The question in the OP is much too broad to be interesting, since the word "system" has multiple meanings, and those meanings are in turn quite general without further qualification.

The meanings of "system" that have been largely left out of this discussion (except by @Srap Tasmaner) are, for example, system as a theory ("Kant's system"), method ("Dewey decimal system," "gambling system"), rules of behavior ("system of discipline").

Within the material context, some definitions that have been given are too restrictive. @Baden's is mostly about differentiating a system from its environment, but in some contexts, environment is irrelevant for our purposes and can be left out of consideration. The only internal differences required of any system are those between the whole and its parts. Stability and rigidity also do not always apply: systems can be dynamic in their composition and form, although it could be argued that some essential features of a system must be invariant within the scope of consideration for it to be recognized as one system. But that is true of any named entity.

@T Clark and @punos gave good general definitions of a material system, and it is pretty clear that not much more can be said on the subject without getting into specifics of particular kinds of systems, such living organisms or ecologies. If we stay at the most general level of a "system," then we are just doing amateur lexicography.

Both are valid concerns, but I'm more inclined to focus on how our predictability is being exploited. I'm not saying social physics isn't useful, but I'd prefer to see applications that go beyond profiting from our behavior. — Alonsoaceves

Well, as I said, "social physics" may be a new discipline, but the phenomena that it studies and the uses to which it is put are as old as society itself. We, social animals, are attuned to patterns of behavior exhibited by other members and groups, and we use this knowledge to cooperate, compete and exploit. We have done this since well before computers, before mathematics, before language itself.

It is not clear to me what your worry is: is it simply the fact that our choices can be predictable, or is it that this predictability can be exploited? The former is an old worry about the supposed conflict between freedom and determinism/determination. The latter is also as old as human society (or any society).

I was just citing a perfect cipher as a proof of concept. Regardless of the intention of the sender, when all you have is a single message, it is entirely possible that the message is indecipherable in principle. And that means that there is no way to prove, or even offer a reasonable conjecture, whether the message in the OP scenario is gibberish or carries a meaning.

The message need not even be nonsense to be indecipherable. There is such a thing as a perfect cipher, e.g. a one-time pad.

It occurred to me that there is a parallel here with some realist and anti-realist positions in metaethics. One influential but controversial position is that of the error theory. Error theorists about ethics are realists, i.e., they believe that ethical propositions say something about objectively existing entities or properties. They also maintain that no such entities or properties exist, which makes ethical propositions erroneous.

I think @Mijin (and perhaps @flannel jesus) are error theorists about personal identity. My position (and @Fire Ologist's?) would be more akin to anti-realism.

Both of you make really good points, but I'm not sure if the transporter issue is totally resolved by this. Do the two of you think that a shrunken down interval of time could exist such that the mental processes responsible for our continuity of identity could be totally invariant over that interval? — ToothyMaw

To my mind, identity is a concept with fuzzy boundaries, but at the same time, invariance over time and space is an important part of it; identity is the key word here. Me five minutes ago is not just someone very similar to me now: we are one and the same person. The same is also true for other things: the chair on which I now sit, the city in which I was born. The very idea of an identifiable person or object implies and requires such invariance.

But this idea of endurance of identity can come under strain. As things change, it becomes harder to maintain it. Paradoxical thought experiments can also strain this idea, but for reasons that I explained earlier, I find this unsurprising and, frankly, not very interesting (they could become interesting and relevant if they ever become reality, but we will cross that river when we get to it).

Again, the metaphysical challenge to identity arises only if you are committed to the idea of sharp-edged essences of things. They are not that challenging if identity is constructed. But I admit that that in itself can be a hard thing to swallow.

We all go through an imperfect transporter, literally every moment of our lives. Your body is not physically identical to itself from one moment to another: it evolves continuously in time. And yet, we customarily consider our personal identity to be invariant, at least over reasonably short stretches of time.

