So good.

I was born in England, lived in Canada, USA, Belize and have lived in Honduras since '75. — Sir2u

So cool, why Honduras if you don't mind me asking? How does it differ from, say, Guatemala or Costa Rica?

I suppose one could argue that lying is not a behavior — RogueAI

That is what I just did successfully.

What about my other question: would zombies have a word for lying? — RogueAI

The issue is that you are not clear when you ask these question, leaving semantic broadness to be used to bring the argument in another direction.
P-zombies can utter the word "lie". Are they invoking the concept of a lie in their mind when they say "lie"? No, they have no mind.

one is a world where the Axis won, and one is a world where the Allies won. Which world would you prefer to be in? — RogueAI

According to Alt-history youtube channels, a world where the Axis won would not be geopolitically so different from today. Germany would pick up Soviet Union's role but more shifted West. It would eventually disintegrate into multiple countries, forming a European Union à la CEI.
Not like alt-history is a real field, but I thought you'd like to know as a little curious tidbit.

I would say the most compelling reason to be a physicalist is methodological and not ontological. We simply have only one valid methodological approach: naturalism.

Every advancement we have made into the truth has been empirical, even if it be done from an armchair, and never by educated guesses that are not grounded in empirical evidence. Likewise, it seems, historically speaking, that we assume something we don't understand is supernatural and then learn later it is perfectly natural--which I think counts in favor of methodological naturalism. — Bob Ross

My thoughts exactly. Though Frank raises good counter-examples.

Isn't lying a behavior*? Also, would p-zombieland even have the word "lie" in its language? If not, then their language would be a lot different than ours, if so, how could zombies come up with a word like "lie"? — RogueAI

Lying is telling something other than what you know to be the case (truth). P-zombies know nothing and intend nothing. So they fail to lie. They would also have the word "lie" in the language they seem to speak, but they wouldn't be thinking about the way they use language.

It's certainly intentional, but it's also behavioral. If zombies can't lie, then they're not behaviorally the same as us, which they're supposed to be. — RogueAI

Lying refers to both mind and physical action. P-zombies have no mind so "lying" is definitionally outside of the concept of p-z.
Behaviourally they are the exact same as us, definitionally.

Picking out and sorting through the varieties of agnosticism is quite interesting. But what is the actual problem that all this is intended to solve? Or is it just a tidy mind? — Ludwig V

Isn't philosophy's goal to tidy up our minds? :grin:

This proposal, presumably, makes both belief and non-belief rare to impossible just as your similar proposal for agnosticism makes that rare to impossible — Ludwig V

Since I take a more Bayesian view of belief (according to the SEP the dominant view of partial belief), I would be happy to grant that, but I would say "A bachelor is a single man" is very close to 180º degrees (belief with certainty), while "A bachelor is a married man" to 0º degrees (disbelief). If we wish to talk about synthetic propositions, we could use "A square has four inner angles", very close to 180º also. The law of identity could be said to be 180º degrees, as it is the basal rock that every other belief depends on.

I think the problem is your obsession with arranging everything on a single scale. The obsession with degrees of belief makes for a tidy diagram but smothers the distinctions that might actually matter here. WHat is the problem you are trying to solve here? — Ludwig V

If there is a problem to solve, for me, it is that true agnosticism (90º degrees belief) hardly exists. Once we are aware of that, we can talk more accurately and honestly about our beliefs. Some of the confusion in this thread would vanish therefore.

but smothers the distinctions that might actually matter here — Ludwig V

Which are?

I can understand being agnostic with a leaning towards theism and being agnostic with a leaning towards atheism — Ludwig V

For me, agnostic is the same as being exactly between p and not-p in terms of belief. Suspending belief would be different. Suspending belief is where, for epistemic reasons (such as not having as much evidence as we conceive we could have about the topic) and/or non-epistemic reasons (such as being able to judge better in the future), we intentionally don't make a judgement, even though we could.
Thus you can suspend belief while leaning towards either. True agnosticism would be leaning towards neither.

