In this essay, he points out that Newton himself realized that the way gravity worked was an "absurdity" and that no person who was of right "philosophical" mind could ever "fall into it".

The conclusion here being that the world does not work according to our common sense intuition and that the goal of scientific enquiry was henceforth lowered, from understanding the world to understanding theories of the world, which is quite different.

The case was that we thought we knew almost everything about the way matter worked, and were proven wrong.

There's also a reference to a paper by Lewontin, near the end, which also gives strong arguments as to what we cannot know about cognition, for instance. I could share the link, but I'd prefer to stick to this essay for a bit before branching out.

If we're not angels and have cognitive limits, there's no way to know and pinpoint how distant the gap actually is — Saphsin

I'm not sure I understood this. Angels refers to the beings people believed in back then, who had infinite knowledge, perhaps thinking of God or gods would be less confusing.

No... we are part of nature. That doesn't mean that the things we experience aren't a product of our cognitive capacities.

I'd be very conservative in what I'd attribute mind independence to.

Simply that a keyboard is also something which we construct in our cognition, there are no keyboards in nature. It's also an idea. Nothing beyond that.

We don't really understand why most animals (if not all) need to sleep. There are guesses having to do with repairing or optimizing neuronal activity, to save on energy use, etc. It certainly feels quite normal, and is rather great when waking up feeling well rested.

I think it may have been @180 Proof who pointed this out, but, Thanatos and Hypnos in Ancient Greek Mythology are brothers, suggesting that at least one culture suspected them to be similar.

One could hypothesize that being in a state of dreamless sleep "feels" - if this word can be used in this occasion - not unlike it "felt" prior to be born: nothing, so far as I can tell.

Of course, I betray everything when analyzing "nothing" using (human) experience. But, there's no way around this problem.

If sleep were "acceptance" of death, one would think people would not be afraid of death at all. That's not the case, as far as I can see.

Aren't you merely using the keyboard to state your thoughts? Are you merely expressing your thoughts about thought here via common language use? — creativesoul

The "keyboard" is a construction of the mind on the occasion of sense. I use it to try to approximate my thoughts via word use, such that what I'm thinking now can be evoked in your own mind when reading these words. It's not an exact science, far from it.

They've yet to have taken into proper account the differences between thinking about thought and thought — creativesoul

Could well be. It's already hard to talk about what thinking is. Thinking about thinking is ever more complex, but we seem to do it.

Well, I am a firm believer in a causal universe, so strictly speaking if by "random" we mean spontaneously formed completely devoid of prior influence, then I would say that there are no such thoughts. — creativesoul

Interesting. So on your view, most (if not all) our thoughts follow a causal process?

I can give examples that more or less follow. Suppose that right now, I have in mind an idea I'd like to convey. I have a computer at my disposal, obviously a keyboard, and some ideas in my head as to what I'd like to say.

In this situation, in which I'm in front of an object, with a goal in mind, I can find a connection between the ideas of transmitting these thoughts, via a keyboard, being careful as to avoid a typo and so on. I see individual letters in my keyboard, which I can use to form words that convey an impression from my head into yours.

This can be accounted for by the circumstances I'm in now. The ideas of a computer, a keyboard, letters and what example to use can be pointed to concretely to account for the connection of my thoughts.

In another circumstance, say I'm walking around in my neighborhood listening to music, I can be thinking of, the war in Yemen in one instance, onto the favorite part of the song that is playing, then thinking about Hume, my dinner with my friends and what I should do tomorrow.

In this latter circumstance, it's less clear to me how to account for how the ideas I have when walking and thinking form a connection or follow. It could be totally random. I'm a bit skeptical on this conclusion, but it's possible.

In any case, I'm off to sleep.

Here's the thing, I've repeated this too many times here, I don't want to bore people. Very briefly "materialism"/physicalism made sense back in the time of Descartes, it was mechanistic materialism, the world - heck the universe - worked like a gigantic clock.

But Descartes could not account for the creative aspects of language use, nor thinking in general, based on materialism, which is why he postulated the res extensa. This was believed by many, including Newton, until, to Newton's own dismay, he discovered that materialism is false, the world does not work according to mechanistic principles:

"It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum... is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it."

With that, "materialism" collapsed. And hasn't been restated in an intelligible manner. Chomsky details this very lucidly.

