It seems clear that we are able to remember a lot of sensations without words attached such as different tastes and smells and the feel of different textiles. — Andrew4Handel

If sensations are understood as radically immaterial, perhaps it's not so clear. I can however easily imagine experiments where people smell something and recall the name for it, etc. But what role is 'sensation' playing here ? Does it clarify or obscure ?

People can combine words from the current languages to create new meaning. That meaning may only resonate with them. — Andrew4Handel

This reminds me of genesis versus structure. 'Language is received like the law.' But language does slowly mutate thanks to the creativity of individuals. New memes (new metaphors, new equations) are created and become popular, and old memes are forgotten.

What do you make of the end of the world ? Is it important to your vision of Christianity ? Was/is it a wrong thing to expect ?

Thinking, one wants to say, is part of our “private experience”. It is not material, but an event in private consciousness. This objection is expressed in the question: “Could a machine think?” I shall talk about this at a later point, and now only refer you to an analogous question: “Can a machine have toothache?” You will certainly be inclined to say: “A machine can't have toothache”. All I will do now is to draw your attention to the use which you have made of the word “can” and to ask you: “Did you mean to say that all our past experience has shown that a machine never had toothache?” The impossibility of which you speak is a logical one.
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Book&action=render

We haven't checked lots of machines for toothaches and failed to find them. We don't know how to look for them. We don't know what it mean for a machine to have a toothache.

Now one may go on and ask: “How do you know that he has got |(Ts-309,39) toothache when he holds his cheek?” The answer to this might be, “I say, he has toothache when he holds his cheek because I hold my cheek when I have toothache”. But what if we went on asking: – “And why do you suppose that toothache corresponds to his holding his cheek just because your toothache corresponds to your holding your cheek?” You will be at a loss to answer this question and find that here we strike rock bottom, that is we have come down to conventions. (If you suggest as an answer to the last question that, whenever we've seen people holding their cheeks and asked them “what's the matter”, they have answered, “I have toothache”, – remember that this experience only co-ordinates holding your cheek with saying certain words.)
https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Blue_Book&action=render

The vaguely postulated pure immaterial pain is like the hole in a donut. Its plenitude, the circular dough, seems to be a nexus of public deeds including blurry equivalence classes of speech acts.

When we say that by our method we try to counteract the misleading effect of certain analogies, it is important that you should understand that the idea of an analogy being misleading is nothing sharply defined. No sharp boundary can be drawn round the cases in which we should say that a man was misled by an analogy. The use of expressions constructed on analogical patterns stresses analogies between cases often far apart. And by doing this these expressions may be extremely useful. It is, in most cases, impossible to show an exact point where an analogy begins to mislead us. Every particular notation stresses some particular point of view. If, e.g., we call our investigations “philosophy”, this title, on the one hand, seems appropriate, on the other hand it certainly has misled people. (One might say that the subject we are dealing with is one of the heirs of the subject which we used to call “philosophy”.)
...
If we sing a tune we know by heart, or say the alphabet, the notes and letters seem to hang together; and each seems to draw out the next as though they were pearls strung on a thread, and by pulling out one I pulled out the one following it.

Now there is no doubt that seeing the picture of a string of beads being pulled out of a box through a hole in the lid, I should say: “These beads must all have been together in the box before”. But it is easy to see that this is making a |(Ts-309,65) hypothesis. I should have seen the same picture if the beads had gradually come into existence in the hole of the lid. We easily overlook the distinction between stating a conscious mental event, and making a hypothesis about what one might call the mechanism of the mind. All the more as such hypotheses or pictures of the working of our mind are embodied in many of the forms of expression of our everyday language. The past tense “meant” in the sentence “I meant the man who won the battle of Austerlitz” is only part of such a picture, the mind being conceived as a place in which what we remember is kept, stored, before we express it. If I whistle a tune I know well and am interrupted in the middle, if then someone asked me “did you know how to go on?” I should answer “yes I did”. What sort of process is this knowing how to go on? It might appear as though the whole continuation of the tune had to be present while I knew how to go on.

Ask yourself such a question as: “How long does it take to know how to go on?” Or is it an instantaneous process? Aren't we making a mistake like mixing up the existence of a gramophone record of a tune with the existence of the tune? And aren't we assuming that whenever a tune passes through existence there must be some sort of a gramophone record of it from which it is played?

