Yes, I do, if the subvenient term you’re referring to is the one that is subsequently going to be part of a supervenience relation with words and sentences. What the copier copies is a physical object, without any “meaning level.” No surprise, the copier can’t enter into any sort of relation with anything, so its copy isn’t a subvenient term. — J

I actually don't follow this argument at all. Why is it that the copy machine does not copy and produce the subvenient term? For reference here are some quotes from our conversation. I began:

I would want to say that the rational/mental meaning supervenes on the purely physical system, in much the same way that the meaning of a word supervenes on the written symbols or spoken phonemes. — Leontiskos

You introduced the notion of a "subvenient set":

What is the (allegedly) strictly physical description of the subvenient set? — J

...and then I pressed the idea of a copy machine: the physical item is the thing that the copy machine copies. I actually don't see how it can be denied that meaning supervenes on the physical thing that the copy machine produces. If I fax you a letter what you receive is a physical copy, and that physical copy is where the meaning comes from. If the copy is faulty then the meaning will be faulty, and if the copy is accurate then the meaning will be accurate. The meaning is clearly supervening on the physical copy.

It seems to me that on your view copy machines can't exist, because you think a strictly physical meaning-carrier cannot exist. Yet copy machines seem to simply prove, contrary to your presuppositions, that physical objects can have a "meaning level."

For this to make sense, you also have to accept a kind of “principle of indiscernibles” which states that a copied page can be two things at once, depending on who’s looking. Before you reject that out of hand, consider that this principle can explain, among other things, how art happens – how a physical object can be simply that, and also, under the right circumstances, a work of art. — J

Okay, but are you saying that the copy is simultaneously a subvenient term and not a subvenient term? Above I said, "In one way these two things are the same thing, and in another way they are different things" ().

Perhaps you are saying that the dominoes are strictly physical in one sense, and yet in another sense meaning goes before their physicality given their logical ordering? We could utilize a variant of Paley's Watchmaker and say, therefore, that someone who stumbled upon the dominoes would be able to infer a source of meaning (usually called a mind).

Interesting, I didn’t know that. So a proposition, say, has something resembling a matter/form division? — J

On this forum I have found that a lot of people conceive of propositions like objectively floating clouds that can be "tapped into," much like Plato's Forms. For Aquinas (and I believe also for Aristotle) a proposition is always dependent upon a mind, and therefore the material element in the mind that corresponds to the proposition will always accompany the proposition, yes. In the case of an immaterial mind I believe Aquinas would say that there is not knowledge that exists in a propositional or discursive form. Or else, if we don't want to quickly get off track, I would probably need to know how you conceive of a proposition.

Yes, but what they are true about can range on a spectrum from strictly physical to strictly mental. I admit I don’t understand why there can’t be anything non-mental. — J

Because truth is inextricably tied up with the mental, for we do not know anything apart from our mind. My mind conceives the shapes, the letters, the words, the sentences, the meaning, etc. In one way this represents an increasing sequence of mental-ness, for the latter terms presuppose the mental conceptions of the former terms in addition to other mental conceptions. Still, there is no first term that is a non-mental truth or is known non-mentally.

What's interesting here is that the copy machine does enter into a relation with the thing it is supposed to copy, namely at the level of shape. It is able to recognize and reproduce shapes.

Similar perplexity here. I suppose a hardcore idealism would insist that everything is mental, in the sense that everything we know about is a product of our minds... — J

It's not that everything is reducible to mental powers, but rather that there is no object of cognition that is known in a non-mind way; and it seems like your search for a "physical subvenient term" is the search for an object of cognition that is known in a non-mind way.

Maybe you could say more about the upside-down G shape understood as (semiotic/linguistic) meaningless but nevertheless “mental.” — J

"...an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning..." The ability to recognize shapes requires a sufficiently sophisticated mind and visual apparatus. You could think about this developmentally. Children can recognize shapes. Older children can recognize letters. Older children can recognize words, etc. Even the recognition of shape in that first step is mental.

I understand the Beatles example now, thanks. The phenomenon you’re describing is a common one for musicians, and often vexing. For instance, I would dearly love to be able to hear song X with an “innocent ear,” unencumbered by theoretical baggage, but since I’ve been a working musician all my life and my brain now performs certain kinds of analysis automatically, this is extremely difficult for me. So the Beatles lyrics are like the theoretical baggage, in that both obscure something more basic and, arguably, more purely musical. — J

Okay, great. But I think it is also worth noting how valuable and incarnational this phenomenon can be. It allows music to take on other dimensions. John Williams' Imperial March was surely better after Star Wars than before. In fact the more closely sound engineers and composers work with other members of a creative endeavor (directors, writers, poets, actors, etc.), the better the result and the less extricable the material music.

