Machines are part of nature.

You claimed there were quite literally zero similarities between minds and computers and here you point out that plants and rocks are distinguishable, as if the two points are related and as if the second point were in dispute. It's all a non sequitur.

There is a huge difference between a computer and the mind that created it. In fact there are quite literally zero similarities. — Rich

They are both composed of matter.

Cat feces is a common source — Bitter Crank

Reminder to self: Use scoop from now on and wash hands afterwards.

If we could exactly model how information is stored and accessed in the human brain, we should be able to accurately predict what random number a person would select at any given moment, based on the brain's configuration immediately preceding the question. — CasKev

Suppose you created a random number generator that was affected by the position of an electron on the quantum level. It's exact position is indeterminate, so we could not know what random number was going to be selected. When speaking of true randomness (as opposed to simply lacking sufficient information), we are saying that State A will not yield State B in all instances, but it will unpredictably vary.

Regardless, the question of determinism versus indeterminism doesn't address the question of free will. In either event, there are things beyond your control that are affecting an occurrence. If I choose to sit down due to predetermined causes or due to a random event, in neither event do I bear responsibility for it.

I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm tempted to say that 2, by being intent only on winning, and thus always going after the smallest boy, wrecked the game, at least as far as 1 and 3 were concerned, and possibly 4, though as I said 4 was at least playing a lot and he seemed okay with the challenge. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't really see any of this as a game in terms of it being a fair contest where there can be a meaningful winner. It's really just social interaction where kids are learning to interact with one another. If one turns out a bully, he'll be ostracized and he'll learn that sort of behavior will limit his social interaction. It's like watching puppies rolling around on the floor. Let them play and figure out what they can get away with as long as none are too aggressive where they're doing harm.

The point is that everything that went into your decision is based on something that existed prior to the decision. Even seemingly random events have a preceding chain of events leading up to them. — CasKev

That there was a preceding chain of events is obvious, but that doesn't mean the earlier state caused the subsequent state. That is, universe at state A doesn't physically entail state B.

Regardless, whether a choice were determined or random, in neither event is the agent reponsible for it.

It was painful hearing about McGregor's life, having been filled with one idiotic Gaelic word after another.

It's all corrupt. The most money is made on a McGregor win so there can be a rematch for even more money; ergo, McGregor wins.

I really do hold that what is significant, or important is the promise, the commitment. — Wosret

This seems a bit tautological though. As a couple increases its level of commitment, the likelihood of divorce decreases, where "commitment" is defined as "refusal to divorce."

The small sticks came from the branches that came from the trees that came from the ground that came from the earth that came from the sky that came from the cat that came from the book that came from the man with the mangled hand who hung out in the garden waiting for the cart full of the weeds that had been pulled and were on their way to the simmering pile by the brook where no man dare tread.

That's where the sticks came from.

Duh.

Much of what you said isn't interesting. Your experience offers me nothing because it is obviously considerably less than and different than mine. What I can say is that dating is a process where you learn about the other person over time, and over that time you often learn they're not the right match for you. If that weren't the case, everyone would marry their first girlfriend or boyfriend and live happily ever after.

You might be incompatible for any reason, which might include that the person doesn't satisfy some utilitarian purpose , that you don't share common morals or attitudes, or that you simply don't love one another in the selfless way you describe. Regardless of the manner you describe proper love, it's possible two people are incompatible. Two people with the purest views of love might not like one another.

So, I would say that the good person is the one you can trust, and is comitted to the relationship. — Wosret

But, as you said, there are plenty of abusive partners who are trustworthy and committed, but they're not good people.

I was in a relationship that I ended where I was trustworthy and I was committed to the idea of trying to make it work, but, in the end, there were issues related to basic incompatibility, not the least of which was that she was not a terribly good person.

The point being that two really good people may not stay together simply because not everyone is meant to be with everyone else. Sometimes the failure of the relationship arises from two people pairing up who never should have, or, just as common, two people who simply don't grow in the same directions over the course of many years and that results in ending the relationship.

It is possible that ending a relationship is better than persevering just for the sake of proving your commitment if that relationship isn't offering many positive effects. I wouldn't call someone particularly good simply because he can suffer through a worn out relationship better than the next guy.

Hah! I get a gig where I am. It's so fast, I post things before I type them.

The angle: many men look for a spouse that is like their mother, — Bitter Crank

That explains why I've been looking for a dead person to be my wife. (Sure, a little dark).

I have a real question. If you found the perfect woman, what exactly would happen next.