It would help me if I had some examples of clearly epistemic and clearly non-epistemic factors. Ditto for doxastic and non-doxastic. — Ludwig V

Epistemic factors, Matthew McGrath:
a. How strongly or weakly your evidence supports p (or not-p).
b. Whether you know or appreciate (a).

Non-epistemic factors, indidem:
1. Whether you will later have better (worse) evidence concerning whether p than you now
have.
2. Whether you will later be a better (worse) assessor of your evidence.
3. How valuable, or how much you value, knowing whether p.
4. How likely it is that, if you inquired further and acquired more evidence, you could come to
know whether p.

Doxastic attitudes: believing that p and its adverbs (strongly, weakly), disbelieving that p or believing that not-p and its adverbs, believing neither.
Non-doxastic attitudes: not making judgement, inquiring into the matter, not having heard of.

And I am glad to announce that a beautiful diagram has been made, much to our irony:


Edit: I forgot to add and I am not uploading the file all over again. Left arrow is 180º degrees, right arrow 0º degrees, and upwards arrow 90º degrees.

IN the absence of evidence, not believing amounts to the jury still being out. But perhaps out of hte building, rather than still in the deliberation room. I can't see any practical difference. — AmadeusD

Me neither.
— Do you believe in a green donkey (it had copper poisoning) orbiting behind Jupiter in such a way that it is tidally locked with respect to Earth, that is, it is always behind Jupiter and we could never see it with a telescope?
— No...
— Well, do you have eViDeNcE it is not there though?
— I guess not.
— ThEn you can't discard the pOsSiBiLity of a green donkey behind Jupiter!

Does a p-zombie have intentionality? No, so it can't lie. Can it say something untrue in English? Sure, make the movements with the mouth that make those sounds.

Let me add this from Descartes' Discourse on the Method, where he talks about something resembling p-zombies:

And here I specially stayed to show that, were there such machines exactly resembling
organs and outward form an ape or any other irrational animal, we could have no means of knowing that they were in any respect of a different nature from these animals; but if there were machines bearing the image of our bodies, and capable of imitating our actions as far as it is morally possible, there would still remain two most certain tests whereby to know that they were not therefore really men. Of these the first is that they could never use words or other signs arranged in such a manner as is competent to us in order to declare our thoughts to others : for we may easily conceive a machine to be so constructed that it emits vocables, and even that it emits some correspondent to the action upon it of external objects which cause a change in its organs; for example, if touched in a particular place it may demand what we wish to say to it; if in another it may cry out that it is hurt, and such like; but not that it should arrange them variously so as appositely to reply to what is said in its presence, as men of the lowest grade of intellect can do. The second test is, that although such machines might execute many things with equal or perhaps greater perfection than any of us, they would, without doubt, fail in certain others from which it could be discovered that they did not act from knowledge, but solely from the disposition of their organs: for while reason is an universal instrument that is alike available on every occasion, these organs, on the contrary, need a particular arrangement for each particular action; whence it must be morally impossible that there should exist in any machine a diversity of organs sufficient to enable it to act in all the occurrences of life, in the way in which our reason enables us to act.

Yes. My position is that the premise is not conceivable. Yes, we can write the words "I conceive of a p-zombie with such-and-such characteristics." But that's just writing words. I can write any outlandish thing i want, but that doesn't make it conceivable.
A square circle that was shaped like a pyramid and made entirely of chocolate flavored whipped cream flew into a black hole, lived there for a year, changed its mind, and flew back out. — Patterner

Then the burden of proof is on you to prove that p-zombies are as incoherent as square circles or the such.

Yes. But if you didn't train it that way, why would it? If you didn't train p-zombies that way, why would they? — Patterner

Because the premise is that they behave like us. We humans say "Yes." to "Are you conscious?". So they would as well.

it would know it's not conscious — RogueAI

From this fragment you can deduce the lack of understanding of the concept of a p-zombie. The zombie does not know anything, does not feel anything, it does not think. It would not go "Huh, I guess I don't know what that thing you are talking about refers to". If asked if it is conscious, it will say "Yes" because that is what we would do.

I would think its brain would prompt it to say something like, "What is 'conscious'?" — Patterner

The premise of p-zombies is that they would not ask that. They act exactly the same as us.

