Aero and Quillette — Bitter Crank

You know, if you are going to post these pseud alt-right spooks sites as "sites from thoughtfull folks", you should at least be fair and measured and put in WSWS.org in there too. Just for balance, you know.

But you're severely underestimating the significance of such a change here, I think. With respect to metabolism, we're talking about two creatures at almost the opposite end of the animal kingdom. — StreetlightX

I agree, the overlap of forms between scales is an exception, and seems to be possible within about only 2 or 3 scales (mostly dog-sized and human-sized). It should not be overstated. Elephants are parts of the Probosciae, but this is misleading, there is nothing common between an elephant's "prosbocis" and a flie's. They belong in different worlds, as per :

The brain monitors if cells are getting as much oxygen as they need, and if they don't, heart rate increases. — Agustino

I'm not sure it does. Given the amount of cells in a human body, the size of that information would be absolutely staggering, and would constantly need adjusting. It's more likely that the monitoring function of oxygen levels is emergent from normal individual cellular operations.

The brain "tells" the body to heat up its metabolic at birth because it's flushed full with a cocktail of hormones naturally released during birth, and which kickstart a lot of other organic function such as autonomous breathing and possibly even consciousness.

An elephant would make no evolutionary sense at the scale of a hamster. — StreetlightX

A contrario, we can observe that some living structures can be adapted (within reason) to multiple scale orders. Monkeys can be the size of mice or bigger than most humans. Feline will vary between 4 and 650 pounds. Yeah there are elephant species which are smaller than others, but you don't see any of the degree of variation present in, let's say, caniforms, feliforms or even ursidae.

Perhaps there is also something there to exploit?

it suffices to just think if a creature could not have evolved that had the shape of the elephant, but the size of a hamster. I think it very well could. — Agustino

You would have to gerrywork your universe a lot to justify the existence of an evolved hamster-sized elephant. Why would an animal so small evolve a trunk? It doesn't need to apply as much force to lift any amount of water, it doesn't need large, unflexible joints to prevent his own legs from breaking, so it's going to be easier for him to lower his head without toppling over.

Perhaps a world with higher gravity?

Aristotle's Prime Mover was not a Creator God.

the notion that God DID NOT create the universe only became thinkable with the advent of modernity. Indeed it’s one of its defining ideas. — Wayfarer

Well, that goes counter that what everyone of my teachers on ancient philosophy have told me. That Creation was not a predominant question in Antiquity because most philosophers didn't feel required to thematize an origin. Most explanations, even the religious ones, seemed to be about consecutive transformative phases rather than in terms of origin and creation.

So, my question is how is meaning ascribed to inanimate objects and how do we agree on whatever meanings are formed in our head shared collectively by a common name? — Posty McPostface

How do you decide you are happy with your signature?
I have no clue how one would go about defining elegance, but I feel its explanation would go a long way about explaining the question of the OP. How one can go about finding something as practical and pragmatic as a signature elegant?

Per se, there was nothing else. God was assumed. They did not need "ID" per se. — charleton

But there wasn't any Design component to it. The question of Creation doesn't seem to have made sense to the ancient world's paradigm.

The big questions of metaphysics were always predicated on the assumption that the universe was designed;... — charleton

Aristotle et al weren't per se defenders of ID, right?

Perception of actions both internal (imagination) and external (will). — Rich

Memory goes beyond imagination. For example, semantic memory doesn't require imagination.

Unless you use 'imagination' in it's non-cognitive, common acceptation.

“…[E]xcept for the problem of ‘What am I’ there are no other metaphysical problems, since in one way or another, they all lead back to it” — Mitchell

How can you do metaphysics without specifying the terms of your epistemology (tentative answer : poorly)?

As such, 'What can I know', 'How can I know' and 'Why can I know' seems equal contenders to the foundation of any metaphysical system, unless we artificially and meta-philosophically decide to restrict the range of the inquiry.

A contrario, it is perfectly legitimate to raise the fact that as such, it also seems impossible to do epistemology without having worked out a certain metaphysical framework. Perhaps, thus, we should oberve that such domains of inquiry are a priori correlated and co-determined. Perhaps, also, should we relegate the move to a specific problem of any such domains to the status of a sophistic artifice.