Consider the following example: A gun is fired in my presence and I say: “This crash wasn't as loud as I had |(Ts-309,66) expected”. Someone asks me: “How is this possible? Was there a crash, louder than that of a gun, in your imagination?” I must confess that there was nothing of the sort. Now he says: “Then you didn't really expect a louder crash, – but perhaps the shadow of one. – And how did you know that it was the shadow of a louder crash?” – Let's see what, in such a case, might really have happened. Perhaps in waiting for the report I opened my mouth, held on to something to steady myself, and perhaps I said: “This is going to be terrible”. Then, when the explosion was over: “It wasn't so loud after all”. – Certain tensions in my body relax. But what is the connection between these tensions, opening my mouth, etc., and a real louder crash? Perhaps this connection was made by having heard such a crash and having had the experiences mentioned.

These last passages are great for foregrounding the takenforgranted metaphoricity in our talk about the mental.

we can be fairly confident that bots don't have any sense of meaning, which would mean they don't really understand what words mean — Janus

If we are confident, is such confidence logically justified or just mere meatbias ? For most of our history, we have done what we like with machines, without worrying about their feelings, excepting of course some of the the 'machines' provided by biological evolution.

If 'sense of meaning' is understood to be immaterial and invisible to scientific and perhaps even conceptual approach, it's hard to see how such an assumption can be justified.

Paul expected the world to change forever and the sooner the better.

By the time of Augustine, waiting for the change required an adjustment of expectations. — Paine

:up:

Ah. OK. So the end of the world was running late.

2. What is Chomsky's real motivation for adopting mysteryism? — Eugen

What, in general, may (?) motivate the adoption of 'mysteryism' ?

Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. [Feuerbach]

So assume in some post-apocalyptic wasteland the only thing to survive is a newborn baby. Given that it has no sense of self and no language it isn’t conscious and can’t feel pain or be hungry? — Michael

I think that we can apply such concepts, and I think we can do that now with pigs being treated badly in processing plants. The baby could be hungry or in pain, yes. Why not ? So could the pig. "We should stop creating pork this way, because pigs suffer, because it's wrong to cause unnecessary suffering." What does it mean to attribute pain ? How does such an attribution relate to other assertions ? Does immateriality add anything?

we still must write narratives of motivation. — schopenhauer1

I think we've evolved a tendency to 'secrete' orienting narratives, and it seems that we need such software to get along in the world.

Do you think that giving someone a deficit to overcome is immoral, bad, unjust, not right, etc? — schopenhauer1

Creating a child violates some of our intuitions of what we owe other people. Yes. But I also think it's disgusting the way we treat animals. And so on and so on.

is that your new name now? — schopenhauer1

Yes, it's my final name for my final resurrection.

What I will say is that I don’t need a second person for me to be conscious. It is both logically and physically possible for me to be the last man alive. — Michael

Yes, I believe that your hardware (your brain, etc.) carries an independent copy of the tribal software. You can end up as the last man alive. But you have already absorbed the tradition of thinking of yourself as a self, as a unified voice responsible for its claims and other deeds. What Descartes takes for granted is all the software that's talking to 'itself' as a [unified] self. Even 'it thinks' is too much, for that unity is not purely given but inherited. Whence the thinker ? Why thoughts and not just signs ? Why not a random emission of words ? Attributed to no one ? Semantic chaos ?

Yes, that’s implied by my assumption here that consciousness is identical to a particular kind of brain activity. — Michael

I don't think the self makes sense as a present-at-hand object (it's never just a body.) It's temporally stretched, socially constituted. It's more of a dance than a pair of legs.

I’m suggesting that we assume that what we think of as first person experience/consciousness is reducible to brain activity. — Michael

I don't see how that can be done. Norms might be primordial or irreducible. They are the foundation of sense. We can't 'think away' language.

But behaviour isn’t enough. There really is stuff going on in people’s heads that we don’t know about, and when we ask about things like pain we’re asking them to tell us about this stuff going on in their heads. — Michael

It's not too outlandish to think technology will become powerful enough to know our socalled insides better than we do. "Hold on a moment: let me see if I'm in pain." <Looks at his phone>

We already see how people fail (in others' eyes) to know their own motives or level of ability.

I suggest approaching the self more as a normative entity than a ghost full of hidden states.

We’re assuming brain states here, not immaterial stuff. — Michael

If you want to pretend that 'pain' has a different grammar than it does, we can try to play that game and see what happens.

If that were true then we wouldn’t ask people if they’re in pain. — Michael

Why not ?

I can’t understand this devotion to the idea that words can only refer to some publicly verifiable activity. — Michael

I don't have a finished theory of reference. I just think immaterial references don't make sense, for the same kind of reason I don't believe that 2 has a square root. The absurdity of such a concept has been demonstrated to my satisfaction.

I take aspirin because I’m in pain. It’s not the case that taking aspirin is being in pain. — Michael

Yes. I agree.

"I have a headache, so I'm going to take some aspirin."

"He went to the doctor, because his back was killing him"

That's within the inferential nexus. That's roughly how we learn to use "headache" and "pain" -- in terms of what implications are thereby licensed. Or that's a theory that seems reasonable to me. We can talk about quarks and confusion in the same way. Imagine meaning living 'between' these signs as norms governing their interaction in inferences. 'Internal' entities need not refer to immateriality.


"He hired a tutor, because he was confused."
"She called to check on her father, because she had a weird feeling."

Time matters here. We do not have static concepts tied to platonic essences that hover in eternity. We keep track of one another. You hold me to what I've said and the implications thereof, as I do you. We make predictions and excuses and arguments. How is all of this structured ? How is pain used to explain and excuse? I say find the big picture and work inward. I don't think we can construct the situation from 'atoms.'

That’s true of every word in every circumstance. I can report that it’s raining when it isn’t. — Michael

People can lie, but that's not the issue. To be sure, the grammar of the word 'pain' could change, but currently (as far as I can make out) it's more about behavioral dispositions than brain states. "My leg hurts terribly when I stand or walk on it, so let's climb a mountain." See Brandom's inferentialism for more on the meaning of concepts as (roughly) the inferences they license or forbid.

This is the motte-bailey issue I've been trying to point out. I have no objection at all to a blurry continuum that runs from more physical to more mental. We can publicly establish that reports of pain (public speech acts) are correlated with a particular kind of brain activity. We can imagine a kind of pain stuff (somewhat indeterminate) as a disposition to make such reports and grimace. No problem.

Can the word “pain” refer to this particular kind of brain activity? — Michael

I don't think that would quite work. The grammar of 'pain' would allow for anomalies like reports of pain that were not accompanied by the expected brain activity.

We can think of how reports of pain are treated differently than reports of seeing so-and-so commit a crime. I have more authority (am less likely to be challenged) when it comes to 'internal' things. This is maybe why they are 'internal' : they are relatively incorrigible. I say look to social norms for meaning.

The question immediately arises: can we live this way? — Fooloso4

This reminds me of Kojeve. This Christ is not unlike the skeptic who escapes into a 'free' interiority from the risk of life required for the attainment of genuine, worldly freedom. We philosophers are the heirs of this antithetical slavish ideology. For us the balcony. For kings the stage.

What is this way of life? — Fooloso4

The triumph over resentment ? The triumph over system ? There's nothing there to refute. It looks like subrational or transconceptual mysticism to me --an extremely negative theology. Even the concepts God and Father are mere 'formal indications.'

How could you perceive the divine through feeling if feeling itself were not divine? The divine can be known only through that which is itself divine – “God can be known only through himself.” The Divine Being perceived by feeling is in reality nothing but the being of feeling itself which is enraptured and fascinated by itself – feeling that is blissful in itself, intoxicated with joy. — Feuerbach

He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God—not even prayer. The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” ... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere.... — Nietzsche

So sayeth Nietzsche, this great symbolist and ironist and inverter of values. — Fooloso4

:up:

Yes. To be clear, Nietzsche's Christ is a literary creation. Nietzsche himself, as he let us know him through his books, is also such a protagonist/fiction/mask. No less than Hamlet he overheard himself, and in the same way he was then his only worthy audience. Summer porn posthumously.

Eliminative materialists go to the extreme of saying that don't refer to anything or only refer to brain activity. Such as "love" just mean Oxytocin levels. — Andrew4Handel

A more reasonable approach is to include everything in the same inferential nexus. A drug or injury may disable a certain kind of love. As I see it, there's nothing that's purely internal or purely external. (I claim that we can't really make sense of such talk...that it's confused.) All entities 'live' in the same 'system,' else they could not make sense for/to us.

I don't know how often blind people use colour terms. — Andrew4Handel

You might like this: https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/08/17/blind-people-understand-color/

The public aspect of language may be the rules of application but whether what is being said refers to something is an open question. But my issue is whether mental terms like memory and beliefs etc refer to the same thing between individuals. — Andrew4Handel

You have your finger on the issue. Immaterial private referents are problematic. Bots are better at English now than children are, than most adults are perhaps. Do they 'really' 'understand'? As I see it, we mostly don't know that we don't know what we are talking about -- beyond an undeniable foggy goodenough vagueness of course. Making this darkness visible, digging out the question, getting some sunshine on it, seems like a good start.

As the issue at hand is the role of the observer in the construction of reality, then the assertion of a reality that is 'bigger than the observers' begs the question - it assumes what needs to be shown. — Wayfarer

I think the issue is that the observer without observed is like the left without the right. Some concepts come in pairs.

It was an offhand remark, so I will say that 'what hurts us is real' is not a considered final thesis. But let me try to expand it so that it's more defensible. 'Hurt' doesn't refer to immaterial pain here. I mean instead damage to our ability to thrive and replicate. We are stubbornly persistent patterns who leap over the graves of our hosts. It's hard to see how a 'mind' (control module, tribal-individual software) will persist if it tends to ignore what is likely to harm it in this way. Patterns that don't tend to avoid harm (their destruction) and seek help (what they require) tend to vanish.

Cool. I'll check that out.

My personal goal, for the time being, is to better understand the AI, its nature, capabilities and limitations. — Pierre-Normand

:up:

Do you ever watch Isaac Arthur? — RogueAI

No, but I'll check out a link if you have one.

This reinforces the view that, for all the "clever", they are bullshit generators - they do not care about truth. — Banno

I think we (for now) are guiding their evolution, so they'll care more about truth when we do, which is to say never ? (I know some of us care more than others.)

Humans are all bullshit generators -- it's both a bug and a feature. Large problems arise when we start believing our own bullshit. — BC

:up:

A quote from "Self Reliance" gets a thumbs up from me. — T Clark

Me too !

"Black flag" can mean a number of things. Are you aware it is a brand of bug spray in the US? — T Clark

Oh yes. And the rock band. And pirates. I'm a poison-drenched zombie pirate bot with sad breath.

.

Speak for yourself — Wayfarer

That's just it. Private referents don't make sense. Meanings and rational norms are public. That's how we can agree enough to intelligibly disagree. I'm not trapped in a little meatsuit. I'm softwhere, a locus of responsibility, an infinite task, a selfreferential vortext. We are made of the same signstuff, different experiment versions of the tribal ego, adversarial and cooperative candidates for partial assimilation by the tribe at large, memevendors with our shops on the same boardwalk.

If we didn't know a language and found ourselves stuck among its speakers with no one to teach us, we might have to learn that way. — Janus

Add interaction to the mix, and I think babies must learn this way.

they don't really understand what words mean, they are just programmed to be able to put coherent sentences together, a facility which relies on their being able to mimic grammatical structure based on statistical data showing how certain questions elicit certain kinds of responses. — Janus

But what if we are hardware 'designed' by evolution to do roughly the same thing ? These things can reason. They can outperform humans on important tests. It's starting to look like humans are superstitious about their own nature. As far as I can tell, it boils down to the problem of the meaning of being, the problem of the being of meaning, the problem of the thereness of 'qualia'. And I claim we don't have a grip on it. Don't and maybe can't say what we mean. That special something that sets us apart is requiring a more and more negative theology. We are the shadows cast by tomorrow's synthetic divinity ?

That's also a concern. I wouldn't marry GPT-4 in its present form, though. It's very agreeable, but too nerdy. — Pierre-Normand

:up:

I married a biological version personally, and I've never seriously considered <cough> dolls. But I know a younger guy who create a waifu and he's in the field. Alienated men with tech skills will create the endlessly upgradable woman/man/other of their dreams. Pygmalion returns.

This is similar to one of the arguments Robert Hanna makes in his recent paper: Don't Pause Giant AI Experiments: Ban Them — Pierre-Normand

Thanks! I'll check that out. Though, if they are banned, I won't believe that governments at least aren't continuing development.

Ah, "pharmakon" is close to my heart, since I love psychedelics. (although they are mostly not poisonous except perhaps in massive doses). I seemed to remember it was Paracelsus who said "The dose makes the poison"? I looked it up and he also said: "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison." — Janus

The dose makes the poison. That's good.

Psychedelics have sometimes made me feel the terror of having been poisoned, but the total experience has always been positive. It's been a long time though. I don't even want THC these days. It'd probably be fine, maybe fun, but I don't bother to seek it out.

We might ask them to explain the idea to us and if their explanation matches our understanding, — Janus

Yes. And we can just watch interactions. On this forum, I can tell (I am convinced) that other people grasp Wittgenstein's later work the way I do. And we read one philosopher about another too, which possibly changes, all at the same time, what we think about the author, the philosopher being commented upon, and ourselves.