Homo Sapiens wouldn't be expected to be monogamous because of marked sexual dimorphism (males are bigger). Generally, dimorphic species exhibit strong male-male competition and individual males usually mate with a lot of females. This pattern is common among primates with only a handful of exceptions.

So how did monogamy become an ideal for our species? What does this imply about the human psyche in terms of our power to override biology? — Tate

. What would the perfect language look like? I don't think W. shares anything on that — GLEN willows

Words (expressions) are definitely actions aimed at making an environment match more closely our expectation of it (the enaction side of active inference). But they only succeed in doing that (when they do succeed) because of the hook they have to other people's models, and this hook is only possible because we quite good at modelling (ie our models are quite accurate predictors of hidden states). If this latter weren't the case, then we'd find it very difficult to share terms, we'd have no common ground over which to share them (unless by complete coincidence!). Which, if I've understood you correctly, is almost exactly what you're saying with...

Agreement would be equally about material practices that are intrinsic to word use. Our words are not just accountable to the linguistic conventions of the group , but are directly accountable to the feedback from the modifications of material circumstances our words enact.
— Joshs

...is that right? — Isaac

Here I feel like I'm being a cheerleader for science but I’m not. I just feel the urge to point out some of the negativity - and bias - of some of the attitudes here. — GLEN willows

- I believe the social-construction tinged idea that theories create the reality is disproven by the thousands of theories that have been wrong - and science has admitted were wrong. You know the list - phlogiston, alchemy etc — GLEN willows

it's (for me) an example of the way that hidden states constrain our models of them. We can have a range if modelled expectations for the entailments of 'boiling a kettle', but none of them can have cold water come out. None of them can result in ice. The hidden states we're trying to reduce surprise in are real and so have constraints. What I'm arguing here (though mostly paraphrasing Ramsey) is that because hidden states are not themselves models, nor bounded in any way, no 'natural kinds', there's no right model. There's only wrong ones. Truth (as correspondence) seems to need a right model. — Isaac

the truth of "I boiled the kettle" amounts to little more than whether you've used the words correctly in your language. "I boiled the kettle" is true because the thing you did is one of the things the expression could rightly be used to describe. — Isaac

at (1) we agree to treat a part of the environment as a kettle, at (3) we do the same for 'boiling', but the theory that the kettle at (1) is exhibiting the pattern at (3) is still, like any theory, subject to underdetermination. Something as simple as 'the kettle is boiling' admits of very little wiggle room for such, but still an important point with regards to 'truth' because it means that even the process-derived truth at (6) remains somewhat agreed on. We don't escape the need for us to socially agree in order for something the have a truth value by this means, it's just that we're constrained in what we could ever possibly socially agree to and still function. — Isaac

For better or worse, I'm in the dark as to the nature of the poison Rouse seems to refer to. Something to do with semantics or truth or maybe something else eniterly? Whatever it is, my response is that Rouse did have a notion of meaning, truth, and other linguistic elements as he penned his thoughts on the flaws in language, but isn't that a paradox? You're using language in particular mode (combination of semantics, truth, syntax) to make the claim that such usage is not good enough. Doesn't that make the criticism pointless. Rouse and his ilk are drinking from the very well they say is poisoned. :chin: — Agent Smith

1. Realism: Science shows you reality as it is. Mass actually does warp space-time.

2. Anti-realism: Science doesn't do what realism says it does — Agent Smith

‘perception is fundamentally the truthful reconstruction of a portion of the physical world through a registering of existing environmental information.’
— Joshs

Not exactly! I don't think it's right (even scientifically) to say that perception always and only aims at accurate representation. That's part of what it does, it has other goals. It is also difficult to distinguish what is accurate from what is useful I think. It'd be a bit shit if we couldn't accurately discern how stuff in the environment behaved - doubt we'd be able to do much, but I don't think that's what perception's "for". — fdrake

patterns of association in language mirror patterns of association in environments; the histories of the two get intertwined through the mirroring relationship. — fdrake

I also got a whiff of hardcore social constructionism of the "if we don't name things they don't exist" or "we create reality to match our theories" type. — GLEN willows

I'd say that the communal meaning supersedes individual meaning insofar that the community decides what counts as "significant": we and not I, as much, decide upon significance, and what counts as significant is what binds together communities (significance is that layer of interpretation that allows us to have conflicting beliefs and see one another as belonging still). — Moliere

Maybe another way to put it is that the truthmaker, whatever it is, is decided by the people in a conversation. So rather than there being an eternal truth-maker which secures our true sentences, we are the ones who get to decide what counts as a truthmaker. — Moliere

So, in this thread I am asking about how this area is important in evaluating philosophies and philosophical ideas? It is a different way of thinking about truth' from the quest for validity and accuracy of knowledge, which is often valued as the measure by which philosophy is measured. It involves thinking of the potential which they have psychologically, as well as the use and abuse of knowledge.. — Jack Cummins

I might add the obvious point that 'the Earth moves" is both a belief about the Earth and a methodological maxim. It is a belief that will determine the experiments one does.

Beliefs just are "ways of conceptualising and intervening in particular situations". Meaning as use.

I'm not familiar with Joseph Rouse, but you and he seem to have in common the desire to juxtapose two things where there is only one.

— Banno

f one supposes that there are various, discreet forms of life, then one might be tempted to suppose them to be incommensurate. Something like that seems to sit with the lion comment.

But if forms of life were incommensurate, would we recognise them to be forms of life? It seems that in order to recognise certain behaviours as a form of life, we have to recognise the parallels with our own form of life. The language, practices and values of a form of life must be recognised as such in order for us to recognise a form of life.

So it seems that forms of life cannot the totally incommensurate, one to the other — Banno

Kuhn's paradigms are certainly theoretical models, if theory is taken to be the propositions held to be true by the paradigm. As if the Copernican paradigm did not theorise that the Earth moves — Banno

Which of these is the “no models” view?
— Luke

The latter, there's no model in the sense that there's no mediation of contact between word and world via a "conceptual scheme", which is a system of organising experience that is specific to an individual and not parsable in terms of anything communal. I don't think people mean the same thing by "model" in this thread — fdrake

Is there any sense to you that our continually evolving response is in some way inevitable based perhaps on the intrinsic limitations and opportunities inherent in being? By the way, I'm trying to ask this question without trapping myself in notions of time or destiny. — Tom Storm

My dog's behavior appears intentional. I've never found the attempt to categorize humans in an entirely special class persuasive. It appears just to be one of degree — Hanover

He makes a distinction between the possibility of gaining knowledge based on what we can imagine and our inability to imagine what that knowledge might be — Fooloso4

It seems obvious to say yes; sometimes when we are intransigent, others where we do not have common-enough interests to make disagreement possible. But both of these seem peripheral… It seems to come back to the old panic that, because we may not come to agreement in an ethical discussion, there must not be any rationality. — Antony Nickles

I don't recall him saying anything about the limits of reality — Fooloso4

A computer capable of self-learning is able to do more than the programs that produce them.In addition, they are capable of doing what we are not. In any case, the article is about the limits of human knowledge, not IA. — Fooloso4

Wolpeet gives the impression the world can ‘break through’ from outside this reciprocally responsive interaction to affect us directly, but if it did it would be invisible and irrelevant to us.
— Joshs

What does he say to give you that impression? It is not a matter of the world breaking through but of our expanding what we know. That has limits, but they are our limits not the limits of reality — Fooloso4

Poor analogy. Spider webs and bird nests are not capable of self-learning or self-improvement — Fooloso4

Our world is not of our making and not in our control. It is not ours in that it controls the shots and we have limited power to change that. The world does not answer to us. — Fooloso4

Our devices may someday be beyond us. In some ways they already are. — Fooloso4

The question of what we can know of that which lies beyond the limits of our imagination is partially about the biological function of intelligence….
It’s also about the possibility of a physical reality that far exceeds our own, or endless simulated realities running in the computers of advanced nonhuman lifeforms.

Our duty is to find our actual disagreement, if any truly exists, by learning about the other's interests and needs (as Wittgenstein searches for our "real need" in #108). Instead of arguing about an abstract right, we are learning about what matters to each other. In doing so, we have the possibility to truly understand each other, and, if we do still disagree, we at least do so rationally, having preserved our community, our union. — Antony Nickles

It looks like you're going beyond phenomenology to system building — Tate

↪Joshs
Cool. That ego's vantage point won't allow you to say that model and world are one, will it? — Tate

But how do we know any of this? What's our vantage point? Why not be satisfied with phenomenology? — Tate

I'd use something like Davidson's argument in On the very idea... to show that there cannot be multiple models; and hence that the notion of a model is superfluous — Banno

There's no model? Or just one model? Which is it? — Tate

There are no words or sentences outside o f their actual context use
— Joshs

That's literally false, for obvious reasons. — Srap Tasmaner

If you think there is no sense whatsoever in which language can be used as a medium for modeling the world, I won't be saying much that makes sense to you. — Srap Tasmaner

I haven't, for instance, tied linguistic behavior to anything more, occasions of utterance, what utterance might imply, anything like that.

Any strenuous objections so far? — Srap Tasmaner

I've always had difficulty in distinguishing

1. Isn't true

From

2. I haven't yet found the/a proof — Agent Smith

isn't it fair to say our thoughts can't have perfect continuity, and our ability of connecting similar things in a meaningful way is relative? Or can disassociation be a measure of creativity or an extention to logic that other people simply don't understand, but can still be purposeful? — TiredThinker

I agree with you that the most basic (pre-linguistic) ways of understanding what is experienced (I won't say "the world") cannot be linguistically articulated, and that discursive schemes are only partially shared: each individual has their own unique set of of associations, images, impressions and feelings which make up their experience, and that these give rise to our primordial hopes and fears, which themselves are impossible to adequately articulate. The partially shared nature of our discursive schemes, what I would refer to as general vagueness and/ or ambiguity ensures that there is room for as much misunderstanding as there is understanding between us...a constant process of renegotiating ideas. — Janus