Nope. Not the acts. The moral judgment. — Vera Mont

The moral judgment judges an act, and therefore your evasion fails. By being unable to specify the acts, you are automatically unable to specify the moral judgments of those acts. As it turns out, personal hygiene and germs are closely related.

- So your position is that when I wash my hands to remove germs I am addressing personal hygiene, but when I wash my hands to remove ebola germs I am only addressing public safety? Apparently you are forced to conceive of these two things as entirely different acts, with no overlap, such that the latter act does not involve personal hygiene.

Your position is strange, to say the least. Again, I would suggest giving these issues a bit more thought than you have.

The answer lies on whether one sees morality in the act itself or in the person/intention. — Lionino

In responding to @fdrake’s claim I pointed to volition. Acts, intentions, and habits are all moral insofar as they are volitional. There is no exclusive dichotomy between the morality of acts, intentions, and habits.

What this means is that, in assessing alcoholism, it doesn’t matter a great deal whether alcoholism is viewed in terms of acts, intentions, or habits. What matters is whether it is volitional, and for this reason @fdrake’s A2 is central. He is viewing it as non-volitional, and for this reason your rejoinder stands.

- The claim that self-defense is murder would seem to beg the question at hand.

People do things they think to be immoral all the time if it suits them. — Janus

Obviously, but again, what in the world does this have to do with the OP?

The one who posed the question said people were hypocrites to morally condemn torture in any and all circumstances when most of them would torture the kidnapper in that situation. I said that was wrong—even if there is no good argument to support condoning torture in any circumstance, it is nonetheless understandable that anyone who cares about their family would torture the kidnapper in that circumstance and would not be concerned about being justified in doing so. They are two different questions. — Janus

He was right and you were wrong. They are hypocrites. It makes no difference whether their hypocrisy is understandable.

I didn't say it was a "non-moral issue". I said that its status as a moral issue may be irrelevant to the one defending themselves in the act of defense. — Janus

Therefore...?

I am imagining the parallel where we are having a discussion about whether one should eat unknown mushrooms, and then you come along and say, "Well, someone who is very hungry might eat unknown mushrooms." But what is the purpose of such a comment supposed to be? That people might do things they know to be stupid? Just as people might do things they know to be immoral?

That there might be pacifists whose ideology carries more weight to them than their own wellbeing or survival, even in the mortally threatening moment, doesn't seem relevant. — Janus

How do you figure that it is irrelevant that people will undergo harm for moral reasons? Why don't you try to set out some form of syllogistic argumentation for why you believe this to be irrelevant.

- Ebola, then. :roll:

- Maybe ask yourself the question of whether handwashing rose to the level of a "moral act" during COVID-19.

What might be, from an abstract perspective, immoral would be completely irrelevant to someone acting to save their own lives and/or the lives of their loved ones. — Janus

No. The moral status of self-defense is an age-old issue. It is not a de facto non-moral issue.

Neither is it practically irrelevant, for there are pacifists who maintain their pacifism even while in danger.

Most people believe it would be morally right and justified to kill someone to save yourself or someone else because it’s basic self defense whether the person you’re killing did anything or not. — Captain Homicide

"Whether the person you're killing did anything or not"? This sounds like the exact opposite of self-defense. Self-defense implies that the other person did something.

I would suggest reading the thread on How to Write an OP.

There is nothing immoral about lax personal hygiene, but nobody likes to be called Pigpen. — Vera Mont

We tend to use the word "moral" to identify that which surpasses an arbitrary degree of harm. Because personal hygiene usually only effects a negligible level of harm, it is not deemed moral. Yet if bad personal hygiene surpassed a certain threshold, such as when it would cause others to become physically sick, it would then be deemed "immoral." There is no qualitative difference between minor and major degrees of bad personal hygiene, and therefore there is no precise philosophical distinction between the two. No sound moral philosophy makes arbitrary distinctions. Or in other words: the uncritical, every day use of this term is not robust or ultimately coherent, and this is why moral philosophy has never defined the genus of the moral in terms of the casual speech of contemporary culture.