Over longer stretches, the invariance of personal identity is more dubious, though. Am I the same person at fifty as I was when I was five? (Or, to put it in your stark terms, did I survive the process of aging?) Legally and conventionally, I am considered to be the same person, but physically and mentally, we are so far apart as to make such an identification almost meaningless. But if I am not the same person as my past self, is there a precise boundary in time between the two identities? Or is there a precise number of microphysical or psychological differences that delineates such a boundary?

To sharpen the issue even further, consider that a stroke or dementia can alter a person's memory and personality much quicker than normal aging, so that people close to them note that they are literally a different person from the one they remember.

So, what does that imply for personal identity? If you hold to a view of an identity as something objectively existing atomic entity, then you must bite the bullet and maintain that there is a fact of the matter in each of these cases about whether the identity survives or perishes in the transition, even if no amount of reasoning or observation will allow us to nail it down.

But if you view personal identity as conventional and constructed, then the problem is dissolved. On that view, there isn't an objective fact to be nailed down. This view also suggests that paradoxical thought experiments, such as the transporter or the replicator thought experiments, are uninformative precisely because of their exoticism. If our understanding of personal identity is shaped by convention and intuition, then we should expect our understanding to break down in scenarios that break with convention and intuition.

Not what I asked.

"Fake" is not a negation. The negation of "is a painting" would be "is not a painting," rather than "is a fake painting."

What does "fake fake" mean, anyway?

So at this point I can see that in your opinion we can never ask, "What accounts for the ice's existence?," — Leontiskos

In fact, we never do ask such a question. That's not a speculative thesis, but an observation about actual causal talk.

• Under normal conditions, ice forms at 0C
• The window iced over because it is poorly insulated
• She likes her whiskey neat [that's negative causation, in case you are wondering]
• ...

You could continue this list ad infinitum, but what would be the point? Causal questions are only sensible and tractable when they are asked for a reason.

Don't feed the troll spammer.

But aren't Aristotle's four causes attempting to answer questions such as, "Why a duck?" — Leontiskos

I think that's the question that Aristotle and Darwin were attempting to answer, if in different ways. — Leontiskos

First of all, Aristotle and Darwin were not answering the same question. Aristotle was offering a broad and rough classification of different types of explanation, whereas Darwin was proffering a specific answer to a specific question.

Second, explanations, causal or otherwise, are always sought and given within a specific context. The various examples of "explaining a duck" that I gave are not complimentary. Each would separately make sense in its proper context, but this would not make sense at all:

The explanation for a duck will presumably include why it is in this locale, why its plumage is of a certain color, and what its evolutionary history (and genesis) is. — Leontiskos

There is no such thing as the cause of a thing, simpliciter, with no context of who is asking and for what purpose. This is why the so-called PSR is a nonsensical exercise, language on holiday.

Doesn't causation just explain the "why" of some event or substance? We usually think in terms of efficient causation, in which one is identifying the (moving) cause that brought about some effect.

Asking, "What caused it?," seems to be asking what accounts for its existence. Thus in the most general sense you have Aristotle's four causes, which are meant to explain the being of substances. — Leontiskos

Yes, in the most general sense, "cause" and "reason" can be used interchangeably, and Aristotle's four causes are better understood as a classification of the types of explanations. Nowadays, when we use 'cause' in a more specific sense, we usually mean something like Aristotle's efficient cause.

But whether you are asking in a more general or more specific sense, the question still requires context to be meaningful. "Why a duck?" asked out of the blue, makes about as much sense as "What's the difference between a duck?" You can ask for the reason of a duck being in this place at this time (if that seems surprising), or perhaps you want to know about its plumage color or its evolutionary history or why it was served for dinner - all potentially sensible questions that can be answered in causal terms (i.e., by reference to how we understand the world to be hanging together). But to ask what accounts for the duck's existence doesn't seem sensible, because there is no way to answer such a question.

I agree with you, but that's kinda scary isn't it? It's such a fundamentally important concept, to pretty much everything in life, especially philosophy. — flannel jesus

Causation is a useful everyday notion, but it is perhaps best thought of as a heuristic shortcut, rather than a sharp feature of the world.

If you ask after the cause of a thing or an event, the question won't even make sense without some context. Why are you asking? What specifically do you want to know? What do you intend to do with that information? Causal analysis is very much an applied, pragmatic practice.