Yes, but what I meant was that the cogito is based upon our certain knowledge of our direct experience. Knowing that "I think" is the same as knowing that I am having a red experience where both are being directly had by us. — Mr Bee

I don't see how useful that is. I guess it works as a sort of gauge of accointance. "Accointance can at least in principle reach the same degree of certainty we experience in the cogito".

I like the Cogito from a truth-value conservation point-of-view. At the very least there is one proposition which could always be put at the center of a network of propositions with a belief value of 1.

When you sleep or in other states time changes because memory changes. Science had no explanation at all for how ir why the feeling of time changes. The mind is clearing experiencing a change in the type of memory it is pulling from. — Rich

I'm sorry I don't follow. What changes in memory?

1. If people support gay marriage in Australia on the ground that it promotes freedom, why don't they support polygamous marriage? — RepThatMerch22

Depends. Could be because they think that polygamous marriage is notably worse for societal conditions than gay marriage. Could also be because they have divested themselves parlty of their Christians values without divesting themselves from the xenophobia toward musulman practices. You should ask them, rather than us.

3. If someone dies in Queensland and does not leave adequate provision for their children in their will, those children have a legal right to sue beneficiaries to claim the estate (even though nothing or very little was given to them in the will). If Australians support gay marriage, why will they not support removing family provision legislation? — RepThatMerch22

That's the same pretty much everywhere in the Commonwealth. Here in Canada it's pretty much impossible to disinherit someone anymore. I don't see the relation between matrimonial law and marriage laws, tho.

4. Should there be a right to suicide? — RepThatMerch22

There is little point in asking for a right to do something which, anyway, everyone is capable of doing, will keep on doing, and where you could not possibly punish the person who commited it.

Memory is jyst there and it's basically being filtered for the task at hand by the mind. There is no separation. It is all one.

Immediate is what we feel as the passage of time. — Rich

Except there is very obviously a seperation between memory states and conscious states.

I also dispute the idea that saying "immediate is what we feel as the passage of time" is in any meaningful. My feeling of time is anything but immediate in many situations : when I sleep, when I day dream, when my time is related too strictly to a task...

You mean the problem of the speckled hen? — Mr Bee

Ah, yes, I knew when I was writing this down that it didnt sound right. Speckled hen, spotted chicken, it's all a poule rousse in French. O:)

I think that scenario describes something different from what you're saying. It says that even though we are directly acquainted with certain visual experiences such as an image of a hen with 47 speckles, we are either not aware of or even justified in our belief that we are having that sort of experience. It's a problem for the idea of knowledge by acquaintance in that it seems to suggest that there are limitations to what we can know from experience. — Mr Bee

That's right, the problem is not presented as explicitely relating to the necessity of knowledge by description for knowledge by accointance to be useful. But I think it's easier to grasp the issue, as the speckle hen scenario does invalidate the idea that accointance is foundational.

Apart from that, if what you want to say is that such an experience in itself is not sufficient to conclude that there is a chicken with only 47 spots in front of us, then I can agree with that. — Mr Bee

That's the important part. If Knowledge by accointance must be related to knowledge by description to gain any value, than in what way could accointance meaningfully be said to be foundational.

The cogito itself? I suppose not very much, but I think the thinking behind the cogito is useful when applied to experience in general (and not just facts about the self). — Mr Bee

I disagree on this. The Cogito is interesting from an epistemologist point-of-view. I see very little general purpose to it. In fact, pretty much none.

Not sure what you mean by "trick of language" here, — Mr Bee

I mean that the epistemological problems of acqaintance comes down to the fact that language tends to put on the same footing experiences of *red*, the proposition 'I know that *red*, and other propositions like "I know that red is a colour with a dominant wavelenght of 625 to 740 nanometers'.

Properly distinguished, I think 'I know that *red*' should be considered an improper construction. Its only purpose is to refer to a position in an index of experiences.

