Late to the party, and I haven't read any responses yet. I'm going to agree that it is not a valid statement. The statement isn't about anything that can be declared true or false. It's truth/falsehood in a vacuum. I understand how it's used, and the paradox it's supposed to embody. But it's meaningless.

Legend has it, that if you say it just like I did, he will appear.
— wonderer1

I was lounging comfortably in my bottle, thank you very much, but I honor the code of my own free will. — Srap Tasmaner

Holy cow! You guys are great! Penn and Teller wouldn't have been able to pull that off more smoothly!

This is a relevant article. — wonderer1

It seems fascinating. Probably moreso for those who know how to play Go. I imagine there are online groups to play, so I really don't have an excuse.

Srap's whole post is excellent.

If intuition is, as it says in the part you quoted, "zipping through the analysis," that's fine. That doesn't make it any kind of mysterious sources of knowledge. And the many times people's intuition leads them to the wrong answer would be explained by the fact that their careful analysis also leads to the wrong answer. As you say, whether the answer comes from intuition or analysis, you'll be correct more often in areas where you have some expertise.

I'm not aware of ever coming up with an answer intuitively. Even areas in which I have some knowledge, I get the answer because I remember some information, or do the multiplication quickly, or whatever. I'm always aware of the analysis.

I'd suggest not being too dismissive of the value of one's own or other's intuitions, or their potential for improvement. That said, I also advise keeping a grain of salt handy. :wink: — wonderer1

I don't know if I'm defining it correctly. It seems as though people sometimes think of intuition like a hunch to play certain numbers in the lottery. The extreme majority of times, everybody loses the lottery.

Other times, when thinking things through thoroughly, intuitive knowledge is seen to be false. Maybe a science experiment.
"What do you think will happen when x, y, and z?"
"Intuitively, I think it will ____."
Wrong often enough. Our intuition doesn't suggest time works the way Einstein tells us it does.

Sometimes it's unprovable. Like someone's intuitive knowledge of whatever deity they believe in.

Intuition has lead people into terrible romantic relationships now times than we can count. "My intuition tells me he's a great guy."

And, of course, sometimes intuition is correct. You said "achieving recognition that one of my current intuitions is faulty has been something which had enabled me to improve the reliability of my intuitions over the long run." I'm thinking you mean something like recognizing a flaw in critical thinking?

Thank you! I'm just not feeling Chandler's book.

That Lyons book is expensive! :lol: And probably way beyond me. I need a good intro to Semiotics. Hopefully, Daniel Chandler is good.

That's extremely interesting! I can't read it, bit I read about it here:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/06/10/science/african-elephants-name-like-calls-intl-scli-scn

Elephants are possibly capable of abstract thought?? I wonder if other animals are capable of any other aspects of thinking we associate only with ourselves. Maybe it isn't these specific capabilities that make human thought and language stand out, but, rather, that we have the combination of all of these aspects.

Or, even crazier, maybe there are species that have capabilities we lack. But, lacking some critical combination, they can't tell us about what they're thinking, and we can't notice their unique quality.

Well I'll get to your post later. Yard work today. But I don't think there's any possibility that any other animal has any language that approaches human language. Because they can't think in the kinds of ways we do. If they were talking, we'd be able to learn each others' languages, and have conversations. We would have been doing this since the time we and any species capable of it found ourselves in the same place. Our cultures and societies would be much different if we had been been coexisting with animals that could communicate like us for the last several thousand years, if not hundreds of thousands.

There are many people who have put great effort into communicating with various other species. Apes and dolphins are big ones. The octopus is supposed to be an intelligent animal, also. But we cannot have a conversation with any of them. They just don't have the ability.

Also, I suspect they'd wipe us out if they could think in those ways.

