Values are related to action, but they are also related to concern, love, intention and judgement. — Janus

Of course. But concern, love, intention and judgement are all realized in actions.

For me ethical values are rooted in caring about how we are to live. My earlier talk in terms of higher and lower was meant to show that I think living with care, concern and love for others and for the whole environment, the whole Earth, is a higher form of life than living without such care. — Janus

If you had said that living in that way was a better form of life, I would entirely agree with you.

I am not sure what you mean by "eradicating people of certain kinds" so I can't comment on that other than to say that I think certain kinds of people certainly need to be restrained; namely those who possess little or no self-restraint or even self-awareness. — Janus

I'm not sure why I express my thought in that way. I was referring to the holocaust in WW2. Of course it is right to restrain people sometimes. The problems arise when you think that some people are not really people.

I don't agree with dehumanizing people in the extreme, but I do think it is fair to see people who have no such care as being less than fully human. By human I mean something like "able to transcend being ruled by mere self-interest and the passions of the moment, able to be aware of and care about one's effect on other beings, both human and animal and even plant". — Janus

Even "less than fully human" is problematic. There is a concept of "human rights", which aims to establish minimal norms for the treatment of all human beings. Once you have branded a group of people as "less than fully human", you have licensed excluding them from those rights. As so often, a lofty and entirely praiseworthy enterprise is undermined by the exclusion of our enemies. This issue underpinned the battles about the rights of the "common man", women, slaves, and so on.
I don't for a moment think that you intend to do this. But this kind of language is very, very prejudicial to values that we ought to hold dear.

By human I mean something like "able to transcend being ruled by mere self-interest and the passions of the moment, able to be aware of and care about one's effect on other beings, both human and animal and even plant". — Janus

In a way, there is nothing wrong with that. Limiting one's scope to narrow self-interest is certainly a bad thing. But it is right to look after one's own interests. I don't see that it is a "lower" value than helping other people to look after theirs. What is wrong is not looking after and helping others as well.
You are forgetting that it is quite easy to do terrible things in pursuit of a selfless ideology - indeed, I sometimes think that a set of values is often the basis for worse things than self-interest - like tyranny, torture and genocide.

Saying infinity is a concept doesn't actually tell us anything about it. I don't even know what it means to say infinity is a concept. Is there anything that isn't a concept? — fishfry

Yes, of course you are right. It is no more help than saying that a table is an object. I was trying to re-instate the line between, let us say, a mathematical reality and a physical reality - or between mathematical possibility and physical possibility. (I think we are agreed that what creates the difficulties here is the confusion of the two in the definition of the supertask.)

Remember the mathematical induction you brought up before? — Michael

I suggest that what creates the problem here is the idea that the mathematical induction is a process that takes time. Perhaps the temptation to do this derives from the analogy with a Hume's inductive process that creates so many issues about empirical laws or generalizations. But once you pose the challenge of actually executing the process to the bitter (and non-existent) end, or think that you can stipulate what happens at the end, you are enmeshed in contradictions. (Achilles' race with the tortoise has exactly the same issues, but in the medium of space rather than time.) This leads us to think that there is some sort of miracle involved in arriving at the fridge to get a beer. But the mathematical induction is one analysis of many that can be applied to either space or time, and does not in any way affect our walking about our kitchen or arriving on time at a party.

When I say I don't believe in god, I also hold that I don't have a robust idea what the idea of god/s even means. It's pretty hard to believe in something which seems incoherent or unintelligible. But not understanding - and therefore not believing - can not be held as knowledge (I would have thought). — Tom Storm

That's just about where I'm at. That's why I'm taking an interest in this thread, but not adopting a position. I do have various theories, but none of them would be of any interest to a believer. For a start, I'm not merely interested in monotheism. Polytheism (which historically, I think preceded monotheism and derives from it.) is pretty clearly a sort of personification of important elements of ordinary life. "God" in modern religions seems to be a keystone for a way of life and a system of values, rather than an empirical reality. There's also the idea that religion is part of the system of social control that became necessary when cities and agriculture developed. Finally, there are those self-certifying experiences that people have.

There are many potential versions of god - from the magic space wizard (so beloved by Trump supporters), to the highest value in the hierarchy of values, as per Jordan Peterson. — Tom Storm

I wasn't aware of Jordan Peterson's theory. It seems like a version of Aristotle's theory of the Supreme Good.

Wouldn't it be the case that to be an atheist or a theist varies radically according to the kinds of god you are or are not believing in, which must surely also impact upon the belief knowledge/question? — Tom Storm

I would agree with that. There's a wide range of different views in circulation. Far too many to classify into just four propositions - unless you think that God is an empirical hypothesis. It's curious, though, that there seem to be both theists and atheists who prefer that approach, no doubt in the belief that favours their case.

That's not true, as I explained here, and as I alluded to above. It is not just the case that whether the lamp is on or off after two minutes is undefined but that the lamp cannot be either on or off after two minutes. — Michael

I'll think about that.

I disagree with your claim that with respect to Thomson's lamp we can simply stipulate that the lamp is on after two minutes. — Michael

@fishfry will speak for himself. But I think the point is that, even a convergent sequence, which does have a limit, does not have a end or last step defined - indeed, is defined as not having one. That means that any answer whatever is equally valid and invalid.