I don't think our knowledge of our experience is useless at all. Pretty much everything we know about the world grounds out in facts about our experience. We are able to infer the existence of an external world from the sensations that we have that suggest it is there. Science is based upon empirical observation, which derives knowledge from the things we perceive. IMO, it is because facts about what is directly in front of us (subjectively speaking) are so certain that we use it as the foundation for understanding the world. — Mr Bee

But this is not provided by acquaintance. Bertrand Russell was very clear about that (although he did also think like you that knowledge was ultimately founded by acquaintance). Acquaintance of an object can never tell you anything about the external world, because those statements about the world are not propositions about knowledge by acquaintance, but propositions about knowledge by description. It doesn't put you in contact with the objectivity, or the objectuality, or materiality, it puts you in contact with something and you know that you have a direct cognitive relation with that something. As such, knowledge by acquaintance is only "existential" knowledge ; if you experience a memory, all the knowledge by acquaintance provided here is that you are experiencing a memory, nothing is experienced by acquaintance about the validity of the memory, about it's content.

That's, in part, why it is useless knowledge. The other reason can be expressed through a thought experiment used to challenge Russell's position on knowledge by acquaintance ; the spotted chicken scenario. Say you are looking at a spotted chicken. It has 47 spots on the side that you can see. Does your knowledge by acquaintance of the chicken and its spots justify the belief that you are looking at the 47-spotted chicken? More than likely not, since almost anyone will readily admit that it's likely there's at least a few spots that could be hidden from my view. Knowledge by description, that is, knowledge of how objects obscure sides when they display others, comes here to modulate the response we have to acquaintance, leading us to believe that the latter is insufficient in founding our beliefs about the chicken and its spots.

Is it possible for one to have a red experience without a "red" object in front of them? If a neuroscientist were to stimulate the parts of my brain that represent a red experience resulting in me feeling like there is a red experience in part of my vision, does that mean that my report about a red experience in that part of my visual field is false? — Mr Bee

At the very least, it could be an acceptable position, given a certain epistemology and ontology.

I certainly agree with that sentiment that the vast majority of what these authors write is hogwash (at least for Descartes mainly, though I can't really blame him given the time he lived in), but I think the cogito is one of the few exceptions to the rule. — Mr Bee

Well, what's the epistemological use of the Cogito, really? Perhaps, let's say someone offers you a bet weither or not you exist, and then ask you what you are willing to bet on it. The Cogito tells us that you should always literally bet everything you can on the fact that you exist, since you won't lose anything if you lose (since you don't exist). That's pretty much it.

First of all, there is no evidence that Wittgenstein had sex with his male students. And I certainly doubt it, since he had some very ascetic sexual views, regardless of what his orientation happened to be. — Agustino

Factually wrong. He had a long-term relationship with Francis Skinner, one of his students, starting around 1933. He later expressed guilt and regret at how manipulative he had been with Skinner.

Limit case :

All you are experiencing is a red experience. Nothing else. Just a pure, unsectionned, unqualified experience of red qualia.

Should you not rather feel as if you aren't seeing red, and that rather something else is deeply wrong?

Supporting case :

if *red* = 'I know that *red*
then 'I know that *red*' should = 'I know that I know that *red*' should = *red*

But 'I know that I know that *red*' isn't = with *red*, since you can have an experience of something without being aware of it.

Well, let's say you find yourself having a red experience via. introspection. It's right there in front of you, you can point to it and refer to it as you are having it. Is it possible for you to not actually have a red experience when you are in this state of mind? — Mr Bee

Knowledge by acquaintance might be indubitable, and I put an emphasis on might, because I see no reason not to reduce it to a trick of language masquarading as knowledge, but even if it is so, it is also completely useless.

As for your example, the first problem is that it relates to ontology of colours, which is in itself a very peculiar and specialised field. The second is that, given a leeway on the language, one could very well say that reports of experiences of red absent of an object that could possibly give a red qualia are cases of false reports of experiences of red.

The positive criterion you listed are taken out of Descartes or Brentano. Good food for thought, I have an immense respect for Brentano despite disagreing with nearly everything he ever said about, well, everything. Husserl was better when he was closer to Brentano. But anyhow, you shouldn't limit youserlf to this limited selection of authors on philosophy of mind. They were, after all, wrong on about 98% of what they wrote about.