Years ago when coaching 8 year olds in soccer, Keith kept throwing small sticks at Anthony, so I made Keith sit out, and so he sat on the cooler and cawed like a crow.

Two questions: (1) is anyone here crow cawing Keith?, and (2) if you're not, and we can't find him, can you write about him on your milk carton to help me find him? I really need to find him. He has my keys and I can't get home.

First we douse you in gasoline.

A good woman is not one who you break up with and camps in her car outside your house for hours until you call the cops. All others are just dandy after that.

Yeah, but we agree to this point entirely. The "external world" as you use it is the noumena, as I've said, and positing any meaning or relevance to it other than that which cannot be known is to misuse the term. It's whatever is out there beyond our interpretative powers, but it is assumed it establishes reality in some regard.

The real issue I have is in the first part of my post, which is the crux of my belief that this "meaning is use" talk is nonsense to the extent it's an attempt to eliminate metaphysics from the conversation by suggesting that everything can be explained away by reference to how we use language. Your simulator discussion was in fact a metaphysical discussion, and it correlated meaning to reality, to the extent you defined reality as the products of the simulator.

This isn't about perception, which is why it isn't indirect realism. It's about meaning. The same argument can apply even if direct realism is the case. The point of the simulation analogy is that the external world has no bearing on what the people in the simulation mean by "it is raining", even if the simulation is an exact representation of the external world. — Michael

This just makes no sense to me. You can't say it's not about perception, but only about meaning, when the only meaning you're interested in is the meaning of the perception. We've already broken this down to clarify that the perception isn't equivalent to the meta-meta reality of the external world, but only the meta-reality of the simulator, but this whole inquiry is in figuring out what the products of the simulator mean to the perceivers.

Whether or not it is also raining in the external world isn't relevant. — Michael

I get all this, but that doesn't address my point. My point is that the simulator was caused by the external world. It had to be because it was caused by something. The external world is therefore relevant as the cause of the simulator, but irrelevant to the pragmatic question of what you're currently perceiving. That is, whether the simulator bears a direct relationship to the external world doesn't matter to the truth value of a proposition if the truth value you're measuring is that of the simulator. When I say "it is raining," I mean "according to the simulator, it is raining," so the truth value of "it is raining" is evaluated entirely upon what the simulator is indicating. To suggest otherwise would be asking the question whether we were having a noumenal rainstorm.

Given that there's some use to it inside the simulation, it doesn't matter what's happening (or isn't happening) outside the simulation. The external world "drops out of consideration as irrelevant", as the author of the article in the OP says. — Michael

By this account, you've identified 3 levels of reality: (1) what you experience, (2) what immediately causes the experience (you call this "the simulator), and (3) what's really out there (you call this "the external world").

External world --> Simulation --> Perception

When I see the cup, you claim it's caused by the simulator. We don't know what causes the simulator to simulate, and we don't really understand why the simulator causes the same experiences in each person. We just know that it does. The external world is therefore deemed pragmatically irrelevant so we ignore it.

The external world, though, is not truly irrelevant because we know that the simulator was caused by something (because everything has a cause), and that something must be something in the external world. So, on a meta-analysis, the external world is relevant, but, in day to day communication, it's pragmatically irrelevant.

What has been set out here just strikes me as basic indirect realism. There is the object out there. By the time it finds its way into your consciousness, it has been transformed by all sorts of things from light, gravity, air, the composition of your eye, and the interpretive ability of your brain.

External World --> Transformation --> Perception

You say "simulation," I say "transformation," but they are the same. By the time the thing gets to your consciousness, there's no reason to think (or care) if it bears any meaningful relationship to the original thing out there. All we can say is that we have received a simulation in our heads and it was caused by something in the external world, but what that something is, we have no idea of. That thing in itself is beyond the limits of what we can know. All of this is just a basic definition of noumena.

Did they not have a "Mediation" class in Law school? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Yeah, but they didn't teach me how to negotiate with cats. I'm talking literal cats here, so keep your mind out of the gutter.

the world external to the simulation has nothing to do with the meaning of the things said inside the simulation.

Well, it may or may not. We just don't know. In fact, we can't even comprehend the world outside the simulator. It's the noumena.

This strikes me being comparable to saying that the cupboard is open if all conditions presently exist which would cause an observer to see an open cupboard if the cupboard is opened.

