you can calculate the odds to a fare-thee-well and make your model as complicated as you like, — Srap Tasmaner
We talk digital even if we mostly live analog. — Srap Tasmaner
Whatever model you have needs individuated states in it though — fdrake
I think we tend to talk about talk as if we talk digital. But I remain unconvinced that language is principally made of chunks, or properties/predicates/relations which induce chunks. — fdrake
For what we do, sure, but I keep thinking the brain is so much messier. The individuated steps there are each neurotransmitter binding to a site or not, an individual ion passing through a pump or not, all subject to randomness, with overall effects that are more naturally described in analog rather than digital terms. (Slightly more or less this or that.) — Srap Tasmaner
You could strengthen your argument by emphasizing the role of the social environment in infants’ acquiring patterns of permanence. The features of psychological development could be attributed to the historical but most stable factors of a child’s socio-communicative medium.There may be a giant hole in this argument. I gestured at the evidence that infants have a concept of object permanence, later acquire object identity, later still recognize other minds, and so on. That's all infra-linguistic, so aren't these very studies evidence that we have such concepts and that they are among the metaphysical assumptions I would place in our unconscious brains? — Srap Tasmaner
Another way I could put it is this: if there are invariants in the models our brains use, something we might call artifacts of those models, then those would in some sense be our "metaphysical assumptions." But I think there's a whole separate set of invariants at work in our linguistic communication with one another, and they need not be based on how our brains are modeling our bodies and environments; they are what we've landed on as the structure of our communication, and I think by and large the structure of our introspective thought reflects that structure, not the modeling our brains are doing below the level of our awareness. Our metaphysical assumptions, if there are such things, are probably no more accessible to us than they are to non-linguistic beings. There do seem to be a whole host of assumptions underlying our speech and our conscious thought, but no reason to think they are the "assumptions" of our unconscious modeling. — Srap Tasmaner
I was speaking in terms of any model you can write down — fdrake
the role of the social environment in infants’ acquiring patterns of permanence — Number2018
defines autonomy on the basis of a markov blanket distinguishing between internal and external states — Joshs
how certain processes actively generate and sustain an identity
Hierarchcal signal passing in their model lets you represent nonperceptual, nonsensory and even nonconceptual data through how data is passed through our states as a simultaneous modelling and control structure. You could read that in terms of a state level plurality in representational type (what does each state represent? lots of different things in principle!), an indifference to type (throw everything in lol, it isn't even a thing or type yet)... And also on a broader functional level of embodied agent level patterns representing+(in)en/acting the world.
Moreover, Barrett's work explicitly construes normativity as a site of constraint and novelty in the landscape of emotion - like you would not expect to see a smile on a disgusted face, but you might see a smile as condescending depending on the context. They see their projects as compatible. — fdrake
I was referring to the reduction of one science to another, and all of them eventually to physics.
Now let's take a step back. Why did it occur to you to raise a counterexample to my observation? There wasn't much riding on my being right. I hadn't used the claim as a lemma in an argument. If you show that I was wrong, how do you expect that to affect whatever position you think I hold?
Caveat number 2: it's widely understood that even statements of fact -- observations and such -- in the context of science are relative to a given theoretical framework. There's no pure non-theory-laden observation to be had, and no one pretends otherwise; rather, it's the theory that enables the observations to be made at all. (More Kant, etc. And absolutely every philosopher of science.)
existence for himself is integral to the cognitive grasp of the transcendent dimension of reality. [/quote]Only the abstract is non-historical. Philosophy is, or should be, an effort to think the concrete. That is why it cannot attempt to surmount the conditions of temporality by seeking out categories which seem to be exempt from history, as do mathematics and logic. It is true that any mind at any socio-historical perspective would have to agree on the validity of an inference like: If A, then B; but A; then B. But such truths are purely formal and do not tell anything about the character of existence. If metaphysics views its categories as intelligible in the same manner, it has really taken refuge in formalism and forsworn the concrete. That is why a metaphysics which conceives itself in this way has such a hollow ring to it...
...Let us now consider the second aspect of the sociology of knowledge, its positive contribution. For the impression must not be left that the social and historical dimensions of knowledge are simply a difficulty to be somehow "handled" by one who wants to continue to maintain the objective value of our knowledge. This would be to miss the very real contribution made by the modem historical mode of thought to our appreciation of what objectivity is. Here we may advert to the remarks made in connection with Kant's view that we can only be properly said to know things and that only phenomenal consciousness (a combination of formal category and sense intuition) apprehends things. To this we may add, with Dewey and the pragmatists, that action is also involved in the conception of a "thing."24
Now with this in mind we may confer a very positive cognitional relevance on the social and historical dimensions of human existence. For if metaphysical categories like "being," "soul," "God," "immortality," "freedom," "love," "person," and so forth are to afford us the same assurance as phenomenal knowledge, they must be filled in with some kind of content-they must begin to bear upon something approximating a "thing." Now obviously this content cannot come from the side of sense intuition as such, which cannot exhibit these notions. It might come, how-ever, from action of a superior kind. And here is where the social and historical dimensions become extremely relevant. For it is through his higher activity as a social and historical being that man gives a visible manifestation to the meaning creatively apprehended in these philosophical concepts. His grasp of himself as a trans-phenomenal being is weakened and rendered cognitionally unstable unless he can read it back out of his existence. Therefore, the historical process by which he creates an authentic human existence for himself is integral to the cognitive grasp of the transcendent dimension of real.
