actually has a temporal "size." Objects are three dimensional and moving through or in time, as it were. But consciousness actually exists in the past, present and future, has actual temporal dimension. An intuition. — Pantagruel

I'm not caught up on this thread, so apologies if the thread has moved on.

I do think there is interesting scientific evidence for consciousness being 'clocked' to some extent, at brain wave frequencies. So there may be a temporal size along such lines.

I'm more skeptical that consciousness 'exists in the future'. I think our brains are continually modelling and updating their modelling of the future. This is what allows us to catch a ball flying through the air, even though our sensing of a moving ball's position is continuously time delayed. So I think it makes sense that it seems that our consciousness exists in part in the future.

...the processes of one's unconscious mind (its synthesizing of information very much included) are fully irrelevant to the issue of what is factually being consciously experienced... — javra

If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and say, "La la la, I can't hear you.", then I don't have more to say. If you change your mind this article on visual cortex filling the role of the 'mind's eye' might be worth a look.

[irony]It hasn't happened yet. I'm curious to see what it would feel like.[/irony] — T Clark

Have you seen that TED Talk? If not, I get the impression that you would appreciate it.

Knowing what knowing feels like is a big part of that. — T Clark

Do you know what being wrong feel like?

When I visually imagine a table, I see the table from one singular perspective (rather than, say, from 12 different perspectives simultaneously). — javra

That depends on the circumstances. If you are visually imagining a table, due to your eyes being directed towards and focusing on an illuminated table, and you have the binocular vision typical of humans, then you are seeing the table from two different perspectives and your brain is synthesizing what you imagine to be a table seen from a singular perspective but with a depth which is due to the binocular origins of the imagining under consideration.

I agree with Chalmers, on the grounds that objective physical sciences exclude the first person as a matter of principle. — Wayfarer

But physical sciences don't exclude the first person as far as I can tell.

Can you show me somewhere, where this principle you speak of is written down?

That makes sense. Not everyone's intuition on a given subject is going to have equal weight. — Tom Storm

:up:

Some chimps know how to crack the nuts, and some chimps don't.

Of the chimps that don't, the smart ones are the one's who are watching and learning.

Yeah, I got that part. If I accept your definition I accept your conclusion because your conclusion is contained in the definition. The question is, why should I accept your definition? Something starting to exist when it did not exist prior its first moment of existence is something coming from nothing. I am not sure how the position just stated violates some core principle of logic? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I suspect Jabberwock is sleeping now. So I'll interject.

I don't think is is a matter of definition. It looks to me as if you don't have a clear mental model of what Jabberwock is proposing. Jabberwock is proposing a first state, in which something exists. "A state prior to the absolute first state" is a nonsensical construction, which you seem to be insisting on inserting into Jabberwock's model instead of grasping the model that Jabberwock is trying to convey to you.

IOW, it looks to me like you are attacking a straw man of your own creation, where you've tacked your own addition, of a state of nothingness prior to the absolute first state, onto Jabberwock's model.

Might I suggest, spending some time, on getting a better grasp on the picture Jabberwock is seeking to convey to you?

It has always surprised me how many people are not aware of their own thinking processes. Unaware that their consciousness and reason are just a small part of their mental life and that most of what we think, feel, know is not a function of those two limited processes. It's certainly something you see all the time here on the forum. So, I guess you could say you're in good company. — T Clark

I think individual variation in cognitive strengths and weaknesses plays a big role that few people are cognizant of. Most people aren't going to see a need for the sort of cognitive testing that I've had done on myself, and therefore most people likely lack an intuitive understanding of the role that variations in cognitive faculties between individuals play in the way those individuals understand things.

The first time I took a WAIS block design test, the person conducting the test commented on how much better it is giving the test to engineers. I had subjectively felt that I was performing slowly, when in fact I was doing the tasks quickly. I realized that I had previously just assumed that everyone has the same visuo-spatial abilities that I do. It is still difficult for me to imagine being without visuo-spatial abilities like mine, because those abilities play such a big role in much that I do.