It's an odd disease then, where how you act both gives you it and keeps it going. — fdrake

I would say that is correct. The OP is concerned with that which involves volition, i.e. things that people do. Alcoholism qua disease/illness does not involve volition, and you spell this out explicitly in your A2. Only alcohol qua volitional/culpable malady fits within the context of the OP.

For instance, one could be born an alcoholic, but this form of alcoholism would be irrelevant to the OP, for it is not something that one does. Thus not all alcoholism is volitional, but the non-volitional forms of alcoholism are irrelevant to the OP. The non-volitional form of alcoholism you specified would be much like Down syndrome, and this would also be irrelevant to the OP even though it be deemed undesirable.

Are there things that aren’t immoral but you still shouldn’t want to be the kind of person that does them? — Captain Homicide

No. If you don't want to be the kind of person that does X, then by definition you deem X immoral. The reason people in our culture resist this fact is because we have a taboo against moral claims, a "dictatorship of relativism." The taboo is common on this forum as well.

- Yep, and “subjective” and “objective” are also better names. What is at stake is not externalization.

- It was, but not in toto. I do not object to therapy as merely one part of philosophy. The point is that it is not the whole.

My attention was drawn to this small joy. I thought I should share it with you. — Banno

For the most part I would respond the way Churchill is said to have responded after reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, "I have always believed this." Anscombe would no doubt resonate with the essay.

On the other hand this debate has always been at play in Christianity, with the Hellenization thesis, anthropological and eschatological debates concerning the sexes, celibate vs. married life, eremitical vs. cenobitical life, etc. Further, an androgynous ideal tends to emerge from Greek culture, but is this true of philosophy elsewhere? In places like China or India? Somewhat, but probably less so.

It is about growing up, and being human, and the inherent limits of great men. — Banno

It seems to me that it is about the inherent limits of unmarried men.

In this sense, philosophy can be a form of therapy, helping us to clear conflict, prioritise, and see things clearly. — Midgley

I would see this therapeutic/plumbing approach as useful and yet extremely limited. It is also remarkably recent in the history of philosophy, and I think it is basically a consequence of our pragmatism and naturalism.

This is an important clarification, and if I appeared to be asking for matter without form, I shouldn’t have been. The question, whether matter can be known without form, is an interesting one, and I tend to agree with Aristotle that it can’t, but it’s not germane to the question that I (and I think the OP) was raising, which is about meaning, not form. — J

Based on the above, we now need to make this more precise. We know that the G-shape would be a matter-form compound regardless, since turtles etc. By introducing the idea of semantic/linguistic form, we’ve moved into a different use of the word “form” -- indeed, it’s what I’m calling “meaning” — J

Either matter/form applies everywhere or else it doesn't. If matter/form does not apply to words (and meaning), then matter/form does not apply everywhere. For Aristotle the matter/form duality does not merely apply to "physical" realities, although such realities are the clearest example, and are therefore the starting point. Perhaps we could say that there is a literal sense and an analogous sense of matter/form, but for Aristotle it seems to be more complicated than that.

But this position need not be merely Aristotelian. In this post I gave all sorts of examples of the subvenient term. If you think the subvenient term does not exist, then what do you make of those examples? To take one, when a copy machine makes a copy of a book page do you deny that it is merely copying the subvenient term (the Aristotelian matter-correlate)? And if it is copying the subvenient term, then obviously the subvenient term exists and is specifiable, no?

I assume that Aristotle, while averring that “it’s form all the way down,” would still call any such combination of matter and form “physical.” So would I. Otherwise, we’d have nothing to contrast with “mental.” Simply adding form to matter – assuming they could even be cognized as separate – doesn’t make the resulting phenomenon mental. (Let’s sidestep phenomenal vs. noumenal, which also doesn’t seem germane here.) So what we’re left with is what most everyone agrees to call the physical world, matter plus form . . . but then there’s the pesky issue of meanings, which is something else again. It may be “form all the way down,” but it isn’t “meaning all the way down,” and that’s the problem. — J

No, it sort of is meaning all the way down, and we are coming up against the problem of universals. I said:

And what is the difference between a linguistic-conception and a shape-conception, or between the speaker's shape-conception and the non-speaker's shape-conception? The former elements of both pairs are more abstract and "mental" than the latter. For example, we could say that, for 'G', the linguistic form builds upon the shape-form which builds upon the ink-form. [...] The linguistic form is always higher in the sense that it presupposes the lower forms, whereas the lower forms do not presuppose the higher forms. Language users are able to do more with shapes than non-language users. — Leontiskos

In this argument I was saying that there are things that are more mental and less mental, but there is nothing which is non-mental. All truths are mental, whether they be meaning-truths or shape-truths or ink-truths.