Firstly, I am not thinking in terms of imperatives, but in terms of concern or care; our human capacity to care about justice, beauty, freedom, truth, creativity, love and so on. I see these concerns as being truths about the human condition, about being human. Those who care nothing for such things are considered to be not as fully human, and I think rightly so. — Janus

Well, I can see that there's a difference, but let's not get picky about language. Values are related to action in a way that facts are not. That's the important difference.
I'm aware that many people like to see ethical values as rooted in the human condition living in the world. I'm very sympathetic.
However, we do dehumanize people who behave very badly - and it is not difficult to find people doing things that pass my (and, I hope, your) understanding. However, I think this is a mistake. The people who set up a huge administrative and industrial system to eradicate people of certain kinds from their society (to give just one hackneyed example) are human beings. We are capable of heroism and horror. We should not pretend otherwise even though the recognition is not comfortable.
And there's the problem. If values are rooted in the human condition, how come people behave like that?

This is why the moral debate between 'objective' and 'subjective' morals is so utterly ridiculous and intractable. They aren't either, independently: They are. together, states of people's minds. — AmadeusD

"States of people's minds" suggests that you are either a relativist or a subjectivist. Or have I misunderstood? I do agree, however, that the binary classification between objective and subjective is most unhelpful when applied to ethics.

B. Atheism = I do not know whether there's a God; — AmadeusD

(sc. B) Isn't the salient part of atheism's position, I don't believe in a god? It is for me. — Tom Storm

And by the same token isn't a theist someone who believes there is a god? I have a number of theist friends, including priests and rabbis, who would actually count as agnostic theists. They would never say that they know god exists. They would say they believe and have faith. — Tom Storm

There is something of a battle going on at the moment between belief and knowledge as the appropriate category. The (mistaken) idea that the difference between belief and knowledge means that saying one believes in God implies some sort of uncertainty, so people who strongly believe in God want to claim to know, while people who don't believe in God (or don't believe that belief in God can be rationally justified) cannot possibly concede that. It's very confusing.

Your reasons determine your decision. I don't see a distinction between "physical" and "non-physical" causation so the act of reasoning is just a type of causal chain. — Harry Hindu

Yes. But the difference is that a reasoning chain justifies its conclusion, whereas a normal, non-reasoning chain does not.

If two things are doing the exact same thing, it is 'X' if a human does it, and it is not X if a machine does it. That's what I got from it. — noAxioms

I think that is what Searle is saying. Except that he doesn't consider raising an arm to be "the exact same thing" if it is done by you or me and if it is done by a machine. The issue is what the difference is. From what I've seen is that he thinks that there is some causal difference between the two. I think the difference is only partly empirical, but the difference between two different language-games. One, the game that the concept of a person defines; the other the game that the concept of a machine defines.

OK, by those two strangely unaligned definitions, if Bostrom's hypothesis is true, then your experience of fear is real, but not genuine. — noAxioms

Yes, there is a problem there.

but it seem that the fear reflex is triggered exactly by recognition of something that can be characterized by danger — noAxioms

Could we just say "recognition of something as dangerous" or "recognition of a danger"? Anyway, if I've understood what a simulation is supposed to be, it involves feeding me information that is false. False information can easily trigger real or genuine fear. So the fear is not actually appropriate in that situation, but it would be misleading to call it simulated because that suggests that I am not really afraid. I'm not sure what the right word would be.

You said:-

It would need an insane amount of power and memory, but a relatively trivial code base. — noAxioms

I said:-

That's just a version of Laplace's demon. Hand-waving. — Ludwig V

You replied:-

I don't see that. For one, there is no power requirement for a simulation at all, except the impatience of the runners of the simulation. As for memory, why would a deterministic simulation need any more memory than a non-deterministic one? They would seem to have similar requirements as far as I can see. — noAxioms

I don't understand what you are saying. It may well be true. But I don't care about the difference between a deterministic simulation and a non-deterministic one. I do care about the difference between reality and a simulation of it.

As do most people. If determinism is true, then you still disagree, but the disagreement isn't free. I also want to point out that my personal opinion isn't one that supports determinism, but that doesn't mean the view is 'hand waving' or that it's wrong. — noAxioms

Well, I don't really think that determinism is just hand-waving. It is much more serious than that.

This is completely false. 1, I have shown an example just above (Norton) where classical mechanics does not do this. 2, Our universe is not classical — noAxioms

None of the interpretations of physics, not even the fully deterministic ones, are consistent with the claim made above by Laplace. — noAxioms

Well, at least we are agreed that Laplace's demon is out of date.

Do you know what determinism is? I suspect otherwise. — noAxioms

I used to know, but then I did a bit of reading and now I don't. But everybody else does seem to know, or think they know. If determinism is not about physics, - and the SEP does say that it is not - then what is it about? Or is it perhaps as out of date and the demon?