I believe Deacon would agree:

...language is not merely a mode of communication, it is also the outward expression of an unusual mode of thought—symbolic representation. Without symbolization the entire virtual world that I have described is out of reach: inconceivable. My extravagant claim to know what other species cannot know rests on evidence that symbolic thought does not come innately built in, but develops by internalizing the symbolic process that underlies language. So species that have not acquired the ability to communicate symbolically cannot have acquired the ability to think this way either. — Terrence Deacon

Only humans have language — Joshs

I just started reading The Symbolic Species, by Terrence Deacon. Literally only the Preface so far. In it, he tells us about giving a talk about the brain to his son's elementary school.

I was talking about brains and how they work, and how human brains are different, and how this difference is reflected in our unique and complex mode of communication: language. But when I explained that only humans communicate with language, I struck a dissonant chord.

“But don’t other animals have their own languages?” one child asked.

This gave me the opportunity to outline some of the ways that language is special: how speech is far more rapid and precise than any other communication behavior, how the underlying rules for constructing sentences are so complicated and curious that it’s hard to explain how they could ever be learned, and how no other form of animal communication has the logical structure and open-ended possibilities that all languages have. But this wasn’t enough to satisfy a mind raised on Walt Disney animal stories.

“Do animals just have SIMPLE languages?” my questioner continued.

“No, apparently not,” I explained. “Although other animals communicate with one another, at least within the same species, this communication resembles language only in a very superficial way—for example, using sounds—but none that I know of has the equivalents of such things as words, much less nouns, verbs, and sentences. Not even simple ones.” — Deacon

I guess the rest of the book extensively expands on this.

↪Patterner If you want to learn about the language and thought patterns when a certain kind of determinist talks about choices, this might interest you.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/ — flannel jesus

Thank you. It's confusing me right out of the gate, but I'll see what I can do.

The photons are the same, whether or not they are perceived at all. Without a perceiver who has subjective experiences, there is no red.

Did you know the eye has evolved independently about 50 times on earth? Crazy. — frank

I had only heard of human and octopus, and thought that was amazing!!

My observation is that people's intuition is wrong as often as right. It often seems to be someone's "feeling."

Other times the answer someone's intuition gives them is the answer they get when they consider it and explain reasoning behind it. And a lot of people have some pretty faulty reasoning. I assume a lot of people here will be happy to say mine is faulty. :grin: Perhaps others think I generally do ok. Mainly, we will say someone's intuition is wrong when it leads them to an answer we disagree with.

I guarantee my intuition leads me astray at times.

In short, I don't consider intuition to be very useful. But I don't know what @wonderer1 has in mind.

:rofl: :rofl: I don't know why. Someone explain to me why my phone types "booty" when I swype "not"! I don't think I've ever intentionally typed "booty" other than when I have to explain this. I usually catch it, but was in a rush that time.

I don't know enough about intuition to know how to respond. How does the "deep learning" about non-determinism take place?

Not sure what you mean. Why would our deep learning/intuition telling us determinism is not correct be evidence that determinism is correct? Or is that booty what you're saying?

I'm not trying to compare them. And no, they are not opposites. I'm just noticing that both are about our identity and thinking, but one is a commonly known idea, and the other, despite having been written about for millennia, is not. Why is that?

Or am I wrong in thinking that, if asked about determinism, most people would say they have not heard of it, and would need it explained?

I also suspect that, once determinism had been explained to them, most would not say it reflects how they feel their thinking works/is accomplished.

This is all just seat of my pants thinking. I couldn't guess how much I have wrong. — Patterner

Well, not having had an inkling of this whole line of thought until a couple days ago, plus not having ever read a word about such things, I'm going to ask for some slack. — Patterner

I've never posted this kind of thing before. — Patterner

So yeah. I live in bliss. :grin:

Still, I think it's an interesting thought. Stop random people in the street and ask them about consciousness. Even if they haven't thought about it in depth, or tried to understand aspects of it that are often discussed here, it's unlikely they'll say they haven't heard of the topic. I suspect many will express the thoughts that consciousness is self-evident, and it is a more important part of their identity than things like their height and eye color.