I think something similar may be going on with many of the extremely language focused philosophers. Some say thinking is impossible apart from language, and maybe for them that is much moreso the case, than it is for me. However I wonder if there isn't a deficit in visuo-spatial abilities involved, with having such a point of view.

I posted a link to that passage here on TPF recently. I don't think there is a chapter in which I don't find something that moves me deeply.

Oh yeah. I've been an atheist so long that I can enjoy theological metaphors now. — plaque flag

Yeah, I love The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I've been considering posting The Coming of the Ship at what is left of the Reasonable Faith Forums but I'm afraid doing so might come across as grandiose, instead of conveying what I want.

At the beginning of relationships, there's the moment of the first kiss, letting 'I love you' slip out, all kinds of stuff. — plaque flag

I was attracted to her before witnessing the 'magic', but wasn't considering asking her out because I knew she was going to be leaving the country in a few months. She was here on a Fullbright scholarship, and part of the terms were that she return home to Finland for two years after completing her studies. I figured I was going to be heartbroken when I decided to ask her out, and that intuition was sure as hell right, but that was the best three months of my life.

It's the book Plato at the Googleplex, Rebecca Goldstein. — Wayfarer

Ah that makes more sense. When I first clicked the link, it too me to an article on biosemiotics.

Looks interesting. I've got another of Goldstein's books on my to read pile.

You might find this title of interest. — Wayfarer

Can you post an excerpt of what in particular you see as pertinent?

I only got a bit past, "But was this only a poetic metaphor or can we really say that the genetic code is a true molecular language?", and saw that the author was likely going to give the wrong answer.

Regardless, it does bring up a couple questions. Do you think DNA is *about* something? I.e. does DNA have intentionality? Is a question of, "What is meant by intentionality?", involved in determining whether or not something is a language?

League of Legends. — Darkneos

That's interesting. I don't know League of Legends. I'm not good at games requiring super quick response times.

On the matter of expertise, and its relationship to intuition; I'd say video games provide a pretty 'thin' training set. Intuitions developed from playing a videogame don't tend to be very useful outside of video games.

Having expertise in something a lot more complex than a video game, might help you get a better grasp on the nature of intuition.

Wow. Same book and same attitude for me at the same age. I loved that dude back then. — plaque flag

:lol:

How thing have changed, eh?

I'm kind of a C.S. Lewis own goal.

Ah but part of the calculation, because she saw that he saw that you were with her -- carrot and the stick. — plaque flag

I would think so too.

I'd love to know what thoughts went through Meri's head. Would she have done the same if it had been just her and Barb there? I'd guess yes.
— wonderer1

Ah, but was there time for thoughts ? — plaque flag

Ok, I was lazy with my language. How about, "What intuitions arose?"

I wonder about trust. Barb and I had known each other for years. Meri, being a great observer of people, I'd guess she recognized Barb's trust in me while we were in the bar. I hadn't asked for her number or anything at that point though. On one hand, I think it was rather bold of her to assume I would step in. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if she 'knew' I had her covered.

I was primarily interested in the details of SGD and backprop. I whipped up software for exploring the math basically, wasn't terribly interested at that time in applications. — plaque flag

I was very interested in the applications but not so much the math. My best friend in college was still in school working on his M.S. and I looked through his copy of Parallel Distributed Processing when visiting one weekend. It changed the course of my life enormously.

About six months later (36 years ago), in a manic state that scared the shit out of me, I intuited an explanation for a lot of idiosnycratic things about myself (including social issues), in terms of hypothesized variations in low level neural interconnect structure. I only recently found out, that some years back evidence that fit my hypothesis well has been found.

I think I became a bit dissociated, with one part of my brain yelling, "This makes so much sense!" and another part of my brain yelling something like, "You don't have anywhere near the educational basis to think this hypothesis merits serious consideration!" Over three days I became pretty out of touch with reality due to this shouting match going on in my head.

It took a year for me to get over the fear of being in that mental state and reach the point that I was willing to risk allowing myself to think about such things.