What would a decision that was forced feel like compared to one that was freely chosen? — Harry Hindu

Have you never done something that you didn't want to do - sometimes something you had decided not to do?
You may have felt that you did it without deciding to do it.

it would feel natural to reach the decision you made — Harry Hindu

If it felt like that, it was probably based on reason, as opposed to some causal chain.

I agree with his claim that seeing ourselves determined in this reductive way by our past leads to more ethical, compassionate behavior toward those who commit acts of violence and other anti-social behaviors than religiously based notions of free will, which tend to embrace harsh, retributive forms of justice. — Joshs

You may or may not be right about those empirical claims. I wouldn't know. But do they constitute an argument for believing that determinism is true?

What is lacking is the concept of reciprocal, relational determinism, which puts the organism in dynamic touch with its environment on the basis of its moment to moment functioning. In this way of thinking, our present actions are still the result of a determined history, but they don’t simply regurgitate pre-assigned properties. — Joshs

That's certainly an advance on traditional forms of determinism.

I still believe that we should hold people responsible for their actions. Holding others responsible has an effect on theirs, and others, future behaviors, which is more of the point of punishment, not necessarily to take revenge on past behaviors but provide reasons to behave differently in the future. — Harry Hindu

If determinism is true, people's behaviour is not governed by reasons, but by causes. Similarly, holding people responsible is never possible if determinism is true.
BTW, the empirical evidence is that what deters people from committing crimes is not the severity of the punishment, but the likelihood of getting caught.

It's more than that; the lamp can't be on and can't be off, even though it must be one or the other. This is a contradiction, and so therefore the supertask is proven impossible in principle. — Michael

Does the difference matter?

If Bostrom's hypothesis is true, and your definition of 'genuine' doesn't include simulated cognition influenced by simulated chemistry, then your emotion is indeed not genuine. That's the best I can answer without a clear definition of 'genuine' in this context. — noAxioms

Genuine=Not simulated. If I'm experiencing fear, the fear is real.

I suppose one could employ wordplay to come up with a scenario illustrating one but not the other, but it seem that the fear reflex is triggered exactly by recognition of something that can be characterized by danger. — noAxioms

But my point is that the recognition and the reflex response are both the fear. Both causally and phenomenologically.

As do most people. If determinism is true, then you still disagree, but the disagreement isn't free. I also want to point out that my personal opinion isn't one that supports determinism, but that doesn't mean the view is 'hand waving' or that it's wrong. — noAxioms

Well, I don't really think that determinism is just hand-waving. It is much more serious than that.

It would need an insane amount of power and memory, but a relatively trivial code base. — noAxioms

Isn't that hand-waving? It looks very much like it to me. So does Laplace's description of his demon. In addition, his thought-experiment describes predictability as opposed to determinism.

This is a straightforward logical point that does not depend on what the physical laws are. — Michael

So Thompson's lamp is not merely physically or metaphysically impossible, but logically impossible.

P6. The lamp is either on or off at t1 — Michael

But which is not defined.

I haven't said that everyday mundane reality is low, in fact I have explicitly said that it is our disposition towards things which could be higher or lower. — Janus

I don't see that the disposition to help people in need, to pursue beauty and truth, to eat drink and be merry, to sleep well at night can be put on a scale at all, at least not on any meaningful scale.

Right, so to extend the above line of thought, it is natural for us to value our species, our own families and friends, ourselves, above all else. But this is something we are called upon to overcome, at least intellectually if not "viscerally" in the name of our human ideals of justice, freedom, beauty, love and truth. — Janus

You are setting up a false opposition here. It is not merely natural for us, it is right. Admittedly, we need to reconcile our love of our own with more universal, and perhaps less immediate values, and the specific values can compete with the universal ones. But that doesn't mean that one is "higher" than the other. "Higher" and "lower" are metaphors and the metaphors should be very cautiously interpreted.

Usually, we do not 'know' our values in any meaningful sense. It would be helpful to elaborate what you mean here. It seems prima facie absurd. — AmadeusD

The context shows that I was summarizing @Janus view:-

You seem to be trying to say that our values cannot be described in the way that facts can and hence are not true or false and cannot be known, and yet we know them and they are true. — Ludwig V

Hwowever, I agree that it was poorly expressed.

Values cannot be truth-apt. They are intellectual states of affairs. — AmadeusD

But that is also poorly expressed, in my view. A state of affairs is truth-apt and values may involve the intellect, but not in the way that science, for example, does. A value is more like an imperative than a statement, in that it relates to action in a way that a state of affairs does not. A value can be the major premiss of a practical syllogism; a state of affairs an only be a minor premiss in such a syllogism.

This might explain why it's so silly... — AmadeusD

One explanation for the fact that he seems to have dropped this topic in his later writing is that he realized that it was, shall we say, the result of a very limited view of language, which he escaped from when he recognized that the meaning of language is in its use, not in "propositions" - which are separated by definition from action, at least in Frege's talk of "entertaining" a proposition.

We all know them, by virtue of being human, but their truth cannot be demonstrated in any determinable way as the truth of the fact of the world of the senses can. — Janus

No, no, no. An imperative is not true or false, but is valid or not, obeyed or not. Values are more like imperatives than truths. They are what we pursue. We can pursue truth (which is why it is also a value), but we also pursue other values, and needs (which are not necessarily the same kind of thing).

It is true that establishing (reaching agreement about) values and establishing (reaching agreement about) truths involve different kinds of argument. We think we have a pretty good handle on arguments about truth and a pretty poor handle on arguments about value, and that may be inherent in those concepts. But let's not pretend that it is a simple matter to establish truth and a hopeless enterprise to establish a value; that far too simple a model to be helpful.

Why do you want to do the rational or right thing? Don't you have reasons? — Harry Hindu

Yes, of course. That's why, when I do something for those reasons, there is no compulsion, no restriction of freedom - except in the sense of opportunities voluntarily foregone.

Meanwhile, in other fields of study, such as philosophy, writers do speak of a concept of infinity. I am not opining here whether, despite philosophical discussions of infinity, infinity is or is not a legitimate concept. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I'm afraid there was a typo in my last post. I posted "Infinity is certainly not a concept", which is rubbish. I meant to post "Infinity is certainly a concept". Apologies.

If, as suggested, the thought experiment is a kind of fiction, then we see the fiction we're told doesn't mention anything a last moment in the sequence of moments, so the fiction does not disallow us from extending to another fiction in which there is a last moment and such that the value of the action at that last moment is whatever x we want it to be. That is, at all the moments mentioned in the fiction, the lamp is on or it's off. That doesn't preclude another fiction in which there is a last moment in which any number of things can be the case: (1) The lamp is on, (2) The lamp is off, (3) The lamp explodes into bits and is off, or (4) The lamp expands to the size of the sun and is on, or (5) the light transforms into a pepperoni pizza. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Quite so.

In our hypothetical scenario with hypothetical physical laws we are still dealing with the ordinary logic of cause and effect. — Michael

I'm not at all clear how the ordinary logic of cause and effect would apply in the context of hypothetical physical laws. But we are clearly not dealing with the ordinary physical world, and that leaves us free to imagine anything at all.

Modeling is not physical, so the models built with infinity will never pose a problem when descending stairs. There is no paradox because the paradox seeks to mix actual stairs with modeling. — Fire Ologist

The first sentence is fine. I don't get the second sentence. You seem to be saying that the paradox is real. But mixing up actual stairs with models of stairs just produces a confusion, so the paradox is just an illusion - in my opinion.

You've solved my problem. I need the willing suspension of disbelief to converse with Michael. Indeed, that's the question I asked him. — fishfry

Yes, I realized that and was hoping to produce a formulation that would allow a more constructive discussion.

Sounds Bergsonian. Actual movement is indivisible but the mathematical modelling of movement is infinitely divisible. — Heracloitus

I don't know about Bergson. I think it is clearer to distinguish between "physical division (separation)" and "mathematical division (analysis)".

I don't recall how we got started on this, but the lamp sequence doesn't have a limit so the terminal state has no natural answer. — fishfry

There are two cases in play at the moment - "0, 1, 0, 1, ..." and "1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16.." Comments switch between them without always being clear. You are, however, quite right that the first sequence doesn't have a limit and the second one has what we could call a natural limit.

Only unitary whole things can be touched or stepped on, like a step. — Fire Ologist

I'm missing something here. When I step on a step, do I step on the whole step, or just a part of it. When I sit on a chair do I sit on the whole of it. It depends how you interpret the words, that's all.

your actual decision was made based on certain reasons and you filtered those other options based on certain reasons to eventually arrive at the last option standing. — Harry Hindu

Here's what I don't get about determinism. That process may determine my decision. But how does it force me to do anything? What sense does it make that I might be forced to do the right or rational thing, when the right or rational thing is what I want to do?

Far more important to human life is how we value, or disvalue the things of sense, how we find beauty or indifference in them, how we love or hate them, or disregard them. — Janus

I don't like "more important" or "highest". Everyday mundane reality is important, not "low".

We all know them, by virtue of being human, but their truth cannot be demonstrated in any determinable way as the truth of the fact of the world of the senses can. As I understand it it is that that Wittgenstein is getting at. — Janus

You seem to be trying to say that our values cannot be described in the way that facts can and hence are not true or false and cannot be known, and yet we know them and they are true. I think that's what Wittgenstein was trying to face up to. It certainly seems to follow from the Tractatus that nothing can be said about values. Yet here you are, trying to say something about values and it is not obvious that what you are saying is nonsense or non-sense. I think he was so focused on a certain use of language that he wasn't able to recognize other uses as having a validity of their own.
But there are some other things that seem to belong here. One of the things that he was getting at is that the relationship between language and the world cannot be stated, only shown, just as the relationship between a picture and what it represents cannot be pictured. (I'm not sure about whether logic in general is among the things that cannot be said.)

One must conclude a danger of some sort first before the chemicals come into play. — noAxioms

But there is a conceptual link between danger and fear that makes it hard to understand what recognizing a danger could be if one didn't fear it.

Another word for determinism, and determinism is not hand waving. It's simply a valid philosophical view. — noAxioms

I hope I'm free to disagree with you?