Kenneth Gallagher - The Philosophy of Knowledge
Emotions come already world-directed — Joshs
We dont have some general body-maintenance feedback first and then have to decide how to explain its meaning by relating it to a current situation. — Joshs
the emphasis is not on WHAT is taking place when one has the sort of experience Barrett describes, but on HOW one has it — Joshs
she could have talked about how one’s heart races where one looks up at the crowd , and calms down when one quickly turns back toward the lecture notes — Joshs
but representationalism seems perhaps to result in an emphasis on arbitrary difference at the expense of what makes the components of emotion belong together as a meaningful whole. — Joshs
How is the way the world appears to change related to the aims of the system, and what lends coherence to these aims? Is there in fact a system at all for Barrett in the sense of an integrated normative directionality? I get the sense that for Barrett all these sources of input into the system are a jumbled accumulation of semi-independent and semi-arbitrary bits of information , and that human goal-directedness is not much more than a more sophisticated, action-oriented pattern-matching version of S-R( judges in a cited study rule more negatively before lunch than after, thanks to the brain's interpreting of the arbitrary negative interoceptive reinforcement from the ‘body budget'). — Joshs
After all, the absolute is not reality with appearances removed, but reality + all appearances. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Wouldn't discussions of God fall into this category? — Count Timothy von Icarus
The crucial distinction is that signs are always "how we know," whereas more pernicious forms of pluralism often seems to rely on the claim that "signs are what we know." But if everything is signs, "appearance," then there can be no real reality/appearance distinction. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yup, but the conclusions which are drawn from this vary quite a bit. We are drawn to ask: "where do theories come from?" That they have cultural, linguistic, and historical determinants is obvious, but there is a weird tendency to move from this insight to the idea that this makes them in some way arbitrary, and thus disconnected from truth. "X is socially and historically determined, thus X cannot tell us about the way the world really is." — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'd say that Hume's constant conjunction and the probability theories that tread similar ground are intellectually problematic insofar as they pre-pave a meta-rut for cognitive bias. For instance, we are now prone to mistake anthropological habits for natural probabilities. — Leontiskos
And I think that other way is captured, in part, in your usual suggestion that everything we do and say involves a metaphysics, generally unacknowledged and unexamined, and thus properly called our "metaphysical assumptions." — Srap Tasmaner
To avoid triviality, a first step is to restrict our attention to meanings with a “shape” that matches the grammar of quantifiers. We may achieve this indirectly, as follows. Understand a “candidate meaning” henceforth as an assignment of meanings to each sentence of the quantificational language in question, where the assigned meanings are assumed to determine, at the least, truth conditions. “Candidate meanings” here are located in the first instance at the level of the sentence; subsentential expressions (like quantifiers) can be thought of as having meaning insofar as they contribute to the meanings of sentences that contain them. Thus quantifiers are assured to have meanings whose “shapes” suffice to generate truth conditions for sentences containing quantifiers. — Sider, Ontological Realism, 8-9
And he's right. Infants acquire the idea of object permanence even before the idea of object identity. They're not born with it, so far as we can tell, but it develops predictably, and so that pattern of development is more or less "built in." And it comes before language, and evidently would have to come before anything like rational thought, so it's not like you could reason your way there anyway. — Srap Tasmaner
Our metaphysical assumptions, if there are such things, are probably no more accessible to us than they are to non-linguistic beings. — Srap Tasmaner
That's pretty weird, but the main thing is that it suggests there's an entirely separate route to belief available: you saw the car accident happen, I only heard you talk about seeing it, and we both hold beliefs that it happened. — Srap Tasmaner
I suppose I'm suggesting that thinking a concept like "object permanence" is actually instantiated in the infant brain might be a sort of category mistake. The whole system will behave in a way that we recognize or categorize as embodying such a conception, but that doesn't mean it's "in there" somewhere. — Srap Tasmaner
I was very impressed by the idea (in Mercier and Sperber) that participants in a discussion systematically simplify and exaggerate their positions, in both the definiteness of their view and their confidence in it, and that this is strategic: you're responsible for bringing a view to the table, others bring others, and you argue to some kind of consensus that would enable group action. (Reasons are in part excuses you offer others to make going along with you palatable.) We're crap at judging our own views but pretty good at criticizing others. — Srap Tasmaner
And it's pretty obvious that something like this is right at the root of language use. We talk digital even if we mostly live analog. — Srap Tasmaner
Phaedo: Likely indeed, he said, but arguments are not like men in this particular.
Socrates: I was merely following your lead just now. The similarity lies rather in this: it is as when one who lacks skill in arguments puts his trust in an argument as being true, then shortly afterwards believes it to be false—as sometimes it is and sometimes it is not—and so with another argument and then another. You know how those in particular who spend their time c studying contradiction in the end believe themselves to have become very wise and that they alone have understood that there is no soundness or reliability in any object or in any argument, but that all that exists simply fluctuates up and down as if it were in the Euripus10 and does not remain in the same place for any time at all.
What you say, I said, is certainly true.
It would be pitiable, Phaedo, he said, when there is a true and reliable argument and one that can be understood, if a man who has dealt with such arguments as appear at one time true, at another time untrue, should not blame himself or his own lack of skill but, because of his distress, in the end gladly shift the blame away from himself to the arguments, and spend the rest of his life hating and reviling reasonable discussion and so be deprived of truth and knowledge of reality.
Yes, by Zeus, I said, that would be pitiable indeed.
This then is the first thing we should guard against, he said. We should not allow into our minds the conviction that argumentation has nothing sound about it; much rather we should believe that it is we who are not yet sound and that we must take courage and be eager to attain soundness, you and the others for the sake of your whole life still to come, and I for the sake of death itself. — Plato, Phaedo, 90b..., tr. Grube
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