All stated rules are given their sense only by our application of them and not by their syntactical definition, since a stated definition is in itself a rule whose meaning must also be shown by application. — sime
A trivial corollary of this is that the "free will vs determinism" debate is utterly nonsensical. — sime
That is what I called the subject matter, or content. But since information cannot exist without a physical form, physical form is just as essential as content. The physical form is what makes the information, information, and not something random. — Metaphysician Undercover
Is not the statement, " ...we still see red when the wavelength is not "red" ", a statement about reality independent of looking at it - as if you had a "direct" view of reality itself? If you say "no", then you end up discrediting the statement itself. If you say "yes", then you have finally seen the light and would be agreeing with me.
How do you know that the wavelength is not red if you don't have some "direct" knowledge that that is the case? — Harry Hindu
I have a phenomenologically grounded conception of the natural, physical world. To all appearances, minds belong to bodies, and mental activity is an activity of physical things; and what we might call products of mind (including concepts, abstractions, types, words, numbers, possibilities) are products of the physical things that engage in mental activity. To all appearances, it seems the mental emerges from and remains grounded in the physical. — Cabbage Farmer
since information cannot exist without a physical form, — Metaphysician Undercover
Pythagorean Idealism...was refuted by both Plato and Aristotle — Metaphysician Undercover
As I explained, it really doesn't make sense, because without the physical form, we have nothing to posit as the means for distinguishing one mathematical object from another — Metaphysician Undercover
Can you support your bold claim that we must "have the same thought" in order to communicate, instead of merely "similar thoughts" as I suggested? — Cabbage Farmer
You and I see the same apple, but we don't therefore have the same perception. You and I grasp the same fact, or refer to the same entity by name, but it's only a misleading convention that leads us to say we thus "have the same thought". — Cabbage Farmer
To all appearances, minds belong to bodies, and mental activity is an activity of physical things; and what we might call products of mind (including concepts, abstractions, types, words, numbers, possibilities) are products of the physical things that engage in mental activity. To all appearances, it seems the mental emerges from and remains grounded in the physical. — Cabbage Farmer
I don't think you could infer what the subject's brain was thinking, because I don't think it's 'in there' - any more than the characters of House of Cards can be found in your flatscreen television.
— Wayfarer
But there is a structure-preserving map from the actors on set to the digitally encoded signal that is transmitted to my TV. That signal carries information about what the actors were doing. Whether the actors are "only physical" or not, it is only information about their physical characteristics that is captured, encoded, and transmitted: how they looked, how they moved, what sounds they made, and so on. Television just extends the reach of my senses of sight and hearing, and it does so by each step between me and the source of the sounds and images translating in a structure-preserving way. — Srap Tasmaner
Information could be something else we embodied minds traffic in just as we do other physical stuff. — Srap Tasmaner
my reasoning tells me that [Peirce's] semiotic philosophy can only make sense if it reduces to a pre-theoretic foundation of meaning grounded in human perception or action that cannot be stated but can only be shown. — sime
I am led by the force of logic to conclude, at least on the basis of my possibly incorrect understanding of these two philosophers, that Berkeley and Peirce must share the same idealism. — sime
Peirce believed nominalism (including what he referred to as "the daughters of nominalism": sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism) to be seriously flawed and a great threat to the advancement of science and civilization. His alternative was a nuanced realism that distinguished reality from existence and that could admit general and abstract entities as reals without attributing to them direct (efficient) causal powers. Peirce held that these non-existent reals could influence the course of events by means of final causation (conceived somewhat after Aristotle's conception),[1]and that to banish them from ontology, as nominalists require, is virtually to eliminate the ground for scientific prediction as well as to underwrite a skeptical ethos unsupportive of moral agency.
the whole point of this OP is to try and show that if information is not physical, then there is something central to the entire physicalist account which is not, itself, physical. — Wayfarer
Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But, our best epistemic theories seem to debar any knowledge of mathematical objects.
Some philosophers, called rationalists, claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.
...an attempt to justify our mathematical beliefs about abstract objects, while avoiding any appeal to rational insight.
It's that 'structure-preserving map' I'm interested in. What is the analogy for the 'structure-preserving map' in reality? That is the activities of the mind. Television, as you say, extends the physical scope of the mind, but the mind is what continually (and generally subliminally) performs all of these transformations. — Wayfarer
When that tree falls in that forest, a wave is propagated through the air whether there's any minds, or indeed any ears, around.
The structure of the object is mapped to the structure of the light, sound, etc. it broadcasts without intention. Living things notice, is all. — Srap Tasmaner
But this is not so - Plato inherited mathematical idealism from the Pythagoreans; he was frequently referred to by Aristotle as being of 'the Italians', i.e. Pythagoreans. Certainly he adapted it. But it was the sense in which the Forms truly existed that was the point of difference between Aristotle and Plato. Plato held they exist eternally in the 'realm of ideas'; it was the literal existence of that abstract realm which Aristotle took issue with. — Wayfarer
You haven't explained it, you've made an assertion which I have taken issue with, by referring to pure mathematics, which is by definition a matter of the relationship between ideas, which (physical) symbols are used to denote. And ideas are mental, not physical, by definition. As you don't accept this, then we're back at square one. — Wayfarer
↪Andrew M Thanks, very interesting. And I tend to think the ‘immateriality of information’ has tended to show up in physics, also. I don’t know if you noticed the article I linked from this post but it explicitly speaks of quantum physics in terms of the Aristotelian ‘potentia’. — Wayfarer
Notice that both Aristotle and Plato are consistent in arguing for a Form, or "whatness", of a thing, which is prior to the material existence of the thing, and therefore independent from material existence. — Metaphysician Undercover
I take a generally Kantian view, that our knowledge is of phenomena, and that what the world is 'in itself', outside those cognitive capacities, is unknown to us. — Wayfarer
What the authors (and Heisenberg before them) are doing is replacing Descartes' res cogitans with res potentia. But res is a Latin phrase meaning an "object or thing; matter". A universal (whether it be mind or potential or color or number) is not a kind of thing. It's an abstraction of things. So res potentia is just a modern variant of the Platonism that Aristotle was rejecting. — Andrew M
All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.