You can say physicalism is whatever physics says. That narrows outlook not focusing on physics.

All thought consists entirely of correlations drawn between directly and/or indirectly perceptible things. Memory is but a repeat of correlations previously drawn. — creativesoul

Sure, this follows when dealing with "ordinary objects", what about between thoughts? How do we account for correlation here?

I work from a strong methodological naturalist bent. Dennett's work is impressive, however, I do not think that everything is physical. I would, however, readily agree that everything - including thought - depends on the physical. I also reject many another historical dichotomy, on the same grounds of inadequate explanatory power. For example, the subject/object dichotomy, the internal/external dichotomy, the mind/body dichotomy, the physical/immaterial, the physical/mental, etc. — creativesoul

It's terminological at this point. I think being a naturalist monist would be liable to least offense, depending on how you think of "the natural". If by the natural, you have in mind, everything that is, then fine, no problem. If by natural you mean, everything discovered by the sciences, then I think we restrict naturalism unnecessarily.

I believe I can understand, to an extent, that everything "depends on the physical" to mean that, the stuff that science describes, is fundamental and often provides the basis for which to proceed: neuroscientists study brains, cognitive scientists study photons hitting the eye, everything is made of the stuff physics describes.

Very very roughly put:Our thoughts connect us to that which is not as well as ourselves, by virtue of leading up to an initial understanding of the world and ourselves("worldview" is more palpable to me). — creativesoul

Replying very roughly too, I'd think we could say that we are frequently thinking, sometimes what we call "ideas" follow each other. If I'm thinking of fixing a wall, the ideas I may have of a hammer, a tile and glue, follow from this situation. Is this order necessary, in some manner? I think so, but it's hard to provide an explanation for this.

Other times, in ordinary life, I find that ideas simply "flow", thinking about say, Palestine, followed by thinking about perception and then thinking about my phone that just ringed, etc. There seems to be no order here.

I agree that thoughts connect us to ourselves and to the world. The problem is how to account for the thoughts I have and how do they connect to "me" and the world. On occasions an "physical objects" prompts an idea. The "me" is never too far off, in my experience.

That's my initial approximation.

To be more precise, I should've said what "principle" connects our thoughts, or even hazard to say what law. Of course, there's something in the brain that does this, but it seems to me we are in the dark here, because very little is understood about the mind/brain relation, outside of a dependency relation.

Who do you have in mind or what school of thought or theory do you have in mind when discussing these topics?

Sure, one need not agree with Hume's account of perception or the mind, to find merit in his thinking.

What he could not do, given his philosophy, is to find a "real connection" between thoughts, it was beyond him, unless he postulated what he calls a "fiction", meaning, more than is warranted by empirical evidence.

But putting aside his empiricism, he could not find a way to connect thoughts, he had to assume a connection. Sure, we can say that Kant might have solved this, or that connections are innate.

But his powers of reasoning was extremely sophisticated.

Point being, I don't see that we've improved on his reasoning in this topic, we don't know what it is that connects our thoughts.

I haven't heard Russell or Chomsky speak well of IQ tests, if that counts for anything. I consider both of them to be among the most intelligent of people in terms of scope and depth of knowledge and understanding.

My response was made to point out that no subject has an inherent level of complexity, and any subject can be understood and dealt with at differing levels of complexity, so that your argument just doesn't fly. That's the problem. An unspoken premise was false, if you want to get clinical. — Reformed Nihilist

I disagree.

I think topics that are up to empirical research definitely have an inherent complexity. When things get too complicated to a physicist, he gives the topic to the chemists, when the problem becomes too complex for the chemists they turn to the biologists, then the biologists turn to the psychologist, the psychologist to the sociologist, ending in the cultural critic or novelist.

It's because physics deals with simple structures that it is so advanced. They abstract away almost everything from the world.

But if you think that intelligence is inherently no more difficult than physics, then I think we're stuck.

Suppose I'm wrong and that IQ does measure intelligence. What good could it do, absent understanding aspects of intelligence for its own sake?

It could help organize schools in a different manner, thus helping some people, as happens in college with sports to an extent.

It might help recruiters in certain fields hire people more easily.

That might well be of some benefit to society.

We do things all the time that we don't understand. We don't understand art too well, yet we do it, we don't understand human psychology too well, yet we deal with people all the time. We don't understand how particles could combine to create colour experience, yet we see colour all the time.