Stop, your making Wittgenstein sound like a human! — Posty McPostface

Well, good, reading again my comment I didn't want to make him sound like an asshole. I mean, very often, when a teacher sleep with his student, that's in part because he's an asshole, but sometimes its not. So yeah, a human being.

Anyways, even if I think he wasn't a saint and that he probably was a tortured individual (Karl W. seemed like a fucking psychopath), he was still significantly less creepy than Heiddy.

Heard he had multiple casual relations with his students.

Genre musicians as you say 'bluegrass[, "country' there is no where to go. — charleton

I beg to differ. Dead South fuses bluegrass with metal inspirations very well. So does Justin Cross.
Shaky Graves is absolutely awesome. Dark Country is finally becoming a legit musical style rather than just another soundtrack for a Red Dead Redemption sequel.

Also, seems that your definition of modern music is fairly myopic. Classic Rock and prog rock, and that's it. I mean, look at stuff like God is an Astronaut, This Will Destroy You, Tangerine Dream...

Given that grammatical categories aren't even the same for alot of human languages — StreetlightX

Obviously not enough to disable relatively easy translation between languages. Are there human natural languages where, by principle, you couldn't formulate the idea of category? I guess that alone would blow my position.

the question really ought to be what good reason would there be to believe that a lion would employ broadly similar grammatical parsings as humans? — StreetlightX

Same basic nervous system. Literally the same evolutive landscape. And we've already performed (in parts) backwards the bridging to their world (by developing a relatively healthy field of feline psychological study).

J+L points toward this. Lions probably already have categories broadly pointing to 'friend' and 'foe', practical utility (prob much more limited), not price, but probably risk (which is pretty similar). And I knowmy cat can see stuff as boring or interesting, according to her wise designs.

I don't think assuming these categories to be the same for most beings, especially similar ones, is *necessarily* chauvinistic or naive. These point to phenomenal markers which are common to species which play "the same games" in this world. And despite being vastly different, me and my cat, on many points, "play the same games", according to the same rules. I put more flourish around it, and she puts more grace.

Is there a good reason to believe that a lion would resolve the basic questions of ontology assembling any differently then we do? Individuals, classes, attributes, relations, function terms, restrictions, rules, axioms, events... Which one would the lion miss? For that matter, which one a neutron star would miss?

Types refered to in the paper are 'what types of knowledge do speakers possess that determines their grammaticality judgements?'

Without much thought, these types could be the cognitive format types the memories of past validations take, or the more propositionally-conceived set of acceptable formulations in a given language.

The paper mentions some of the same types as Nordquist as well. Again, what conditions could impose themselves on lion so that lionese would not have the interrogative type as the statement of the implications of the query as well as the query? As in "Who did the girl kiss?" likely informs that the girl kissed someone?

There is also the problem that intuitively, I feel that I share a hell of a lot more with the world of a lion than I do with a countless number of entity populating this universe. I would have had much less problem with Witty's remark if he had spoken about a bacteria's language, or hell, a neutron star.

Those who insist that we could understand a lion talking are like Augutine: they don't pay attention to kinds, to grammar, and think everything is just a matter of semantics without grammar. To be clear, I don't think Wittgenstein's stipulation is categorical: at some point, after alot of work and effort, we would be able to understand the lion.

But the point is that the grammatical types which are marked and unmarked in lionese would be so vastly different that it would be not just another lanaguge, but another kind of language altogether. There might be grammatical markings that exist that simply have no correlate in English - or in any human language - nor could they exist, even though we might come very close to reflecting the same meaning with some clever grammatical combinatorics. — StreetlightX

You mean grammar types à laNordquist? Comparative, generative, mental, pedagogical, peformative, referential, theoritical, traditional, transformational, universal types? Because I really cannot at all conceive of conditions which would preclude the possibilities of these types without also precluding the possibility of language.

No matter how inventive lionese might be, as long as it provides it's fluent speaker with the basis for individuation, reference and abstraction, we should have all we need to relate directly to it. Everything else is, in other words, cultural.

