Yes, precisely that meaning of free. Regarding our 'eerie temporality', I have lately been speculating on the forum whether consciousness might not actually exist - ie. have a "size" - in the temporal dimension, versus just traversing time. — Pantagruel
I haven't heard of Brandom. I have a rather love-hate relationship with linguistics. — Pantagruel
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/From_German_Idealism_to_American_Pragmat.pdfAs I understand his work, Kant’s most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. Judgments and actions are things we are in a distinctive sense responsible for. They are a kind of commitment we undertake. Kant understands judging and acting as applying rules, concepts, that determine what the subject becomes committed to and responsible for by applying them. Applying concepts theoretically in judgment and practically in action binds the concept user, commits her, makes her responsible, by opening her up to normative assessment according to the rules she has made herself subject to.
The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something. On the theoretical side, what one is committed to doing, what one becomes liable to assessment as to one’s success at doing, is integrating one’s judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception. It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for one’s judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken. Apperceiving, the characteristically sapient sort of awareness, is discursive (that is, conceptual) awareness.
For it consists in integrating judgments into a unity structured by relations of what judgments provide reasons for and against what others. And those rational relations among judgments are determined by the rules, that is the concepts, one binds oneself by in making the judgments. Each new episode of experience, paradigmatically the making of a perceptual judgment, requires integration into, and hence transformation of the antecedent constellation of commitments. New incompatibilities can arise, which must be dealt with critically by rejecting or modifying prior commitments. New joint consequences can ensue, which must be acknowledged or rejected. The process by which the whole evolves and develops systematically is a paradigmatically rational one, structured by the rhythm of inhalation or amplification by acknowledging new commitments and extracting new consequences, and exhalation or criticism by rejecting or adjusting old commitments in the light of their rational relations to the new ones.
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But the minimal unit of responsibility is the judgment. It is judgments, not concepts, that one can invest one’s authority in, commit oneself to, by integrating them into an evolving constellation that exhibits the rational synthetic unity of apperception. Accordingly, in a radical break with his predecessors, Kant takes judgments to be the minimal units of awareness and experience.
The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something.
Ok. The focus on the instruments threw me off. There are norms governing the driving of cars on public roads. — plaque flag
I really don't personally mind if you are sold on the wonders of phenomenology, but such a statement suggests that you haven't much looked into it. Correct me if I am wrong, and I don't intend to be rude. — plaque flag
Just to be clear, I'm not pissing on science. I love science.
But I've got some experience with math and physics (went to school for that kind of thing, also computer science), and to me it seemed that people all too readily settled for a very 'local' semantics. It's presumably because of the specialization of knowledge. Everyone is afraid perhaps to speak outside their little yard. The positivist boogey man will get them ? — plaque flag
In other words, if a theoretical model can not be efficiently simulated via quantum computer then it cannot be efficiently realized in the real world. — Pantagruel
Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific.
Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts.
These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any. — Scientific Method - Defend the Integrity of Physics
As a first point of call, what I hope to get to myself, is a place where an understanding of science is self consistent. — PhilosophyRunner
Imagine a guy called Luke. It is fair enough if Luke takes after Feyeraband and it is fair enough if he takes after Popper. However I hope that whichever he takes after, he stays true to the assumptions underlying it. If Luke adopts Feyeraband but also believes strongly that many theories are pseudo-science, then I find that self contradictory. The same is true if Luke adopts Popper and believes there is no such thing as pseudo-science. And so on. — PhilosophyRunner
But the point of the critiques of speculative physics and cosmology is that they might never be testable at all. — Quixodian
What if they solve problems of cognitive dissonance? You know, are used to keep challenged paradigms immune from criticism? — Quixodian
No. I mean they’re used to smooth over annoying inconsistencies in current models. Like I said, Everett devised many worlds to avoid the spooky implication that the measurement problem was mind-dependent. Hidden variables theories to make spooky action-at-a-distance go away. The multiverse is routinely invoked to explain away the anthropic cosmological principle. And so on. Examples could be multiplied. — Quixodian
At an abstract level, organisms adapt to different types of information in their environments, producing forms that are specialized in various ways to interact with that information. — Pantagruel
Yeah but that’s biology. The parameters of what we’re discussing are no longer determined by that, and I think rationalising science, or any other human activities, in those terms is inherently reductionist. And there are better things than simply being well-adapted. — Quixodian
At an abstract level, organisms adapt to different types of information in their environments, producing forms that are specialized in various ways to interact with that information. — Pantagruel
Whereas we’re discussing the metaphysical implications of science. Do you see any difference between biological adaptation and intellectual interpretation, or do you see the latter on a continuum with the former? — Quixodian
As a scientist, I do not know of anyone who uses a 'scientific method'. Imagine a private investigator trying to solve a case. They can build on the experience of themselves and others, but ultimately they will use whatever currently legitimate tools are available. — Richard Goldstein
There is, in short, a constantly evolving array of scientific methods, tools, and techniques of inquiry—methods, tools, etc., often local to specific scientific fields, though sometimes proving useful elsewhere, too. Insofar as these methods, tools, and techniques stretch scientists’ imaginative powers, extend their unaided evidential reach, refine their appraisal of where evidence points, and help sustain honesty, provide incentives to the patience and persistence required by scientific work, and facilitate the communication of results, they enable progress: better measurements, better theories, more sensitive instruments, subtler techniques, finer-grained experimental design, more informative terminology, and so on.
Are we pieces of matter that learned to think? Or ideas that learned to enrobe themselves in matter? Is one of those options inherently less improbable than the other? — Pantagruel
Using a phenomenological method, having interviewed many people who have that same experience, one may come to the conclusion that time is indeed slower when you put your hand on a hot stove and quicker when you are spending time talking to someone you find attractive. This is saying something about time. — PhilosophyRunner
Given that all observation (perception) is theory-laden, in essence, learning new knowledge can be like opening a door that lets you peer into a completely new dimension of reality. — Pantagruel
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