I didn’t say anything about craft, did I?

Many restaurants and homes have what I consider to be badly designed forks. I was in an Italian restaurant yesterday and ordered tagliatelle, but was shocked (shocked!) to see that my fork had short tines. Some might say that it was beautiful to look at, but if a tool is not fit for purpose, any beauty it might have is empty. Its eye-pleasing shape was superficial; for any tool, an important element in its beauty must be its functionality (and how it feels in the hand etc). — Jamal

I recall reading about a study which claims that people think, to some degree, that aesthetically pleasing tools work better, even though they may actually be inferior in function to ugly tools.

What it might say is that conceptual art is a mistaken or ill-conceived separation of the two, that it's the exemplar of a belief in the false equation, art = [craft, skill, and technique] + [vision, emotional investment, imagination]. And this belief could be the result of the inflated status of the artist as creator, which is an ecomonic and sociological phenomenon. — Jamal

I wouldn’t call this separation “ill-conceived”, I would simply tend to regard the result as commercial art, or art produced with the intent of making money, promoting some cause, or whatever. The ‘conceptual artist’ in this case is the capitalist or boss and in this way does hold a higher status position, and reaps the lion-share of profits. It’s not just artistic concepts though, like any business it’s having access to resources that the talent lacks.

Think for yourself.

And I got a word to spare. :grin:

With Roe vs. Wade squashed, we should expect a population explosion in the US in the coming few decades.
— Agent Smith

Between the defunding of social security, healthcare, daily mass shootings, and uncontrolled climate change (all Republican priorities), I kind of doubt that. — Mr Bee

If the decision mostly affects single mother’s of very limited means, there should be a significant uptick in crime in the areas most affected in about 18 years.

Then tell me what it means to you. — Jackson

Personal aesthetic expression, to put it broadly.

What does “making objects which convey meaning” mean to you? Dictionary’s are objects made to convey meaning, for instance, and you don’t seem to like those objects much.

Not sure what you're saying. Art for art's sake was a motto for decorative art. — Jackson

Forgive me for utilizing my common sense but wouldn’t that be art for the sake of decoration?

Art is not about beauty, it is about making objects which convey meaning. — Jackson

Art for art’s sake is not art then? That can’t be right, can it?

Tribalism always entails the enemy as the outsider. — Jackson

Heretics and infidels. :death:

Why does religion still hold humanity in its grasp and why is it so hard for most people to see through obvious truths? — enqramot

The core of it is tribalism, a survival strategy, and though religion may be the most potent expression of this it exists in many forms.

Hey brat a little tip, try showing some kind of maturity and mutual respect that way you can get the other person to actually have a conversation with you so that you might actually learn something for a change, the keyboard has been saving the smart mouth a brats for almost 30yrs now so it's to be expected, is all I ask is that you try to talk to others over the internet the same way your mother makes you talk to people in real life , if you keep talking like a little shithead you will end up creating a bad habit and might accidently smart off in real life and get a spanking for it. Just trying to help you but take it or leave it IDGF — MAYAEL

I suppose this means that you’re not going to tell me about your little tower now. :sad:

real Tower builders don't have pamphlets — MAYAEL

Oh, I get it now, if you had anything honest to say your little tower would fall like a card house.

well build one and see — MAYAEL

You go on a five paragraph diatribe about Towers and now you can’t say anything about the value, or curse, of them? WTF?!

build one and find out — MAYAEL

Why would I want to do that exactly?

you can reach the same knowledge and the same enlightenment without any narcotics — MAYAEL

Then why bother building a stupid Tower? :lol:

Nothing special about knowledge if it can be wrong. On my view, it cannot. — creativesoul

“What was once useful may no longer be useful.”

I'm trying to get Janus to explain what the difference is, according to his/her position, between feeling certain and being certain. Seems to me like that difference amounts to feeling certain being on par with belief whereas being certain is on par with knowledge. That difference is truth to some, warrant to others, and truth plus justification to some. Belief is required for all.

Clarity has not been forthcoming. — creativesoul

What’s so special about knowledge? Knowledge can be wrong and outlive its usefulness.

A spoon may be in my hand or I could just be hallucinating it. All that really matters is if it works, if it is useful in fulfilling my objectives. Adding belief will only trap me in some ideology that I rather be free from.

There is no spoon. :razz:

No need for people to fret much over this...

Your language use is very odd. You claim that feeling certain that 'X' is true is not equivalent to being certain that 'X' is true.

So what extra is needed aside from S's feeling certain that 'X' is true in order for S to be certain that 'X' is true?

Let 'X' be "God exists"... — creativesoul

I know I know! Meeting God.

Isn’t that just your associative memory at work, guessing it’s a phone, and if you put more thought into it you might think that I would try to make it hard to guess and deliberately not use a phone. I’d love to hold a cute little pig though.

Suddenly it occurs to me now how much belief is a story or personal narrative for ourselves, our ego, strengthening individual as well as group identity.

Well, for instance, I could ask you what I’m holding in my hand. You might well guess that I’m holding a phone. If you did guess that, would you believe it?

what do we believe when we experiece sensations but don't know what they are?
— praxis

Depends what you mean by 'know'. We always make a prediction as to what they are, we're never 100% sure. — Isaac

You’ve been saying that predictions are beliefs. If we always make beliefs (predictions), then what do we believe when we can’t recognize, understand, or make any sense of something?

Be that as it may, the framework is such that individual determinations contribute to a group determination. The individual determinations are determinations. In an election, I vote for the canidate that I determine will best serve my interests, and my vote contributes to a group determination. To claim that my vote isn't a determination is unfair and downright unAmerican.

On a related note, what do we believe when we experiece sensations but don't know what they are? Do we believe nothing, or do we beleive that we don't know? What do we believe when we can see two things, like the duck/rabit sketch?

Each column, therefore is processing data not yet in the form of a belief (a belief that...) because there's no 'that' until the predictions have been related (to whatever the belief is about) and that happens (in Hawkin's model) after the voting process, where the hippocampus (or the entorhinal cortex, or sub-cortex depending on the type of memory) make the association on which we can act. — Isaac

Seems an arbitrary distinction, as though saying that when holding a cup in hand we can believe it’s a cup but we can’t believe in the cups texture or weight, the individual elements it’s comprised of.

I’ve read Barrett’s book on constructed emotion theory, but I was more thinking of thousand brains theory.



Assuming this theory is good, at what point in the neural process is there belief? In each cortical column or in the consensus of columns?

I don’t see how they can change unless we are aware of them. If I have a belief that I’m unaware of it would never change.
— praxis

Why do you think that? — Isaac

Because I don’t think that subconscious predictions are beliefs.

I can't think where you've read such a thing into what I've written when I've mostly been arguing the exact opposite - that belief is dynamic and usually held in degrees of certainty. — Isaac

I don’t see how they can change unless we are aware of them. If I have a belief that I’m unaware of it would never change.

Trump was provided the facts, not that he accepted them. — Relativist

Americans don’t deserve a leader who accepts facts.

Prediction precedes belief?
— praxis

A prediction is a belief. But we're not getting anywhere just disagreeing about definitions. What is the consequence of a distinction between that which we're aware of holding to be the case and that which we hold to be the case but are unaware that we do? Whatever word we give those two categories, how does their differentiation bear on the question? — Isaac

One consequence is in learning. If I’m reading you right, you seem to be saying that in everything thing we do, we always believe that we’re doing it correctly. If that were the case then we would not be able to learn.

For example, I could watch an expert basketball player shoot hoops perfectly. I could try it myself but I would fail to perform nearly as well. I would not believe that I was doing it correctly. Maybe some of the predictions that my mind made while trying were closer than others, but I would know that many were way off. I wouldn’t hold all of my predictions to be true or false. Comparing performance to goals seems to requires awareness.

… action precedes reflection.

Prediction precedes belief?

If a belief is a relation between a state of mind and a proposition, then it would seem, by definition, to require a mind. — Isaac

A mind is conscious, so it appears you’re drawing the line there and subconscious processes do not entail beliefs.

So if I'm walking down a flight of stairs and I have a propensity to act as if the next step is the same dimentions as the previous steps but I trip because it's not, did I have a mistaken belief or a prediction error?
— praxis

Both are the same thing. — Isaac

I’m curious where the line is drawn. If consciousness isn’t a prerequisite then it would be correct to say that my phone (specifically the calculator app) believes that two plus two equals four. If that’s correct then, following the rules of gravity, perhaps gold believes that it’s heavier than aluminum.

So if I'm walking down a flight of stairs and I have a propensity to act as if the next step is the same dimentions as the previous steps but I trip because it's not, did I have a mistaken belief or a prediction error?

About a propensity to act, why are we calling that a belief rather than, say, a conditioned response?

So almost but not perfectly. A shade of meaning.

Well, yes. It's just that it doesn't carry the connotations of certainty you read from it. "I believe God exists" could equally mean one is a fervent evangelist or a casual churchgoer. — Isaac

Us Yanks, well, one at least, see a difference between the the following statements.

"I think God exists"

"I believe God exists"

The former suggests consideration or thinking and the latter suggests more conviction or faith in the sense of accepting another's word as true. If someone had actually met God I think they would be inclined to say something like, "I know God."

Do you really see the statements as perfectly synonymous?

So we need to believe certain things are true if we are willing to kill based on it being true. — universeness

In a court of law, reasonable doubt gets an acquittal and reasonable conviction… gets a conviction. In this area there seems to be a moral imperative to ‘hold a conviction to be true’. It also helps to avoid the trouble of having to retry the case indefinitely, which would be impractical.

Oompa loompa …

If you’re not a returning banned member you will go far

Doompety doo!

Fact checking is a way to support personal beliefs. — universeness

If we’re not sure about something why would we need to hold it to be true?

Surprising, but I'll take your word for it. It suggests nothing of the sort to me. American vs English usage perhaps? — Isaac

They don’t say things like “I believe God exists” in Limey town?

Outside of that, there's no 'it' to be 'really' anything. — Isaac

So the mind constructs ‘it’.

"Having studied the subject a bit, I believe that Democracy is the best form of government for the people that I know of, at least when it has adequate supporting institutions, checks on power, etc."

...wouldn't make any sense to you? It seems a perfectly normal sentence to me. — Isaac

It suggests more a commitment, that I will ‘hold it to be true’, when I would rather be more adaptive.

As ↪Banno has already clarified, that's what 'seeing' is. We don't 'see' the constructed screen (as if we could see the deconstructed one, but don't). Rather 'seeing' something is the process itself. Identifying edges, corners, texture, colour, size...naming it, remembering it, picturing it's use, imagining it's far side...these processes are what 'seeing' consists of. — Isaac

I know it’s beside the point, I’m just saying that the mind is constructing it in at least the sense that the screen is distinguished from everything else. Is it really separate?

The way to help stop people believing in and acting (sometimes lethally) based on false claims is to encourage everyone to fact check as much as possible, not encourage alternatives to the word or concept of belief. — universeness

Isn’t fact checking or verification the alternative to belief? If you’re opposed to holding something to be true then, if it matters, you must be for verifying that it’s true.