We don't know what life is, yet we do biology. We don't know what mathematics is, yet we do extremely complicated theorems - at least some people do.

So yes, we proceed to work with what we're given and construct theories. The simpler the phenomena, the more developed the science is, hence physics is considered the star of the sciences. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of important things to work on in chemistry or biology or all the other fields.

I don't see the problem.

The point about the "idiot", though rhetorical as you well point out, is that people who are fascinated by IQ tend to make these distinctions with more frequency than others.

Verbal Comprehension
Perceptual Reasoning
Working Memory
Processing Speed — Reformed Nihilist

Thanks for the clarification.

If you can tell me what intuition is and how it can be recognized, it should be testable. Same goes for "street smarts" . I'm not sure that novelty by itself is something we usually associate with intelligence (any idiot can make a tuna fish and pineapple sandwich, that doesn't require intelligence, but it is novel). — Reformed Nihilist

Curious that you mention an "idiot" instead of a "person."

The thing that responses like this seem to fail to consider is that the world's best educated experts have spent entire careers on the subject of functional intelligence have over generations have crafted these tests to do exactly what you seem to think they can't, and your view appears to be based on a very passing familiarity with the subject. Why wouldn't someone who's spent their whole life on this subject have considered the objections you bring up? — Reformed Nihilist

The world's most educated experts have serious trouble accounting for the behavior of a single particle when it interacts with a receptor and a screen, in a field which is significantly more developed than psychology.

Perhaps intelligence is a bit more complex than a particle.

I assume I am mistaken in many things, this included. It's always a possibility.

There's no certainty in the empirical world.

I base my conclusion on the observation of what the test does. It asks questions pertaining to two domain within belong to what we tend to call "intelligence": verbal and mathematical.

Perhaps they've expanded recently and put in reading comprehension and some other things.

But I think it is evident that such a constraining circumstance can only account for a small fragment of what is called "intelligence". Street smarts, intuition, psychological acuity, insight, novelty, depth and a bunch of other factors are excluded.

Unless you are of the opinion that intelligence is that which the IQ test measures.

If the latter is your view, then it's no surprise you think IQ tests say much of substance.

I likely have a negative IQ. Cant count for shit, nor spel neither.

At best, such things can probably indicate that you are good in very specific situations of abstract reasonings. Maybe you have a larger vocabulary than other people and you can do some difficult math problems.

But to equate these two to something as complex as multi-faceted as intelligence is a stretch.

Doesn't matter much now, to my surprise, he's playing in the Open.

I should say, when dualism was seriously proposed - and taken seriously - it was done as a scientific move on Descartes part.

He thought he could account for res-extensa - matter - based on mechanistic materialism. However, materialism could not account for the creative properties of language use, nor for the mind more abstractly considered.

Out of other intelligible options, he did the sensible thing, he postulated a res cogitans, which would work with different principles than matter. But the goal was to provide a intelligible picture of the world, even if it was dualist in nature.

Now we know, due to Newton and others, than we do not know matter anywhere nearly as well as was thought, so (substance) dualism collapsed.

Which is only to say, that if dualism can coherently be re-articulated, in should be done so with the goal of explaining or providing a framework for phenomena which cannot be explained using the current methods we have.

But it shouldn't be done, in my opinion, as a move away from understanding, but as means of integrating knowledge.

If it had not been pointed out, I wouldn't have even considered there was "mistake" here.

The artist might care and maybe an avid fan, I don't think others would care much.

Not that it's ugly to me, I like colours, I just have trouble seeing what's artistic about this...

Absolutely.

I mean, not really knowing what makes up 95% of the universe is a bit of a problem. Hopefully James Webb can shed some light on that.

But the point remains, as you say, our faculties were "meant" for survival in the wild, not for scientific hypothesis.

I mean, I know it's easy to criticize but shouldn't he have settled on Federal law? That's the most important one, usually.

However this plays out, I would be shocked if they let Novak play, I don't think most fans at the Open would even want him at this stage of this drama.

Well, in Hume's famous Appendix to his Treatise, he concluded that:

"In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there wou'd be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess, that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding."

Bold letters inserted by me.

He's probably right.

It was a relatively minor surgery. He was out partying when COVID first broke, didn't cry then when he helped infect a lot of people, as well as encouraging others through his example of not getting a vaccine.

