Some here may find the history of investigation of the Voynich Manuscript interesting.

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese.[18] The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438). Stylistic analysis has indicated the manuscript may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The origins, authorship, and purpose of the manuscript are still debated, but currently scholars lack the translation(s) and context needed to either properly entertain or eliminate any of the possibilities. Hypotheses range from a script for a natural language or constructed language, an unread code, cypher, or other form of cryptography, or perhaps a hoax, reference work (i.e. folkloric index or compendium), glossolalia[19] or work of fiction (e.g. science fantasy or mythopoeia, metafiction, speculative fiction).

Your biological body replaces its cells periodically. Over a period of seven to eight years, almost all the cells in your body have been replaced, yet you still perceive yourself as the same person you were eight years ago. — punos

This is not an accurate description in the case of neurons, many of which persist from birth:

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/public-education/brain-basics/brain-basics-life-and-death-neuron

So neurons use 20% of bodily energy to pulsate in stroboscopic fashion, in order to taste up i.e. sense the state of neural centers & give rise to the aware consciousness when in range of 7-80 Hz. Cerebellum activity can never be sensed (made aware) in qualia, as it pulsates at ca 350 Hz, so the thalamus-entrained consciousness can only influence and receive within its frequency range - another proof that it is all field-based & works as an active antenna. — Ulthien

I'm not an RF engineer, but the wavelength of an 80Hz oscillation is ~3700 km (with the wavelength of lower frequency brainwave components being even longer).

What are you proposing to serve as an active antenna for such long wavelengths? (Particularly in the electrically noisy environment of a brain.)

What we know is clear: There is a world independent of our own minds.
That is a fantastic example of a belief. Plenty of self-consistent views deny this. — noAxioms

Self consistent, and oftentimes with low correspondence to reality. Perhaps, something to watch out for.

well, dear colleague, have a go at TIQM seminal paper (in hope you are not too young to have had quantum mechanics curriculum on study years): it opens the eyes directly :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M6tTbR_rt0sWjlrlKEXAcg0xzZK2QRSb/view?usp=drive_link — Ulthien

It seems I can't access the file without giving out identifying information I don't want to give out.

As an EE myself, I have to say that sounds to me like pseudoscience.

Welcome to the forum.

What this means to me is that the ability to engage in langauge games does not require an inner state. — Hanover

This seems like a surprising conclusion to me, as I would say that both humans and LLM's require going through a lot of complex inner states in order to engage in language use. Would you elaborate on your reasoning? Also, is a distinction between conscious states and subconscious states of relevance, and if so how?

?? How nuh? You have to really want to disagree with me to find these disagree. — Fire Ologist

Perhaps it would be worth considering the twin paradox.

The two twins do not see the same thing, yet the observations of each twin occurs in accordance with Special Relativity.

I thought that might be the response. But AI is an instrument which has been created by human engineers and scientists, to fulfil their purposes. It's not a naturally-occuring object. — Wayfarer

Why think that there are any unnaturally occurring objects?

Well, name one. — Wayfarer

This AI-powered lab runs itself—and discovers new materials 10x faster

Easy enough guess in the case of Mww, but one can also quote and Google "The usual test, whether that which any one maintains is merely his persuasion, or his subjective conviction at least, that is, his firm belief, is a bet."

:up:

We believe that's very unlikely, but how do we know? — RogueAI

We don't know, but so what?

At present, I tend to believe that the idea that the universe “behaves in an orderly way” reflects a human tendency to project patterns and impose coherence where there may be none inherently. — Tom Storm

As an electrical engineer (who routinely makes use of my understanding of the regularities of nature to design things that I wouldn't have any reason to expect to work if such regularities were illusory) I find your perspective a bit mystifying. Knowing somewhat, about the zillions of clockwork like operations in physical systems that enable us to interact with people all around the world on TPF, it seems particularly ironic to me, to have such skepticism towards orderly behavior in nature.

Of course, I can't expect someone without my background knowledge to see things the same way, but I still find it somewhat baffling that you hold such a perspective.