No. The cupboard is closed, but if all conditions exist such that I'd see a cat if it were opened, I can say there's a cat in the cupboard. The metaphysical cat is whatever it is that makes us see the cat. You're saying that metaphysical stuff is a simulator.

But this has nothing to do with the world outside the simulation. — Michael

The world is the simulation, composed of the simulated facts transmitted by the simulator and the simulator itself, which is the independent metaphysical reality that determines truth values.

In my example we've never looked inside the cupboard — Michael

That's irrelevant. The cat is in the cupboard if all conditions presently exist which would cause an observor to see the cat if the cupboard is opened. You try to say nothing exists when things aren't observed, but then you offer no explanation for why things pop into existence consistently. But then you do admit that something exists independent of you, and you call it the simulator. I call it a cat when it simulates a cat.

You're refusing to define the simulator. In our community of observors, we take note we see things. We must therefore ask ourselves why. Instead of agreeing with most and saying we see the cat because there's a cat, you say we see the cat because there's a simulator showing us a cat. I say fine, the simulator is the cat. I had no idea what an unobserved cat was anyway, and if you want to say the cat is simply that which makes us see the cat image, we're in agreement.

When we don't see the cat in the cupboard we don't presently see the cat, but we note that everytime we look in the cupboard, there's that cat. We therefore conclude that even when we see no cat, something continues to exist that will cause the cat to appear when we open the cupboard. The laws of the simulator exist outside us. That is the cat.

If the inside of the cupboard isn't being simulated then "the cat is in the cupboard" is neither true nor false, because for it to be true requires that a cat be simulated inside the cupboard and for it to be false requires something else (or nothing) be simulated inside the cupboard. — Michael

P has a truth value at all times, you're just misapplying the rules of the direct realist on the indirect realist. If you ask an indirect realist if there's a tree in the woods when no one is looking at it, he'd say there is, but he's also be saying a description of a tree without reference to the way it is seen is meaningless. That is, all the conditions for the tree being present exist when unseen, so P is true if those conditions are present when unseen.

And now back to your simulator. If I say "the cat is in the cupboard," such is true now if I look later and he's there. That is, even when he isn't presently simulated and observed, all the conditions for his appearance exist even while not simulated. Those conditions, all which exist independent of the observor, and which are part of the mysterious composition of the simulator, are the metaphysical reality which must be true for P to be true. If they are not, P is false.

By "external world" I meant the world outside the simulation. — Michael

I understand your distictions, but I'm saying they're irrelevant. What you're saying is P is true if P corresponds to X, where X is some event independent of the speaker. It's obvious to everyone other than naive realists that X is undefinable without resort to the subjective interpretation of the observor, and it's assumed that all or most observors impose similar subjective interpretations on the object.

You're just now using the term "simulator" to describe the collective subjective interpretation of the community. This makes the simulator the "meta" reality, which is that which exists outside the observer. P is therefore true if it corresponds to that metaphysical reality, thus begging the question of what the simulator is composed of and why it causes sensations in people.

I'd define the simulator as you have: That which causes sensations. What it "really" is without subjective interpretation is incoherent, or noumenal.

My cat is kneading it's claws in my chest and my dog is whining on the floor because she wants up in the bed. My efforts at negotiating aren't working.

Motivation is driven by your emotions, both being of the same root, and both referencing what moves you, both physically and emotionally.

The point is that the external world has nothing to do with the meaning of the phrase "it is raining", and so nothing to do with the truth of the claim that it is raining. Only the things that play a role in how we use the phrase are relevant, which in my analogy is the simulation. — Michael

I see no distinction between the simulation and the external world. The simulation is the shared reality, making it external to to each person sharing that reality. An indirect realist would hold that the truth of a statement is dependent upon the way it's perceived and talk of an objective (i.e. non-simulated reality) is incoherent.

So, "the cat is on the mat" is true if we all agree it's true, but we're agreeing on something external to us, whether it be the contents of God's reality or Michael's simulator. You've just distinguished phenomena from noumena.

Yes, but you were still speaking of Mind and body as separate and different, whereas i claim that that is an artificial dissection of the animal. — Michael Ossipoff

A person has a consciousness and a brain. That is a reasonable division of a person into 2 seperate parts. Your position I take it is that those two parts are both composed of the same matter, the same substance. A reasonable response to that is "who cares"? If there are 2 parts composed of the same substance, the question still remains of how do you account for such divergent behaviors from the same substance, so much so that we can't even accurately observe or measure the consciousness phenomena but we can the brain phenomena.