More about embodied thought.

What about my cat's (adowable lil') paws would make her unable to understand something like "take my hand", had she the linguistic abilities I have? No matter how different our performance of whatever task might be put before us to evaluate our ability to "take a hand", obviously, she should still be able to relate the terms to the event of a possibility.

You can think that a cat would have very little incentive to hold the hand of anything or anyone, and that might be true. But even then, the fact that they have very little incentive could be thematized, such as a : "look at me, I'm so crazy, I'm holding my master by the hand" type of thing.

A limbless man would only be too conscious of his inability to perform the associated performance of "take my hand" to be unable to understand it. I feel that a failure to relate to a term might actually be the best way to establish such a relation in the first place. A little bit like shame tends to be about the fact that we should've felt shame if we had any at all, given what we did.

Nuh. — Banno

Yup.

(See, that's a language game too!)
If you can make a rule about it, then it's a game.

But why call these behaviours language games? — Banno

Don't know. Ask Witty. All games are language games, as far as I'm concerned.

And recognisably, they interacted. — Banno

Well, of course. But even with the lion (according to Wtty's thought experiment) I could interact. Sinking his teeth in my carotid still passes as interaction, so is me screaming in pain and crapping my pants.

What did these "language games" look like? — Banno

Running to one another, striking a pose, rolling the head one side to the other in a really menacing way, then running away quickly to invite chase. Couldn't tell you why the behaviourist thought they were so unique, but he stated the panther would have easily killed the dog if she had acted with him the same way she had with other panthers, and the dog would have invited the panther to attack him had he acted like a normal dog, because that would have shown him to be meek.

Sorry.

onomatopoeia*

But no one's stupidity is thick enough to sustain an ever larger balloon. — charleton

The stupidity was not buying a Bitcoin a year ago and making about 14 000$ of profits.
Alas, stupidity knows little bounds.

In any case, the whole "If lion could speak..." spiel goes so much against my personal experiences of trans-species communication that I'm fairly sure I'm so biased against it, I couldn't possibly acquiesce to it.

...and how, exactly, is that? Work through it. — Banno

Performative analysis? Unless producing honomatopea has significantly more value in the Other's world than mine, then I can assume that his production is actually aimed at a similar goal than mine. Contextual cues lead you to assume meaning behind potentially meaningless actions, because they are correlated to our domain of action, which is always meaningful to us.

I was struck a long time ago by the image : An animal behaviorist was speaking of a relationship established by a black panther and a labrador, brought in to help the panther with her depression. The behaviourist kept insisting how the language games played by both were not, at all, the same as either those that would occur between panthers or labs, and not even really a mixture of both. The strength discrepency between the two was so large that they both had to develop a new set of communicative behaviours in order to interact.

Pretty much the same way I'll recognize that someone who is speaking a foreign language I've never heard and which might sound (to me) like a bunch of honomatopea, is still likely speaking.

If I see a lion writhing in pain with evident cause, do I think: all the same, the lion's feelings are hidden from me?

No. — Banno

I've never understood how Wittgenstein regarded the animal as such a radical Other.

I'd even go further and say, even before we are able to recognise that the lion is indeed speaking, we'll understand that some of what he is doing is saying stuff. Even if we can't know what it is.

So, what are facts in a coherentist view of meaning and truth? — Posty McPostface

I can't refer to a single author, but my intuition would be that if a coherentist wanted to use 'facts' as a term, he would do so in a heuristic manner to establish a frame of comparison between his and other systems of beliefs held by other agents. By stating x or y as a fact, you emphasize the need for attention to that specific part of your propositional language. That way, it may become easier and easier to ascertain that two different belief systems are incompatible.

Perhaps, also, 'facts' would simply denote those propositions taken to provide the most validity to the structure of beliefs? That might be a bit too foundational.

2026 or possibly sooner. Remember, it's only an engineering problem now so it's pretty close. — Benkei

I was under the impression the Q-Wave* had disproved all claims regarding quantum computing as the Grail of computer ingeneering?

* Sorry, D-wave.