These frameworks are always provisional or tentative, useful for communicating, and predicting, but not revealing some deep, necessary structure of the universe. — Tom Storm

I don't have anything to say about a "deep necessary structure of the universe", but do you have any explanation for why scientific frameworks would be useful for predicting if there were no reliable regularities to how things occur in nature which are described by such frameworks?

:up:

But what is “going through it” referring to? — Punshhh

I was alluding to your statement:

there are people living ordinary lives going through these processes entirely unaware of it — Punshhh

A process of subconsiously occuring deep learning.

I am coming to this from the perspective that people who are following this course are only partly aware and in charge of what is going on. That it is a more esoteric (putting the baggage of that phrase to one side) process and the pupil and teacher are developing on an underlying unconscious, or soul( baggage accepted) level and may be unaware of what is going on. Also that there are people living ordinary lives going through these processes entirely unaware of it and may have no interest at all in anything religious, or spiritual. — Punshhh

FWIW, what you describe here is quite consistent with deep learning occuring in the neural networks of our brains. So, based on neuroscience, there is good reason to think we are all unintentionally going through it. Of course, it might be beneficial to realize that deep learning is prone to "hallucinations".

But the point at issue is, whether time is real independently of any scale or perspective. So a 'mountains' measurement of time will be vastly different from the 'human' measurement of time.

Sensory information doesn't really come into it. Clearly we have different cognitive systems to other animals, but the question of the nature of time is not amenable to sensory perception.

Anyway - I can see we're going around in circles at this point, so I will leave it at that. Thanks for your comments. — Wayfarer

What do you mean by a mountain's measurement of time, if not sensory information?

You talk as if the mountain of your imagination has a flicker fusion threshold, but a flicker fusion threshold is a characteristic of sensory systems.

So touching to see the camaradie amongst the forum positivists. — Wayfarer

Do you feel better now that you've gotten some narcissistic supply?

:100:
(All your posts in this thread.)

Why? — Banno

Seems to me the following sentence answered your question.

If we start with that assumption - and call it the "ontolgoical ground" (OG), we can then entertain some possibilities. — Relativist

Basically, who cares what they think? — Fire Ologist

People who live in societies where such theists are trying to set the government agenda have good reason to be concerned with the thinking of such people.

That's what the anti-religious are required to do if they want to engage in philosophy. — Leontiskos

In what sense do you think this is a requirement?

What is the LNC about? What is it a law of? What domain does it govern? — J

I'd suggest it is a law about use of language which is truth preserving.

I'd also suggest that there are patterns to language which preserves truth; the neural networks in our brains recognize such patterns, resulting in our intuitive recognition of the LNC as truth preserving.

Simply consider the possibility of us being irrational. If there is a possibility of that, we were not purposefully directed. If there isn’t, we were purposefully directed towards rationality. — PartialFanatic

Of course humans are often irrational, and not as a matter of choice. Anyway...

The “Unintelligent Design” of the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve

But I would assume that it would be somewhat inconvenient for a physicalist to admit that, say, the 'laws of thoughts' are actually an essential aspect of that physical world which is assumed to be totally 'mindless'. — boundless

Non-eliminativist physicalists don't assume the physical world to be totally mindless of course (unless the minds under discussion are defined as being incompatible with physicalism).

Furthermore, from the perspective of many physicalists, 'laws of thought' of some sort are to be expected. And 'laws of thought' are expected to be consistent with the sort of information processing that occcurs due to the structure of our brains.

:up: :up:

:up: :wink:

Now I'm sure some good work has been done to stich together "the God that draws the crowds" and "the God that wins internet arguments" and I don't want to sell that short, but fundamentally that is what I take it to be: reconciling two very different ideas of God created for two very different purposes. — goremand

You are right to recognize the distinction

To me it seems like equivocation between the God described cataphatically during uncritical in group discussions amongst believers, and the vagueness of the God described apophatically when faced with skeptics.