During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?
I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not 'physical objects' in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. — Werner Heisenberg
Heisenberg contrasts “potentia” with “reality.” What Aristotelian Thomism says, though – and what Heisenberg himself clearly means, given the context – is not that potentials are not in any sense real, but rather that qua merely potential they have not been actualized. (Act and potency are in fact both real, but they are different kinds of reality.)
In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime,but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.
what a theory of concepts might look like.... — Srap Tasmaner
suggested article.... — Wayfarer
I don't think this is right. The form of a tree, say an oak, might be prior to the existence of any one particular tree, but the form of an oak is not prior to the existence of oaks in general. The unique form of a particular oak might be thought to be inherent in the acorn and thus prior to the existence of the oak as tree, but it would not be not prior to the existence of the acorn. This would be so, even if the unique form of the particular oak were entirely determined by the acorn. But this is not so, either, the form of the tree will depend on its environment with all its conditions as well. — Janus
No. I didn't use the word, "indirect" in my post. If I did, then that word would be in quotes as well because I put "direct" in quotes to refer to it's arbitrariness. "Indirect" is even more arbitrary as it refers to your little boxes that you've put everything in, as if everything isn't interconnected.Precisely. Direct needs to said in scare quotes. Indirect is admitting that it is only “as if”. — apokrisis
I think the mistake Apo made was making the distinction that a wave is not red. Apples are red or not red. Anyone who knows what they are talking about should know that waves are not red. Apples are.As I understand him, he's comparing the scientific-mathematical aspect of the wave to its sensual aspect. True, what is implied is that the same wave is involved. So the wave itself (as the unity of its aspects) is red. But its mathematical description is not red.
The object-in-itself (perhaps a red apple) is theoretically complicated/questionable but practically almost common sense. It makes sense that our experience of the object is mediated by human nature. Our eye catches reflected photons, etc.
Is the direct realism versus indirect realism debate about anything more than a differing preference for how the same process is described? — t0m
To even say that it is "indirect" is to admit causation, no? — Harry Hindu
what is the point in making a distinction between "direct" and "indirect", when you are getting directly at how reality really is in order to make any statement about how reality really is? — Harry Hindu
I think the mistake Apo made was making the distinction that a wave is not red. Apples are red or not red. Anyone who knows what they are talking about should know that waves are not red. Apples are. — Harry Hindu
An effect is a model of prior causes, as it carries information about the cause. Does your model carry information? If not, then how can you even call it a model? If it is, then what is it that you are informed of when the model appears, or takes shape?But not your direct cause and effect. Instead my indirect causation which is the modelling relation. — apokrisis
Well, you are. You just did it again by stating, "The modeling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality." Is this statement an accurate statement, or is it what is pragmatic and useful? Is it really how reality, or some part of it, is? If not, then you aren't saying anything informative. I just find it amazing that you keep making these kinds of statements without understanding what it is that you are doing. Every time you make your case for how you think things are, you are attempting to get at and inform me of how things really are.But my argument is indeed that we don’t get at what reality really is. The modelling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality.
You then want to claim there is a problem in that because now I’m making a claim about how things “really are”. — apokrisis
It applies every time you make those kinds of statements, like, "The high bar you set doesn’t apply to me if my claim to know that this is how the mind works is itself just another testable pragmatic hypothesis." It seems to me that you are concerned about some absolute veridical knowledge every time you state how things are, as in the previous statement and in "The modeling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality." Science is about seeking what is accurate, not pragmatic. We get what is pragmatic by it being accurate. It simply wouldn't be pragmatic or useful if there wasn't some semblance of accuracy to it.Well, partly we can know what is real about our own epistemic strategies. Science is about accepting the pragmatism of the modelling relation. But then also it is only you who is concerned about some absolute veridical knowledge of reality in the first place. The high bar you set doesn’t apply to me if my claim to know that this is how the mind works is itself just another testable pragmatic hypothesis. — apokrisis
Then talk of light and laser beams are just misdirection. I thought we were talking about waves, not apples, lasers or light. Again, do waves really exist, or are waves simply some pragmatic model that we use, and only exist in our minds? If you say that they are simply another model, then you are using models to explain models, which then makes the term, "model" meaningless.So how does colour constancy fit in here? You haven’t explained.
And this talk of apples is just misdirection. A laser beam could be tuned to the same hue as the apple as seen under white light. So trying to treat colour as some material property of an apple is nonsense when we can see red just from the pure shining of a light. — apokrisis
Every time you make your case for how you think things are, you are attempting to get at and inform me of how things really are. — Harry Hindu
Colors are merely the effect of the state of the apple interacting with light and your visual processing system. — Harry Hindu
If you say that they are simply another model, then you are using models to explain models, which then makes the term, "model" meaningless — Harry Hindu
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.