Also seemed to be in a good mood the day after he tested positive and was around other people, without a mask.

If he has a legitimate medical issue for not doing so, fine, then state it. If not, then that's a problem given who he is.

What a clown. Good. People with that level of influence have more responsibility.



Hmmm, interesting. I suspected something of the sort, in terms of him being a big name draw, and hoping most people would turn a blind eye to him coming in. They did not count on omicron, which really made people mad, with good reason.

I mean, surely the Victorian government looks to be somewhat culpable here and even more so the actual tournament, who would want Djokovic in, since Federer is out, and Nadal is rusty.

Sure, there's some bit of not-good looking PR in the whole situation. But I think that had Djokovic team been more thorough, they would've noticed that he did not have sufficient documentation for clearance in all levels of government. He posted in his Instagram that he had exemption like a day, or even mere hours, before taking the plane.

His wife I hear, is quite loony with alternative medicine, and his father is just crazy. Djokovic cried when had to take a minor elbow surgery, that's how much he dislikes modern medicine...

One aspect which is interesting is the way that languages vary unlike mathematical ones, like numbers and the basic principles of mathematics. — Jack Cummins

Strictly speaking, mathematics is not a language. You can say "mathematics is the language of the universe" in a poetic sense, and that's perfectly fine and legitimate. But it's not to be confused with an actual language with syntax, phonemes and all the other technicalities belonging to linguistics.

I do wonder how the basic ideas seem to have a certain universality but with different expression in the many languages. — Jack Cummins

That's an excellent question. I think Chomsky is right here, the different languages human beings use are rather superficially different, though to us the differences seem immense, but we have many of the same basic concepts, RIVER, MOUNTAIN, LOVE, TRIBE, FRIEND, ANIMAL, etc.

It's quite mysterious, related to innate ideas in some manner.

It could be asked how such similarities and differences come about. In some ways, it is about naming of objects in the physical world, but it is also about abstract concepts — Jack Cummins

Yep. It is curious, why so many different ways of talking about essentially the same things. When it comes to abstract concepts, almost nothing is known, it's very sophisticated and complex.

@Banno@Wayfarer@StreetlightX

Since ya'll from Down Under. I wanna know, do you think Djokovic's lawyers stand a chance appealing the governments decision?

To be clear, I'm not a fan of his and I think he's a clown on this - and other topics. But, that's neither here nor there. Come Monday, he should be out or what do you think?

We know a little about language, not much. I think it's "primary" use, so to speak, is to articulate thought to oneself.

Communication is done by all animals, and they don't have language, if by language we have in mind what people do. So, language can't be about communication, it would be superfluous.

Consciousness is a process of the brain, which we don't understand much at all. One can call it "physical" or "ideal", doesn't matter much what it's called. Our views about experience need not commit us to an ontology.

Yes, I agree, Dennett does appear to articulate a strain of thinking which is misleading, imo, but, influential nonetheless.

This variant is pretty crazy, everyone is getting it. At least it's less bad than Delta, but mutations are already arising.

It's incredible that we are still at this stage of things. Forget about "cooperation" with Global Warming, we can't deal with this BS.

Unreal.

I have to say, your post-quality ratio is truly impressive.

Nearly every post you make is full of extremely interesting, well thought out information.

It wouldn't be philosophy otherwise.

Is there any experience without acquaintance with nature, or any acquaintance with nature without experience? I think experience is just a word to denote that we have awareness. — Janus

True, I use experience so to avoid saying "consciousness", and to a lesser extent "awareness", as they are used too frequently.

I think technically, what you say is correct. We have acquaintance with nature in so far as we can experience parts of it. But parts of it must be outside our experience.

To my way of thinking the so-called "hard problem" is a kind of illusion based on thinking that what matter is is clearly understood; that it is something like "dead" particles that could not, according to our conception, possibly give rise to what we think of as "immaterial" subjective experience. — Janus

100%

That's actually historically accurate. Locke speaks about this extremely lucidly in his Essay. A lot of what he said has been forgotten.

I shared a quote here by him, though the whole chapter is fantastic:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/387/tpf-quote-cabinet/p11

The hard problem then seems to me to be an expression of incredulity based on ignorance. — Janus

You're speaking about this better than me. Yeah, I think we sometimes verge on the fallacy that we know so much, when I think it's the opposite. Which makes what we do know all the more impressive. There's no reason why a species should understand anything about nature.