I'm not seeing the "good work" though. Can you explain?

:up:

I was simply asking that we consider evidence in regard to the difference between faith and belief. — Tom Storm

I took a glance at the SEP entry on the epistemology of religion. I haven't read far, but it certainly opens with a discussion of the relevance of evidence to religious faith:

Evidentialism implies that full religious belief is justified only if there is conclusive evidence for it. It follows that if the arguments for there being a God, including any arguments from religious experience, are at best probable ones, no one would be justified in having a full belief that there is a God. And the same holds for other religious beliefs, such as the belief that God is not just good in a utilitarian fashion but loving, or the belief that there is an afterlife. Likewise it would be unjustified to believe even with less than full confidence that, say, Krishna is divine or that Mohammed is the last and most authoritative of the prophets, unless a good case can be made for these claims from the evidence.

Evidentialism, then, sets rather high standards for justification, standards that the majority do not, it would seem, meet when it comes to religious beliefs, where many rely on “faith”, which is more like the forecaster’s hunch about the weather than the argument from past climate records. Many others take some body of scripture, such as the Bible or the Koran as of special authority, contrary to the evidentialist treatment of these as just like any other books making various claims. Are these standards too high?

I agree that Plato was mistaken in his hypothesis. I don't see that as contradictory to what I said. Still I have to give him credit for recognizing something important in our thinking, and taking a stab at making sense of it.

Of course fly bottles are an issue.

I say the problem is in trying to come to grips with the sense in which such concepts exist. — Wayfarer

I'd say the best way to work on such a coming to grips, is by developing an understanding of the sort of information processing that goes on in our brains.

There's a lot more information available to enable the development of such underanding than there was in Plato day (or Russell's). It seems a shame to not be take advantage of such educational information.

The abstract notion of a triangle is a recognition of a simple pattern. Our brains are to a substantial degree, pattern recognition engines that develop models of the world.

Forms sure sound to me like Plato's offering of a cognitive science hypothesis. Without a, doubt it's a very insightful hypothesis. There is something there to be explained, which Plato is pointing at with the notion of forms. I'd suggest the reification of forms mentioned by @Banno amounts to looking at the finger that is pointing, and missing out on learning about what Plato was pointing towards.

Welcome to the forum.

This is a topic I am very interested in. Thanks for the links.

I think the need to provide public justification for private beliefs is still very strong, at least in the U.S. (though it may be fading fast), and that's a good thing. — J

Seems to me a characteristic one would want an engineer to have (the engineer who designed the plane you are going to be flying in, for example) is an appreciation for the value often found in the consideration of justifications for private beliefs.

Doing so plays an important role in social primates, such as we are, having the ability to think synergistically and learn from each other.

What is a good thing?

:up: :wink:

So it seems you prefer to use the word "signs" where many other people are inclined to use the word "information". E.g. instead of someone saying that she is going to "gather information", you would prefer that she say she is going to "gather signs"?

I'm curious to hear, where you want to go with this?

The link to Lewis' paper that you originally posted is dead. In case you want to update the OP, this link works:

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://joelvelasco.net/teaching/hum9/lewis%2520-%2520divine%2520evil.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjGj5S8ot-MAxVgHNAFHdqgJAEQFnoECAEQAg&usg=AOvVaw1CBUmYf6iWzju7jHvBjD70

Life is the necessary condition for value. — James Dean Conroy

Ignoring possible ambiguities to "life"...

It seems to me that replacing "value" with "valuing" results in less likelihood of reification.

I suggest you consider the possibility that your perspective is self contradictory. How do you know anything about chemicals?
— wonderer1

Does it matter? — Darkneos

Does it matter to you, whether your thinking is incoherent or not? Your thinking about the answer to my question might help you see that at present your thinking isn't coherent.

Doesn't change [...] how they are the reason we feel what we feel. — Darkneos

Again, you are looking at things in an overly simplistic way. The reasons we feel what we feel are quite complicated. You certainly aren't going to find any scientific backing for 'it's just chemicals'.