Yes, that part is hand waving. It assumes that the hard problem isn't hard, or rather, that there isn't a hard problem. The hard problem, as stated, is also hand waving, and will by definition never be solved, regardless of the progress of science and the success of a simulation such as Bostrom describes. — noAxioms

So we agree on something.

Simulated cognition influenced by simulated chemistry. — noAxioms

And that adds up to genuine emotion?

And you can’t posit or define or conceive of half without reference to half of some other defined, conceived thing, and that thing must be a whole unit. — Fire Ologist

Yes, but once you have defined your half, you can treat it as a unit and define a half of a half... and repeat indefinitely. What limits that process?

Infinity applies to numbers. Numbers aren’t physical things, like stairs. — Fire Ologist

That's certainly where are problems are. But you need to state this carefully. For example, there are no infinite natural numbers and while numbers are not physical things like stars, they do apply to physical things. The tricky point is that the idea of infinity is embedded in the number system, not some accidental additional property.

There is no infinity apart from the mind that conceives it. There are things apart from the mind that conceives of the unit. — Fire Ologist

Infinity is certainly not a concept and not a physical entity - I doubt that it should be called an entity at all. I would love to know what things apart from the mind "conceive of the unit".

That's not the case. "Object" is not implied. You are simply saying that whatever it is that the two names refer to, it is one and the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ostensive definition can only work if you know, or can work out from the context, what kind of thing (category) is being defined. When you gesture at a red car and say this is red, you will misunderstand if you take red to mean a car or a wheel or a heavy object.

Again, this is not true. When you say Ringo Starr is Richard Starkey, all you are saying is that these two names have the same referent. It is only upon analysis, if one seeks to determine whether it is true or not, or something like that, that one would determine that the two names both refer to a person. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not enough to know that the two names have the same referent. You need to know, in Wittgenstein's phrase, where the referent "is stationed in the language".

My point is that once we've entered the realm of speculative fantasy, where do we stop? — fishfry

I think that there some rules that apply in fiction (imaginary stories), because the story needs to have plausibility. But I don't know how to work out what they are. Coleridge, I think it was, said that there needs to be a "suspension of disbelief" for any fiction to work. The reader/audience needs to co-operate and not ask awkward questions. But there are limits. There needs to be some realism for the story to be recognizable at all.

s has a greatest number in its domain, and the last value for s is x. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I don't quite see why x is the last value, nor why you think that defining the set in that way gets round the point that w is not derived from the criterion from which all the other numbers in that set are derived.

Your question was why does this analysis of ethics and religion "end up in the same place." — Constance

I looked at your post again, and now I see better what you - and @Astrophel - are talking about. I got distracted by the question of freedom.

Another way to put this is to refer to earlier on in the Tractatus when he says the point of the book is to draw a limit to the expressions of thought. What lies on the other side of language is nonsense, and what is on the other side of language? Metaphysics. — Astrophel

Yes, that's exactly his argument. What is not clear is whether he thought of that as debunking metaphysics or legitimizing it (in some form)? (Throwing away the ladder once one has climbed up it.) I can't see that he might have intended to allow (or would have allowed), if he had known about it) a project like Husserl's or Heidegger's - both of whom abjured metaphysics (as traditionally understood.)

But a very real and palpable metaphysics in the burned finger, the falling in love, the heartbreak, the joy, the despair, and so forth. These and the value that is pervasive in our existence, from vague interest to thrill and excitement, literally constitute ethical possibility. — Astrophel

I'm all for giving a central place in philosophy to human life. But classifying that as metaphysics is a bit of a stretch don't you think?[/quote]

I want say that if ethics were just as coercive (meaning one really has no choice to accept constructions in symbolic logic) and absolute (though logic itself is understood in language, and language cannot be said to be apodictic; I mean, when we ask what language is, we don't get truth tables and theorems. We get history and evolving meanings) as logic, then everything would change. — Constance

It certainly would. Ethics as we know it would not exist. It would reduce to determinism.

Plainly put, our ethics, so familiar and complicated, would be grounded in Being itself. In Being, this qualitative play of good and bad that is our existence is risen to a new order of significance, one traditionally reserved for religion. — Constance

That depends on what you mean by "grounded". You seem to be attributing some sort of coercive force to Being and that is the nightmare of a world without ethics or even value.

I'm not qualified to provide specific examples, but I'm pretty sure in my readings I have come across a notable amount of "instances" in Philosophical "calculations" where God must be assumed for the "equation" to resolve a metaphysical or even Ethical question. Correct me if I'm wrong. — ENOAH

You are probably reading philosophers who have an religious agenda.

It's natural for humans to think they are worth more than other animals, just as other animals care only, or at least predominately, for their own. — Janus

Yes. I don't see that as a problem. We put our families first - not to do so is morally questionable - and we often do so to our own cost. "Putting first" in not simply "prioritizing over everything else". In any case, enlightened self-interest would prompt us to recognize that our well-being depends on the well-being of everything in our environments.

I find all of that list to be part of cognitive content, but with chemical influences as well. — noAxioms

Code which is influenced by chemistry. Good luck with that.

Give it particles and forces and such, and off you go. It would need an insane amount of power and memory, but a relatively trivial code base. — noAxioms

That's just a version of Laplace's demon. Hand-waving.

But Bostrom adds a lot more to the software requirement because it needs to know which molecules comprise a set of particles that is designated as a human, and it needs to glean intent from that human so that it can change the physics of some systems when necessary. Now the software is a million times more complicated, but the extra code is worth it for the optimization it buys. — noAxioms

That's just a lot of hand-waving.

I'm sorry to be so abrupt. But I've tried to follow the detailed arguments to no avail.

Are we anything other than extraordinarily complex wind up toys? — Patterner

I hope you are not winding me up with that question. I certainly am extraordinarily complex, but I am also certainly not a toy. Partly, its a question of attitude. We have a physical existence, so, in a way, the answer has to be yes. In fact regarding the body as a complex mechanism is very useful. (Medicine, for example.) More to the point, when that mechanism fails, we die. Yet that mechanism allows us to laugh and sing and fall in love, as well as destroying the planet and each other. Reconciling those two facts is, for me, the only game in town, or out of it. Notice that I have not answered your question which has presuppositions that require definition or at least explanation.

And I really don't think Laplace was trying to convince us that such a demon is likely, or possible. He was just saying, in a universe where everything is deterministic, anything at any point in the future would be, in theory, calculable. — Patterner

Yes, that's right. But that form of determinism does not amount to anything that could threaten freedom. There's a difference between being able to determine which horse will win the race, in the sense of being able to predict the result of the race and being able to determine which horse will win the race by fixing the race. Laplace's demon can do the first, but not the second.

Ah, Searle said that, which makes sense. Of course Searle isn't going to accept a naturalist premise, but his unwillingness to set aside his opinion about it prevents his rendering any proper critique. — noAxioms

I don't think a proper critique requires the critic to set aside their opinion. But it does require a willingness to engage with the opposition. I think he has an extreme form of a regrettable, but not uncommon, tendency to adopt a premiss (axiom, "truism") which presupposes his conclusion. But to be fair Derrida, in their famous debate, does not exactly go overboard to understand Austin, but I thought that he did at least try to do so.

I need to correct myself. I found an entry on Google Books:-

With special emphasis on vision Searle explains how the raw phenomenology of perception sets the content and the conditions of satisfaction of experience. ...... He next justifies the claim that perceptual experiences have presentational intentionality and shows how this justifies the direct realism of his account. — GoogleBooks on Searle's Theory of

For my money, this doesn't amount to direct realism. Note the references to "raw phenomenology" and "presentational intentionality". But I can see why one might pigeon-hole him under that heading. But I'm quoting the summary, not Searle himself. Perhaps there's a distortion in that.

For purposes of this discussion, I've been using the two terms interchangeably. — noAxioms

Yes. Only a naive person like myself would want to differentiate the two. But I had in mind the much-abused ordinary experience that was so popular in Oxford at a certain point; it seemed better to call it naturalism.

If this world is part of a simulation, it is definitely going to have to simulate chemical/hormonal influences on our experience. Far more than that even. — noAxioms

Yes. The question is How much more? Emotions (as opposed to moods) have a cognitive content, and that wouldn't be a problem. But they also involve desire and value. That is extremely problematic. It seems to me that software commands can simulate emotion, but having an emotion (desire, value) is a very different kettle of fish.

I believe that what is attempted with the law of identity is to express an unqualified sense of "same". You seem to think it fails. Why? — Metaphysician Undercover

If I say that Hesperus is Phosphorus, I am saying that they are the same object (heavenly body). If I say that Ringo Starr is Richard Starkey, I am saying that Ringo Starr is the same person as Richard Starkey.
If I say that Venus is Venus, I say nothing at all. But even then, it makes a big difference whether you are talking in a context in which Venus is a goddess or a planet.

The distance between your eyes is a whole. — Fire Ologist

I suppose you can. But then I can define as a whole anything I like. A spoonful of sugar. A rainbow. Six inches of two-by-four. The distance between my front door and the shop on the corner. What counts as a part is defined in relation to that. But each part is a whole in its own right. The leg of a chair. The branch of a tree. The handle of a door. Half of a penny. It's just a convenient trick of language.

Mind

You need to grab that finite whole thing first from the physical world to then posit the concept of half of that whole. The half wasn’t grabbed from the physical world. — Fire Ologist

"Grabbed" from the physical world is a completely inappropriate metaphor. Nothing is grabbed. Something was defined. In any case, if the whole thing was "grabbed from the physical world", it follows that both halves of it were "grabbed". If they weren't, nothing was "grabbed".

The simple solution is simply to say that motion isn’t continuous. Discrete motion at some scale is a metaphysical necessity. — Michael

The simple solution is to recognize the difference between an analysis and a dissection. A dissection physically separates an object into separate parts (and the parts then become wholes in their own right). An analysis has no physical impact on the object at all. One can analyse a distance into metres, centimetres, millimietrs or yards, feet and inches or any other units you like. You can analyse it into any fractions you like. All at the same time. The object doesn't change.

If I ask you what the minimum unit of space is, I can analyse that distance into fractions, however small it it is. Whether I can physically divide an object into those fractions is another question.

I was not expecting that response. I don't know what to say. So I'm absolutely delighted!

Intellectuals are lost if there is nothing to say. — Constance

That's why their chatter is endless.

Truth is, I don't know where to begin.
I had in mind looking at Heidegger's project and perhaps comparing it with Wittgenstein's (or Kant's or Husserl's or ...)
Or perhaps looking more carefully as Cavell's idea that the roots of philosophy go deeper than its problems.
Or something else.

What if ethics were as apodictic, that is certain, as logic? I will simply hand this question to you to see what you think. — Constance

I don't think that I really understand how to follow up your question.
We could start by asking whether logic is as apodictic as it is thought to be.

Rather, you are given the sequence; and given the limit; and you can apply a formal definition to see that 0 is indeed the limit of the sequence. It's conceptually sort of the other way 'round from thinking that the limit is the result of some logical process applied to the sequence. — fishfry

I take the point. I may not have stated it accurately enough, but the crucial thing, it seemed to me, is to realize that the limit is part of the definition from the start - not, as I think you're saying, something that is worked out from the sequence itself.

I believe that what is attempted with the law of identity is to express an unqualified sense of "same". You seem to think it fails. Why? — Metaphysician Undercover

If I say that Hesperus is Phosphorus, I am saying that they are the same object.

“The infinite” or “infinity” as a noun, is best used for dramatic effect. It’s not a thing, like a noun is best employed. “Infinitely” as an adverb, sets out some activity that, by definition, cannot conclude. Thereby banishing all finitude, which marks conclusion, such as a step, or a series of steps, or a noun. — Fire Ologist

You are right, Language is a great trap here. I would like to use "endless" or "endlessly" and even "endlessness" instead. That would make it more difficult to talk about conclusions. But we are lumbered with a world which uses "infinity". Natural language allows this, but has no guard rails to prevent us from talking nonsense.

But the infinite finds no home, no place in the physical world, — Fire Ologist

The difficulty here is that it is possible to defined an infinite series in a finite frame, which leads people to think of apply the abstract idea to the physical world. Sometimes that works, as in physics, so we can't just say that such ideas have no place in the physical world.

But you never find the infinite. There need be no infinitely small fraction. — Fire Ologist

Yes, we do. We don't find them by failing to count them, but through various arguments. The proofs that π or sqrt(2) or that there is no largest natural number are all well established. So is the possibility of a convergent series.

There is no such thing as a half step. — Fire Ologist

True, if you are thinking of a staircase. But nobody would contest that. But if you think of the distance between my eyes, you can certainly divide that by 1/2 or 1/4 or...

He (sc. Searle) associates it (sc. "secret sauce") with life. Something about living things. — fishfry

But that's an issue that goes back millennia. A century ago, there was "elan vital" or "Life Force". Before that, it was the "mind", the "soul". Aristotle's "psyche",
Searle's mystery component can be seen in his Chinese Room. It is (from what you tell me and my memories) just a gesture towards something in the future.

I could think about it a lot, without ever figuring out what you were trying to tell me here!
I thought I was agreeing with you, that emotions are an argument against computationalism. But perhaps I misunderstood. — fishfry

I'm sorry. It was lazy of me to do that.
One point about it was indeed that the physical basis of the emotions is clearly not just a matter of processing information. The focus on the brain, together with the computer analogy, misleads us. Even the knowledge that we already have should prevent us from thinking that there is necessarily any simple correlation between mental and physical phenomena. People equate fear and anger with the circulation of specific hormones. But that is, surely, clearly not the sort of thing that our computers can do. It is one phenomenon in among others that are associated with the emotions. The brain, presumably, is involved in triggering the release and the whole of the rest of the body is affected. Compare the call of "action stations" in a ship or perhaps the fire alarm in a building. Everything is affected. There's no way of picking out the specifics, except by the general description "ready for action" or "falling in love".
Computers of the kind we are familiar with do not (so far as I can see) have any capacity to be afraid or fall in love, to value one outcome over another and one of the reasons for that, it seems to me, is that the way they "think" has no conceptual space for those things. (Though I'm sure that some people will respond to the challenge by developing simulations.)
I'm going to stop there. There's not much I'm sure of beyond this point, except that philosophers don't seem to be able to grapple sensibly with what's going on here.

Emotions are another good example, thanks for that. They're squirts of hormones in the limbic system or some such. Nobody understands how it works. It doesn't seem very computer-like to me. — fishfry

No, they are not just hormones. The causes of the hormones in the brain and the effects of the hormones in the body, together with their psychological counterparts are all part of the package. Think about it.

The lamp is either on or off at t1. The fact that it makes no sense for it to be on and no sense for it to be off if the button has been pushed an infinite number of times before that is proof that it makes no sense for the button to have been pushed an infinite number of times. — Michael

Exactly. The contradiction follows from the fact that no final state is defined.

That completion is just as arbitrary as any other. But it has one supreme virtue: 0 happens to be the limit of the sequence. So that's why I call it natural. — fishfry

I understand that. What seems important to me is that the convergent series is the result of a calculation which involves 0 and 1, while "0,1, 0, 1, ..." doesn't involve any calculation at all. You could also have a series "a, b, a, b, ..." or "fish, chips, fish, chips, ..." The calculation involves numbers, but "0, 1, 0, 1, ..." only involves numerals.

