Sorry, I did not understand that paragraph. Could you perhaps rephrase it? — Samuel Lacrampe
There's a certain "objectivity" in a great art. It resonates for a culture. It concretizes that culture's ideals. ... We can see measure the proportions of a culture's ideal woman. But I don't see why we would measure our understanding of cultural ideals only in a quantifying manner. We don't just want to manipulate and predict. — t0m
I'm not defending the holy individual here, though I do think there are limits to this dissolution of the individual into the social. I'm really just trying to be accurate about the world. For me, however, this very notion of "world" is in question. I don't assume the world of natural science. To me that is a useful abstraction that exists within a more "primordial" notion of the world. We are in the world with others. But I don't think the spatial notion of objects next to other objects captures this "in-ness" or "with-others-ness." — t0m
A painting is exactly like a bicycle in making it obvious how you are meant to view your world. It is another part of the technology that Heidegger was talking about.
If something is hung in a gallery as if its contains sacred meaning, then we know the hushed tone and clever reverence with which we must approach it to be "part of the club" - even if it shit in a can. — apokrisis
Information entropy is exactly about semantic content, isn't it? It's how many bits can be lost before the information contained in the string loses its meaning? Yes or no? — Wayfarer
However one question that occurs to me about the purported equivalence of thermodynamic and logical entropy is that there is no concept of temperature or energy in the discipline of information entropy. — Wayfarer
As a really crude example, you could encode the same information in a string of granite boulders, each of which weighed 1 tonne, and also in bits on a hard drive. — Wayfarer
I should maybe say that they make space and time possible as concepts. They make talking about space and time possible? — t0m
The physics comes into it as enough granite boulders would form a gravitational field so strong they would collapse to create a black hole — apokrisis
My question was about the equivalence of thermodynamic and logical entropy - the 'equation' which you referred to. — Wayfarer
Thermodynamic entropy and Shannon entropy are conceptually equivalent: the number of arrangements that are counted by Boltzmann entropy reflects the amount of Shannon information one
would need to implement any particular arrangement.
The two entropies have two salient differences, though. First, the thermodynamic entropy used by a chemist or a refrigeration engineer is expressed in units of energy divided by temperature, whereas the Shannon entropy used by a communications engineer is in bits, essentially dimensionless. That difference is merely a matter of convention.
In classical thermodynamics, which is the study of thermodynamics from a purely empirical, or measurement point of view, thermodynamic entropy can only be measured by considering energy and temperature. Clausius' statement dS= δQ/T, or, equivalently, when all other effective displacements are zero, dS=dU/T, is the only way to actually measure thermodynamic entropy.
It is only with the introduction of statistical mechanics, the viewpoint that a thermodynamic system consists of a collection of particles and which explains classical thermodynamics in terms of probability distributions, that the entropy can be considered separately from temperature and energy.
Ultimately, the criticism of the link between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy is a matter of terminology, rather than substance.
The public\private dichotomy does not help us here, and it is not toward it that my use of the term "public" was aimed, but rather to the fact that the initial act of assignment, the first time someone establish that & means "and", that must be at least at some point be shared to the processors — Akanthinos
One could even say that the forms are outside of space and time in the sense that they make space and time possible. — t0m
Not so much ‘outside’ as ‘prior to’. — Wayfarer
You are still thinking that Shannon was talking about the meaning of a message. He was instead talking about its quantity. — apokrisis
But it's not especially relevant for the metaphysics of meaning as I understand it. — Wayfarer
One point which I've been trying to make in this thread, is that it came to Plato's attention that these Forms which are outside of, or prior to material existence, are not the human conceptions of universals as is commonly attributed to Platonism in the modern representation, they are, as described in "The Timaeus", the forms of individual, particular objects. — Metaphysician Undercover
Particular objects are perceived, as it were, already infused with conceptuality stemming the spontaneity of the rational subject herself. — Wiki
Indeed. Aren't they Kant's 'primary intuitions'? — Wayfarer
But I'm so glad you see the point. Really this is the single issue that has been my main interest, ever since joining forums, which must be getting near to 10 years. It has to do with the fact that rationality, rational relations, can be understood to be true with reference to nothing other than thought itself, and yet (miraculously) they are also predictive with respect to phenomena. It really is an astonishing thing, which most people simply take for granted - like, they use it all the time, without actually noticing what an amazing faculty it is. That is actually the primary sentiment behind the essay of Wigner's, 'The Unreasonable Efficiency of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences'. Why should it be that the 'laws of thought' can unlock all of these undiscovered facets of reality? That, I think, is near to the heart of the entire Pythagorean-Platonic-Aristotelian tradition. — Wayfarer
One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is.
Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thinking apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered. (B 8.34–36)
For to be aware and to be are the same. (B 3)
It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not. (B 6.1–2)
You will know the aether’s nature, and in the aether all the/ signs, and the unseen works of the pure torch/ of the brilliant sun, and from whence they came to be,/ and you will learn the wandering works of the round-eyed moon/ and its nature, and you will know too the surrounding heaven,/ both whence it grew and how Necessity directing it bound it/ to furnish the limits of the stars. (Fr. 10)
…how the earth and sun and moon/ and the shared aether and the heavenly milk and Olympos/ outermost and the hot might of the stars began/ to come to be. (Fr. 11) — Parmenides
If you can quantify, you can do science. So Shannon clears the decks for the assault on semantics. — apokrisis
We know that Plato was influenced by Parmenides. — t0m
For to be aware and to be are the same. (B 3) — Parmenides
The Parmenides is one of the principal dialogues. It's deeply mystical. The difficulty is with these materials, such words as 'thought' and 'knowledge' - and even 'is'! - are laden with unstated meanings that have to be drawn out by scholars expert in the tradition (which I'm certainly not). — Wayfarer
"What is', is rather like the Indian 'sat' , or truth. Perhaps it denotes an awareness, typical of mysticism, that is in some sense beyond or outside time and space. It would have to be something like that, otherwise what he says makes no sense. — Wayfarer
He sharpens the question, what do we really mean when we say what something is? Recall, this is generation before Aristotle with his ‘substance and accident’.
For to be aware and to be are the same. (B 3)
— Parmenides
Obviously enigmatic, but I would say this is a reference to the apodictic reality of being - the same idea, basically, as the Cogito. — Wayfarer
That sounds plausible. I read parts of Plato closely but have utterly neglected other parts. For me that's secondary, I suppose, because something like conceptualism is more plausible to me. — t0m
Well and good, but it's a different matter to the metaphysics of meaning. What interests me, is the idea that rational and mathematical truths are real but not physical. — Wayfarer
What appeals to me especially is getting behind or around all the pre-interpretedness that we don't think to question (since it's almost invisible as we use it) that traps our thinking in certain loops. — t0m
I really like the way you’ve been expressing this. But I think the weakness is that it depends heavily on the metaphysical truth of some communal or shared state of being, when the phenomenal mind is so completely private and unshared.
So it is both an appealing notion - expressed in many philosophies - but also fails unless we can define the “ground state” in something other than the usual mentalistic terms. — apokrisis
Alluding to the divine kind of works for me if it again has nothing to do with anthropomorphic creators, or creating forces. — apokrisis
There is a mathematical magic at the heart of Peircean metaphysics, a self-making relation that can call forth being from its pure inescapable logic. And then that meaning-forming, structure-creating device points deeper to its own ground, its own precondition, in the “not-being” of Apeiron, of Firstness or vagueness.
So reality swims into existence. And it condenses out of neither some ur-substance, nor some rarified divine mind - ur-phenomenology. The ur-potential of the Apeiron has to be a still more subtle concept. — apokrisis
Yet I can see that that approach to metaphysics is by-passing phenomenal being, which is actually the basis of our particular being as humans. So to match the ur-objectivity of the pansemiotic metaphysics I just described, there is then the ur-subjective description that would formally complement that.
There is here the possibility of two complementary metaphysical projects. — apokrisis
That was probably the first sense of "inform", where Plato referred to the creation of particular things as matter being informed. Matter is passive, and receives a form. Aristotle produced a similar description of the mind, it receives intelligible objects, as forms. This produced the need for the "passive intellect" to account for the reception of forms. The Neo-Platonists and Christians went even further to say that matter is created in the act of informing. — Metaphysician Undercover
"Information" properly refers to the act of informing, though we commonly use it as a noun referring to a thing called "information". If "information" refers to the activity of informing, then it really doesn't make sense to speak of information as not being physical, because the passive thing receiving the form will be physical. There are two parts to the act of informing, the immaterial form, and the material thing receiving the form. If "information" is used as a noun, referring to the thing doing the informing, then we are speaking of nothing other than th e forms themselves. And if the forms are assumed to be non-physical, i.e. exist independently from matter, such independent existence needs to be demonstrated logically.
The independent existence of forms is necessitated by Aristotle's cosmological argument, that is the necessary logical demonstration. The consequence of this principle is that not only is matter a passive receiver of forms, but matter is created in the act of information. This accounts for the fact that the living soul creates its own material body. — Metaphysician Undercover
So you want a definition of meaning. And you don’t think it useful to first have a definition of the meaningless?
Mathematical truths seem fundamental in some crucial way, yet you don’t seem impressed when two such opposed things - information and entropy - are shown to be mathematically the same? — apokrisis
My impression is that anytime meaning is mentioned, your mind skips immediately to the necessity of a self experiencing that meaning. That is where all he mystification begins. Meanings can’t be just acted upon. They must be felt. They are not just states of interpretation or information that constrains, they are understood, appreciated, perceived, known to be. — apokrisis
I do like the background you provided. To in-form as the imposition of form is nice. — t0m
But what is this thing which is called "information", which is supposed to be somehow independent from the act of informing? is it just the form itself, or is it something other than the form? — Metaphysician Undercover
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.