Ask random people about determinism, and I think a much higher percentage will say they never heard of it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most will be able to discuss it in some depth, and a good percentage will say that they feel it is, indeed, how all their thoughts and actions come about.

It's not a need for a word for thinking in the Determinist sense. It's the fact that there isn't one. Because the idea is not something that has been a part of humanity all along. Which makes sense. Because we don't feel determinism. I mean, everybody who grows uo without ever hearing anything about these ideas is going to take for granted that, faced with different options, although they chose one, they could have chosen another. It doesn't feel as though the choice we make is the only one we possibly could have made.

It's an intellectual idea. One people came to think of after seeing it's how everything we observe and study with our science works, and wondering if it's how our thinking works, too. The idea wasn't originated by someone who felt that's how it works, and started trying to tell everyone.

At least that's the way it seems to me. Even now, having heard this idea for some time, I can intellectually understand it, but I can't feel it.

Well, not having had an inkling of this whole line of thought until a couple days ago, plus not having ever read a word about such things, I'm going to ask for some slack. :grin: Certainly, I'm not claiming any great revelations. I just think humanity, as a whole, has always taken the default position that we have free will, and thought is not simply brain states. I think we would have words specifically for that idea if any significant number of people thought it in the language's younger days.

↪Patterner what does thinking without consciousness have to do with anything? Did someone suggest that in this thread? — flannel jesus

No. Just another example.

It seems to me that to some degree "intuition" is a word we use for speaking about thinking without consciousness. — wonderer1

It may be that the word applies at times. But I'm not sure that's the intent of the word, though. The definitions I'm finding are about knowing without conscious reasoning. Does that fit the bill? I'm not sure. I've never posted this kind of thing before.

And if you don't mind multiple words being used, Here is some recent casual discussion of thinking without consciousness. — wonderer1

We can definitely discuss the idea with our language. My point is that we don't have words for things that weren't part of the, shall we say, collective consciousness. Like I've heard there's are many words for "snow" in the Inuit language. Knowing about the different types of snow was extremely important to them. So the language has words for each. Closer to the equator, it wasn't as important. Certainly not a matter of life and death on a daily basis. So, while the people noticed the differences, only major categories got specific words. Snow, slush, ice... The variations only get adjectives. Things like powdery snow and packing snow.

Since determined thinking and thinking without consciousness were not a big part of the collective consciousness, we don't find specific words for them in the language.

This is all just seat of my pants thinking. I couldn't guess how much I have wrong.

I'm not remotely knowledgeable enough to debate it. I'm just thinking we don't have words for the competing ideas being discussed. We have a word for thinking. We don't have one for thinking with consciousness, and one for thinking without consciousness. We don't have one for thinking independent of the physical events of the brain, and one for thinking that is the physical events of the brain. The ideas of thinking without consciousness and thinking being nothing but the physical events of our brains are not parts of our culture, or our language. Is this because our culture and language grew in a people who, rare individuals aside, never considered these concepts? The things we have words for are the things the people assumed were true without even saying.

In not remotely. I just thought FO didn't understand what fj was saying, and tried to get them on the same page.

Yes. I agree with you entirely. I argued the same position in another thread not long ago. The problem, I believe, is that languages were developed by beings who believed as you and I do. If, for many thousands of years, anyone had any inkling of determinism, or thought we did not have free will, they probably didn't have many serious conversations about it with many people. So we're stuck trying to discuss things with language that can't easily express the ideas. I was saying choices don't have meaning, and aren't "actual" choices.

But how does the phrase “make sense TO ME” make sense in a deterministic world? How do “you” make sense to you, if there is only a causal chain - where do “you” fit in there any differently than a heart beat? And the word “choice” becomes a metaphor for simply two relay racers passing the baton of cause and effect. — Fire Ologist

I think I understand what you're saying. I don't think you understand what he's saying.