The idea that there is such a thing as Mental to Mental Causation is an overliberal use of the term 'Causation'.

The term Causation is a physical term that describes types of temporal organisation. Even within the world of physics causation is a quite difficult item to deal with at the extreme ends of the micro and macro scales. — I like sushi

There are established usages of the word 'causation', both in ordinary language and in specialized domains. Capturing these usages in a single, all-encompassing definition has proven to be difficult. To my knowledge, no one definition works perfectly.

That said, we can note two things:

One is that when it comes to science, particularly physical science, causation does not have much of a role to play. Causation does not appear explicitly in physical ontologies. There is no "law of causation" to be found in our best theories. That was the basis of Russell's attack on causation a century ago, which remains influential to this day.

Where causation does play a role is in informal talk and reasoning. (Philosopher Peter Norton, whose views on causation can be characterized as Russellian, likens causation to folk science.)

With that in mind, I see no reason to deny mental causation as not complying to some pure notion of causation. Causation is very much an impure, informal notion, and mental causation fits comfortably within that informal domain. My intention to perform an action results both in mental and physical effects. Intentions are causal. Communication is causal.

Originally, I was skeptical because I thought "mass shootings" wasn't a real problem: i.e. I thought "Do people really just want to go out and shoot people they don't know, or was that 1-off?" and I grew up with weapons. — Moliere

But, really, if we can prevent mass shootings with such a simple fix I don't really care about any other argument for firearms. — Moliere

Mass shootings aren't a real problem. Well, not compared to all the other shootings. If you wave a magic wand and end all mass shootings in the US once and for all, you will hardly make a dent in the gun death statistics.

Not this (or so it says :))

that's right. by algorithmic choice I meant a decision made on the basis of cause-and-effect relationships.
modern AI in the absence of complete data make decisions based on confidence probabilities. But nevertheless, such an approach is verified objectively. that is, the path to the solution can be tracked from start to finish. — Astorre

I wonder: "isn't this exactly what creates colossal tension inside us and sets the very thirst to do something, and not to do it?" — Astorre

I think you are jumping to answers too quickly. Let us slow down and try to understand the question first.

The mark of higher consciousness (as distinguished from basic what-it-is-likeness) is the ability to introspect your own thought process. And this awareness and control over the thought process is what distinguishes "algorithmic choice" or rational choice: we consciously and deliberately follow a line of reasoning. We are aware of our beliefs and assumptions, of the rules that we follow (or break!) We can revisit and critically examine the steps that we took, change assumptions, correct mistakes, learn lessons.

All this should be considered against the fact that much of our cognition is unconscious. Even much of our decision-making is performed unconsciously. What little of which we become aware comes late in the game - sometimes even after the decision was made and acted upon! And yet, I believe that this tiny tip of the cognitive iceberg is essential to what distinguishes human consciousness from much of the rest of the animal world - and from today's computer programs as well (I won't speculate about the future).

For this reason, I think that you are wrong when you liken our algorithmic/rational thinking to computer algorithms. Even the most advanced AIs of today lack self-awareness*. Yes, the process is algorithmic, but no part of the algorithm is aware of what it is doing - the machinery for such introspection simply isn't there.

Indeed, it is perhaps the unaware, intuitive, emotional, preference-driven decision-making that is more akin to what most computer programs are doing. We see the end result, but we don't know how we got there - because we weren't in on the decision-making process!

* The Chinese generative AI DeepSeek that made much noise recently appears to display some introspection: when asked a question, it shows what appears to be its thought process. However, we do not know whether any of that actually plays a part in generating the answer, as opposed to serving as a high-level "debug output".

Hello and welcome to the forum!

This is a meaty first post, but I would like to start with a clarifying question. Just what do you mean by a choice being algorithmic? I would describe it as a decision process that consciously follows a rule-based procedure. This would be closely related, but perhaps not identical, to what we would call a rational decision. One difference between rational and algorithmic choice is that in general, a decision algorithm need not incorporate only reliable information and rely on sound epistemic practices. On the other hand, we often take heuristic shortcuts when making decisions, though if pressed for justification, we can rationalize them by reconstructing a plausible thought process, thus justifying their rationality in retrospect. In the first approximation though, we may identify "algorithmic" choice with rational decision-making. Would you agree, or were you thinking of something different?

For those who want to argue the premise, I won't be participating. Most threads dealing with consciousness, regardless of their intent, soon turn into debates about Physicalism vs Idealism vs Panosychism vs... I obviously can't keep the thread on the track, or system of tracks, I want. But I won't be taking part in derailing it. Maybe there really isn't anything to say aside from the debate, and my lack of participation in it will doom it to a very small thread. But I can hope. — Patterner

What are you expecting from this discussion? The position that you outlined is pretty much orthodox contemporary panpsychism. You could have just written: "Panpsychism: discuss (but do not debate)."

If you are serious, what makes you think that? The source I'm quoting is SCMP: — neomac

Not sure what your wiki reference is supposed to add here. So, it's a Hong Kong newspaper with a dubious reputation. The journo is referencing anonymous sources.

What makes me say that is that diplomats don't talk like that, least of all, Chinese diplomats, who are known for their exemplary circumspection.

The comment, to the EU’s Kaja Kallas, would confirm what many in Brussels believe to be Beijing’s position — neomac

It would, yes, but the contention that China's top diplomat made such a blunt and frank declaration to the EU's top diplomat sounds extremely implausible. It seems a lot more plausible that someone in Brussels put their own opinion into Wang Yi's mouth.

Maybe we need ro know what a law of nature is in itself to find out why those laws exist. One of my philosophy professors didn't understand the question when I asked whether laws ofnature were regularities or their causes. I wondered about that because civil laws affect what we do. For example, you may need to speed up or slow down when you read a speed limit sign. — BillMcEnaney

So, what happens if nature violates its laws? Does it get a ticket?

This obvious parallel with human-instituted laws is unfortunate (and it's probably why some people like @Moliere are allergic to the phrase). Human laws are only prescriptions. They require complex social mechanisms to work, and even then they work imperfectly at best. Laws of nature were always thought of as inviolable (with the possible exception of an occasional miraculous intervention).

The remedy is to not get too hung up on words and their folk etymologies, and remember that words can have multiple meanings. Laws of conduct, laws of science, and laws of nature all mean different things.

I'd prefer to say things are useful, not true or false. This is my thesis. — Tom Storm

I know that, but I note that you keep evading the questions that challenge that thesis.

The next obvious criticism is: if nothing is true, then neither is what you said, Tom.

To that, I would agree. Saying “we never get to truth” expresses skepticism about objective or foundational truth claims, but it is not itself a universal truth, rather, I'd see it more as a useful framework for managing ideas and guiding actions. — Tom Storm

That's not the criticism, at least not from me. The criticism is that you keep saying things about the world and our relationship to it, while maintaining that the world is independent of our concepts and practices. Don't you find this contradictory?

The most reasonable move from this point of view would be to drop this mysterious "world" thing as surplus to requirements. But then, of course, in the process of expanding the world of mentation and sociation to encompass the sensible world that we inhabit, in assimilating our commonsense beliefs and scientific theories, you will end up with a construct that is isomorphic to the world of the realist, with the main difference being a more contrived language (like saying "useful" in place of "true").

Back to laws and patterns. Perceived patterns in the external world emerge through our embodied interaction with the environment. I am wondering if they reflect what human cognition projects onto experience and that they can function provisionally to produce what we call useful outcomes. — Tom Storm

Sounds like you've been listening to @Joshs :) But how does this square with your earlier stated view that there are no patterns in the external world? What is it that we perceive then?

These patterns are neither external to us, nor are they merely internal to us. The order emerges out of our discursive and material interactions with our environment. It is not discovered but produced , enacted as patterns of activity. — Joshs

We do, of course, actively discover order when we look for it, be it in our natural environment or in artificial constructs. But the other kind of pattern emergence has its place too, both in sentient and nonsentient organisms. Our DNA encodes patterns in our environment, for example, and so does our behavior.

I would say that this is how all teleology works, namely that it is a final cause and not an efficient cause. The end-directedness produces no guarantee that the end will be reached. — Leontiskos

I don't think that the question of determinism vs indeterminism is relevant to teleology. Again, if you think of the most ordinary examples, although in theory, nothing is absolutely certain, when it comes to simple, immediate actions like reaching to grasp an object or striking a key, we treat them as certain to succeed. It is still a goal-directed behavior, though. There is both intension (outward-directedness) and intent (future-directedness) in these actions.

I added a few things to that post, but what do you mean when you say that it is "indeterministic at every scale"? Is it just that it is defeasible or fallible? — Leontiskos

Yes, I meant it in the way the OP problematized the issue: "no particular outcome is necessary." A species may experience selective pressures, but its successful adaptation is not guaranteed - it may just die out instead. Some individuals carry favorable variations, others don't, and even those who do will not necessarily leave more and more successful progeny.

A favorite example of mine is astrology. People who take astrology seriously are able to do all the things you just said: Hear and respond and understand one another in a perceived orderly manner.

But I'd be hesitant to draw the conclusion that the astrologists have found order in the world. I think they've ordered their thoughts in a manner that they are able to communicate, and that their names refer to various objects in the world, and all their explanations are entirely false. — Moliere

I wonder why you picked astrology as an example, rather than astronomy? Would you consider them more-or-less on the same footing, and if not, why not?

How does it help if these connections are only in our head and have nothing to do with the environment in which we live? How could we even exist in and of a world that lacks any order? For that matter, how do you come to any conclusions about the world, even such skeptical conclusions as you make? — SophistiCat

I am suggesting a constructivist view. Even the notion of "order" itself is a contingent human artifact. My instinct is that our knowledge, meaning, and order are contingent products of human interpretation, language, and culture. The world exists independently but is indeterminate or (as Hilary Lawson would argue) "open in itself"; order and meaning don’t exist “out there” waiting to be discovered but arise through our way's of engaging with the world. — Tom Storm

I understand that this is your view, and this is what prompted my questions above (and likewise, @Patterner's questions). Do you have any thoughts on that?

So, in this view (which I think has some merit), we never arrive at absolute truth or reality; everything we hold is contingent and constantly changing. We don’t really have knowledge that maps onto some kind of eternal, unchanging foundational truth. — Tom Storm

Well, this is all lovely and banal even, but one does need to be a constructivist in your sense to hold such views.

A model can be useful even if it isn't true. For instance, the miasma theory of disease turned out to be false — Tom Storm

Did it now? How? I mean, if we apply your outlook consistently, then all our beliefs are almost certainly and irredeemably false, being that the world is independent of them, and they are independent of the world. But how then do we prove or disprove anything? What meaning can such words have?

How can we make sense of the indeterminate, beyond knowing it is indeterminate? — Patterner

And how can we even know that it is indeterminate? This, too, would be a construction that has no purchase on anything outside our cultural practices.

I would go further and say that natural selection is itself a teleological explanation. It is a teleological explanation that covers all species instead of just one (i.e. a generic final cause).

The common objection would be, "But natural selection is not consciously seeking anything." The response is, "It doesn't have to. Such a thing is not required for teleology." — Leontiskos

Evolution by natural selection is a good example of a teleological explanation that is indeterministic at every scale. It is teleological because evolution is directed towards a future state of greater fitness. However, success is not guaranteed, and many do fail, at species, population, and individual level.

I think it’s perfectly accurate to describe that the way I did - as the future, reaching back to influence the past. — T Clark

Can you specify a mechanism other than God that could establish a goal or purpose for the universe? — T Clark

Again, a bizarre non sequitur. Even accepting your caricature, what does this have to do with establishing a goal or purpose for the universe?

I’d guess that humans are pattern seeking, meaning making machines. We see connections everywhere and this often helps us manage our environment. — Tom Storm

How does it help if these connections are only in our head and have nothing to do with the environment in which we live? How could we even exist in and of a world that lacks any order? For that matter, how do you come to any conclusions about the world, even such skeptical conclusions as you make?

Are you saying that something in the future reaches back and causes something in the past? — T Clark

That's not what teleology is.

As I see it, the only way to make teleology plausible is to assume there is a God. — T Clark

This is a non sequitur, even to your own caricature of teleology.

What said. Also, consider that the paradigmatic cases of teleological explanations are those where human (or animal) agency is involved, and these are extremely common. For example,

Q: Why did Alice go out?
A: To buy bread.
Q: Why is the overpass being constructed?
A: To relieve traffic congestion.

We make up these explanations, regardless of how certain the outcomes are. Alice may or may not buy bread. The overpass may or may not be completed. That does not in any way change the fact that the actions were goal-oriented in the first place. Of course, in a world in which the future is so wide-open that any fixed outcome is extremely unlikely teleology would not be possible, so you have a point there. But fortunately, our world is not like that. A lot of things are fairly predictable, and so we set goals with a reasonable expectation of achieving them.

Just to make it clear where we stand, we have rules about self-promotion and SPAM:

Advertisers, spammers, self-promoters: No links to personal websites. Instant deletion of post followed by a potential ban.

Now, you didn't include a link, but that doesn't change the fact that you started a thread only to promote your book. That you did it under false pretenses only makes it worse, in my opinion. The only reason this thread has not been deleted is that there already was some discussion there. But keep this up and you will be banned.

You can open a discussion where you outline your ideas at some length. You can even refer to your book there, but you can't just say "I have ideas, go buy my book," which is essentially what you did here.

I invite anyone to obtain my book - and then I challenge you to find the fatal flaw in my reasoning.

By my understanding, until such time as a fatal flaw has been confirmed in my reasoning, my theory stands. — Pieter R van Wyk

You know, there was not so long ago another cr..., er, thinker on this forum who challenged all comers to refute his theories. He made his (also self-published) paper freely available on the internet and offered a four- or five-figure sum as a reward to anyone who would meet the challenge to his satisfaction.

Just something to think about as you eagerly check on your Amazon sales stats...

"The only results I see from philosophy are a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger, and a world in which a well-balanced coexistence with our environment and among ourselves is but a pipedream!" — Pieter R van Wyk

Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but the way this quote reads is that "a world in which we are: unable to have peace, unable to eradicate poverty and hunger," etc., came as a result of philosophy -which is absurd. Philosophy is not responsible for all the misery in the world. If that's not what you meant, then you really need an editor ;)

If philosophy cannot end the diversity of viewpoints, what exactly is the purpose and utility in studying philosophy? — Pieter R van Wyk

If anything, the purpose of philosophy is to increase diversity of viewpoints.

I have never had discussions over PM. I don't feel obliged to respond to, or even read crap posts from crap posters, so, filtering is not much of an issue. The only problem with an open discussion is that it can get derailed or split into multiple conversations. This is where a more focused discussion with a reduced audience could be preferable. But it is unfortunate if it gets to the point where people want to retreat into private messages. This forum was meant to be a community, not a hookup spot like Tinder.

Generative AIs are trained on huge volumes of text from print and electronic media, and designed to generate similar texts. Since their training material is, for the most part, written by people and reflects the way they talk and think, it is to be expected that AIs would often assume - confabulate - a human-like personality and point of view. However, the resemblance between AI's confabulations and human interaction is not deep. The "personalities" that they affect are not organically grown over many years, like human personalities are. They are thrown together chaotically, on the fly. As you have noticed, different sessions can produce substantively different results.

Sometimes, the narratives that an AI fabricates from its enormous bank of text bits can sound quite reasonable, but they can also be frivolous and even nasty - because all of those elements can be found in their training material, which includes not only accurate information and reasonable discourse, but fiction (of all sorts), conspiracy theories, and mis- and disinformation. Impressionable readers should be wary.

I won't IMPLORE, but I do suggest you read or listen to this story in New York Times about people, whose interactions with AI were deeply disturbing, on one occasion driving a man to the edge of suicide: They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.