It makes no sense to answer this question with "a plate of spaghetti" or "1/2". — Michael

I think you'll find that's because it makes no sense to answer the question.

In other words, it also makes no sense to answer the question with "on" or "off".

I understand why those answers seem more natural, but that's an illusion.

But this is just a hypothesis based on "Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct." — SpaceDweller

You are quite right. Enthusiasts are fascinated by the speculative possibilities and so forget the provisos. It's really quite annoying.

Is naturalism = physicalism? Or is there a further distinction? — fishfry

That's not exactly wrong. But let analytic philosophers loose on an -ism and in a few years you'll have dozens of them. In the first half of the last century, there wasn't a concept of computability, so that issue is undetermined.

The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” — Stanford EP - Naturalism

In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe.[1] In its primary sense,[2] it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. — Wikipedia - Naturalism

I believe in that same lecture (or perhaps a different one) he did NOT advocate dualism. He advocated what I call "secret sauce," my phrase, not Searle's. That is, consciousness is physical, but not computational. That's the point I've been making to noAxioms. — fishfry

I'm clearly out of date. Apologies to Searle. However, I'm not much reassured. If Searle is positing consciousness as an unknown something-or-other in addition to what is currently recognized as physical, he is positing a consciousness of the gaps, which is at least close to dualism.
The mistake is to start with "Consciousness is....". We know what consciousness is; we don't know how to explain the physical basis of consciousness - yet. But it is clear that there are many disparate phenomena involved and it is possible that consciousness will not map neatly onto the physical world. (Consider the many complicated physical phenomena that are involved in the emotions, for example).

Mind-body problem is only relevant to dualism, and sim theory isn't dualism, so the there's no problem. I think the term is 'interactionism', how the dual aspects interact with each other. — noAxioms

I apologize. I should have referred more generally to "philosophical theories of the mind". Bostrom clearly has one, though he proceeds as if it was certainly correct. A serious error, in my book.

How does my decision to point a gun at the baddie cause Lara Croft to raise her arm? There has to be a causal connection between my decision and her arm, and there is. But under sim theory, there isn't two separate things that need to interact, so the problem doesn't arise. — noAxioms

If there is a causal connection between my decision to point a gun and Lara Croft raising her arm, there are two things that interact. That's what causality means. Whether you are dualist, monist, physicalist, idealist, epiphenomenonalist or panpsychist.

But there's no need for there to be any logical relation between the sequence itself, and the arbitrarily-defined terminal state. — fishfry

So, the terminal state not being defined does not prevent me defining one arbitrarily?
Isn't it the case that there is a requirement - that the terminal state not be defined by the function.

There is no last term in any infinite sequence. There may (or may not) be a limit. Big difference. — fishfry

Yes. The exact status of 1 or 0 in these cases is more complicated than I realized.

Even if you insist that the terminal state must be either 0 or 1, there is no logical way to prefer one over the other. — fishfry

So can you help me to describe the role of 1 in defining the series 1/2, 1/4, ... when the limit state is 0? (Or indeed when it's the other way round?)

Ah the mind-body problem. I saw a video of Searle giving a lecture. He raised his right arm and said, "I think to myself, I'll raise my right arm. And my right arm goes up. How does that happen?" — fishfry

How could the mind-body problem not be relevant if people are positing that sims might be people (and sometimes asserting that at least some people are sims?)
Yes. Sometimes I find his tendency to present dualism as common sense ridiculous and sometimes annoying. It reminds me of Bishop Berkeley and his wilful refusal to recognize that he is contradicting common sense.
But the rhetoric of that sentence is genius. A mystery created from a commonplace.

But I do object to the "best they could do at the time" argument that video games are getting better, therefore in the future they'll be indistinguishable from reality. — fishfry

I do so agree. That argument is pure hand-waving. Completely acceptable in a (conventional) fiction, where we aren't expected to ask questions.

Nevermind, I looked it up. It's "the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted." — fishfry

"Naturalism" is used much more widely than that. I've been classified as a naturalist because I reject dualism.

If my reality is nothing but a "simulation," then I'm not real. There is only the simulation. Meaning that I'm not a simulation, I'm an instantiation. — fishfry

Better put than I managed.

The code here is effectively the same as a recursive function. — Michael

Not quite. The code specifies a process which must take time. The function does not.

I'm arguing that supertasks are metaphysically impossible. He's arguing that supertasks are metaphysically possible. — Michael

Thank you. I must have got confused.

Don't follow. The limit of 0, 1, 0, 1, ... can not be 1. Nor can it be 0. It's a sequence that has no limit. — fishfry

I'm sorry. I was talking about the convergent series. Didn't check

I do not think Michael and I are making the same point. — fishfry

Perhaps not. But if the last term in the series is not defined, contradictions are likely to follow from the attempt to identify it. Equally, if something gives rise to a contradiction, the definition will be faulty. So, if you are right, I need to ask why it matters.