Why would a computer that had no programming or memory related to consciousness think it was conscious, or come up with the idea on its own? — Patterner

If you train an AI on comments talking about things such as feelings and so on, the AI would talk as if it is conscious.

then there is no reason they would say Yes if asked if they are conscious — Patterner

If it is their brain that prompts them to say yes, there would be a reason.

How would the p-zombies, which do not possess consciousness, come to be programmed to speak and act as though they did? — Patterner

If mind-body dualism is true, they would simply have no soul.
If physicalism is true, I don't see any way; anything with our neurological set-up would be conscious. Unless you come up with a physicalist version of p-zombie where the zombie acts the way we do because the neurological set-up is the same ours EXCEPT for a certain property X that gives us consciousness. That would an essentialist view of consciousness within physicalism, but that is pushing the meaning of p-zombie.

The better view is information exists as brain state which is reduced to physical matter and communication is possible by physical signals. No brain external information. — Mark Nyquist

:up:

What makes equally balanced agnosticism "true"? — Ludwig V

Let me put this way, I believe you will agree with me. In the debate of belief in God, there are those that believe and those that don't believe. There is also the word 'agnostic'. In this debate, people use this word in many ways, including but not exhausting: suspending belief, finding the idea incoherent, having no clue, etc. "Agnostic" is somewhat used as a catch-all word for the third position. But that is just how many people seem to use the word, very lax. As we know, agnosticism means not knowing, which is what I call true agnosticism, trying to constrast it from suspending belief or others.

Now, I see another argument in your reply, which is

I can see what makes a 90 degree angle a right angle, but that doesn't mean that the only true angles are right angles — Ludwig V

To make the analogy with angles, for me, believing that P would be a straight angle, believing that not-P would be a zero angle, and "true agnosticism" the right angle of 90º. My belief is exactly that we are seldom 180º about any proposition, because of point C here, and that most things we believe could be a 160 or 97 degrees angle, the things we disbelieve a 30 or 70 degrees angle. I think that you are questioning why I don't think that 80 or 100 degrees is agnosticism instead of only 90. My reason is that, if we accept 80 or 100 degrees to be agnosticism, there is no fine line to separate agnosticism from believing that p or not-p — thus agnosticism would become an arbitrary concept, while belief and disbelief would at least have limits on one side (180º and 0º) —; the only fine line for accurate terminology would be 90º or nothing.

I am aware a counterargument would be the colour 'red'. We don't know where red starts or ends as distinct from violet and orange, the colour red is somewhat arbitrary, yet we productively use the concept of red all the time.
I would reply that {leaving "agnosticism" to an arbitrary range that we are supposed to intuit whether we fall under or not in the moment}, like 'red', is not productive, and it is better to make agnosticism 90º, 95º weak belief and 85º weak disbelief, while 175º strong belief and 5º strong disbelief.

Hopefully my text was not confusing.

But I think that only shows that one needs to be clear about what criterion of truth is at work in each use. — Ludwig V

Right, maybe the text above expresses the criterion of truth I am working with.

I don't see that agnosticism with a preference one way or the other is restricted to the context of religious belief. — Ludwig V

My explanation on that was also not clear. With "its sense in the discussion of belief in God here" I meant here in this thread. In the first paragraph in this text I specified what I was referring to. The ocurrence of those usages is something I verified here in this thread.

I'm puzzled about suspension of judgement. It is one of the non-genuine doxastic attitudes, and yet you use the same phrase to describe "true" agnosticism. — Ludwig V

That was not my intention, maybe you are referring to one my previous posts that you saw before I made a correction. Indeed, 'suspending belief' is not a true doxastic attitude.
Being that an exactly 90º degrees angle is almost impossible — and, for the sake of ease, let's say impossible —, we are left with two regions, 90.0̄1 to 180 degrees, and 89.9̄ to 0 degrees. In that sense, there are two doxastic attitudes (or regions), and one that is almost impossible to truly occur. Thus, if we want to have a third position that does occur often, it would be not a genuine doxastic one, which for me is suspending judgement, which can coexist with weakly believing and weakly disbelieving — true doxastic attitudes.

If any non-epistemic factors make a belief "non-doxastic" — Ludwig V

Every belief is doxastic by definition, no?

I suppose you mean that religious beliefs are not rational. I think that is true, but the thread, as I understand it, limits the discussion to rational belief — Ludwig V

I didn't really think about religious belief specifically.

After all, scientific beliefs are supposed to be based on a commitment to truth. Isn't that a non-epistemic factor? — Ludwig V

I believe that scientific belief is more about "will this also happen in the future?" than anything else. There is a commitment to regularity in scientific beliefs for sure, I am not sure if I would call that an epistemic or non-epistemic factor.

Let's agree to disagree.

The reliance on excessive vocabulary and technical jargon is the desperate cry for relevance and convincing others of its own importance. The more one relies on esoteric vocabulary, the more unnecessarily complex the idea becomes. This can give the illusion of complexity and intelligence where it does not exist. — Philosophim

I disagree. There is no word in any language that expresses "epiphenomenalism". From this fact, it is evident that there is a need for new words to be coined. Those new words quickly become jargon.

Do you have any famous philosophers in mind here, or just the hoi polloi? — Joshs

Although this phrase right here is an example that validates Philosophim' claim.

That's not my argument. That's the premise, which i dispute. — Patterner

I don't understand what you mean.
You say the difference is that we can program computers to act like us; a p-zombie could be neurologically programmed to act like us.
You say "But there's no reason to think p-zombies would act like us.". I presented a reason.

The difference is that we can program computers to act like us. But there's no reason to think p-zombies would act like us. — Patterner

By your own argument, there is. The p-zombie would be biologically wired to act like us.

I don't really see those elements as relevant (at least certainly not necessary) to the Hard problem — AmadeusD

Because one of the versions of the hard problem is "When will a collection of physical states C be conscious (chimpanzee) or un-conscious (rock)". If p-zombie is physically possible, there will no distinguishing criteria for what C will do.

I am under the impression that this requires biting the "consciousness is not emergent from neural activity" bullet hard, but nothing else - only serves to preclude a fully physicalist account of consciousness, and all the interesting questions are still in the air (what, where from, how, why etc..) about consciousness. — AmadeusD

That seems to be what it implies.

p-zombies are physically the same, yet unconscious. No idea why we are assuming they're behaving exactly the same? If i've got that wrong, then I have got that wrong. — AmadeusD

On the outside they act exactly the same. They show happiness and sadness, but they don't undergo the experience.

Replace p-zombie with a computer that perfectly simulates human personality. Does the computer feel sadness when it cries? That is basically the question.

Of course you will say "No! The computer is not biological". Here is where p-zombie comes into play; they have a brain and it works just like yours, they are made of flesh and bones, but they don't feel or think, they just act as though they do.
For me, the question hinges entirely on mind-body dualism, I think 180 proof said something similar as well.
The question is surely related to solipsism as well.

The law of non-contradiction doesn't apply to dialectical logic in any non-trivial sense, since dialectics assumes that opposing viewpoints can reach a synthesis. More generally, the "rules" exist in order to facilitate social interactions, which are themselves the bases of the meanings of our existence. So the laws of reasonable discourse are in aid of reasonable social interactions, not the determinants of them. — Pantagruel

I would not be so eager to call dialectics logic.

It is not just discourse. When I manipulate mental contents inside my mind, I cannot make an apple not be an apple, be apple and not be apple at the same time. No matter what, I can look at two rocks and see that is less than three. Language being so is a reflection of the mind. Whether there is a society around me or not, I can reason, and my reasoning is bound by some limits, which we call laws — whatever their origins are.

Removed.

and I do not think that researchers are dumb — mentos987

You'd be surprised.

some other source would likely have provided some counter evidence — mentos987

Perhaps in real sciences like chemistry and astronomy. But pure statistics like that based on surveys are just that, numbers based on the choices of a bunch of people. Even in biology you often see papers with false claims that nobody ever corrects, because there is no other researcher interested in doing so.