Let’s try to rephrase it: We both agree that an upside-down G is matter-plus-form but no meaning (for English speakers). We also agree that the rightside-up G is matter-plus-form-plus-meaning. — J

I think you may be conflating meaning with the mental. I would either want to say that an upside-down G has shape meaning but not linguistic meaning, or else I would want to say that it has no (semiotic/linguistic) meaning, but it is nevertheless "mental."

But my point all along has been that the infusion or importation of meaning occurs at this level, not at the level of words. By the time we get to “the meaning of a word supervenes on letter-changes,” we’re already working with a subvenient term (the letter) which involves the physical coupled with a meaning. — J

To say that words supervene on the physical is not to say that words supervene on letters, although words do also supervene on letters. To talk about letters qua letters is to talk about entities that already have linguistic meaning, as you have pointed out. My original statement which began this was, "the rational/mental meaning supervenes on the purely physical system." A letter is not a purely physical system. The thing that the copy machine copies is a purely physical system, and mental meaning does supervene on that purely physical system.

Now the deep issue is that meaning never supervenes on what is non-mental simpliciter. If it did then we might think sand dunes are conscious, as some users in this thread apparently do think. In the case of Bobby Fisher, the copy machine, or the archeologists who turn up a dead language, a dormant or implicit meaning is being resuscitated. At the end of the day it would seem that either mind arises from matter or matter arises from mind, and as a theist I hold to the latter. Meaning and intelligibility are part of creation because creation comes from a Mind.

About the Beatles example: I had trouble following it because I wasn’t sure how you were using “linguistic form” here. Do you mean that the Beatles-person hears the lyrics in their head as the tune plays, while the other doesn’t? Why would this mean that the Beatles-person can’t hear the matter-relata at all? I’m not clear about the “indecipherable aspect” of the melody. — J

Yes, even when I wrote that post I thought that to be the weakest sentence, but I decided to keep it given the contextual discussion. First, by "linguistic form" I mean that the musical melody has taken on a lyrical form that has become inseparable for the Beatles-person. In their mind the melody is welded to the lyrics. Now it is arguable whether they are able to hear the melody absent the linguistic form (sans deautomatization). For them, the melody is always in-formed by the lyrics and their linguistic meaning. They can't directly access the isolated subvenient term, and the subvenient term only exists in its fullness for the non-Beatles-person.

(We could also think about this in terms of degrees, and say that the subvenient term is more accessible to the non-Beatles-Person than the Beatles-person, but I prefer thinking in terms of polarities for pedagogical purposes. If you wish to press the point that the non-linguistic 'G' is nowhere to be found, then I would submit that the Beatles-person also cannot find the subvenient melody. If you wish to press the point that the subvenient melody is accessible, then I would submit that G-conceived-as-a-shape is also accessible.)

(Or do you simply mean that the non-Beatles person is having a better time of it because unbothered by those silly lyrics? :wink: ) — J

:lol:

Yeah, not the forum's finest hour. — Banno

No, but it is perhaps an instructive hour. We witnessed two individuals who are extremely confident and yet demonstrated that they do not understand even the most elementary logical inferences (@Corvus and ). This is a good reminder that the following thought cannot be taken for granted, “This is a philosophy forum, therefore everyone meets the minimum level of logical competence.” There needs to be better “handshaking”; a more cautious appraisal of the interlocutor’s competence. If this is not done then a great deal of time will be wasted on everyone’s part.

So there's something for you to learn about variations in human nature. — wonderer1

Eh, the case could be reasonably made that this correction should have occurred in private.