Heart beat was a good thing to mention. In a deterministic world, a certain group of physical events takes place, and we call the overall activity a heart beating. Another certain group of physical events takes place, and we call the overall activity thinking. If Determinism is correct, there is no "me" aside from the physical processes. The "me" is the physical events.

Intended by whom? — flannel jesus

Beats me. By whatever non-determined consciousness is behind them. Different people who believe this type of thing might have different ideas. Some might say a universal consciousness. Some might say God. Some might say other things. I'm just saying the consciousness literally telling determinists what to do in the context of this thread - that is, the consciousness that made the op - would (presumably) be as determined as the rest of us. Just another part of the gigantic web of physical events that are all of our thoughts.

Worded that way sounds like a consciousness telling us what to think.
— Patterner

But the context is that we do have a consciousness literally telling determinists what to do, here in the thread. So comparing THAT - a real thinking entity actually telling people what to do - to determinism "telling people what to do", just doesn't make all that much sense to me. — flannel jesus

But, in that context, the "consciousness literally telling determinists what to do" is, itself, determined. So it's still a consistent theory. I was trying to say some non-determined consciousness arranged/arranges everything so that the webs of physical events that are our thoughts are exactly as they are by design. The exact thoughts we have were intended.

Determinism isn't whispering suggestions on what or how to think in anyone's ear. — flannel jesus

Right. Worded that way sounds like a consciousness telling us what to think. I would say determinism means the web of physical events is our thoughts. But that doesn't mean some thinking entity is causing the physical events to play out the way they do in order to create those thoughts.

↪Fire Ologist Yes but determinism isn't telling us "don't think" if we're already thinking - determinisms the one telling us think! Or rather, "we" are defined by determinism, and "we" are defined as "things that think" — flannel jesus

Determinism tells us exactly what to think, and exactly when to think it. Yes?

That fact that I can believe I am free means to me that I have to be free, because I have a belief without causes. So that is the best proof. — Fire Ologist

That is a valid point. They're isn't even an answer to the question of how webs of physical interactions are conscious/have subjective experience/are aware. Add to that the question of how these webs of physical interactions ever got the idea that they are not completely subject to physical interactions.

To be honest I am kind of getting bored of saying the same thing and people constantly thinking this is some kind of trick. Maybe I worded it badly but cannot think of a better way to word it. If you do not get it then nothing I can do I guess. I have tried. — I like sushi

If several people are misunderstanding you, particularly if they are all misunderstanding you in the same way, then yes, there's a good chance you worded it badly.

In my case, I have answered you as clearly as can be. What is 'better' is a matter of opinion. You seem to be looking for an objectively correct answer. There isn't one.

:up:

That does not offer any kind of answer(s) to the question. — I like sushi

There is no objectively correct answer. It is a matter of opinion. Many people believe it is 'better' to believe Determinism, and many believe it is 'better' to believe Non-determinism. Neither view gives an advantage in survival, attracting mates, scientific understanding, ability to be happy, or anything else.

It more or less sounds like you are arguing with yourself about entering the experience machine or not. — I like sushi

Not in the least. I would enter. I think it would be an amazing experience.

The only difference being one is willfully living a lie and the other choosing not to. — I like sushi

There is no lie. It is another setting in which to experience. Putting on VR goggles is not a lie. Entering the Matrix is not a lie.

I would rather know what's going on, and base my decisions on that. The truth shall set you free, or some such crap. Let's say I'm happily married, crazy in love with my wife. Let's also say she cheated on me, and I don't know about it. I would rather find out, and have my life turned upside down with a divorce (if that is, indeed, the decision we came to) than go the rest of my life happily ignorant of the truth.

Is it 'better' to believe in Determinism or Non-determinism assuming Non-determinism is true? Why? Why not? If neither why? — I like sushi

Since you put 'better' between ' and ', it would be a good idea to define how you are using the word at the moment. Otherwise, different people might answer based on their own interpretations of it. If we don't all happen to interpret it the same way, there might be no way to compare the answers.

For myself...

If Non-determinism is true, then whether or not it is 'better' to believe in Determinism or Non-determinism is a matter of opinion. My opinion is it's better to believe in Non-determinism.

If Non-determinism is not true, then the question is meaningless, since all any of us 'believe' is actually nothing more than the way the physical events play out.

More to the point, do you think someone who believes in Determinism would put up more of a fight than someone who believes in Non-determinism? That is what I was asking.

I said, plain and clear, that a believer in Determinism would not because they would not believe they are losing anything. — I like sushi

I believe in Non-determinism, and I would not put up a fight. I would embrace the opportunity of the experience.

I do not believe a believer in Determinism would necessarily not put up a fight for the reason you state any more than they would not put up a fight if I tried to cut their arm off. Even if they were tied down with no possibility of avoiding the fate, they would not simply go along with it just because they believe it is preordained.

In essence, you are saying, "I am defining a Determinist as someone who will not fight this particular thing, and a Non-determinust as someone who will. My question is, do you think the person I've defined as someone who will not put up a fight will put up more of a fight than someone who I have defined as someone who will put up a fight?"

This is why you are not getting the kind of answer from some of us that you want.

How about looking at it this way... If you were forced into the machine against your will, and you had reason to believe you would never be able to escape it, what would you do? Become catatonic because of the horror that your life would never be "real" again? Perhaps even kill yourself? Become an e-junkie so that you wouldn't be able to think straight, hoping you wouldn't remember the horror of your plight?

Could you not have a meaningful existence in the machine? Could you not be happy? Is that existence of no value? Would it be worth trying?

↪Patterner Huh? The point is you would not enter the machine because it was not real. — I like sushi

I certainly would. I wouldn't miss the experience.

↪Patterner This is WAY off topic now. — I like sushi

It's not. You said:

The human choice of entering this machine is effectively a denial of reality in favor of a world where human experiences are determined by the machine rather than chosen directly by the human. — I like sushi

I disagree, and am telling you why. What is able to be experienced in the real world is the result of certain factors, and quite a bit of it is outside of my control. What is able to be experienced in this machine is the result of other factors, also largely outside of my control. Either way, I don't make the rules/laws of nature, but would be experiencing what could be experienced. Assuming I had the same consciousness and free will in the machine that I have now (regardless of how much I have now), as those plugged into the Matrix do, then the setting of my life isn't important. How I chose to live it is.

Before elaborating on further nuances, it is time to introduce Nozick’s thought experiment, the “Experience Machine”. This was created as a means of disproving a certain kind of hedonism, but it will serve a good purpose here in developing the problems of choice in a non-determinist human life (a life of choice). Nozick’s experiment revealed that people would generally refuse the perfect lived experience if they knew such an experience was disconnected from reality (in a Matrix movie fashion). Here there is a parallel with the idea of believing in determinism - entering the ‘experience machine’ - in a non-determinist human world. The human choice of entering this machine is effectively a denial of reality in favor of a world where human experiences are determined by the machine rather than chosen directly by the human. — I like sushi

I hadn't heard of Nozick. But how I experience an event - how I feel about it, and what I chose to do next - are real, regardless of the nature of the event. If I know I have entered a machine, I feel and act in response to whatever input I receive, and my feelings and actions will be influenced by that knowledge.

If determinism is true, then there is no good reason to deliberate because such thought will not change how I decide (I must choose, or "act" the same way whether I deliberate or not). — NotAristotle

Deliberating adds to the equation. You cannot know that a decision made immediately and a decision made after any amount of deliberation would be identical, even if determinism is responsible in either case.

You're confusing determinism with predictability, but I thought we'd already covered this. — fishfry

I predict that conversation will never end. :grin: