Comments

  • The Mind-Created World
    What divulges meaning intent for one can confound another. Not because they do not comprehend, but due to the fact they have not yet had any reason to apply the intent of the meaning in a productive dialogue.

    We are often happy to talk of the 'infinite' yet struggle with the obvious problem of relating to the concept in an experiential sense. Sometimes it pays to speak in order to better present silence beyond the white noise that can never be experience -- when tinnitus dies away we assume the experience of silence exists.
  • Why not AI?
    AI is biased. It wil try and substantiate and support ideas rather than criticise them. It takes quite a bit of work to get AI to do what you want, and even then it can make glaring mistaking (struggles with verbatim quotes).

    It is a damn useful tool but not at all intelligent. If you are just copy and pasting AI text as your own post then it is almost certainly not expressing what you want to say perfectly. If you are using it as a fact checker it will require more effort than needed to just write and express your ideas yourself (as it makes errors without exact instructions).
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    And making radical changes would likley result in millions dying but that is okay because it will benefit future generations. You know what I mean when I say we need to be cautious.

    Imagine the hardship and suffering it woudl cause to ban people from using fuel, or switching to vegan diets. The best we can do is attack the problems we foresee from multiple angles. We are already doing so in many sectors and huge strides have been made already in terms of how we manage farming. In the near future we probably won't need farmland as hydroponic will have moved on a lot.

    The only real threat I am concerned about is AGI, but I am not entirely sure that can/will happen anytime soon. Hard to say. If it does that has far more potential to ruin our lives as well as improve it dramatically.

    I am not overly concerned about the future of humanity tbh. Someone needs to be and it looks like you are so that is enough for me.
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    Okay, but how should we react to the danger?Athena

    Any danger. Cautiously and with consideration of what effects it may have. If we start literaly changing everything about how we live unforeseen problems will arise. Revolutions are revolutions because they cause severe upheaval.

    For example, in today's world people complain about how the economy is bad and their quality of life has fallen without fully understanding this is not at all true for the vast majority of the population around the world who have seen an increase in their quality of life.

    I am kind of shocked that we appear to disagree about the need to rethink everything.Athena

    You must be using hyperbole? We do actually constantly rethink things all the time, but thankfully we do not act on them because all people have some conservativism too.
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    I said either is dangerous in the extreme. There is nothing unusual about that. Changing everything is an extreme thing to suggest -- dangerous!
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    If we had already gotten everything wrong we would not be here today. Tilt too far into conservatism or liberalism and it will result in distaster. History has shown this and life experience has shown me this personally too on an individual level.
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    rethink everything.Athena

    This is the kind of thinking I find most scary. There is something to be said for conservative values as much as there are for liberal ones.
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    someone might benefit from our memory of the past and gained wisdom.Athena

    I think this is something we should be more concerned about that adaptation. We can only step forward confidently once we appreciate what happened before us. This is likley why human progress tends to take the form of 3 steps forwards then 2 steps back.
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    That is a cultural problem more than a 'school' problem I would say. Symptoms of a deeper underlying problem. I do not accept that 'guns' are the main cause they are merely a convenient tool to express a hidden societal problem.
  • How should children be reared to be good citizens, good parents, and good thinkers?
    Generally speaking I think parents assume the part they play in how their children turn out is vastly overestimated. That is not to say that parenting does not effect them, but the parent's job is most important in the first few years of development.
  • Referential opacity
    The fault likely more with me here. I guess I was trying to say something that appears quite tangental to this thread and I am still far from the level of competence I would like to reach when it comes to philosphical writing (that sentence is a good example!).
  • Virtues and Good Manners
    I think we can both agree that a formal tone is required in order to present a sense of neutrality? If one attacks an argument that is fine, but such should probably be done in a formal manner.

    If someone is speaking informally I have no qualms with openly attacking their position in an informal manner IF attempts at a more formal and distanced dialogue fail. It all depends on judgement.

    Examples:

    - Formal: I am not sure I agree with your position on this point due to X and Y.

    - Informal: You are probably wrong about this mate, because of X and Y.

    Of course there are more severe degrees and everyone has a lien of tolerance for the style they encounter. I would find the second a little disappointing as the 'mate' from someone I have never met seems misplaced, but I would not judge on one sentence alone.
  • Referential opacity
    Read the exchange with I just had with Banno. You do need to understand the issue of Supervenience though in relation to Mental States/Identity.

    I think I'll just write a paper on it and send to a Journal. Looks like no one else has written about it yet.
  • Referential opacity
    It is a subtle point.
  • Referential opacity
    @Ludwig V Do you understand what I am getting at above? No one seems to :(
  • Social Media and Time Appreciation
    As I understand it, you believe (rather, it has been proven), the proliferation of intimate and highly-engaging historical data will kind of "cheapen" or, no, let me use a more neutral word, "skew" the perception of the world we live in (time as it relates to one's lifespan), in a negative (or at least possibly less than conducive to the human experience) way?Outlander

    Will answert to rest, just gotta dash to work in 5 mins.

    Anyway, no. I was pondering a thought and it wondered over into thinking about how we appreciate certain aspects of our world and it threw up this idea. I think there might be something to it, but it is not something we can judge for a few centuries or millenia yet as far as I can see!
  • Social Media and Time Appreciation
    Actually the main difference is where in 100 yrs time someone watched the video, read the journal or simply knew someone climbed a mountain and no more.

    There are distinct differences in term of resolution in how the history of those three people are recorded.

    We have only lived at the start of this trajectory having access to written words for a century or so in a global sense. I am speculating about how current media technologies -- projected forwards a few centuries or millenia -- could influence our overall perception of time due to the historical access we will have receding into the past.
  • Social Media and Time Appreciation
    In terms of the frequency of how we use different tenses. There is evidence that it effects foward planning.

    What is the relationship or ability (or perhaps disability) between the three individuals in relation to the idea or premise your OP is discussing or otherwise wishes to explore?Outlander

    None. I was considering this more broadly as effecting future language as having a more visceral relation to historical events could perhaps lead to a better appreciation of an individuals place. A bit like the difference between reading something happened 10 years ago is quite different to seeing it play out before your eyes -- it has a more immediate and real impact on you as it is sensory rather than conceptual.
  • Referential opacity


    I used the term Phenomenological as it is the standard terminology in Philosophy of Mind.
  • Referential opacity
    I think the issue here is nothing other than a mismatch in terminology.
  • Referential opacity
    He does not use that term. EDITTED
  • Referential opacity
    A striking feature of attempts at definitional reduction is how little seems to hinge on the question of synonymy between de niens and de niendum. Of course, by imagining counterexamples we do discredit claims of synonymy. But the pattern of failure prompts a stronger conclusion: if we were to find an open sentence couched in behavioural terms and exactly coextensive with some mental predicate, nothing could reasonably persuade us that we had found it. We know too much about thought and behaviour to trust exact and universal statements linking them. Beliefs and desires issue in behaviour only as modified and mediated by further beliefs and desires, attitudes and attendings, without limit. Clearly this holism of the mental realm is a clue both to the autonomy and to the anomalous character of the mental.

    These remarks apropos definitional behaviourism provide at best hints of why we should not expect nomological connections between the mental and the physical. The central case invites further consideration

    - Davidson, 2003, p. 217, 'Essays on Actions and Events'.
    — Donald Davidson

    EDITTED
  • Referential opacity
    Maybe this is a very particular connection that is tangental to the discussion. I think it is an important considered though.
  • Referential opacity


    The exact same point can be argued for Venus as Evening and Morning star. The Planet remains the same physically, other than relative daytime positioning, but the appreciation and importance of this difference gives them distinct identities that transcend the mere nomological description.
  • Referential opacity
    This is exactly where Davidson's regard for mental causation breaks down. He even admits himself that there is a discrepency between the phenomenal-description-of and the nomological-description-of.
  • Virtues and Good Manners
    As long as honesty is not mistaken as bad manners I generally agree. Meaning, I would rather someone was honest and impolite than polite and trying too hard not to upset anyone.

    The biggest problem of dialogue on these forums is the lack of ability to read emotions. I have managed to have a couple of video chats with people on this forum and it seems far easier to get the emotional intent across but not so easy to articulate in the moment.

    Both have benefits. Hopefully one day I will be equally competent in both forms of communication.
  • Social Media and Time Appreciation
    It has been shown that our use of tense in language does influence how we appreciate time and plan ahead.

    Whether more detailed media sources provide more lived exposure to historical events is certainly up for debate. I am sure there have been studies done on something related to this.
  • Negatives and Positives
    The example shows a logical case. Much like with the Trolley Problem the likelihood of the situation arising is not that important. It is the unlying reasoning we are concerned with.

    I good give another example of someone inventing the Car and then someone else also inventing the Car completely unrelated to each other. If we are then to ask Who invented the Car? it is perfectly fine to say two people rather than one. The genuine inventor is both people, yet it is highly likley someone will accuse another of fraud and call them a Fake.

    This is a different use of the term Fake though, but it is just an example of how the assumption of one genuine creator of an object/idea is not necessarily true. If taken to a more realistic level it is likley that someone is accused in Art of 'copying' someone else's style and therefore the style they use can be considered Fake as it is not their genuine style -- this is especially the case if the person replicating someone else's style does so with the intent of pretending this style is their own.

    There is no true antonym of 'fake' so there is no necessary negation of it. Double negatives are only about Not Not Fake, rather than Fake Fake where the context can shift the meaning.

    Not Fake is not a double negative, whereas Not Not Fake is, but I have seen people making this mistake simply because they construe a term that seems negative (such as fake) as a true Not.
  • Negatives and Positives
    What are you talking about?
  • Negatives and Positives
    Or, as I just stated, a genuinely original piece that just so happens to look identical to the other piece (maybe two artists even name the painting in the same way too).
  • Negatives and Positives
    So now, what makes a fake, a fake? I think it must come from the perceiver, not the thing in itself. Only a perceiver could say the plastic decoration was the same thing as the organic plant, or that it was related to the organic plant at all intended to be a fake version of it. These are born in perception.Fire Ologist

    There is the direct logical view of viewing this as a double negative too, or assuming the a fake fake, a fake, or a fake fake fake fake, are always Fakes, of some sort or they would not be called fakes at all.