What has happened in this thread is a microcosm of what I warned about in your own thread. @AmadeusD put his trust in ChatGPT and because of this came to believe logical fallacies. Like a human, ChatGPT made an error and recovered from that error without ever admitting that it made an error, and AmadeusD follows it almost step-by-step. Here’s what I said:

It seems to me that this is the big liability for us, namely that we don't know what it is that ChatGPT knows and what it is that ChatGPT doesn't know. We can attempt to verify its claims and quantify its accuracy, but probably a lot of what is being done and what will be done is taking ChatGPT at its word. — Leontiskos

I was quoting this from your post:

For example, consider the bi-conditional proposition: "If it is raining, then the ground is wet." Denying the antecedent would result in saying "It is not raining, therefore the ground is not wet." However, the ground could still be wet for reasons other than rain, such as someone watering their lawn or a sprinkler system being turned on.

Therefore, denying the antecedent of a bi-conditional proposition does not provide valid grounds for concluding that the consequent is also false, making it logically unsound." — AmadeusD

As I noted, this is false because it mistakenly calls a conditional statement a biconditional statement. It also makes false claims about biconditional statements.

In the new quote that you provided in your last post, the reasoning is formally valid (except for the minor error in constructing the biconditional), but it is unsound given the fact that things other than rain can also make the ground wet, such as dew.

So you would agree with the AI, and say that the falsity of the “first” half of a biconditional does not entail the falsity of the other half?

- What you have expressed is a different statement entirely, and yours is in fact biconditional.

For example, consider the bi-conditional proposition: "If it is raining, then the ground is wet." — AmadeusD

It pleases me that the AI does not know what a biconditional is.

Becoming experienced requires learning how to ride. Learning how to ride requires belief. — creativesoul

And your tacit conclusion is, “Therefore, riding a bike requires belief.” The question and ambiguity is this: did it merely require belief at some point in the past, or does it require ongoing belief?

One sees the bike, handles it...no need for belief. — Janus

1. I know airplanes can fly.
2. I believe airplanes can fly.
3. I know how to ride a bike.
4. I believe I can ride a bike.
5. 1 -> 2
6. 3 -> 4

Do (5) and (6) hold?

(It depends only on our definition of belief, but the definition of belief that supports (5) and (6) is not uncommon or illegitimate.)

The original argument you gave had to do with “avoiding danger,” and because of this it was a good example of the invalidity of the inference from learning to riding. There are a variety of ways in which the experienced rider is not avoiding danger in the way that someone who is learning is avoiding danger.

Yes, or in other words: denying the “antecedent” of a biconditional is not a fallacy. Yet denying the antecedent of a conditional is a well-known fallacy.

I think your general approach is correct here, but it would seem that you need to speak to the question of riding, not the question of learning. This is because it would be perfectly possible that one needs to believe while learning, but once they are an adept practitioner that belief ceases. In other words, your argument applies to learning, but there is no reason to believe that your argument will also apply to riding simpliciter.

(Not everything we do when learning to ride a bike is necessarily something that we do when riding a bike.)

I would simply advise you to be present to the text, and to recognize that this is one of those texts that you can reread for the rest of your life. Plato will be engaging you on multiple levels, and ideally you should allow the text to fire on all cylinders, without limiting or circumscribing it.

So maybe the question about the letter G becomes: If there were a strictly physical subvenient item somewhere in the neighborhood, where would we look for it? On my view, it has to be “beneath” or “prior to” the letter G itself, which is already a physical/meaning hybrid. — J

Yes, I think I have understood what you are asking, but I think my last post to you illustrates where the strictly physical item is located. In one sense you are asking an Aristotelian to show you matter without form, and this is impossible. Incidentally, @apokrisis has written well on these topics, but let me try to say more…

This is where I think I most clearly addressed your question:

That's what a sign is: a perceptible reality with an attached meaning. The strictly physical description is simply the perceptible realities, without taking into account any meaning they might possibly have. — Leontiskos

For English speakers the shape, 'G', carries with it an intrinsic meaning. For someone who has no knowledge of the English language, the shape 'G' (presumably) does not carry with it an intrinsic meaning. The non-speaker encounters the physical shape in isolation from linguistic meaning; the speaker encounters the physical shape as already intrinsically bound up with the meaning. For the English speaker the mere shape can only be accessed by prescinding from the attached meaning as far as possible (this is in fact possible albeit difficult, and is called "deautomatization").

So if you are looking for the physical perception in G-conceived-as-a-letter you will not find it, because G-conceived-as-a-letter is already a matter-form compound (where "form" here indicates semantic/linguistic form). Instead, the matter of the G-letter sign is found in G-conceived-as-a-shape. It seems to me that you are looking in the wrong place, and thereby committing a kind of category error. The linguistic form of 'G' is a mental relation, existing in the mind and not in mind-independent reality. Its complement (G-conceived-as-a-shape) is also a mental relation, a conception, albeit an inverted mental relation which is difficult for the English-speaker to access given the speaker's intellectual habit of associating the shape with a linguistic meaning. For the non-English speaker 'G' does not have a linguistic form; it has only a shape form, and therefore the non-speaker is immediately able to access G-conceived-as-a-shape, and they are entirely unable to access G-conceived-as-a-letter (unless they learned English).*

You are a musician. You have an audience of two, one person who has never heard the Beatles and one who has. You play the melody of "Eight Days a Week" on your instrument. One person hears a linguistic form and one does not, although both are hearing a matter-form compound. That which the person who has heard the Beatles does not hear is precisely what is the matter relata in the linguistic matter-form compound; and it is only the person who has not heard the Beatles who is able to easily and fully access this "relata." But the subtlety lies in the fact that for the Beatles-person this relata is a relata or indecipherable aspect of the melody they hear, not a separately existing thing; and for the non-Beatles-person it is a separately existing thing—it is the melody itself, devoid of any linguistic or lyrical aspect, and therefore not a relata. In one way these two things are the same thing, and in another way they are different things. Both listeners hear the "material" melody, yet for one it is complete in itself and for another it calls out to the lyrics. The non-Beatles-person's matter-form compound is the matter relata of the Beatles-person's linguistic matter-form compound.

(I think your question about specifying what counts as G-conceived-as-a-letter and what does not count as G-conceived-as-a-letter is a somewhat different topic, because for the English speaker some things count as G-conceived-as-a-letter and for the non-English speaker nothing at all counts as G-conceived-as-a-letter. That question is a question only for English speakers, and it speaks to a much more subtle question of the relation between matter and form in English writing. For Aristotle the matter-form compound is irreducible, and so this phenomenon is everywhere, and like "turtles all the way down." There simply is no getting outside of it.)


* And what is the difference between a linguistic-conception and a shape-conception, or between the speaker's shape-conception and the non-speaker's shape-conception? The former elements of both pairs are more abstract and "mental" than the latter. For example, we could say that, for 'G', the linguistic form builds upon the shape-form which builds upon the ink-form. Or if we wanted to speak in geometrical terms, the linguistic form builds upon two-dimensional shape which builds upon one-dimensional points. The linguistic form is always higher in the sense that it presupposes the lower forms, whereas the lower forms do not presuppose the higher forms. Language users are able to do more with shapes than non-language users.

Throw it in! That's absolutely part of knowledge and belief's relationship. — fdrake

:up: Sounds good. I just wanted to highlight an aspect of belief that I often see overlooked on this forum.

If the dictionary sufficed, you can end the thread here. — fdrake

I don't find the OP question very interesting at all. I think most everyone knows that belief and knowledge are not the same thing. So good on you for raising more interesting subjects. :wink:

I think you are creating too strong a separation between knowledge and belief. Beliefs are very often taken to be propositional, cognitional, intellectual, truth apt, etc. For example, the second two definitions that Merriam-Webster gives:

2) something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion : something believed

3) conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence


For example, in practice belief is often used as qualitatively identical to knowledge, just less certain. Your understanding seems to exclude this common meaning of belief.

We actually see a symptom of this pragmatization of scientia in recent philosophy of language, for example:

The meaning of "water boils at 100℃" is what we are able to do with it. — Banno

...Speculative claims are thus reframed to mean practical claims. Many such users on the forum seem to actually labor under the idea that speculative beliefs do not exist. This is reflected in places like Banno's thread on belief.

So the world government idea becomes even more undesirable in the eyes of those who oppose it, because it implies censorship of destructive knowledge further raising suspicion and conspiracies about world government. — SpaceDweller

Rather, the objection is that any solution which requires that a small minority maintain power indefinitely will eventually fail. Governmental solutions, including a world government, require that a small minority maintain power indefinitely. The democratic case is slightly more complicated, but presumably the government that is doing the policing will need to be filled with superior humans, and insofar as such policing is necessary there must be large numbers of inferior humans who need to be policed. Thus even on the democratic case a similar reality ensues.

Governmental approaches can often be useful alongside other tactics, but they cannot be a standalone silver bullet, and in general I don't think "minority approaches" are sustainable.

I'm inclined to believe that the same principle applies in the case of rational inference and neural biology, contra 'neural reductionism'. — Wayfarer

I think that's probably right. From above, "logical reasoning or inference utilizes identifiable, deterministic patterns, and we are able to order the dominoes in such a way that they mimic those patterns."

In this transaction, a piece of information has been relayed by various means. Firstly, by semaphore; secondly, by Morse code; and finally, in writing. The physical forms and the nature of the symbolic code is completely different in each step: the flags are visual, the morse code auditory, the log book entry written text. But the same information is represented in each step of the sequence. — Wayfarer

Right, and it is an interesting example.

In such a case, what stays the same, and what changes? — Wayfarer

If Morse code can handle all of the nuance of semaphore, and the written language can handle all of the nuance of Morse code, then the fidelity of the original message could be preserved throughout. I would want to say that if everyone involved is from the same culture and equipped with the same linguistic abilities, then the communication will be effective.

Of course the simpler answer is that the meaning stays the same while the physical media change. What are your thoughts?

But is this really a supervenience on strictly physical reality? — J

Those who cannot read English cannot tell the difference between a letter-change and a serif-change, but I used the example precisely because you can read English. English speakers are in a position to understand that, "the meaning of a word supervenes on the written symbols," because they understand that when words change, meaning changes, as is said in the quote by Pascal in my bio. In English serif-changes cannot effect word-changes.

How does the “correct” physical organization produce meaning? — J

By convention. Word-signs are based on convention.

So by the time we arrive at the level of “the meaning of a word supervening on letter-changes,” we’re already working with a dual description, i.e., G as physical item, and G as symbol. Therefore (finally!): Can this really be supervenience between the physical and the mental, if G is already being used as a meaning vehicle? What is the (allegedly) strictly physical description of the subvenient set? — J

That's what a sign is: a perceptible reality with an attached meaning. The strictly physical description is simply the perceptible realities, without taking into account any meaning they might possibly have.

Do copyists need to understand the language they are copying? No, although it can be helpful to have such understanding. Similarly, when a copy machine makes a copy, it is copying the physical reality without in any way interacting with the meaning.

I recall a story about Bobby Fisher where he delivered an audible message in a language he did not know. He simply memorized and repeated the sounds he had heard, and the person to whom he delivered the sounds was able to understand their meaning. Similarly, it is possible to find an ancient text which we cannot interpret, and nevertheless know that it has meaning within a linguistic context that we are ignorant of. These are all ways in which the material sign and the formal sign differ; or in which the material aspect of the sign and the formal aspect of the sign differ.

One of the interesting things about the OP is that the dominoes are "copying" a form of human reasoning (about prime numbers), and this domino setup is to the decision procedure for prime numbers what the manuscript of Huck Finn is to Huck Finn, or what Fisher's vocal sounds are to the meaning of those sounds. In all such cases non-mental artifacts are imbued with meaning.

- "Change" is applied to the meaning of (written) words insofar as the letters change, not insofar as the serifs change. The meaning of a word supervenes on these letter-changes, and because written letters are physical realities, the meaning is supervening on physical realities. A similar fact holds with the dominoes, for the meaning supervenes only on particular kinds of changes among the dominoes, namely whether they stand or fall.

But I do think you are right that there is a difference, and I tried to get at the difference with the ideas of discursivity and a validation method. Yet the similarity is also worth noting, for in both cases a mind is infusing material reality with meaning. In the case of the domino-sign the meaning is somewhat active, and able to yield new information.

- Another question here asks how rational processes can be represented in non-rational systems (i.e. How is it that the correct answer can be "both"?).

I would want to say that the rational/mental meaning supervenes on the purely physical system, in much the same way that the meaning of a word supervenes on the written symbols or spoken phonemes. The difference is that a word-sign represents a non-discursive thought, whereas the domino-sign represents a discursive thought, and provides a validation method. The basis for the discursive domino-sign is the fact that logical reasoning or inference utilizes identifiable, deterministic patterns, and we are able to order the dominoes in such a way that they mimic those patterns. For Aquinas, reasoning is always a kind of ordering, and in this case there is parity between the order inherent in logical reasoning and the order imposed on the dominoes. Ergo, a decision procedure for determining whether a number is prime can be externalized in the relations between material objects – in this case binary gates.

- No, just an explanation of why I have had you on ignore for almost a month now. I made an exception given that you responded to a video I posted. Adios, again.