:up:

That said the thoughts are of course mine — Tobias

Therein lies the rub. If thought waves are real, you can't be thinking

Do be philosophical — Thinking

Being philosophical, I think, is orders of magnitude harder than coming up with a creation story. Many, perhaps all, creation myths predate philosophy as a formal discipline and once philosophy managed to find a foothold in the human psyche it's been involved with one simple task: mental hygiene.

However, don't be fooled by the word "simple" for it's only so by virtue of the wisdom gained from the collective effort of people actually philosophizing over many generations. Mental hygiene itself is no walk in the park for the mind is a veritable maze complete with booby traps and it's easy to lose one's bearings and, let's not forget, booby traps maim, even kill.

As a matter of mental hygiene, we would have to look back over our shoulders into the past, do an overhaul of old ideas, creation myths being one of them, and also keep an eye on new ideas people seem to continuously churn out on an almost daily basis.

An argument against creation myths that Richard Dawkins employs in his book, The God Delusion, is as follows:

If The universe as complex as ours needs a more complex creator then that creator would itself would need an even more complex creator and such a creator would require a creator of much greater complexity, so on and so forth...ad infinitum.

If you reject the infinite regress above it'd mean you're positing something (a creator) that itself wasn't created but if there can be something that doesn't have to be created, why can't the universe be that which wasn't created?

Creationists have no satisfactory response to this particular counterargument.

My reply to the esteemed Dawkins would be one and only one concept: Technological Singularity. Wikipedia has an article on the topic.

First things first, Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and subscribes to the simple to complex evolution of the universe.

Ergo, the creator needn't be more or even as complex as the universe. The creator of our universe could've, in its own universe, achieved the technological singularity and created our universe which is even more complex than its own. The chain of creators extending backwards through time consists of simpler and simpler beings not, as Dawkins and those who share his views supposes, more and more complex beings. There'll come a point in this series of creators when we'll arrive at the simplest of the simplest "creator" [which wouldn't qualify as a being and thus can't be a creator in the usual sense of the word???] and let's just call this simplest of the simplest "creator" the first cause

The question that'll have to remain unanswered is whether our universe is the handiwork of the first cause or that of someone who appears at some other point in the long line of creators. Does it even matter now that there's a first cause, the simplest of the simplest "creator"?

Well, not quite, although that's the pop view. Unfalsified theories are not assumed to be true. They are taken as helpful, to greater or lesser extents, and hence the need for Lakatos' research programs to acknowledge the variety of unfalsified theories. For my money, Feyerabend put paid to Poppers program (alliteration unintended...), showing firstly that it did not solve the problem of induction, and secondly that it is not the way science actually works. — Banno

Lakatos' intention, as far as I can tell, is to make falsificationism soften its stance. His notion of science as a research program is falsfication-tolerant - in a sense, the work of accommodating inconsistent obesrvations is delegated to so-called auxiliary hypotheses that are constructed/modified to safeguard what he terms as hard core, non-negotiable assumptions of a scientific theory in question. His goal in formulating such a paradigm for science is to prevent the immediate and total rejection of scientific theories based on inconsistent observations which, as far as I can tell, he considers to be detrimental to scientific progress.

Plus, Lakatos seems to be a man of moderation - he sets a limit to the extent to which auxiliary hypotheses can save a scientific theory. He differentiates between progressive research programs and degenerative research programs. What distinguishes the two is that adjustments made to a theory (new/modified auxiliary hypotheses) are productive in the former but in the case of the latter, all the adjustments manage to accomplish is saving the hard core of a research program from being falsified.

Lakatos' genius duly acknowledged, there's a slight problem with this conception of science as research programs. What's the role of falsificationism at the auxiliary hypotheses level?

Is it Popper-like in the sense if observation is inconsistent with an auxiliary hypothesis then that auxiliary hypothesis is considered falsified and consigned to the garbage heap?

If yes, the fate of the hard core of a scientific theory is ultimately decided by falsficiationism. The introduction of auxiliary hypotheses as some kind of a buffer between a scientific theory (the hard core) and falsificationism is pointless. This situation is like that of a person who's fed up being dependent on his parents and so decides to shift the burden of ensuring his welfare to his sister but, the catch is, his sister depends on his parents. Reminds me of someone... :rofl:

If no, then that means auxiliary theories will need their own auxiliary theories and these, in turn, will need other auxiliary theories and so on and pretty soon we'll have a theory that's grotesquely bloated and beyond manageable.

I'm afraid Lakatos' concept of research programs fails at the task it was set out to do.

Paul Feyerabend seems to want a laissez-faire type of environment for science but then such a state of affairs would fail to distinguish science from non-science. If anything goes then everything is science. Is it? Maybe it is...you never know. I've heard scientists complaining about philosophical interference but this is scientific hegemony at a whole new level.

As for my claim that science is an argumentum ad ignorantiam, you're correct in that scientific theories are described as true best available explanatory frameworks. However, the fact remains that the credibility of scientific theories, in Popper's universe, rests on them not being proven false and that this bears a striking resemblance to a known fallacy (argumentum ad ignorantiam) should, at the very least, keep us on our toes.

Emotions are the reason that anything matters

It appears to be a rather complicated issue, emotions and mattering but I find it helpful to distinguish between two kinds of significance/importance (mattering) viz. subjective significance and objective significance although it appears the the boundary between the two is blurred.

Subjective significance is, as the description suggests, peculiar to an individual. For example there are people who collect mementos, usually inexpensive small objects they pick up during their travels to distant lands. These objects matter to folks who keep them because they would like to be reminded of the amazing experiences they've had. They loved the times they spent in those places and that's what gives the souvenirs their significance. To someone who didn't share the experience, these souvenirs wouldn't matter at all. In short, subjective significance has emotional roots.

Objective significance is a different animal. Take for example a battery-operated watch on somebody's wrist. The battery matters for without it the watch won't run. I'm sure we could scale up this analogy to include the entire universe itself or even scale it down to as small as possible and the message is still clear: an objective significance transcends emotions in the sense that emotions are irrelevant i.e. no matter how one feels about it, whether one assigns subjective significance to it or not, it matters.

Remember how I talked about "...the boundary between the two is blurred." I mean two things by this:

1. People seem to be drawn to objective significance i.e. they're likely to invest, big time, emotionally in it. An odd state of affairs comes to be - we're infused with passion both in subjective and in objective significance. The difference is that in the former, emotions are the reason why things matter and in the latter, things matter at a non-emotional level but that evokes feelings.

2. What started off as something of subjective significance turns out to be of great objective significance and what we thought of as possessing huge objective significance is later discovered to be of subjective significance.

I'm not willing to go so far as make a value judgment on subjective and objective significance and assert that one is greater/lesser than the other because of "1. People seem to be drawn to objective significance i.e. they're likely to invest, big time, emotionally in it" and this, if nothing else, bespeaks an innate, intuitive, grasp of not just what matters but what should matter. What should matter exists in a world beyond our own and remembering that objective significance, to discover it, assuming it even exists at a level that satisfies us, is far from being a walk in the park, the least we can do is give our nod of approval to subjective significance for the reason that it acknowledges the role of emotions in things that matter or rather the things that should matter.

I've dissected what matters/things that matter (significance) into two viz. 1. subjective significance and 2. objective significance and these two, as explained above, differ in terms of which of the two - significance or emotions - causally precedes the other. That out of the way, take note of the fact that in both cases, emotions are involved. In conversational mode, I'd be saying, "you're going to get emotional with things that matter (both subjective and objective significance)". Our situation then is analogous to being told that there are buried treasures of gold and silver coins [things that matter (both objective and subjective significance respectively), given a metal detector (emotions), and told to look for it (if we so desire of course). Quite naturally, every time our metal detector beeps (we experience emotions), we'll come to the conclusion that we've discovered a buried treasure (things that matter). To get right to the point, emotions are good at sniffing out things that matter/what matters (significance) whether of subjective or objective significance.

The mystery in all this is whether the distinction subjective and objective significance is real or just a figment of my imagination? The metal detector (emotions) can't tell the difference between gold and silver coins (between objective and subjective significance respectively). What if, and this is at the heart of the matter (at least for me), everything that we get emotional about (metal detector beeps) possesses profound objective subjective significance (buried treasure of gold)?

The way I see it, existential empirical statements are of lower utility than universal empirical statements. More can be done with, say, knowing all metals expand on heating than with some metals expand on heating. After all, consistency in behavior (universal statements) make up the meat on the bones of comprehending, and from there manipulating, our universe. The aim is to get our hands on a set of universal statements that both explains and gives us the power to control the universe.

According to some, universal empirical statements aren't verifiable but they're falsifiable. The classic example of "all swans are white" comes to mind. To verify it, we would have to observe all swans, something impossible because time is a factor - observing all swans over a hundred, or even a thousand generations will not suffice to prove "all swans are white" because that one non-white swan that breaks the pattern may just hatch from a perfectly good swan-egg just the next day after the triumphant but ill-considered decision to declare "all swans are white". However, we can falsify "all swans are white" with the observance of a single non-white swan.

Existential statements aren't falsifiable because to falsify, say, "some swans are white", we'd have to demonstrate the truth of, verify, the universal empirical statement "all swans are non-white" and verifying universal empirical statements is impossible for the reason mentioned in the preceding paragraph (time). Nevertheless, existential statements can be verified - observing one white swan would do the trick.

As you can see, given that we're, or rather scientists are, on the lookout for universal empirical statements that we can add to the theory/theories that explains our universe, we don't have the option of verifying them for that's impossible and so we're left with nothing else but falsficationism and this, according to Karl Popper, is [real] science.

What's intriguing is Karl Popper's idea that science is about falsifiability isn't a conscious choice on our part. It's not that we, sat down together somewhere, and after a good, long and serious discussion, decided to define science in terms of falsifiability. Given that science is about universal statements (the laws of nature), falsificationism is unavoidable, it's inevitable. That said, due credit must be given to Karl Popper for discovering this truth about science.

Note one important fact. Science is, first and foremost, empirical i.e. observation is a central feature of science. This is because verification but more importantly falsfication depends on observation. When (an) observation(s) is inconsistent with a scientific theory, that theory is falsified.

At this point it becomes clear that if a theory is non-scientific then it doesn't, in any way, involve observation, the very basis of falsification. Does this description of the non-scientific fit metaphysics and what it deals with? :chin:

As for this:

The article here is very much in the Popperian tradition, looking at the logical structure of unfalsifiable metaphysical propositions, but does not simply dismissing them as meaningless

Whatever the scientific verdict on metaphysics is, it bears mentioning that falsficationism as a scientific principle is itself not without fault for it commits the argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy; after all, it assumes a [scientific] theory to be true based on it not being falsified. The fallacious reasoning here is akin to, to use an example from metaphysics, believing that God exists just because it hasn't be proven false that God exists. Is the pot calling the kettle black? :chin: It's obvious that falsificationism is itself a deeply flawed perspective.

To sum it all up, neither metaphysical claims nor scientific claims are verifiable and even given that metaphysics is largely unfalsifiable, science is entirely, if falsificationism is its foundational premise, an argumentum ad ignorantiam.

Sure they will cite evidence until the cows come home. They show infinite creativity here.
But, the conclusion is what is all important. The "evidence" is just means to that end. Typically this "evidence" is easily dismissed, by experts. But conspiracy theories operate outside the domain of experts (otherwise I guess they would be "fringe theories"). Their audience is the lay public, and the quality of evidence must only be good enough to fool them. — hypericin

A few points to consider:

1. Fact is stranger than fiction (Many times, reality has outdone our wildest imaginations. This is as clear as crystal from media headlines that more often than not use words like "shocking", "surprising", etc.. Even correcting for the media's penchant for sensationalism, such descriptors appear at an unusually high frequency)

2. Improbable doesn't mean impossible (Even if we agree that conspiracy theories are improbable, that doesn't, in any way, imply their impossibility. Think lotteries...highly improbable for an individual to win the jackpot but someone does win)

3. Simulation Hypothesis (Nick Bostrom's argued that it's likelier that we're living in a (computer-generated) simulation than not and that's a point in favor of conspiracy theorists - after all, who knows what plans the creators of our simulated reality have for us or, in true conspiracy theory spirit, what plans have they hatched against us?

4. Descartes' Deus Deceptor (This remains an unsolved problem in philosophy but it's just an older version of 3. Simulation Hypothesis and also let's not forget another gem of skepticism at its best - brain in a vat thought experiment)

What's odd is that conspiracy theories emerge from doubt/refusing to believe/accept the "official story". Being skeptical, critical thinking experts say, is a very healthy habit - to be cultivated until it becomes second nature to us - and yet when people are skeptical, they're frowned up as conspiracy theorists with nothing better to do than spin a yarn around what are supposedly plain, obvious, and simple events. If there's a fault in conspiracy theories, it's not the skepticism from which they emerge but in the alternatives to what's accepted as truth that they offer. It's one thing to doubt a claim but another to come up with an even more improbable alternative.

Regardless of how you define "thinking," and regardless of whether Descartes is actually thinking, he most certainly thinks he thinks — Hanover

Let's study this very carefully. There's "thinking", there's "Descartes", and then there's Descartes' "I" in "I think therefore, I am". To what does the "I" in Descartes' argument refer to? Surely, it refers to the thinker who's allegedly thinking but...if thought waves are real, no one, let alone Descartes, is actually thinking. If there's no thinking, there's no thinker and if there's no thinker then it becomes impossible for Descartes to identify himself with a thinker as a thinker doesn't exist.

You're not contradicting me. You're just making clear that you've never read a word of Descartes in your life. Which is par for the course with you. — StreetlightX

Focus on the argument StreetlightX :smile: Descartes would've appreciated that (a lot).

Did you get my eye analogy?
— TheMadFool

It was irrelevant, like the rest of the OP. Descartes does not set out to establish that the self is what thinks. Only that there is a self at all. — StreetlightX

I'm sorry to contradict you here but Descartes' self is the thinker but if thought waves are real, there's no thinking so we can forget about a thinker. There's no other way to interpret his argument: I think, therefore I AM.

You cannot doubt you are doubting. — Hanover

I'm sorry about repeating this part of my argument but it seems it hasn't sunk in. Doubting is thinking but if thought waves are real, there's no such thing as thinking and so there can't be a thinker and Descartes' self is, by all accounts, the thinker. Nobody is actively thinking in this scenario, everyone's just passively receiving thought wave signals that are traveling through space.

The example actually proves the point you like to disprove. By your lights, somehow when we discovered that vision and seeing consists of light waves falling on our retina and being transmitted to the brain, we stopped 'seeing'. Descartes does not contest that he 'is' thinking, in the sense that 'thinking' and 'Decartes' are absolutely identical, which seems to be what you presuppose he says. He does not contend: "I am thoughtwaves", het just states that he is thinking in much the same vein as I can say that I am seeing. Whatever it is that I am de facto doing when I am thinking, is irrelevant to Descartes point. I am a being that thinks, he contends and I cannot escape holding true the idea that I am thinking. That is different according to him with 'seeing' and therefore that cannot be the basis of the self. — Tobias

Again, sorry for repeating myself but Descartes' argument is that he is the thinker in the sense actively generating thoughts. Now this is necessary for Descartes' cogito ergo sum argument because if he's a passive recipient of thought waves then it's not him that's thinking. Just give it some "thought" - If the thoughts that I'm thinking aren't mine, i.e. I don't generate them on my own, then, how can I claim to be a thinker and if I'm not a thinker then how can I identify my self as a thinker? How can I say I am that which I'm not!

:up:

I'm sorry I couldn't reply to all of the other posters. I'm a bit tired today. Thank you thought.

I'd be wary of slipping easily between Platonic and Buddhist. Interestingly, they both have chariot analogies, but they're totally different. They also have different conceptions of the nature of reason. In Plato, 'reason' is the 'higher' faculty that it bridles the drives and the appetites - hence reason as 'the charioteer' or the highest faculty. — Wayfarer

According to Plato, the human predicament, our greatest challenge, stems from our split personality so to speak - one one side we have the rational & positive passions (the noble horse) and on the other we have the irrational & negative passions (the savage horse). Plato then compares us to the charioteer of the chariot driven by these two horses; quite naturally the chariot will behave erratically because of the savage horse. This difficulty we face, our susceptibility to irrationality & negative passions, defines what I referred to as the human predicament.

The Buddha, although he makes no such analogy, epitomizes people who pay heed to the noble horse [in Plato's chariot allegory] - the rational half of Plato's dualistic take on the human psyche. The Buddha's modus operandi is to find a solid foundation for his view on life in the form of undeniable truths and then see what their logical implications are. This tactic - to build a worldview based on truths and sound reasoning - is the hallmark of rationality; it's the noble horse at peak performance.

To tell you the truth, Plato's chariot allegory can be thought of as incipient Buddhism because of how negative passions were bundled together with irrationality. All that the Buddha does is reiterate what's presupposed by Plato viz. that poor reasoning is to be blamed for negative passions. If one reasons well and reasons from truths, negative passions become something of an impossibility (to experience) for they're, as Plato thinks and the Buddha concurs, irrational (the logic is flawed or the premises are false or both).

Furthermore, our irrational & negative passions have the unwanted effect of sometimes hindering and other times overwhelming our rational & positive passions - the savage horse, sometimes for a few and all the time for most, gains the upper hand over the noble horse.

What all this boils down to is the noble horse (the rational & positive passions) lodge two complaints against the savage horse (the irrational & negative passions) viz. 1) the savage horse is an encumbrance and 2) the savage horse doesn't make sense

In the Buddhist texts, the reason given for suffering in all its forms is the reality of dependent origination, which ultimately originates with tṛṣṇā, 'craving' or 'thirst'. This is stated in practically every text. But in Buddhism, 'craving' has a cosmic dimension, as it's the factor driving all of existence. So the faculty which is key in Buddhism is prajna or Jñāna, which is insight into the fact of dependent origination as it conditions each moment of existence. The goal of 'mindfulness' or meditation is to become directly aware of those processes which normally run on automatic pilot, as it were. So instead of acting out your automic and conditioned drives, you're acting from jñāna, from wisdom, unshackled from craving. — Wayfarer

:up: What you say here is relevant to what I said above in the post preceding this quote. I'll restate them here verbatim for clarity.

[1. What all this boils down to is the noble horse (the rational & positive passions) lodge two complaints against the savage horse (the irrational & negative passions) viz. 1) the savage horse is an encumbrance and 2) the savage horse doesn't make sense]

[2. All that the Buddha does is reiterate what's presupposed by Plato viz. that poor reasoning is to be blamed for negative passions. If one reasons well and reasons from truths, negative passions become something of an impossibility (to experience) for they're, as Plato thinks and the Buddha concurs, irrational (the logic is flawed or the premises are false or both).]

Please read my reply to JackCummins below.

Do you think that suffering is a 'pernicious lie' and that 'which we cherish the most is immune to damage, death and decay', because surely this contradicts the idea of impermanence. — Jack Cummins

Suffering is real but the Buddha's point is that we suffer when what we love is damaged, dies, and decays but that means those who suffer either didn't expect or don't want such things from happening. If we didn't expect damage, death, and decay then it means we're ignorant of a fundamental truth about the universe, impermanence; if we don't want damage, death, and decay, we're asking/demanding the impossible. In both cases, we're being irrational. This state of not wanting what we cherish to be subjected to damage, death, and decay, this entreaty for the impossible, is what's known as attachment or, as Wayfarer likes to put it, tṛṣṇā, 'craving' or 'thirst'

How would you react to this? What would you do? What would you say? Would you trust anything or anyone ever again? Would you want to go back? — Outlander

Here's the deal in my humble opinion. You ask this question for the simple reason that it's not possible to distinguish reality from a simulation. Ergo, nothing will be able to convince me - if I were the unlucky dude in a coma - that I actually "woke up" from a dream.

But conspiracy theories offer magical hope for this dilemma! "Ah, I knew it all along, I was right, my side was right after all!". The trash details arriving at this conclusion are irrelevant, only the conclusion itself matters. It is therefore the antithesis of science. — hypericin

This doesn't add up. A conspiracy theorist is vindicated precisely when the evidence that fae depends on and the conclusion that fae draws from it hangs together. Last I checked, conspiracy theory proponents do go to great lengths to prove their case whatever that may be and that's just another way of saying that conspiracy theories aren't just about conclusions.

Again, irrelevant — StreetlightX

You missed the point then. Did you get my eye analogy? :chin:

I remember hearing something about someone who started picking up radio signals from a filling he had and was able to hear the programs — Outlander

I came across that story too. It would've made my day if it were true. Unfortunately, it appears to be just one of those tall tales people spin to make their lives just that bit more interesting.

This is irrelevant because Descartes 'proof' does not depend on the self being the source of thought. That it thinks is enough. — StreetlightX

The point is if there are thought waves of the kind I described in the OP, no one, including Descartes, is thinking. If this is a difficult for you to accept, consider vision. When we see objects around us, do we conclude that we're the light waves that enter our eyes? No, right? Similarly, if our brains are simply receiving (like our eyes receive light wave) thought waves, we can't assert that we're the thought waves and if that's the case, we can't claim to be thinking beings just as our eyes can't claim to be the light waves.

However, unlike Descartes, radios, records and CDs don't have self-consciousness, so they do not begin to think they are identical with the sounds. — Jack Cummins

This begs the question. For to assert that there's self-consciousness amounts to saying that one exists as a thinking being but the catch is, if thought waves are real, no one claim to be thinking (see my reply to StreetlightX)

Streetlight is correct. — Tobias

See my reply to StreetlightX

self-identifies — Metaphysician Undercover

See my reply to JackCummins

I'm open to ideas thought. First things first, we all seem to have some hardwired tendencies/proclivities which are very difficult to override - perhaps this reflects brain architectures that tune in to a certain assortment of thought waves (the brain has a preference for certain broadcasting "stations").

Secondly, there's the matter of how we seem to have some control over our thoughts - we can, for instance, decide to close a book we were reading and go out for a walk. This I suppose is what JackCummins means by "self-consciousness" but these instances can be explained in my theory as simply a preset sequence of contents broadcast from the "station" our brains are tuned in to. So deciding to stop reading a book and go out for a walk could simply be the next program in thought wave "station" broadcast.

No I don't think that would be correct. If the correct answer might be 1&2&3&4, you cannot represent it properly as 1 or 2 or 3 or 4. You need to have reason to know that it is either/or, which you don't give — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm working under the assumption that only one alternative will be correct and the Shannon's logic works perfectly well in that case. As for the possibility of 1&2&3&4, the question or uncertainty would need to be reframed like so: 1&2&3&4 OR 5 OR 7&8 OR... As you can see all questions the uncertainty of the anwer can be reexpressed as a disjunction.

The problem with this approach is that you need to know that the correct answer is within the list of options, which will only occur if you already know the correct answer. So such a request for information has an extremely limited applicability, like a multiple choice exam. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes but what's wrong with that? Shannon's theory is about messages and their information content - how the message containing the information brings our uncertainty regarding the answer to a question [a request for information] to zero; another way of saying that is eliminating alternative answers to the question until we're left with only one - the correct answer.

As for your claim that "...such a request for information has an extremely limited applicability..." think of how the very foundation of the modern world - science - operates. A specific set of observations are made and not one but multiple hypotheses are formulated as an explanation. One of the stages in the scientific method is the question, "which hypothesis is true/best?" Hypothesis 1 OR Hypothesis 2 OR...Hypothesis N? Shannon's uncertainty shows up again and in vital area of humanity's experience with information. Here too, we must eliminate alternatives until we arrive at the best hypothesis.

In fact, this very discussion that we're having is based on the uncertainty of whether what I'm saying is correct or not (1/0)? I feel it makes sense but you think otherwise precisely because we're unable to get our hands on the information that would settle the matter once and for all.

I stand by what I said. I no longer believe as I did before that there are two parts to our personality viz. the emotional and the rational - this is quite an old idea, I suspect going back to ancient Greek philosophers - Plato's Chariot Allegory.

Emotions, ergo, suffering, has (a) reason(s) as I outlined in my previous post. This squares quite well, in my opinion, with the fact that emotions are essentialy reactions to what I'll term as stimuli (people/events/places/time even/etc.). However, between the stimuli and the reaction, there's some processing (of the stimulus) involved and this is nothing other than rational analysis of the stimuli.

Say, for example, that you call me a liar. The word "liar" is the stimulus. The next stage of what's going to be an unpleasant experience is me taking this as an insult - you're casting aspersions on my integrity - and only after this does the emotion of sadness well up inside me and I suffer. A similar story holds for all emotions. The form of the logical argument apt for the occasion is:

1. X thinks/says/acts in a certain way about/towards me
2. If X thinks/says/acts in a certain way about/towards me then I feel sad, I suffer
Ergo,
3. I feel sad, I suffer

It must be clear to you by now that rationality is the main protagonist in this tale of human suffering but as you'll find out below this particular brand of reasoning is imperfectly rational.

However, if we're to be perfectly rational i.e. go after truths, and having acquired them, live by them then, according to the Buddha, suffering is pointless because it (suffering) has as its foundation a pernicious lie - that change doesn't occur, that what we cherish the most is immune to damage, death and decay.

:up:

:up:

I remember starting a thread in the old forum which has now sadly become defunct about how questions could be reformulated as statements using the logical OR operator.

So, the question, Q (question) = "Who started the thread titled QUANTA article on Claude Shannon?" could be rewritten with no loss of meaning as A (alternatives) = TheMadFool OR Metaphysician Undercover OR Gnomon OR Wayfarer

Remember that a question is defined as a request for information and and as you can see in the above example a question can be reduced to a list of alternatives - there are 4 for the question Q above and Q can be expressed, without any loss of meaning, as A. At this point uncertainty enters the picture - we're not sure or we're uncertain as to which of the 4 possibilities is the correct one. If I now send you the message "Wayfarer", the uncertainty disappears and I have the information the question Q is asking for which means I've whittled down the possibilities (alternatives) from 4 (TheMadFool, Metaphysician Undercover, Gnomon or Wayfarer) in the beginning to 1 (Wayfarer) at the end and according the Claude Shannon the message "Wayfarer" consists of log2(4) = 2 bits of information.

Note that since computer language consists of 1's and 0's, the message "Wayfarer" must be decomposed into binary e.g yes/no answers. The first information we need is "Does the name of the person who started this thread start with a letter that comes before the letter "P"?" The answer would be "no". The possibilities now narrow down to Wayfarer and TheMadFool. That accounts for 1 bit of information. The next question is, "Does the name of the person who started this thread begin with the letter "W"? The answer is "yes" and we've got the information. That's the other 1 bit of information. We've homed in on the information viz. Wayfarer using 2 bits.

I think you must have misunderstood. If you perceive a contradiction, then point it out to me so I can see what you're talking about, and maybe clarify what I meant. — Metaphysician Undercover

You can ignore my post.

Yes, of course I am saying that, that's what I said in my first post in the thread, uncertainty is a fundamental aspect of language use, and we clearly cope with it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for bringing up the issue of ambiguity because it lies at the heart of Shannon's theory on information. Thanks. Have a G'day.

I'd like to pick your brains about something though.

If I don't have the information on who invented the internet, does it seem ok to represent my lack of information as: Mark Zuckerberg OR Jeff Bezos OR Vint Cerf OR Bill Gates?

lol. you might be the best Daoist i've ever met. — turkeyMan

I wish I was a Daoist :sad:

The emotional side doesn't have anything to say...Is someone there?

I appreciate your contribution and I think that it captures some extremely important points, especially the Buddhist perspective. I would not consider myself as a Buddhist as such, but do think that suffering and impermanence are the central aspects of human experiences.

I used to have a big problem with impermanence, especially as teenager. Now, I think that the constant process of change is to be celebrated as well deplored because it does mean that all the bad aspects of life will pass, not just the pleasant ones.

I think that you are right to emphasise the two strands, emotion and rationality. The use of reason is useful for considering our attachment, rather than just being driven by it blindly. — Jack Cummins

It just dawned on me that we're, as some have accused me of, self-delusional. As Agent Smith in The Matrix rightly pointed out, "there's no escaping reason". Notice an important detail that's missing from my analysis - the "reason" behind our emotions. We get emotional - we become attached, we suffer for it - for "reasons", right? I remember the many times I've felt sad, deeply so, and the sadness didn't just happen for no reason. If, perchance, this were true, we should be witnessing random laughter and tears but this, for better or for worse, isn't true. There's always a reason for suffering. It must be then that our rational side is shifting, or trying to shift, the blame - tilting at windmills as the English are fond of saying -creating an imaginary foe just so that it can let itself off the hook. So, at the end of the day, we're not two beings (emotional and rational) locked in a battle with each other but one being struggling under the burden of its own delusions.

I've come to the realization that there are two sides to every person - an emotional half and a rational other half. These two don't get along and all of our troubles either are or can be traced back to...the former...so says the latter. I wonder what the former thinks of the latter? :chin: Please wait...

To the extent that I'm aware, a lot of subjects, not just science, and including philosophy, have, for reasons that are obvious, developed their own specialized language, consisting of precising and stipulative definitions. This situation arises out of necessity ("...for reasons that are obvious...") and not choice as the concepts involved need to be clear, clear as possible to avoid confusion. That being the case, the challenge for a science communicator is to find the most appropriate words in the vernacular for words part of the technical jargon of whatever branch of science fae is part of. This, I believe, is no easy task and either by force of habit or the lack of corresponding words in colloquial speech, a science educator will employ words that are, well, incomprehensible to a lay audience.

That said, I'll leave you with a quote by Albert Einstein and it goes...

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough — Albert Einstein

Figured what out, that Shannon is using "information" in a way which is completely inconsistent with common usage? I said that right from the beginning. The question is have you figured that out yet? — Metaphysician Undercover

Sorry, but you seem to be contradicting yourself. Please go over your posts again.

The issue now is the relationship between uncertainty and information. In the normal, common expression of "information", some degree of uncertainty is inherent within the information itself, as ambiguity. In the way that you describe Shannon's expression of "information", information is the process which excludes uncertainty. Do you see the difference? Now the problem with Shannon's representation is that it cannot cope with the real uncertainty which is associated with ambiguity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you implying we can cope with uncertainty? Uncertainty, ambiguity being one of its causes, comes with the territory and it can't be, to my reckoning, dealt with in a satisfactory manner by any theory of information, whether based on certainty or uncertainty, let alone Claude Shannon's. So, your criticism is more appropriate for language than Shannon's theory.

Again, this is not consistent with the common usage of "information". In common usage information is what informs a person, to deliver one from ignorance, and so being informed is the opposite of ignorance, but information, as that which informs, is not itself the opposite of ignorance. So, that information is the opposite to ignorance, is a category mistake relative to the common usage of "information". — Metaphysician Undercover

What is this "common usage" of "information" that you speak of?

Google gives the following definition of information: facts provided or learned about something or someone

So, what is a fact?

Here's a fact that we all know, The Eiffel tower is in Paris

Now, if one is ignorant of this fact i.e. one doesn't know that the Eiffel tower is in Paris, this state of ignorance can be represented with the following possibilities (alternatives) [uncertainty]

The Eiffel tower is NY, OR The Eiffel Tower is in Beijing OR The Eiffel tower is in Sydney OR...

Once you come by the information that the Eiffel tower is in Paris, the uncertainty becomes 0. Isn't that just fantastic? That's what I meant when I said Shannon's theory "...feels natural and intuitive..." Mind you, Shannon's theory is probably just one of many other ways to approach the subject of information but it, for certain, captures the uncertainty aspect.

Thank you for your discussion.

the pregnant mother will also have to experience extreme pain, permanent body damage, expensive medical bills and a small possibility of death — TheHedoMinimalist

A very good post by all standards - a fresh perspective to a vexing problem in this age of modern medicine :up:

However, killing in self-defense is only permissible when there's a threat to life and that seems to be missing from your list of undesirable consequences for the mother. By the way, to my knowledge, current practice allows the termination of pregnancies when there's a risk to the mother's life. Thank you again for opening up a new front in this pitched battle between pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Excellent!

As I pointed out, the surprisingness is only related to external information concerning the frequency of rain in these places, it has nothing to do with any supposed information within the message. — Metaphysician Undercover

What else could surprising/shocking mean? Also, what do you mean by "it has nothing to do with any supposed information within the message"? How would you come by information without a message and a medium for that message? If for instance, I read about rain in the Sahara, the message is the article on what is indeed a very rare event and the medium is the paper I'm reading. :chin:

This is evidence of what I said, the "information" as the word is used here, is not within the message, it is in how the message is related to the "baseline" — Metaphysician Undercover

Glad that you figured that out.

If the accepted "information theory" represents information in a way other than the way that we normally use the word "information", and cannot account for the existence of information, according to how we normally use the word, as that which is transmitted in a message, then surely we are justified in "raising philosophical objections to it".

What I am saying therefore, is that Shannon's "information theory" does not deal with "information" at all, as we commonly use the word. If we do not recognize this, and the ambiguity which arises, between the common use, and the use within the theory, we might inadvertently equivocate and think that the theory deals with "information" as what is referred to when we commonly use the word to refer to what is inherent within a message. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for your patience. I do agree that Claude Shannon's theory is not the only game in town insofar as information is concerned. I remember reading about another less-popular theory that's also out there. However, in the universe of computers, the world of 1's and 0's, in which it's almost a given that one binary state (1 or 0) should correspond to 1 unit of information, Claude Shannon's conceptualization of information as a process of reducing uncertainty of which alternative is true among [idealized] equiprobable alternatives has a natural and intuitive feel to it. The least amount uncertainty happens when we have two alternatives (0 or 1) and knowing that 1 or 0 is the case reduces the uncertainty to zero (only 1 of the two alternatives remain) and this suggests that for computers at least a 1 or a 0 should count as 1 unit of information. If the uncertainty is 4 alternatives, you would need 2 units of information to bring the uncertainty down to zero, and if the uncertainty is 8 alternatives, you'd need 3 units of information to make the uncertainty = 0 and that means the information content of a message that whittles down N equiprobable alternatives to 1 = lo2(N). This is a perfect fit for what I said a few lines above - that a 1 or a 0 should count as 1 unit of information as log2(2) = 1.

By the way, this just popped into my mind. Information is, in some sense, the opposite of ignorance and ignorance can be thought of as uncertainty among given alternatives e.g. If I don't know i.e. I'm ignorant of (I have no information on) who invented the Information theory then this state of not knowing can be expressed as consisting of the following equiprobable alternatives, just as Claude Shannon theorized, Vint Cerf OR Larry Page OR Mark Zuckerberg OR Claude Shannon...

It rained in Oxford has the same degree of information as does it rained in the Sahara. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then why is it surprising that it rained in the Sahara and not that it rained in Oxford? I admit that I'm not sure what the logic behind why the shocking/surprising is treated as having more information but if I were to hazard a guess it's got to do with what people refer to as the baseline - the greater the deviation from it, the more bits (units of information) necessary to code it into a message and the shocking/surprising certainly are major excursions from the..er...baseline, right? Food for thought: why is news "news"? New, shocking, surprising, out of the ordinary,...

"Dog" is only redundant when "poodle" is related to something else such as a definition — Metaphysician Undercover

That's correct but that goes without saying, right?

But if each word of the message needs to be related to something else, like a definition — Metaphysician Undercover

Claude Shannon's information theory assumes that we've already passed those waypoints in our quest to understand quantify, efficiently transmit, information. Shannon's information theory is,whatever else it might be, not a philosophical inquiry into information and so we best refrain ourselves from raising philosophical objections to it - that would be like trying to diagnose a uterine malady in a man.

While not to discount the possibility that we don't see the world as it really is, I'm somewhat certain that you're making a mistake if your thesis depends on color vision and other examples, if you choose to employ them, of a similar nature and the mistake is you're concluding, to use an analogy, that a black-and-white photograph isn't real because it lacks color. Black-and-white photographs are real, it's just not complete, color-wise. If I listen to a song incompletely, it doesn't mean the parts that I listen to aren't the real deal.

Everything about Buddhism boils down to suffering and how to escape it, not in some haphazard, ill-considered manner, like routed soldiers fleeing from battle but after carefully scrutinizing the nature of suffering and coming to a reasonable conclusion about how we might deal with our predicament, like a mathematician systematically tackling a problem given faer.

The first order of business then is to understand the cause of suffering for if we can discover the cause, we have something to work on towards reducing/eliminating the unwanted effect, to wit, suffering. To get to that I'd like to first draw your attention to a point of view that has its origins in logic and perhaps even philosophy itself, the view that every person has an emotional and a rational side to them and this is germane to the question of attachment because first, attachment and suffering are both, at their core, emotions and second. the entire project of alleviating/eliminating suffering is a rational one.

While I'm not completely certain that all suffering is attachment-related, I concede that attachment does figure prominently in the list of causes for suffering. Well, if I had to justify that all suffering is attachment-based I would say something to the effect that suffering arises when that which we value is damaged/destroyed and that which we value is what we get attached to; attachment then is that intimate connection between us and the things we hold dear that's vulnerable to attack, injury and destruction, this then manifests as suffering.

So far so good.

Returning to the dual nature of all humans, the emotional and rational aspects of the human psyche, what transpires is this: our rational side, after studying the nature of the universe, arrives at the conclusion that, well, nothing lasts forever which, in Buddhist circles, is known as the doctrine of impermanence and ergo, our rational half concludes, there really is no point in getting attached to the point of being completely unable to, as @Wayfarer put it, "...let go..." Remember this is precisely what causes suffering - being unable to "...let go..." What's supposed to happen next is our rational side informing our emotional side that attachment doesn't make sense because impermanence is part of the very fabric of the universe and to have attachments, a facet of which is the inability to "...let go..." [suffering], would be asking for the impossible and expecting/waiting for an outcome whose probability of happening is zero is irrational. It's like expecting a 7 from a roll of a 6-sided die.

Perhaps, if the inherent duality of the human mind (emotion and reason) can't be reconciled, it would be best to give both free reign - let our emotional sides suffer, excruciatingly even, and let our rational sides maintain its equipoise through all that.

From my notes on Claude Shannon's Information Theory as contained in Richard Dawkins' book The Devil's Chaplain

Message = Information + Redundancy + Noise

Information = What is to be conveyed (worth paying for)

Redundancy = Unnecessary duplication (can be deleted)

Noise = Random rubbish

Rover is a poodle dog: Dog redundant

It rained in Oxford every day this week: not surprising, very little information

It rained in the Sahara desert: surprising, high information content

Information: Shock/surprise value

Ignorance BEFORE receiving message - ignorance AFTER receiving message = Information content = The amount of ignorance reduction.

If the prior uncertainty can be expressed as a number of equiprobable alternatives N, the information content of message which narrows those alternatives down to one is Log2(N). This might need a little explaining. What's the smallest possible uncertainty? If you have 5 equiprobable alternatives, the uncertainty is 5; if you have 4 equiprobable alternatives, the uncertainty is 4, and so on until you get to 2 alternatives. It can't be 1 alternative because then there's no uncertainty at all. So, the smallest value of uncertainty is when you have 2 alternatives. If now, you know one of the alternatives, the uncertainty reduces to 0. That means, the alternatives have reduced to only 1 and the uncertainty has dropped to 0. If information is encoded in binary (0 or 1), that means knowing either that it's 0 or 1 should result in alternatives = 1 ( the 1 or 0 you found out was the case) and uncertainty = 0. In other words, in binary code a 0 or 1 is 1 unit of information. How do we get a 1 (unit of information) from 2 (alternatives)? Well, log2(2) = 1.

Imagine the following scenario: A nurse and a soon-to-be father agree that if the nurse holds up a pink card, the baby is a girl and if the nurse holds up a blue card, the baby is boy. The nervous father is outside the delivery room and, after some tense moments, he sees the nurse with a pink card in her hand. The initial uncertainty is 2, the father doesn't know if the baby is a girl or a boy. With the pink card, the uncertainty is halved, as now the father knows it's a girl (1 of the 2 possibilities has actualized). The information content of the colored card = 1 bit. Compare this colored-card system with the nurse saying, "Congratulations sir, you have a beautiful baby girl". [8 word] Remember, the information content is the same (identification of the gender of the baby)

In digital code there are 0's and 1's. There are two possibilities (0 or a 1) i.e. the uncertainty is two. As soon as we know it's a 1 or a 0, the uncertainty is halved (one of the two possibilities becomes real/true). So, information content in a digital 0 or 1 is 1 bit [log2(2) = 1]

A DNA example:

DNA has a 4-letter nucleotide code [Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C) and Guanine (G)]. The initial uncertainty here is 4 as there are 4 possibilities. The information content of each nucleotide is then log2(4) = 2 bits. This can be understood in terms of what 1 bit of information means. 1 bit of information is that amount of information necessary to halve the uncertainty from 2 to 1. We have 4 possibilities (A/C/T/G). To reduce the number of possibilities to 2, we can ask the question, "does the letter precede D?". If yes then the possibilities are to A/C and if the answer is no, the possibilities become to T/G. We have halved the uncertainty (4 possibilities have reduced to 2 possibilities) and that accounts for 1 bit of information. The next question to ask depends on which, A/C or G/T, possibilities followed from the first question. If it's A/C, the follow-up question should be, "is it A?" If it's A then it's A and if it's not A then it's C. If the possibility that actualized is G/T, the next question should be, "Is it G?" If it's G then it's G and if it isn't G then it's T. Either way, the uncertainty is halved (from two possibilities it became one). This is the other 1 bit. Together, we have 2 bits of information in every nucleotide.

Let's frame this problem in the right context, Leibniz's principles concerning identity.

1. Indiscernibility of Identicals: The less controversial principle that states that if x is identical to y, what's true of x must be true of y too. My favorite example to illustrate this principle is Lewis Carroll aka Carl Lutdwidge Dodgson. Lewis Carroll is identical to Carl Lutwidge Dodgson; ergo, what's true of Lewis Carroll is also true of Carl Lutwidge Dodgson.

2. Identity of Indiscernibles: This is the principle that's harder to swallow. It basically asserts that if whatever is true of x is also true of y, x and y are identical i.e. they are the same thing.

Notice that in 1 above, Lewis Carroll and Carl Lutwidge Dodgson are the same individual and if I were to form a set with this information, I would get A = {Lewis Carroll} or A = {Carl Lutwidge Dodgson} and the number of elements in set A, n(A) = 1. In other words, identity in numerical terms is 1.

Coming to your two black balls, if I were to form a set with them, it would look like this B = {black ball 1, black ball 2} and if I were to count the number of elements in set B, n(B) = 2. However, according to principle 1 above, the only number that validly describes identity is the number 1. Ergo, the two black balls aren't identical.

No argument there. . — tim wood

Precisely. You don't argue and prove a definition but you need to for a proposition. Stock markets and the Brooklyn bridge are definitions.

Merry Xmas! Manana... — tim wood

Merry Xmas to you to!

I think maybe a surfeit of Christmas cheer? Because in one way, I agree, in another, no. Prehaps you mean a true definition as a true definition. No argument there. . — tim wood

Really, definitions can't be true/false. They're either good or bad depending on how well one adheres to the criteria of a good definition.

Can you say "stock market?" A big part of the world runs on propositions of doubtable truth value. If you don't agree to that, would you agree that the Brooklyn Bridge is a mighty nice piece of property? For not a lot of money I can quit-claim it to you. — tim wood

:up:
Not to contradict you but definitions can't be true/false.

All credit to you for setting up the targets ahead of the shooting - I mean troubling to establish some definitions. But the one lacking is of knowledge.

Knowledge comes in different proofs, or flavours for a different metaphor. Some things are known a priori; known as so because they cannot be otherwise. Other things a posteriori, that can indeed be otherwise. Skepticism, as I understand, is simply the guts not to commit until the whatever-it-is is known to the appropriate degree of either certainty or confidence. And there are two kinds (at least) of certainty: One that acknowledges, and one that commits. The first, I see or I agree; the second, I will do it.

But it would seem - your point - that some knowledge of some kind is needed to even play this game. In that case the skeptic cannot be completely a skeptic. Point to you! — tim wood

The a priori and a posteriori distinction is irrelevant to my point because whether it's either, the matter boils down to a proposition and its truth value and the skeptic's statement that either such can't be determined or that if determined, not with 100% certainty.
`
Radical skepticism denies all knowledge including itself, its own claims are given the same treatment as any other claim - they're all met with doubt!

Thank you for your comment!

Merry Christmas to you too, TruthSeeker.

You raised an important concern regarding my little excursion into epistemology which, I feel, also applies to everyone, everywhere, and every time to wit. what are the practical applications, and that usually means what are the social benefits, of whatever it is that we undertake?

For my money, skepticism is a vital component of rationality - it's the recommended defensive stance by exponents of critical thinking as there are, quite possibly, an infinite, number of ways in which things could go wrong between you and the acquisition of knowledge - an obstacle course of fallacies, both formal and informal, cognitive biases, deceivers of all shapes and sizes, and just plain old bad luck awaits those who seek truth. Skepticism then, if adopted and practiced well, becomes something of a defense against the dark arts to use a Harry Potter analogy. Many of the ills society is burdened with would've never seen the light of day had people been even a tiny bit skeptical.

Having said that, the OP isn't about that kind of skepticism, doubt that operates under the assumption that knowledge is possible. The skepticism in the OP is of the kind that questions all knowledge, its very existence aka radical skepticism.

@Metaphysician Undercover :up: G'day

In metaphysics there are two distinct customary ways (sets of conditions) for violating the law of excluded middle, one is neither is, nor is not, the terms are not applicable, and this is expressed by Aristotle, and the other being both, is and is not, and this is expressed by Hegel. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for the info. How does what you said and the fourfold indeterminacy of Pyrrhonism and Nagarjuna's tetralemma hang together?

There are only 4 possibilities regarding a proposition (Pyrrhonism)

1. p.........................p
2. ~p.......................~p (not p)
3. p & ~p................both p and not p
4. ~(p v ~p)............neither p nor not p

Aristotle seems to have opted for 4 and Hegel 3 in their acts of violating the law of the excluded middle but they're equivalent - different sides of the same coin - because ~(p v ~p) = p & ~p.

Nagarjuna's tetralemma is as below:

5. p (p)..................................................no! So, ~p (not p)
6. ~p( not p)..........................................no! So, ~~p (not not p)
7. p & ~p (p and not p)..........................no! So, ~p & ~~p (neither p nor not p)
8. ~p & ~~p (neither p nor not p)...........no! So, p & ~p (p and not p)

So, given any proposition p, the following choices are available, choices expressed by a disjunction:

9. p v ~p v (p & ~p) v ~(p v ~p)

The Buddha and Nagarjuna deny all four these possibilities and we get:

10. ~p v ~~p v ~(p & ~p) v ~~(p v ~p)

and we get

11. (~p v p) v (~p v p) v (p v ~p)

which reduces to

12. p v ~p

And 12 is the law of the excluded middle which is precisely what the Buddha and Nagarjuna are trying to deny - the Middle Path is between what to these two are the extremes of p and ~p - and the best way to do that is to reject the law of the excluded middle with ~(p v ~p) which reflects their stand all issues is viz. neither is nor is not.

Can we do the same with Nagarjuna's tetralemma negation tactic?

13. ~p v ~~p v (~p & ~~p) v (p & ~p)

we arrive at

14. ~(p & ~p) v (~p & ~~p) v (p & ~p)

which takes us to

15. (~p & ~~p) v (~p & ~~p) v (p & ~p)

we then see that

16. (~p & ~~p) v (p & ~p)

However, we've already denied (p & ~p) and so,

17. (~p & ~~p)

and we get,

18. ~(p v ~p)

As you can see 18. ~(p v ~p) violates the law of the excluded middle, and the Buddha and Nagarjuna have set their sights on exactly that - they're the Middle-Path guys. But, in classical logic, 18. ~(p v ~p) = (p & ~p) i.e. violating the law of the excluded middle takes the form of a contradiction and this is why I think Zen and Ch'an Buddhism are all about tackling paradoxes which are, to my knowledge, contradictions.