I don't see why there would be some agenda to falsify this particular information — mentos987

I don't think they are falsified. I just think they are misleading. Take Japan for example, a country known for its rough worklife and student life (though not nearly as bad as SK), also a country whose culture does not see full honesty positively. So it may be that when asked "Are you happy?", a Japanese person might say "Yes" for politeness even if they don't mean it. But the suicide rates there are specially high. I think they are high in Finland as well — but that might be the lack of Sun, it really makes a difference.

What logic? Symbolic logic? Propositional logic? Dialectical logic? You are speaking of logic as if it were an objective reality, instead of a construct. — Pantagruel

Even acquiescing that logic is a construct, there are laws of logic (and related) without which we cannot productively have discourse. Law of identity, non-contradiction, law of excluded middle, the possibility of analytic judgements, etc. It is perfectly fine that a construct is fundamental. Scientific discourse relies on non-contradiction, as does any discourse.

Finland is statistically measured the happiest country on earth for now. One could look at what they do, how they think. — mentos987

I am always skeptical of these statistics. How are Germans — with all due respect to the great German nation —, with German food, German weather, and German *****, happier than Italians? Maybe they are more satisfied/fulfillied. But happy? I doubt it.

Reflective analysis leads to a pluralistic understanding, that embraces the diverse truths of the various categorical modes of thought - aesthetic, religious, positivistic, scientific, historical. Culminating in a synthesis which is a categorical thinking founded on universal a priori propositions (as mentioned). He has a penchant for the "concrete universal" and the "concrete mind" where the historical fusion of thought and reality are transcendentally real. He says metaphysics is "the science of beliefs." — Pantagruel

I admit that I have not read Collingwood, and there is a good chance I will never read one of his books back to back, like I won't to many many writers out there, but from the description given here, at a surface level I don't agree with any statement. Especially:

He says that when people become absorbed in a viewpoint (e.g. Logic) then they make that their metaphysical-rational basis — Pantagruel

I don't see how logic could not be our rational basis; rational discourse is destroyed without logic.

he has a view that any true discontinuity in consciousness per se is enough to end an identity — AmadeusD

How would blacking out be different from sleeping?

is this a 'constant conjunction' thing? My experience has been the inverse.. — AmadeusD

Not constant conjuction in a Humean sense because it is not really constant. But for me it is a rule whose exceptions don't matter; not because I am not trying to achieve truth but because it is about practicality.

By fucking them — L'éléphant

This but for real.

I agree - but it’s also because at least some of what was truly worth preserving was written down and carried forward. Those around Plato, for example, obviously realised that what he wrote had to be preserved whilst there must have been many another self-styled philosopher that left no legacy. — Wayfarer

On the other hand, where is this generation's Leibniz, Descartes, Caesar, Bohr, Peano? We had Stephen Hawking, and look how that turned out. Some might argue that we simply don't know about them yet, because often geniuses are recognised posthumously, but I think that is only true to a certain extent. We have thousands of genius experts in all sorts of fields across the world, Biochemistry, Aerospace Engineering, Philosophy, Quantum Physics, Robotics; and yet if you were to ask a history question to most of those forementioned...

Maybe the ancients were wiser than we are. — Ciceronianus

The more I read and the more I live the more I am convinced of that. Or perhaps it is survivorship bias.

I don't have a reason to quarrel with you, though I would classify not knowing whether... as epistemic. — Ludwig V

I'd like to correct myself. It is not that agnosticism is not an epistemic position, surely it is. I mixed the actual sense of 'agnostic' with its sense in the discussion of belief in God here. In the argument that I was referencing, true agnosticism (not knowing whether p) is probabilistically unlikely (almost impossible), as the overall doxastic sway will almost always be towards p or not-p.
I quote Matthew McGrath that " I distinguish three: suspension of judgment, the inquiring attitude, and an attitude I call agnosticism. For the first two of these ways of being neutral, non-epistemic factors such as future-comparative and goal-related factors matter to their justification. But they are not genuine doxastic attitudes". Being that some individuals will be in/around the middle — even if more towards p than p-not or the converse — in such a way that they don't feel it is fair to affirm either, they will suspend judgement, which is the only third position — not doxastic but declarative.
As a disclaimer, Matthew McGrath, in that paper, does not claim Bayesian epistemology or reduction of belief are the case, which I presuppose for my argument.