That is, these 2 things are significantly different, and simply making a reductionist claim (i.e. at some level they are reducible into quarks or whatever) answers nothing (especially since we really don't know what a quark is).

What is present can be referred to by the simple act of pointing. Earliest man used this means first and exclusively to refer to what was present, since, like any animal, he was not yet aware of the possibility and power of absence. — Mark Aman

You sort of made this up. There's no way to know that the first man did.

I remember when my kids were little, I would point to things and they'd look at my finger. It made sense, considering I was showing them my finger. My cat does the same thing, but she smells my finger. It's sort of how we say hello to each other.

I don't think Banno was far off in his comment because I think earliest man did in fact prioritize procreation. I'd think when the lady caveman saw the man caveman coming at her in full arousal, she understood what that pointing meant. She would either scamper toward or away depending upon her mood, sort of like how it is now.

Subsequently BitterCrank dropped by to let me know I was wasting my time trying get anything done and that I should grow thicker skin. I told him that I wasn't trying to get anything done. — Mongrel

That is in part what BitterCrank said to you. That is not what you said to BitterCrank.

The point is, I was surprised that a crowd of offended men showed up to make it into a mountain. — Mongrel

You and Agustino seemed to have been offended, maybe Un, but I'll let him speak for himself. The rest seemed to just be weighing in like philosophically minded folks (men or women) tend to do.

I'm not even slightly surprised that you condescend to me like you think I'm a 19 year old spring chicken. — Mongrel

Disagreeing with you isn't condescending. You're reading something into my comments that isn't there. You can say I'm condescending, but I'm not.

You are actually part of the problem with this forum. — Mongrel

It takes little for you to launch into a personal attack.

Do give me some more hints on how to deal with sexism. — Mongrel

I never provided you the first hint, so I don't know why you ask that I provide you more. What I said was: "I'm only disagreeing with you to the general proposition that the appropriate response to every wrong is to file a protest." Of course, had I said, "I'm only disagreeing with you to the specific proposition that the appropriate response to sexism is to file a protest," then your comment would have made sense. Instead, it's a troll, designed to inflame the conversation and designate me as an attackable sexist.

How do you think I should factor in my intensively sexist upbringing? — Mongrel

I really don't know how you should best deal with the unfortunate issues you have faced growing up, but I don't think expressing hostility toward me will serve any purpose. It won't offend me, change my behavior, or change my opinions. I'll just think to myself, "Wow, she's hostile."

So let's go to the person who's preaching apathy. Tell him wrong. It's likely that his apathy is a coping mechanism. You're telling him to make himself vulnerable. And what's the carrot supposed to be? — Mongrel

Telling someone not to make a mountain out of a molehill is not preaching apathy; it's preaching perspective. I'm not suggesting that you were wrong in your anger about certain posts, and I'm certainly not suggesting your response to others during that discussion was at all appropriate, I'm only disagreeing with you to the general proposition that the appropriate response to every wrong is to file a protest. Some things actually don't matter all that much.

My thought is that Kevin ought be banned. Whether others ought be offered an opportunity to publicly lambast him seems a pretty silly question in light of the fact that we have a murderer in our midst who needs removal.

And here you admit to what Agustino denies, which is this thread is about Mongrel. As since it obviously is, it doesn't belong on this site. This is a philosophy forum.

The OP is a thinly guised attack by Agustino on Mongrel. He today asks that a rule be formalized that decrees Mongrel's past behavior an official transgression. In sum, he asks for childish, petty vindication, and again wastes our space here on non- philosophical matters. I thank those who tried to divert the topic to worthy matters, and I ask all others to control their urge to engage anyone who attempts to hijack this site for their own personal vendettas.

Here's the problem: it feels very phony. It feels fake. I am not being paid/compensated as much as Harrison Ford or Robert Redford, but I sure am doing a lot of acting like them. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The job of cashier requires that you accept people's money for the good you're selling and to exchange niceties in order to have them return and buy other things. It's no more fake that you act like a guy who rings people up than it is that you act like someone who cares about your customers' day. You're just doing a job.

At Disney World I am told that they pay they workers to be actors, so if you're job is that of an old world street sweeper, you skip down the road and whistle a happy tune and talk to the young kids as you sweep the streets. You're being paid to act like a cashier. Do that.

I get that you're an introvert. So am I. I'd guess most of us here lean toward introversion. It's not a disorder and it has its value, but it also has it's problems, so you'll need to set it aside sometimes. Insisting upon being yourself isn't always the best way to get along with others.