I can go along with attributing a form of DID to everyone.

But not to nature. We don't know if nature is intrinsically like or unlike experience, so it seems to me to anthropomorphize nature in the extreme, to speak of objects as "alters".

Maybe neutral monism is a better metaphysical model/position than either idealism or physicalism, if this is the case. — Paul Michael

Yeah either neutral monism, or naturalist monism.

As you can probably tell, Dennett is pretty divisive. Personally, I don't think he makes sense. So I'll skip commenting on him, don't want to ad-hominem just because I don't like that type of thought.

I think the interesting fact about consciousness and language is that we don't have a good way to talk about ideas absent language. I think it's clear to many of us (if not most), that ideas are one thing, language is another, but as soon as we'd like to speak of ideas, we use language.

There's plenty of stuff we can't talk about, language fails to capture many experiences accurately. Other times, we can express subtle experiences through language use.

As for culture, who knows? It's what we're in all the time, but the only thing I can say about it, is that it's whatever is peculiar to us as about another group of people. Otherwise, it's the same.

Aha. Now we are getting each other.

People who reject physicalism and, for example, adopt monistic idealism (á la Bernardo Kastrup) claim that consciousness/experience is fundamental to reality itself as a whole rather than generated by the brain. — Paul Michael

His is a very interesting case. He makes some good points, I mean, it is true that in terms of acquaintance, we are best acquainted with experience than anything we study in nature.

However, it seems to me that if consciousness were as fundamental as he says, we should be able to introspect and know everything about the world. And there's lots of things to say about unconscious brain processes which are far more prevalent than mental states.

Just look at the reports of people who have taken large doses of psychedelics, for example. The chemical directly interacts with the brain, as can be observed by neuroscientists, and they all report extreme changes in their experience. These reports are pretty convincing to me that the brain generates experience. — Paul Michael

An "idealist" can say that chemicals are the way nature looks like to an experiencing being who is not aware of this. All psychedelics do is show how what we take for granted is actually a product of mind.

A "physicalist" can say, as you point out, these are just chemicals, and attempt to verify this claim by looking at brain scans.

It leaves the status of experience exactly as it was, "metaphysically neutral", as it were.

Sure, a blow to the head can alter experience pretty substantially, as can a shock to the brain and so on.

No, I mean, I personally don't have too much issues with "qualia", but it seems to me *some* people here start arguing about the term, which I don't see the point of.

So I speak of seeing outside your window, listening to music or tasting chocolate. If people have trouble with that, then we aren't going to have much of a conversation.

That is to say, we don’t need to know the manner in which the brain gives rise to experience in order to know *that* it does. — Paul Michael

Sure. That makes sense. It's assumed to be the case, because what other option exists? Surely experience is not in my finger, or nose, or leg.

I think it's a kind of massive epistemic gap. We can say some things about the human body as well as physics, we can say some things about the brain as a biological organ.

But the difference between looking at neuronal activity in a person and actually having the taste of chocolate or listening to you favorite tune, etc. is just enormous. We lack intelligence to know how this is possible.

But I'm a bit peculiar on this topic. :cool:

Most problems in understanding the world are "hard problems".

Anyone can use whatever vocabulary they see fit, I'm thinking qualia here is just a very loaded word. We all have experience, we can see outside our window and see a blue sky, or a green tree or a person walking around.

We can listen to music, etc. No problem with that.

We know way too little about the brain to think about how the brain interprets a stimulation as an ordinary object.

We have problems with the behavior of particles, much simpler than a brain. So, it's not surprise we can't say much about something as complex as seeing another person or looking at the sky, etc.

It's basically a sensory overload in which we are tricked into believing these things have shape, colours, speed and the like. Combine that with adrenaline and dizziness and you have yourself a well pulled off magic trick.

:wink:

No killing intended, messenger or OPs.

However, if rollercoasters are immune to the status of illusory entities, then I say we have a problem, because I don't know how one can ride one, if there's no time involved.

Perhaps.

But then what isn't?

What's unreal about time?

I suppose we could speculate on the whole "time before the Big Bang" topic, if that even makes sense. But that aside, I don't understand what unreal time means.