How does one determine when one has actually been reborn? :wink: — Tom Storm

Short answer: they don't, they are just stoned.

See process philosophy's account of the self, it is more concrete than anything in substance philosophy.

Makes life kind of hard when you're aware of it, but it instills a certain sympathy for a huge swathe of previously-irking behaviour — AmadeusD

Agreed.

Facebook seems to be a great aggregator of Dunning-Kruger effects, to the degree that that's an actual thing. — AmadeusD

And Discord, and Reddit, and Telegram, and Twitter. Quora has a surprising amount of specialists and talented amateurs posting despite the torrents of shit and bots that site has, but it is not a platform for discussing.

if you ever want to communicate with the general population — mentos987

Descartes wrote in French mainly because he wanted his text to be accessible to people who did not master Latin. How many people today, even after mass printing and several translation, read the Discourse or the Metaphysical Meditations? Perhaps communication with the general populations is a pipe dream of humble members of the elite who believe they are closer to the average person than the average person is close to an orangutang — and I don't say this as an insult, more as a bitter and unfortunate realisation.
The average global IQ is, contrary to popular belief, not 100; far from that, it is in the 80s.

Does this question even belong in philosophy any more? Ffs, the meaning of life is to do whatever the fuck you want with yours. That every philosophy scrub must try to answer this damn question only serves as an example of hubris. — Vaskane

:rofl:

To avoid confusion, I am going to use capital letters for theories, and lowercase for propositions. — Bob Ross

Alright.

My point is that ‘p is metaphysically impossible’ != ‘p and M are metaphysically impossible’ != ‘p ^ M is metaphysically impossible’ != ‘!(p ^ M)’ — Bob Ross

Right, I agree with that, maybe I caused confusion previously by exchanging "p and M are" with "p ^ M is".

To reply to the thing I meant to reply to:

You represent this as Z ^ Znot, but this is not accurate because you are conflating the proposition which is metaphysically impossible with the justification for it being such. Z is metaphysically impossible, and the justification is that !(Z ^ Znot) ^ Znot → {metaphysically impossible} . Saying ‘Z ^ Znot’ is metaphysically impossible shifts the focus to a different proposition, X, which would have to be evaluated relative to a specified metaphysical theory, N. — Bob Ross

I think that by "!(Z ^ ZNOT) ^ ZNOT → {metaphysically impossible}" you mean "!(z ^ ZNOT) ^ ZNOT → {z is metaphysically impossible}".
I believe that the source of our disagreement is that, for you, z is metaphysically impossible in reference ("coherence" as you say) to the fact that !(z ^ ZNOT) ^ ZNOT. A statement (z) can be evaluated as metaphysically impossible without explicitly stating the theory ZNOT that contradicts it, through the fact that !(z ^ ZNOT), right?

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

There has to be a whole binding all the parts of something from the top-down for it to be coherent, you can't actually building anything by "combining parts" without that, despite what a pragmatic heuristic it is to think so. — Hallucinogen

How is that contradictory with reductionism? And before all, I would ask that you specify what kind of redutionism you are talking about.

It seems logically possible for syntax to be sufficient for semantics — Hallucinogen

I have not studied this subject sufficiently to give a reply on it — specially the Chinese room experiment, it did not make an awful lot of sense to me when I last read it.

It just turns out when we investigate with thought experiments like the Chinese room argument, that syntax is actually insufficient for semantics. But without knowing that beforehand, it appears possible that we might understand the meaning of some symbol purely by looking at the instructions of which it is a part. — Hallucinogen

This seems to agree with my proposal earlier in the thread. That although nothing about 'semantics' implies that syntax is insufficient for it (analytic), we learn later, if we are to agree with the CR experiment, that it has to be the case that it is insufficient, and it has to be insufficient — a synthetic necessity.

:up: :ok: