Maybe you would agree that the brain idea must incorporate into its assumptions that natural scientific concepts such as functioning brain, neuron and physical law are not the product of human observation and representation of a world independent of our representations, but practices of interaction with others in the world — Joshs

I think I am going to quote from something I wrote to myself just to describe how I think about that kind of thing. It is very anchored in a first-person experiential perspective though:

It is not only that words model or describe sensory experiences; trivially, they are experiences, as much a part of our same stream of sensations as any others. Words and any models, therefore work precisely by being directly situated and enacted in the dynamics of experience in very complicated, nonlinear ways, whether in conversations with other people or ourselves, writing up and reading descriptions, learning, making predictions, engaging with math or pictorial representations, etc. Again, it is not a matter of models having some kind of essential nature as objects independent of the living context in which they are embedded; such a view is an idealization. There is no independently existing singular model of quantum mechanics or evolution; what exists are people with shared knowledge who enact that knowledge.

Models, and any word meanings for that matter, are nothing above the cause and effect mediated by people's implicit neuronal processes that drive the generation of future experiences in the context of the past. The equations in our theories written down on paper and the words we physically say cannot actually do anything independently of the minds that generated them and do things with them; neither is there necessarily a determinate way of expressing models and theories which is not contextualized by what is deemed acceptable by people in the context of their cognitive abilities and neuronal architectures. Therefore, in this kind of view, minds and cognition are only as deep as our experiences and the momentary unfolding of their dynamics.

Well I think it is certainly a better story than just appealing to reason or metaphysical truth without any explanation of how people do it and without being open to the subtleties of people being fallible or interacting with the world in a perspective-dependent way.

To be clear, "metaphysical truth" isn't some vague term I've concocted. It's the term used to denote "truth" in the sense that the term has been used in philosophy for most of history, covering correspondence theories, identity theories, etc. This is as juxtaposed with with deflationary theories of truth where "truth" is simply defined in terms of the word's use within the context of a specific language game in which it appears. On the deflationary view, "truth" has no explanatory or metaphysical import.

Rorty fits this mold and he reads Wittgenstein as suggesting such a view of truth, claiming Wittgenstein's main value to us lies in demonstrating that metaphysics isn't "meaningless" but rather "simply a waste of time." I don't think this is a good reading of Wittgenstein, but it's obviously not too uncommon (and tends to draw most from On Certainty).

Perhaps I should have been a bit clearer that I had turned my attention that way. Kripke is not a deflationist. Theories like causal baptism don't suggest deflation. I am not sure if the same can be said of Kripkenstein, and this is one of my major issues with that reading of Wittgenstein. I don't recall Kripke addressing the issue directly. However, given the idea that meaning is nothing but the expectations of members of the community, and the assumption that communities can vary in their conceptual schemes and hinge propositions, it would seem that deflation would follow.

So my point isn't meant to be handwavey. It's a straightforward denial of the idea that "reason" should be thought of as simply the ability to follow the rules within the context of any specific language game—that there is not a sui generis version of reason for each language-game or conceptual scheme (Joshs and I have had this conversation before).

I personally like Sokolowski's image here, that we should think of language (and our senses) as a lens we use to investigate the world. A lens is of course something you tend to look through not at. Hence, reason would ground the ability to translate between disparate conceptual schemes. Reason might be said to be transcedent in very many ways, and we could think of Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, etc. here. But for the purposes of this conversation re deflation, I think it's enough to say here that it transcends any specific language game or conceptual scheme, and in doing so allows us to approach truth. We could also speak of a "family resemblance" vis-á-vis truth across different schemes, but that doesn't seem as helpful to me.

To be sure, any statements of truth will be in a language game and no language game will be divorced from changeable use, history, culture, etc. But the assumption that this precludes access to a non-deflationary version of truth seems to need to assume that statements in language games are "what we know," not a means of knowing, or else that a short-lived positivist notion of correspondence truth is the only possible notion of metaphysical truth and that once it is defeated deflation must follow. This is reason (and so us) transformed into a fly trapped in a fly bottle, a bottle whose walls are the limits of a specific language game. Or rather, reason becomes a whole host of flies, pacing in tight circles within the confines of their individual bottles.

By my reckoning, the key value of On Certainty is its demonstration of the problems inherit in a certain narrow view of truth and reason of the sort that Wittgenstein was surrounded by early in his career. Although not new (Aristotle tackles the issue of an infinite regress of justifications and the need of axioms in the Posterior Analytics) On Certainty acts as an updated diagnosis more specific to the woes of early 20th century analytic philosophy.

Of course, I'm certainly open to the argument that Rorty ends up closer to what Wittgenstein intended. Much of Wittgenstein's writing suggests at least deflation vis-á-vis practical reason.

And certainly, yes, I would believe my claims were better pr more correct than the immaterial soul. Better arguments in favour of it

Well, better in virtue of what is the question, right? Better at approaching truth? Or better because they can be demonstrated from dominant hinge propositions in a given community? Is the goodness of an argument determine solely by the expectations of the people who are going to hear it?

Though it sounds like an anti-jewish epithet at first, Kripkenstein is indeed a "character".

Yeah, it's a moniker because Kripkenstein doesn't really seem like Kripke (in his other work) or Wittgenstein, but rather a (by some accounts monstrous) fusion of the two.

I don't know Kripke well enough to know if the book is sort of an elaborate bracketed thought experiment or if it's an elaborate trolling operation. Certainly the idea of ridgid designators for which he is famous (e.g. water is H2O in all possible worlds) and essentialism doesn't seem to straightforwardly work all that well with the nihilism set up for the skeptical problem.

I personally like Sokolowski's image here, that we should think of language (and our senses) as a lens we use to investigate the world. A lens is of course something you tend to look through not at. Hence, reason would ground the ability to translate between disparate conceptual schemes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the optical metaphor is a good way to illustrate the difference between a metaphysical realist and a deflationary reading of Wittgenstein. The former associates empirical truth with observation, a representational seeing which places the observer and the observed, perceiving and acting, on opposite sides of a gap. By contrast, I read Wittgenstein as doing away with the gap by replacing the notion of observation with practical engagement , performance or doing rather than seeing. As Rouse argues, “the sciences ofer not a single synchronic “image” of the world, but a temporally extended field of research opportunities, intelligible disagreements, outstanding problems, and the conceptual and practical capabilities that guide them. Scien­tifc understanding reaches out from, beyond, and partially against “what we take to be the case”…To ask how our representations can ever get a foothold in the world is to presume, erroneously, that one could ever make or understand representations without already having a foothold in the world. “

The equations in our theories written down on paper and the words we physically say cannot actually do anything independently of the minds that generated them and do things with them; neither is there necessarily a determinate way of expressing models and theories which is not contextualized by what is deemed acceptable by people in the context of their cognitive abilities and neuronal architectures. Therefore, in this kind of view, minds and cognition are only as deep as our experiences and the momentary unfolding of their dynamics.

I do like what you’re saying here, and I think it’s pointing in the same direction that I am inclined to go in reconciling philosophical and scientific images of the world. I would just add that a thoroughgoing reflexivity between word and world implies that cognitive abilities and neuronal architectures are themselves responsive to, and continuously shaped by, the social world that they are exposed to and intertwined with. We can’t use biological concepts as the court of last appeal and legitimation for grounding conceptual meaning when they are not split off from the social milieu.

To be clear, "metaphysical truth" isn't some vague term I've concocted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ofcourse, but I don't think it comes for free and imo it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain people's beliefs about the world so it doesn't seem like a particularly good explanation.

On the deflationary view, "truth" has no explanatory or metaphysical import. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say there is a point here, since "metaphysical truth" is neither necessary nor sufficient for truth behaviors and people often either use the word cheaply or are wrong. If we get things right about correspondences to the world, then it must be mediated by messier, more elaborate mechanisms. At the same time; from my perspective, the notion of "correspondence" itself is rather cheap and thin, nor is it perspectiveless.

So my point isn't meant to be handwavey. It's a straightforward denial of the idea that "reason" should be thought of as simply the ability to follow the rules within the context of any specific language game — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think language games here would just reflect the activities and norms of reasoning which will naturally have emerged within a community. People don't reason well if they don't have the right information, if they haven't learned or been taught how to reason, if they are not attuned to the norms of what is deemed "reasonable" position to hold. And ultimately, what is doing the work is brains in their interactions with their environments and other brains.

But the assumption that this precludes access to a non-deflationary version of truth seems to need to assume that statements in language games are "what we know," not a means of knowing, or else that a short-lived positivist notion of correspondence truth is the only possible notion of metaphysical truth and that once it is defeated deflation must follow. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For me, "knowing" doesn't mean much more over the unfolding activities of our behaviors, thougjts, experiences. We predict experiences, enacting those predictions in various ways. I see language games are an exemplification, a subset of that process.

Well, better in virtue of what is the question, right? Better at approaching truth? Or better because they can be demonstrated from dominant hinge propositions in a given community? Is the goodness of an argument determine solely by the expectations of the people who are going to hear it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

He thing is that an explanatiom being deemed better doesn't necessarily mean it approaches truth. Someone can be mistaken about what they think is a good explanation. Something can be a good explanation only because we don't have all the relevant information to deduce a better one. At the same time, we likely do have to learn about good reasoning and good explanations, and such learning isn't going to be isolated from the community.

I would just add that a thoroughgoing reflexivity between word and world implies that cognitive abilities and neuronal architectures are themselves responsive to, and continuously shaped by, the social world that they are exposed to and intertwined with. We can’t use biological concepts as the court of last appeal and legitimation for grounding conceptual meaning when they are not split off from the social milieu. — Joshs

Yes, definitely agree. Ofcourse, words and concepts must be inherently evolved, developed, learned, used in a social context. Brains in some sense synchronizing with other brains as well as other parts of the environments they navigate. And then, good understanding of whats happening here wants multiple levels of explanation spanning all fields from microbiology to evolution to linguistics, anthropology, social psychology to history and upward. No one field or level of explanation can do justice to everything.

Of course, words and concepts must be inherently evolved, developed, learned, used in a social context. Brains in some sense synchronizing with other brains as well as other parts of the environments they navigate. — Apustimelogist

I'm afraid that although I understand the first sentence, I think. I cannot understand the second sentence unless I substitute "people" for "brains". That's a bit puzzling because, of course, it's perfectly true that human people need functioning brains if they are to behave as people. I can't help wondering you are making the same mistake that people make when they say that my eyes see. They don't. Neither does my brain. People see, even though they cannot see without eyes or brains.

Forms of life and language games are all just appeals to the blind behavior produced by the brain - in terms of both cognitive and motor-acts - in an interacting community of brains all "acting blindly" together: — Apustimelogist

I take it that you are referring here to Wittgenstein's "We act blindly". So, again, I can only understand this by substituting "people" for "brain". Brains don't (cannot) walk or talk even though one cannot walk or talk without a brain. Whether they can be said to understand anything is not clear to me. Normally, we say that people understand or fail to understand, though we also accept that they could not understand anything if they did not have brains.

Plus, I have already mentioned how I think brains are a deeper explanation more fundamental - brains interacting with their environments, multiple brains interacting together. — Apustimelogist

Of course brains interact with their environments. But they don't interact with other brains, unless that's just a fancy way of saying that people interact with other people, in ways that they could not if they did not have brains. But you do have some definite claims.

It is the explanation of how we act blindly and is linked to the possible idea that brains and any kind of neurons learn to perform tasks without any human-interpretable rules. — Apustimelogist

I suppose you have in mind the (apparent) fact that AIs appear to be able to act on rules without being able to tell what rules they are following. But in that case, we can certainly work out what's going on from the results. I have no idea what would persuade us to accept that any machine, biological or not, is not working from any human-interpretable rules. If we can't identify the rule, we have no evidence that there is one. In any case, whatever the tasks are that brains and neurons are doing, they are not acting blindly in the sense that Wittgesntein had in mind - in fact they are not acting at all in the sense that people act.

The brain idea is that it doesn't matter if rules are underdetermined because what causes our behavior is not platonic representations of rules but a functioning brain acting under the laws of physics. — Apustimelogist

Well, we agree on platonic representations of rules (if I've understood you right), and certainly, we do not (cannot) violate the laws of physics when we act; nor can our brains. But the idea that the laws of physics are not underdetermined is a big jump. So far as I can see, it contradicts (without refuting) the classic argument against induction. What have I missed?

"people" for "brains" — Ludwig V

I mean, I don't understand how you could think this as some kind of over-reductive description when I literally said in the same paragraph the following:

And then, good understanding of whats happening here wants multiple levels of explanation spanning all fields from microbiology to evolution to linguistics, anthropology, social psychology to history and upward. No one field or level of explanation can do justice to everything. — Apustimelogist

[Brains] is one level of description, appeal, explanation - made necessary by the fact that it explains how people behave and think, at least in the proximal sense.

Of course brains interact with their environments. But they don't interact with other brains — Ludwig V

If brains are in their environment then ofcourse they can interact with other brains.

I have no idea what would persuade us to accept that any machine, biological or not, is not working from any human-interpretable rules. — Ludwig V

Its a well-established issue in machine learning and I already had posted a paper talking about it in the context of neuroscience this thread:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662731931044X

But in that case, we can certainly work out what's going on from the results. — Ludwig V

Which is always our interpretation of what is going on and falls to the same kinds of rule-following issues as initially described - which inevitably would result in another appeal to blindness.

in fact they are not acting at all in the sense that people act. — Ludwig V

Depends what you mean, I guess; but, not important.

But the idea that the laws of physics are not underdetermined is a big jump. — Ludwig V

Wasn't necessarily imply they weren't underdetermined; but the point was that rule behavior is not determined by rule abstractions floating about in a platonic dimension. It is determined by extremely complicated mechanistic processes in the world and our brains, as is the behavior which translates to our agreements about the applications of words and categorizations of behaviors.

Edit: [ ]

I have no idea what would persuade us to accept that any machine, biological or not, is not working from any human-interpretable rules.
— Ludwig V
Its a well-established issue in machine learning and I already had posted a paper talking about it in the context of neuroscience this thread: — Apustimelogist

My statement there is badly written, I'm afraid. I'm relieved to hear that it is an issue. I'll have to read the article later, but the summary is interesting.

But in that case, we can certainly work out what's going on from the results.
— Ludwig V
Which is always our interpretation of what is going on and falls to the same kinds of rule-following issues as initially described - which inevitably would result in another appeal to blindness. — Apustimelogist

Of course. But blindness resolves the infinite regress of interpretation and underdetermination, so it is a feature, not a bug.
You think that the AI's hidden rules resolve the "problem" of blindness. I don't see how. If you are accepting that they are interpretable by humans, how do they not have the same problems as any other rules? To put the question another way, if the AIs rules cannot be understood by human beings (or even, if you insist, by other AIs, how would "correct" and "incorrect" have any meaning? To put the point yet another way, if the AIs rules really were uninterpretable by human beings, what meaning would "correct" and "incorrect" have?

If brains are in their environment then of course they can interact with other brains. — Apustimelogist

Of course they can. Everything interacts with everything else. The interesting questions are about how they interact and whether there are any limits. Surely brains don't interact directly with other brains, but only via a chain that connects them - roughly, via the bodies they live in. How do people and their interactions fit in to this chain?

Depends what you mean, I guess; but, not important. — Apustimelogist

That depends on whether you think people are important. They probably are not, at the level that you are talking about. Indeed, I wonder whether they exist at that level.

I mean, I don't understand how you could think this as some kind of over-reductive description when I literally said in the same paragraph the following:
And then, good understanding of whats happening here wants multiple levels of explanation spanning all fields from microbiology to evolution to linguistics, anthropology, social psychology to history and upward. No one field or level of explanation can do justice to everything.
This is one level of description, appeal, explanation - made necessary by the fact that it explains how people behave and think, at least in the proximal sense. — Apustimelogist

Yes. I did read that. This is the idea that all science will, in the end, be unified into a single over-arching structure. That's an article of faith, or perhaps a programme of research. It certainly isn't a fact. What's worse, is that, by eradicating people from your causal chain, you seem to be reducing people to their brains. Perhaps unintentionally, but nonetheless, there's no conceptual space for them.

Wasn't necessarily imply they weren't underdetermined; but the point was that rule behavior is not determined by rule abstractions floating about in a platonic dimension. — Apustimelogist

Certainly. We agree on that.

It is determined by extremely complicated mechanistic processes in the world and our brains, as is the behavior which translates to our agreements about the applications of words and categorizations of behaviors. — Apustimelogist

If the laws are underdetermined, how can they determine those mechanistic processes - except, perhaps, by some version of blind action? I do agree that there are complicated physical processes going on. But we do not know how to translate from the physical level of description to the human - it's called the hard problem. But if there were a translation how would it not be a matter of rules?

If the laws are underdetermined, how can they determine those mechanistic processes - except, perhaps, by some version of blind action? I do agree that there are complicated physical processes going on. But we do not know how to translate from the physical level of description to the human - it's called the hard problem. But if there were a translation how would it not be a matter of rules? — Ludwig V

The translation of physical processes into the language of human intersubjectivity may be made easier if we start by asking ourselves what we are doing when we posit conceptions of the physical and the mechanistic and attempt to found indeterminate intersubjective discursivity on these.

I like to quote Evan Thompson on this issue:

“Many philosophers have argued that there seems to be a gap between the objective, naturalistic facts of the world and the subjective facts of conscious experience. The hard problem is the conceptual and metaphysical problem of how to bridge this apparent gap. There are many critical things that can be said about the hard problem, but what I wish to point out here is that it depends for its very formulation on the premise that the embodied mind as a natural entity exists ‘out there' independently of how we configure or constitute it as an object of knowledge through our reciprocal empathic understanding of one other as experiencing subjects. One way of formulating the hard problem is to ask: if we had a complete, canonical, objective, physicalist account of the natural world, including all the physical facts of the brain and the organism, would it conceptually or logically entail the subjective facts of consciousness? If this account would not entail these facts, then consciousness must be an additional, non-natural property of the world.

One problem with this whole way of setting up the issue, however, is that it presupposes we can make sense of the very notion of a single, canonical, physicalist description of the world, which is highly doubtful, and that in arriving (or at any rate approaching) such a description, we are attaining a viewpoint that does not in any way presuppose our own cognition and lived experience. In other words, the hard problem seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as transcendental or metaphysical realism.

“I would give up both realism and anti-realism, then, in favor of what could be called a pluralist pragmatism. What the pluralist insists on is that there is no foundational version, one which anchors all the rest or to which all others can be reduced. The pragmatist insists that the world is both found and made: it is made in the finding and found in the making.To erase the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way in the world gives us a fresh appreciation of the world. That world, however, is not given, waiting to be represented. We find the world, but only in the many incommensurable cognitive domains we devise in our attempt to know our way around. The task of the philosopher is not to extract a common conceptual scheme from these myriad domains and to determine its faithfulness to some uncorrupted reality; it is, rather, to learn to navigate among the domains, and so to clarify their concerns in relation to each other.

when we posit conceptions of the physical and the mechanistic and attempt to found indeterminate intersubjective discursivity on these. — Joshs

Yes. One quibble. Our conceptions of the physical and mechanistic will originate with us (collectively). What would it mean to found our indeterminate inter-subjective discursivity on them? I would have thought that some sort of inter-subjective discursivity would have to be in place in order to develop any conceptions of the physical and mechanistic. But then, how could we not have a conception of the physical and mechanistic if we can discourse between ourselves?

The task of the philosopher is not to extract a common conceptual scheme from these myriad domains and to determine its faithfulness to some uncorrupted reality; it is, rather, to learn to navigate among the domains, and so to clarify their concerns in relation to each other. — Evan Thompson

I like that. It doesn't have a hierarchy and requires only an arbitrary starting-point.

The pragmatist insists that the world is both found and made: it is made in the finding and found in the making.

That's brilliant. Would you care to share the reference? Then I could quote it too.

By coincidence, I've been reminded that Wittgenstein discusses the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge - the paradox that one may know how to use a word perfectly well, but be unable to define it - Socrates' great mistake. In fact, this was a lynch-pin of his argument for meaning as use. Socrates thought that if you can't give an explicit definition of, say, courage, you didn't know what it is. But, for Wittgenstein, if you can behave bravely, you do know what courage is, even if you can't define it.
I think of tacit knowledge as like a sub-routine in a programme. It's the routine stuff that is delegated by consciousness, which is limited and lazy and prefers not to concentrate if it is not necessary. That does demand an explanation by reference to what's going on in the brain - and in the rest of the body as well. However, this is not a simple matter of physical laws, but requires an intervening layer, like the software in a computer.
Those sub-routines will involve implementation of rules - otherwise they cannot possibly be successful or even unsuccessful. So indeterminacy and blind action will apply.

But blindness resolves the infinite regress of interpretation and underdetermination, so it is a feature, not a bug. — Ludwig V

No it doesn't. It just explains how people can still act coherently under chronic underdetermination.

You think that the AI's hidden rules resolve the "problem" of blindness. I don't see how. If you are accepting that they are interpretable by humans, how do they not have the same problems as any other rules? To put the question another way, if the AIs rules cannot be understood by human beings (or even, if you insist, by other AIs, how would "correct" and "incorrect" have any meaning? To put the point yet another way, if the AIs rules really were uninterpretable by human beings, what meaning would "correct" and "incorrect" have? — Ludwig V

Because they don't resolve anything. All that it does is explain the fact that we act. Brain's are mechanistic systems which produce our behavior regardless of how we interpret it. The fact that I cannot interpret my behavior does not magically stop the physical chains of events that produce my coherent behavior. I don't need a determinate rule-interpretable understanding of what brains or A.I. do for them to perform the tasks they do.

Surely brains don't interact directly with other brains, but only via a chain that connects them - roughly, via the bodies they live in. — Ludwig V

I wasn't implying otherwise.

This is the idea that all science will, in the end, be unified into a single over-arching structure. That's an article of faith, or perhaps a programme of research. It certainly isn't a fact. What's worse, is that, by eradicating people from your causal chain, you seem to be reducing people to their brains. Perhaps unintentionally, but nonetheless, there's no conceptual space for them. — Ludwig V

What you are saying is directly opposite of what I had written.

Note I edited my original comment for clarification.

If the laws are underdetermined, how can they determine those mechanistic processes - except, perhaps, by some version of blind action? I do agree that there are complicated physical processes going on. But we do not know how to translate from the physical level of description to the human - it's called the hard problem. But if there were a translation how would it not be a matter of rules? — Ludwig V

Laws are descriptions or produce predictions, in our minds, about a world that exists independently of us - they don't determine the world, we pluck them out from our observations in perspective-dependent ways. Our descriptions can be underdetermined but that doesn't mean that things aren't happening in the world regardless of how we choose to describe them; nor does it mean that our descriptions are not useful to us. Those things cause our behavior even when I am not looking, even if I cannot characterize them in a determinate, perspective-independent way.

I like this Evan Thompson quote a lot!

The pragmatist insists that the world is both found and made: it is made in the finding and found in the making.
That's brilliant. Would you care to share the reference? Then I could quote it too. — Ludwig V

It’s from Is Internal Realism a Philosophy of Scheme and Content?

https://evanthompson.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/j-1467-9973-1991-tb00717-x.pdf

Regarding tacit knowledge, I think all we do is essentially tacit at some level. Traditionally people often split up know-how and know-that but to me, know-that is a special case of know-that - or at least that is how it is implemented. Know-that is enacted.

However, this is not a simple matter of physical laws, but requires an intervening layer, like the software in a computer. — Ludwig V

Yes, I wasn't deliberately trying to exclude other things; after all, most of neuroscience does not appeal to physics. I was just trying to hit home that meaning behavior comes from processes which are independent of our own notions of meaning. Physics is the ultimate grounding since brain dynamics, computational behaviors are in principle implemented in the entities of physics. At the same time, I think I was trying to refer to something deeper than our perspective-dependent descriptions of the world since these are all in principle underdetermined and indeterminate whether in physics or neuroscience or machine learning, etc. By physical laws I just meant the way the world tends to behave independently of perspective; obviously this is not coherently accessible, but we infer that there id a world that exists and behaves consistently regardless of who is looking.

Those sub-routines will involve implementation of rules - otherwise they cannot possibly be successful or even unsuccessful. — Ludwig V

Well they would be the same processes which are not human-interpretable as described in the paper, the point being that if what they do can be explained in ways that is not fundamentally in terms of human-interpretable rules, we do not need to appeal to such kinds of rules to explain behavior, but instead to the kind of semantic-less descriptions of math, physics, statistics. Obviously, those descriptions themselves may be in principle underdetermined, but the point is that meanings are not the bottom wrung of explanation here - mindless algorithms are. Mindless algorithms drive our behavior despite underdetermination, which itself became apparent to us through the same kinds of mindless algorithms driving our categorization behaviors.

It’s from Is Internal Realism a Philosophy of Scheme and Content? — Joshs

Thanks very much.

I was just trying to hit home that meaning behavior comes from processes which are independent of our own notions of meaning. — Apustimelogist

Yes. In a sense, the processes act blindly. But that implies that they follow rules, which they don't. They do not differentiate between following a rule and not following it. They don't recognize rules. So they don't explain them - any more than they explain why 2+2=4 and not 5.

By physical laws I just meant the way the world tends to behave independently of perspective; obviously this is not coherently accessible, but we infer that there id a world that exists and behaves consistently regardless of who is looking. — Apustimelogist

If "the world" is not coherently accessible, our inference that it behaves consistently regardless of who is looking is a hope, not a fact.

Physics is the ultimate grounding since brain dynamics, computational behaviors are in principle implemented in the entities of physics. — Apustimelogist

How is that not reductionist? The bitter truth is the physics is just another way of conceptualizing the world, another lens through which to survey it. And that conceptualization cannot recognize rule-following behaviour. Causes are not correct or incorrect. They just are what they are.

know-that is a special case of know-that - or at least that is how it is implemented. Know-that is enacted. — Apustimelogist

I hope there's a typo there and you meant that know-that is a special case of know-how. I would agree with that. Articulating one's knowledge is also a case of a know-how that is quite distinct from the know-how that one is articulating. Quite a surprise - especially to philosophers!

mindless algorithms — Apustimelogist

Forgive my ignorance, but I had this naive impression that an algorithm is a rule.

Yes. In a sense, the processes act blindly. But that implies that they follow rules, which they don't. They do not differentiate between following a rule and not following it. They don't recognize rules. So they don't explain them - any more than they explain why 2+2=4 and not 5. — Ludwig V

I don't really understand what you are trying to say here. These processes are not meant to explain the rules, they explain our behavior despite underdetermination.

If "the world" is not coherently accessible — Ludwig V

It should be If "the world" is not coherently accessible independently of perspective.

So we can make that inference from within perspectives. Obviously, this is a hope in some sense [i.e. problem of induction]; but, that is trivially the case for all claims. Obviously, such a claim is very much an abstraction that fills a role in our understanding of things. Our understanding of things includes the concept that things exist when we don't look at them, even if there is no fact of the matter in how someone could possibly objectively characterize things in a perspective independent manner.

How is that not reductionist? The bitter truth is the physics is just another way of conceptualizing the world, another lens through which to survey it. — Ludwig V

I'm not ruling out other explanatory frameworks, but there is a clear asymmetry in the sense that physics undergirds all behaviors in the world but not the other way round. Maybe a better way to talk about it is in terms of scales. We can describe how the world behaves on different scales. Behavior on larger scales obviously depends on behavior on smaller scales, regardless of the kinds of descriptions you use. Ultimately, physics is the only framework that describes the smallest scales of reality on which everything else emerges in some sense. That's not to exclude or say we don't need or want explanations on other scales [nor mean there is super hard explanatory reduction].

Causes are not correct or incorrect. They just are what they are. — Ludwig V

Yes, and they explain in a proximal sense all our rule-following behaviors in principle. I'm not really interested in some kind of objective sense of correctness. I just don't find it an interesting issue and in my conceptualization where all of our knowledge is basically idealizations regarding enaction in our unfolding flow of experiences, the idea of monolithic rules doesn't even seem well-founded to me except in a sense which is idealized, which is about what I think of as cognitive instrumentalism or pragmatism.

Forgive my ignorance, but I had this naive impression that an algorithm is a rule. — Ludwig V

Well, maybe in the loosest possible sense of a rule; but the point is that what neurons are doing in my brain are not related to the semantics of "plus" and you don't need the semantic notion of 'plus' to explain how mindless neurons do 'plus' tasks. Obviously, characterizing what artificial or biological neurons do is not exempt from underdetermination or indeterminacy either.

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Really enjoyed reading this :up:

These processes are not meant to explain the rules, they explain our behavior despite underdetermination. — Apustimelogist

Yes, and they explain in a proximal sense all our rule-following behaviors in principle. — Apustimelogist

what neurons are doing in my brain are not related to the semantics of "plus" and you don't need the semantic notion of 'plus' to explain how mindless neurons do 'plus' tasks. — Apustimelogist

I'm sorry. I really don't understand what you are getting at. We are agreed that we need functioning brains to do plus tasks. I don't understand anything beyond that.

you don't need the semantic notion of 'plus' to explain how mindless neurons do 'plus' tasks. — Apustimelogist

Can you explain what the semantic notion of "plus" is?
I don't need to explain how mindless neurons do plus tasks, because they don't do plus tasks. Saying that I act blindly when I do a plus task is saying that there is no need of and no room for an explanation how I do them. So I don't know what my neurons are doing while I am blindly doing a plus task, either.

I think you believe a philosophical thesis that physics is the ultimate grounding of everything, and that you therefore infer that my neurons must be doing something relevant. My problems are first that I don't accept the philosophical thesis that there is/must be an ultimate grounding of everything and second that you don't seem able to explain what the relevance of my neurons is.

know-that is a special case of know-that - or at least that is how it is implemented. Know-that is enacted. — Apustimelogist

I hope there's a typo there and you meant that know-that is a special case of know-how. I would agree with that. Articulating one's knowledge is also a case of a know-how that is quite distinct from the know-how that one is articulating. Quite a surprise - especially to philosophers!

I don't understand anything beyond that — Ludwig V

Its just the idea that mechanistic component cannot be inherently interpreted in terms of a semantic component. If you look at a brain performing a plus task, our description of 'plus' is not interpretable in terms of our description of how neurons arr actually performing the task.

I don't need to explain how mindless neurons do plus tasks, because they don't do plus tasks. — Ludwig V

Neurons are precisely what is performing a plus tasks for you. The biology and dynamics of neurons account for everything about your ability to do a plus task.

Saying that I act blindly when I do a plus task is saying that there is no need of and no room for an explanation how I do them. — Ludwig V

No, its saying that you don't know how you do them. But neurons explain how you do it and in principle they would even explain how you don't know how you do it.

I think you believe a philosophical thesis that physics is the ultimate grounding of everything — Ludwig V

In what sense do you mean that physics does not ground everything? Physics describes the smallest scales of existence which grounds everything else and upon which all higher scale behavior depends and emerges from.

and that you therefore infer that my neurons must be doing something relevant. My problems are first that I don't accept the philosophical thesis that there is/must be an ultimate grounding of everything and second that you don't seem able to explain what the relevance of my neurons is. — Ludwig V

I don't really understand what you could possibly mean by saying here other than rejecting mainstream science. In what sense are neurons not relevant? When you are performing a plus task it is due to the behavior of neurons.

I hope there's a typo there and you meant that know-that is a special case of know-how. — Ludwig V

Yes, thats what I meant.

a mechanistic component cannot be inherently interpreted in terms of a semantic component. If you look at a brain performing a plus task, our description of 'plus' is not interpretable in terms of our description of how neurons are actually performing the task.

Neurons are precisely what is performing a plus tasks for you. The biology and dynamics of neurons account for everything about your ability to do a plus task.

Physics describes the smallest scales of existence which grounds everything else and upon which all higher scale behavior depends and emerges from. — Apustimelogist

In principle it is true that physics grounds all ‘higher’ scales of natural phenomena , but in practice it is not true that that a mechanistic account based on efficient, linear causality describes the neural processes underlying conceptual thought. There is no such thing as an inherently mechanistic component, only an account which explains the functions of a component in mechanistic terms. This is a useful account for describing phenomena in the service of accomplishing certain kinds of scientific and technological tasks, but is inadequate for others. Looking at the neural activity at the level of detail of chemical reactions will only reveal a chain of linear causality. Looking at the level of global self-organizing processes of a living system will reveal a non-linear reciprocal causality that moves between the global and the elemental.

As Alicia Juarrero explains:

The bottom-up causality of nonlinear far from equilibrium dynamics is thus truly creative; it produces qualitatively different wholes that are not reducible to sums, com­pounds, or aggregates. Once self-organized, furthermore, these emergent global structures of process actively and dynamically influence the go of their compo­nents, but not qua other. In contradiction to the received views on causality, that is, the whole also actively exerts causal power on itself top down. Self-organization, in short, strongly counsels for a wider denotation for the
term cause, one reconceptualized in terms of “context-sensitive constraints” to include those causal powers that incorporate circular causality, context-sensitive
embeddedness, and temporality. On this interpretation deterministic, mechanistic efficient causes become the limit of context-sensitive constraints.

I didn't mean mechanistic in such a narrow sense as you do here.

In what sense do you mean that physics does not ground everything? Physics describes the smallest scales of existence which grounds everything else and upon which all higher scale behavior depends and emerges from. — Apustimelogist

Does physics ground mathematics?

Of course, words and concepts must be inherently evolved, developed, learned, used in a social context. Brains in some sense synchronizing with other brains as well as other parts of the environments they navigate. — Apustimelogist

H'm what does "in some sense" mean? Brains no doubt navigate their environment - the body. But I don't navigate that environment (under normal conditions); the environments I do navigate are all "external" to the body.

what neurons are doing in my brain are not related to the semantics of "plus" and you don't need the semantic notion of 'plus' to explain how mindless neurons do 'plus' tasks. — Apustimelogist

I know what a "plus" task is. Hence, I know that brains/neurons don't do the plus tasks that I do. I don't understand what you mean by "the semantic notion of 'plus'". Are you by any chance saying that brains/neurons do plus tasks without knowing what they mean? Somewhat as a small child might move a chess piece without knowing the rules of chess?
In that case, though we might interpret what the child does as a move, it isn't a move in the sense that I might make the same move as part of a game of chess. To put the point another way, the child doesn't know what they are doing and isn't playing a game of chess. Similarly, the brain/neurons doesn't/don't know what it/they are doing and isn't/aren't performing a plus task.

I didn't mean mechanistic in such a narrow sense as you do here. — Apustimelogist

Can you explain in what sense you do mean "mechanistic"?

Looking at the level of global self-organizing processes of a living system will reveal a non-linear reciprocal causality that moves between the global and the elemental. — Joshs

I expect it will. One of the obvious features of life in general and people in particular is that they are autonomous. Whether those systems approaches can answer all the questions is another issue. On the surface, it looks as if they leave out the notion of a person, which implies that their scope will be limited.

One of the obvious features of life in general and people in particular is that they are autonomous. Whether those systems approaches can answer all the questions is another issue. On the surface, it looks as if they leave out the notion of a person, which implies that their scope will be limited — Ludwig V

How do you reconcile the notion of person with philosophical and psychological approaches which deconstruct the concept of self?

Francisco Varela provides “a great amount of neuroscientific detail about distributed neural networks to explain the idea of a selfless virtual self, an agent that emerges from a pattern or aggregate of personal processes” ( Shaun Gallagher).

As unenlightened beings, we mistakenly believe on a deep emotional level that there does exist a real “I” or ego within our mind and body, and therefore our experience of ourselves and others is profoundly egocentric… One mentally imposes an intrinsic “I-ness” and an intrinsic “otherness” onto phenomena, but “I” and “other” are simply relative designations imputed onto elements in which there is no inherently existing “I” and “other.” Each “I” is an “other,” and each “other” is an “I.” (Evan Thompson)

“The 'I' (which is not the same thing as the unitary government of our being!) is, after all, only a conceptual synthesis - thus there is no acting from 'egoism'”…
The concept of the 'individual' is false. In isolation, these beings do not exist: the centre of gravity is something changeable…
“If I have anything of a unity within me, it certainly doesn't lie in the conscious ‘I' and in feeling, willing, thinking, but somewhere else: in the sustaining, appropriating, expelling, watchful prudence of my whole organism, of which my conscious self is only a tool.(Nietzsche)

Does physics ground mathematics? — Ludwig V

Do the smallest scales of existence ground our use of math?

Absolutely.

H'm what does "in some sense" mean? — Ludwig V

The kind of synchronication between internal and external states as described by active inference / free energy principle.

But I don't navigate that environment (under normal conditions); the environments I do navigate are all "external" to the body. — Ludwig V

Imo, the body is on equal footing to the rest of the environment in the sense that the brain synchronizes with the body by sensory inputs in the same way it would to any other sensory inputs from the external environment.

Obviously, I am in some sense equating the "I" and some states of the brain.

I know what a "plus" task is. Hence, I know that brains/neurons don't do the plus tasks that I do. — Ludwig V

At this point, I can only assume you are taking on some dualistic notion of the world that gives a profound ontic separation between you and your brain that I just don't agree with and find isn't evidenced by either science of philosophical arguments. I am not going to be able to make you understand what I am saying without you giving up this kind of dualism.

Are you by any chance saying that brains/neurons do plus tasks without knowing what they mean? — Ludwig V

A brain performs a plus task by sequences of membrane depolarization, not by looking up and applying meanings. That's how anyone acts blindly. That's partly why no one can give a non-circular definition of what 'plus' is that eliminates underdetermination / indeterminacy. We don't know anymore than our brains because our brains are exactly how we perform these tasks.

Can you explain in what sense you do mean "mechanistic"? — Ludwig V

I just mean mechanistic in the sense of one event causing the next event and the next event in a way that is divide of any kind of extra meaning. Like knocking down dominos where one falls causes the next and the next and the next in a mindless ways. But I am not assuming any limits on complexity or non-linearity or recurrence or anything like that.

Brains in some sense synchronizing with other brains as well as other parts of the environments they navigate.
— Apustimelogist
H'm what does "in some sense" mean? — Ludwig V

I know @Apustimelogist already answered, but I want to add the following link to flesh out the very literal sense in which synchronization occurs:

https://drsarahmckay.com/brain-to-brain-synchrony-how-neuroscience-decodes-trust-rapport-and-attachment/