    A white and black, black and white guitar are both white and black. A genuine fake is a perfectly acceptable term, but a fake genuine is not.

    There is also something to be said about different types of antonym and how people disagree about categorisation -- I guess this is something of an obsession of mine!
  • Negatives and Positives
    My point was that this can mean different things as how the meaning is interpreted is not set in stone.

    A fake fake could be something that is original yet coincidently looks identical to something else. Here there is a reasonable case for saying that both are Genuine, Original and Identical, but neither are copies as it only appears that one is a copy of the other.
  • Negatives and Positives
    If i created a work of art, such as a painting, and then gave you an atomically precise printed copy of it, would you consider it art or not? Or, if i wrote a book and gave you an atomically precise copy of it, would you regard that copy as a work of literature?punos

    I guess this is part of a discussion in another thread. There is the experience of making Art and the experiencing if Art. With a replica I am still experiencing the Original Work even if I look to the finest level.

    The regard for experiencing the original is identical on an aesthetic level. We can somewhat understand the distinction better when considering music. A song can be listened too in different ways, but the recording is still authentic to the original sound assuming one has an excellent sound system. A live recording misses out the atmosphere of the live experience but the sound is genuine.

    When it comes to AI writing novels I find a problem with what I am saying regarding how I frame the term Art, but that is another matter. Artifical Art I guess? Which makes it Artistically appreciated but not Artistically Created.

    Can you clarify what you mean by “demarcating what something is or is not due to the subjectivity of experience”?punos

    As in the kind of idea people have that how something is genuine matters to them more even when the sensory experience is identical. The Hard Problem of consciousness.
  • Negatives and Positives
    Is that Artistic Value though? i would say no. As an object of Art there is a further arguments to be had ...

    If it was literally #D printed top teh atomic level there is no human touch, so it woudl not be Art. We find difficulties in these areas and this interests me a lot as it is here that logic fails to demarcate what somethign si or is not due to the subjectivity of experience.
  • Negatives and Positives
    It would not be reasonable in my estimation to state that both are the original, because even if structurally identical they have two different paths within spacetime. Although for practical purposes in most cases i suppose it shouldn't be a problem.punos

    Agreed, to a point. I think I would say 'practical' with a bit more force. If the physicality of a painting is primarily what matters (and I would argue that it is), then both would be indistinguishable. The history of the painting is much harder to construe as 'physical' as a painting -- in terms of aesthetic quality -- is not determined by its historical journey.

    This would dovetail into why I do not view most 'conceptual art' as Art.
  • Negatives and Positives
    Exactly.

    I am sure everyone has heard of the analogy taken at the atom level too where a painting is replicated down to the atomic level? If we then accidently mix them up do they both become the original to us?

    And if so what is there to say against them both being Original if they are indistinguishable by every other trait other than their existing history (which is unobservable physically)?
  • The Question of Causation
    Just saying everything is mental may in some sense be simpler than materialism or dualism, but I don't think it provides any deeper insights or amelioration to these issues.Apustimelogist

    You are missing the point. Husserlian Phenomenology is not at all concerned with material existence as it is focused on the experience of consciousness. It is not merely sayign everything is Mental it just does not care about material measurements -- the aim being to figure out an approach that can better ground science in subjectivity.

    Husserl started as a physicist so he was not against empirical data at all.

    What we are talking about in phenomenological terms is understanding how when we look at any given object of perception it is necessarily 'pregnant' (to use his term) with unseen aspects -- volume, back, bottm, side etc.,. When we look at other phenomena the same makes itself known to us, like with sounds. We cannot think of a sound that has no volume, nor a song that has no melody.

    To Bracket Out the general material view we are used to allows us to reframe our experience and categorise it differently. This can then be used once we readopt material data and seek clues to how our subjective experience maps onto neural networks or not at all.

    Replacing combination with emergence does not really solve much because they are similar issues.Apustimelogist

    Yes. It is no better than stating something like "I don't know how it works, therefore aliens!" The issue becomes one of reductionism -- something else Phenomenology puts its hand to.

    We are talking about consciousness so it makes sense to start at the source rather than shift to what our consciousness constructs (that is a representation of other in the idea of something being something). The question of how we obtain a pciture of a World is where conscoiusness is most readily at work. My conscious being appreciates physics not the other away around.
  • The Question of Causation
    The first-person reality of consciousness doesn’t appear as an object in the world; it manifests as the point of view from which the world is experienced.Wayfarer

    This is precisely why I favour Husserl's approach to a science of consciousness. He was not at all concerned with the 'existence' of physical objects and bracketed out any difference between a unicorn and a horse. Both are 'objects' of consciousness.

    His phenomenology -- whilst problematic -- does offer an interesting way of approaching the problem of articulating consciousness without direct concern with empirical objective measurements.
  • Using Artificial Intelligence to help do philosophy
    Maybe because we can learn by doing rather than relying on something to constantly correct our mistakes (which is laziness) ;)