Generalising that from the flower to the environment as a 'system of proximate causes', those material constitution variables which are associated with the values of hidden states (which we elicit/model) are proximate causes for what we see, which are Markov separated from their past by their current configuration. — fdrake

OK, that works well for the flower, we can draw a hypothetical Markov blanket around all it's current states and consider that to be the first exterior node of our own perception. I'm not quite sure how that idea (which I'm fine with, as a model) fits in with how we might accommodate things like neuronal noise. They're happening 'within the body', but are surely as outside of the Markov blanket of our own perception process as the first rain the seed felt is outside that of the plant's current state?

The ambiguity regarding what the nodes of a causal chain of perception should be transfers uncertainty to any definition of "the perceptual object" which seeks to distinguish the perceptual object by its antecedent to the logging node. Since the interdependence of the two makes it difficult to break the conscious logging event out of the perception process.

There's then a further ambiguity regarding whether it's correct to say that the antecedent event to the conscious logging event is what is perceived. — fdrake

Yep, I can see the difficulty, but do we really have no ground for our 'stand roughly there' type of line being around the 'logging event'. Consider it this way...

The perceptual process is 1>2>3>4>5>6>7>8>9>1>2>3>4>5>6>7>8>9>1>2>3>4... where the numbers are all reals (even though I've just used natural numbers). Now we've removed the artifice of packaging up the process entirely. We want to take a 'snapshot' of the state of the system for our definitions, to answer the question "what are you looking at?" That snapshot is not going to come from an arbitrary number in that sequence, it's only ever going to come from the 9s. The conscious logging event (or maybe even the final step in it, if we come to terms with the fact that it too is a stepwise process) is not your average point in the process, it's the stopping point for any kind of third party access, we can't tell anyone what the signal from our retinal ganglia was, we can't tell anyone what just exited our V1, we can't tell anyone what photons just sped away from the flower's petals...We can't talk about any step in the process other than the last logging event. So even though that event merely feeds back into the perpetual process to become a step like any other, it remains significant to us in language, social behaviour etc. That, I think, gives the step immediately prior to it a justified priority when asking "why do we say...?" or "why do we do...?" the 'say' and 'do' parts are always going to be one of the 9s in the sequence so looking for 'why' should start at 8...regardless of an understanding that the cycle is continuous.

To me that makes the answer to the question "what am I talking about...?" the nearest step I can describe (arbitrarily put a ring around) to the 'talking about' bit of the cycle. I could say that I'm talking about the very last neuronal signal prior to be making the sounds, but that's not yet something we have a social construction for, we don't know what that is. But to go back beyond our beliefs, memories, mental images...etc, all things for which we do have words, all the way back to the hidden external state to answer that question seems unwarranted. If we're looking for the nearest describable step in the chain to the latest logging event (the one where we determine to do the action we're enquiring about), then I think it's just not true to say the nearest one we can find is the external hidden state (the flower), we have much nearer steps we can still find meaningful words for.

I think that says 'some internal states in perception have internal states as proximate causes', not 'all internal states in perception have internal states as proximate causes', in Friston's model there's both. I'm trying to highlight the realist commitments contained in 'some internal states in perception have environmental hidden states as their proximate causes', I believe you're highlighting that 'some internal states in perception have internal states as their proximate causes'. And even more radically, 'some internal states are proximate causes of the values of environmental hidden states"!. We can both agree. — fdrake

Yes, definitely (even your hidden bit). I think that's the essential difference between my position and idealism (with which it is often confused). Idealism would claim the latter - 'all internal states in perception have internal states as proximate causes', I claim only the former, but I believe that the state of intent to act (speak, do) is an example of such a state as has another internal state as it's proximate cause and as such, in some modelling exercises, the internal state is the proper subject of those acts, not the external state further along the causal chain.

Don't have any time this evening but wanted to clarify this was a rhetorical device not something I actually think. I thought it was more obvious than it clearly came out.

My point was that when we espouse pet theories without citations (even in support of anti-covid measures), we invite any such theories as the one I made up to the discussion.

It was a poorly thought out device and I shouldn't have risked it in this climate.

See the context...

...or

...we could cite our sources and have a proper conversation. — Isaac

Sorry for the confusion.

But you didn't make any point at all. I wish you would. — magritte

Wasn't my point.

Lack of social distancing is the superspreader, and that's regardless of any variant of COVID or any other communicable disease.
College campuses are social gatherings, students are there to socialize, and it's this lack of social distancing aspect that the university is addressing. — magritte

A dangerous vaccine ingredient is the is the superspreader, and that's regardless of any variant of COVID or any other communicable disease.
College campuses are fully vaccinated, and it's this dangerous vaccine ingredient that the university should be addressing.

...or

...we could cite our sources and have a proper conversation.

The point is that a whole series of actions were taken, many imposed against the preferences of the students. Let's say your theory is true (it's certainly more likely than mine). It doesn't address the question at hand, which is whether all those other protections had an effect significant enough to justify their imposition. If, as you say, it's all down to social distancing anyway, then why were vaccines and masks mandated but social distancing not?

It's extremely difficult to respond to your post given that it's so terse and cluttered. I'll do my best

1. You seem to be claiming that I've said the weather is in your skull by quoting me saying "You've just said that you believe the actual weather you're referring to goes on outside of your skull. ==>I don't.<=="? If so, then try reading the entire expression rather than just the underlined bits. Expressions make sense as a whole, not in parts. I'm saying that the 'actual weather' you're referring to is inside your skull ie what you claim is the 'actual weather' in that sentence is, in fact, a belief about it inside your skull.

Either that or you did indeed catch me out in a stunning coup de grâce and I did truly believe that you had rain, wind and snow inside your skull. A second's thought about which was most likely would have eliminated this entire pointless digression.

If you believe in such a model and I do too, — Isaac

What model? — InPitzotl

The one I outlined in the preceding sentences.

The flower that is not inside the box? — InPitzotl

Yes, that's correct.

...not just any weather. The weather as it is currently occurring outside my window. — InPitzotl

Fine.

Nothing. The flower in the box does not exist. — InPitzotl

You claimed your expression was about the flower. I'm asking you what becomes of that claim?

Don't have to. I was just wrong about it at T1. — InPitzotl

Right, so, like Janus, you're happy with the notion that you don't know what your expressions are about when you utter them? That seems daft to me, but is at least coherent.

It's about what's in the box. That's why on finding the box empty at T2 I can say "I guess I was wrong. (because) There was no flower in the box." The lack of flowers in the box is why there is no referent to "the flower", which makes "The flower is green" false. — InPitzotl

Forget the box, it was a device I thought might make the thought experiment clearer, but it has clearly not.

T0 - I show you a flower
T1 - you say "the flower is green"
T2 - I reveal that I had tricked you with a powerful hallucinogen and there was in fact no flower.

What was your statement at T1 about?

That's a misleading quote. — magritte

Misleading how? The point being made was...

An institution with a mandatory vaccination policy, compulsory mask policy, and surveillance testing has become a den of superspreaders. So what will they think of next? — NOS4A2

...(literally the only point made in the entire post).

So how does the fact that everyone there is vaccinated make the quote misleading with regards to that point. It is indeed true that the policies in place (specifically the vaccine) have not worked to prevent this cluster, that's the only point being made and the quote supports it entirely transparently.

The main problem is the lack of social distancing. — magritte

No, the main problem is that the vaccine is a poison making those who take it vulnerable to the new variant.

(see what we can do if we abandon the need to cite our theories?)

I'd expect most to be disgusted about the scandals. — jorndoe

Most? Most seem to presume their products are manna from heaven, their every word is the gospel truth and any notion that they might be manipulating information wild conspiracy theory.

I've posted most of those before. Between the deafening silence, in place of solidarity, I was accused of being mentally ill.

So no. I don't think most would be disgusted about the scandals. Most want to sweep the scandals under the rug and pretend it isn't happening. See my response to Boethius above.

The Great Barrington Declaration (which I don't actually agree with, by the way - I'm using it as an example of the discourse, not an example of good policy) was trodden into the dirt for receiving web hosting and administrative support from AIER (who, again, I've got absolutely no time for) totalling some thousand at most. The government appointed CDC declarations are treated as gospel despite receiving over a billion dollars from the very industry whose products their pronouncements are about - and no-one even so much as raises an eyebrow. — Isaac

It's not enough to look at all those scandals and simply say 'tsk!'. These people are in charge of the response to the crisis. I just don't understand how people cannot put the two facts together.

They (you included) seem to have no trouble seeing the severity of the disease. They maybe agree that the pharmaceutical industry (and their ties with government and regulators) are as bent as a nine-bob note. Then, when deciding what to fill the front pages with, think that the fact that these criminals are being handed the reins and unflichingly believed wholesale at every turn is of secondary import to that fact that a few nutjobs think the vaccine turns them into a 5g transmitter.

If there is no actual John, but only an imagined John, then I believed the statement was a about an actual John, but subsequently discovered I was mistaken, and that it was about an imagined or fictive John. — Janus

So you don't know what your statements are about at the time you're making them? That's fine if that's your model. Seems perfectly consistent to me, but quite nonsensical. I prefer a model where I do know what I'm referring to in my expressions at the time I'm making them.

If "it's raining" describes what's inside my skull, and (2) is inside my skull — InPitzotl

Who said (2) is inside your skull?

At an absolute minimum, I expect some sort of explanation from you that achieves the goal of building a fence such that "it's raining" and "a belief about a weather condition" are on one side of the fence, and "the actual weather condition" is on the other (possibly because "atmospheric molecules" make "the actual weather condition"), such that you can say "it's raining" is on the side of the former and not the side of the latter. Because something like that is what you actually claimed. — InPitzotl

We can just take that as a given. If you believe in such a model and I do too, there seems no need to go through the work of demonstrating it's construction.

So you're claiming that the expression "the flower is green" is not about the flower? — Isaac

What flower? — InPitzotl

The flower you originally claimed you were talking about. I've just exchanged for the sake of the thought experiment. "it's raining">"the weather is raining">"the flower is green" - all expressions of the the same form "the x(object) is y(property)". You want to claim that "the weather is raining" is about the actual weather outside your skull (object), so "the flower is green" is about the actual flower outside your skull.

So when you find out you were deceived and there was no flower, what do you do about your expression at T1? You claim it was about a flower outside your skull, but there was no flower. Do you go back in time and change what it was about? Do you not know what your expressions are about (only guess)? Do the outside-skull objects of your expressions blink in and out of existence depending on what's later believed about them?

I can think of a deflationary answer to why we shouldn't be conscious of the seed - because while the seed and its growing environment is a distal cause of the flower's behaviour in the environment we're perceiving in, it doesn't form part of the system of proximate causes that our perception is responding to in our current environment. Seed caused flower to be there, wind's making it move, we see the movement. — fdrake

True, but that assumes no distal causes can intervene in the perceptual process does it not, no neuronal noise, no transmitter suppression en route? If we break the chain at the seed because it's influence on the flower is only distal, then is there some way we can distinguish the many influences from inside the brain on the route between retinal ganglia and conscious logging such that they're categorically different from the way the environment affects the seed? I can' draw it properly by it might go...

seed>(plus stochastic external influences)>flower>retinal ganglia>conscious logging

- and we're troubled including the seed because of the stochastic influences which muddy it's causing the flower. But considering that we actually have...

seed>(plus stochastic external influences)flower>retinal ganglia>(plus stochastic external influences)conscious logging

...the stochastic variables don't seem to be a distinguishing feature of the seed>flower step.

Which I think might be what you're saying with...

Maybe if I can steel man a bit - maybe the point you're making is that it's unclear exactly how to extend what we are conscious of into the system of proximate causes of our environment when the causal network that leads to our perceptual acts is ambiguous - how do you chunk it up into nodes, and which parts are perception? Definitely agree with the presence of that ambiguity. If what the object of perception is, is equated to the antecedent step to the conscious logging event, then I think it's quite clear that the retinal ganglia firing event is the object of perception. — fdrake

...?

Do you think it's right to say that the conscious logging event is part of the perceptual process, or is it an external process which perception just 'writes to' once it's finished? Perception makes a package, sends it to conscious awareness, done. Or is it like 'perception is online, sending live feed to conscious awareness as part my internal function' - is conscious awareness a 'receptor' of the output of the perceptual process - a terminal node - or is it an interior node of the process of perception? — fdrake

Can I be really annoying and say both?

Perception is a process involving feedback (reaching out into the environment to 'test' hypotheses, or even to make the environment match hypotheses) so we must include the conscious awareness that logs very short-term events as those will without doubt be brought back into the process a few seconds later (there's also non-conscious versions of this, such as the loop between the V2 region and the Hippocampus, for example - consciousness is not required).

However, it would seem perverse to say that all of the thousands of mental events that are triggered during a perceptual process (as if we could break that up into chunks either!), should be considered as part of the process. we'd only ever have the kind of radical holism that can't investigate anything for failure to commit to boundaries.

I think, if we're to investigate perception we have to learn to be happy about identifying a main stream of events in the causal chain and accepting that we've cut-off a whole load of more minor tributaries from our investigation. Much of conscious logging goes out the window by that means, for me.

I personally make a stink about perceptual intermediaries in part because of the above ambiguity - going strongly against construing conscious awareness as a terminal node/passive receptor of data. Could be wrong there though. — fdrake

No, I think you're entirely right, but it's only that an actual investigation must set it's boundaries. It has to draw some arbitrary lines around what is actually a continual process affected by just about every part of the brain, body and environment at some level. It would be impossible to proceed with any interrogation of that massive network without making those boundaries. Sometimes that boundary is at some arbitrary logging point (usually the subject verbally acknowledging that they've 'seen' X).

Which I think is also your criticism here...

Another, perhaps deeper criticism, is that while it's possible to construe perception as a causal chain with components, as an overall process it takes environmental or bodily states and 'maps them' to inferred values ; which makes it functional or relational, so more of an bidirectional arrow (reciprocal/feedback relationship) than a node. — fdrake

...?

with whether the constituent processes are part of the body's process of perception (under the conception that conscious logging isn't a terminal node) you get: seeds aren't, flowers aren't, retinal ganglia are, conscious logging events are. In that regard it looks like:

(seed->flower) = world states
(retinal ganglia->conscious logging event) = body states

IE it looks like:

world states -> body states

and there's no 'intermediary' between the body's perception and world. — fdrake

Yes. I like this.

...the problem though (sorry) is with the feedback within the body. Take language. If I say "rose", the whole process, up to the sound exiting my mouth, is an 'in body' one. So to say that I picked the word 'rose' because there's a world state equating to 'rose' would be to break your own boundary distinction. I clearly picked the word 'rose' as a result of internal stimuli - body states. Since the signals triggering my speech centres were internal. Speech isn't a part of perception (another of our artificial boundaries), so we cant say it's all part of the body state response to the world state {rose}.

So if we have...

world state{there's a rose}>body state{perception of rose}>body state{I think I'll say "rose"}

...then we picked the word rose because of a body state, not because of a world state.

A final point of contention is that if perception requires environmental foraging, and exploratory acts are treated as part of the perceptual process (eg, adjusting to a load due to perception of heaviness), the exploratory acts are proximate causes of changes in environmental hidden states (where the weight is held), and thereby in direct contact with environmental objects - as proximate causes. Shift the weight, therefore proximate cause of weight movement. — fdrake

I agree here too, but the same caveat applies - do we include speech in this exploratory act? Is non-exploratory action (like picking the flower for a loved one)? Is remembering the scene five minutes later? Five hours later? I think we must draw arbitrary lines, perhaps different lines for different purposes.

Unfortunately, in philosophical circles it sometimes is. — Banno

There is that, yes. There's no accounting for folk...

So we can on your account consider (almost?) any point in the chain of events as the object of consciousness. — Banno

With one important caveat. We talk for reasons, so our talk is subservient to those reasons. Some cut-off points would not serve any of the needs we have, the reasons for talking. Many would totally get in the way.

A considerable amount of philosophy (in my opinion) is composed of things we could say without any reason why we should.

I'm not suggesting you think otherwise, Isaac, but I suspect that there might be those who erroneously think your account provides succour to such views. — Banno

Yeah. There's no doubt about that. I'm not that well versed in philosophy so my explanations are often lacking, and I'm afraid I am rather prone to saying things like "there's no flower". Call it a kind of active inference Tourette's.

Perhaps demonstration might be better...

Here is some work using the idea of perceptual features. https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2019/1/niz012/5566576 (an interesting paper, but just a random example really). Now, they describe the first node outside of the Markov boundary as a 'hypothesised stimuli', I use 'hidden state'. The question for the "when we talk about the flower, we are talking about the flower and not some odd construct" position is...are they wrong to do this research? Are they wrong about what they're discovering, wrong about their modelling assumptions? Basically, the trouble I have understanding the position you espouse (which does differ from mine on this point, I think) is exactly where you think people like Friston have gone wrong.

I totally get that in normal language games it's be ridiculous to say "pass me the set-of-hidden-states-that-I'm-currently-modelling-as-the-jam would you". I can even go as far as to understand why a more in depth linguistic analysis might want to deal in flowers, bulbs, light and nervous tissue, rather than models.

Where I struggle is in philosophy of mind and epistemology where I can't seem to accommodate what is, at the moment, the prevailing model of perception . I don't currently see how it can take into account that model without getting into Markov blankets and hidden states.

If we extend our causal chain further seed>flower>retinal ganglia>visual cortex>action(pick the flower), we see that in terms of proximate causality, your reaching out to pick something is stimulated by the message from your visual cortex (there are complex backward-acting suppressive messages too, but we'll ignore those for a minute). So the properties (spatial location, texture etc) that form your reaching strategy are those properties the visual cortex delivers. Additional properties (what flowers are 'for', the fact that there might be hidden thorns...) that your reaching strategy is modified by are those delivered by (well, a very complex set of brain regions, but all triggered by the ventral stream of processing from the visual cortex). The point is, if we want to understand your reaching strategy (behaviour), then it's the information entering your sensorimotor regions that determine the strategy, not 'the flower' near the beginning of our chain, any more than 'the seed' right at the start of it

So. To say "we reach to pick the flower, not a model of the flower" is fine until you want to explain why we might make mistakes, or how influences other than the flower affect our strategy (which is where my research was). If we can only talk in terms of reaching for 'the flower', then I can't distinguish other influences. I suppose I could say that we reach for the flower+additional-models, but that seems like a clumsy compromise.

Suggestions welcome!

I've asked you to teach me, but you can't: proof: — James Riley

Teaching is a collaborative, not a combative activity.

Seems like my government is telling me the truth when they say their are subversives and useful idiots out there doing Putin's work for him, and pushing an agenda of white nationalism. — James Riley

How does it 'seem like...' they're telling the truth? Do their words come out with glitter on?

democracy — James Riley

Ha!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/07/is-america-a-democracy-if-so-why-does-it-deny-millions-the-vote

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/24/us-world-democracy-rankings-freedom-house-new-low

This dramatic decline is primarily down to the US having been demoted to a “flawed democracy,” in the classification of the EIU - as a result of low public confidence in the government. The report stresses that this was strongly in evidence prior to the presidential election that saw Donald Trump become president. — https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/which-are-the-worlds-strongest-democracies/

Quite simply, when all I see is unmitigated hatred and sniping against my government (warranted or not),I want to know if the sniper is sincerely trying to help, of if he is an agent for one of those other governments? — James Riley

OK, I'll be more blunt. The answer is it doesn't matter one jot. Your government, their government...what does it matter? You owe your government nothing, you owe no enmity to the other. That's the us vs them to which I was referring.

So, as a naïve noob in these matters of international concern that you seem to be such an expert on... — James Riley

I've made no greater a claim than you, we're all just giving opinions here, or did you think that yours came along with labels on?

I have taught you repeatedly — James Riley

I have taught but you have not learned. — James Riley

I already taught you — James Riley

Remember what I taught you — James Riley

...and I'm the one who's comments are apparently suffused with pretensions to expertise!

How is a simple American supposed to know? That's my simple question. — James Riley

You can't. You've already ruled out 'doing your own research', you've ruled out listening to dissenting voices in any areas other than those in which you are an expert. You've blindfolded and gagged yourself, so do whatever your government says, it's the only option you've got left.

I guess we'll see.

Here in the philosophy forum, you made an argument tracing back to this:

It coveys (1)a belief about a weather condition, not (2)the actual weather condition (3)(which is composed of atmospheric molecules). — Isaac

...to which I replied that (1) goes on in my skull, (2) and "it's raining" four feet in front, and (3) is just a model we use to explain (2).

I've seen two replies to this, but no responses. I don't know why you keep quoting me; you don't seem very interested in actually talking about this. — InPitzotl

I don't know what a response to this would look like that's not what I've been providing. You've just said that you believe the actual weather you're referring to goes on outside of your skull. I don't. I've gibven the argument that if it were the actual weather we were referring to we'd have to retrospectively change what we referred to if we found out we were being deceived so it makes more sense to say it's our belief about the weather that we refer to. I don't know what's 'not a response' about that.

"The flower is green" is about the contents of the box, as opposed to having nothing to do with the contents of my right shoe. — InPitzotl

So you're claiming that the expression "the flower is green" is not about the flower?

No, that's the first scenario. When there isn't a cat he isn't talking about an actual cat.
But in the second scenario where there is a cat he is talking about an actual cat. — Michael

Sorry. The second, there's an actual cat (where by 'actual' I mean here that the whole language community playing that particular language game agree there's cat).

The person is alone. Nobody else is around to either see or not see a cat. The person can see a cat, and talks about the cat he sees. — Michael

Then there's no meaning to anything they say. No-one to speak to, no meaning to the expressions. Language is a social enterprise.

We were talking about access to facts. If my experience is veridical then ipso fact I have access to a fact. — Michael

I agree.

Are you saying that because I don't know if the money is real then I don't have access to real money? That doesn't follow. If the money is real then I have access to real money, even if I cannot distinguish real money from fake money. — Michael

I agree here too. I don't see how it follows from this that you can say our expressions must be about these facts which is turns out we have veridical access to. That it turns out we sometimes have access to veridical facts is one thing, that our expressions are about them is another.

If my experience is veridical then my finger is pointing to a cat. If my experience is an hallucination then my finger isn't pointing to a cat. — Michael

Yep, since you can't verify which at the time of speaking you're left with either retrospectively changing the subject of expressions, not knowing the subject of expressions at the time or that the subject of expressions in belief not cats. I think the first two are nonsensical.

What do you mean by not knowing at the time whether an experience is veridical or not? Your entire argument is that to know is to believe. Iff I believe that my experience at the time is veridical then I know that my experience at the time is veridical. — Michael

No. I'm saying that knowing is a type of belief, a type with a particularly compelling set of justifications (usually they are 'my epistemic peers would mostly agree' and 'when I act as if it were the case I get the expected results') these two types of justification for believing something are very persuasive but they're still just justifications for believing something.

The idea Dr. Norman (and his whole team!) can just be removed from the conversation is completely absurd. Likewise, other experts, of which there are many with advanced degrees, professorships, questioning the statistical "evidence" of the governments as well as moral / legal basis for mandates in any case. — boethius

Interesting interview with Stefan Baral on that topic

https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2020/10/why-scientists-fear-toxic-covid-19-debate

Only a few pages back (or perhaps on the other thread) I cited Vinay Prasad (a perfectly well respected contributor to public health discourse for decades) and the person I cited it to immediately trawled through his previous work to find something, anything, by which his name could be smeared out of the discussion.

Likewise when citing Martin Kuldorff (didn't he do an interview on a show which also interviewed an anti-semite?), Pete Doshi (didn't he write an article that was opposed to Pfizer a few years ago?), Sunita Gupta (didn't she get funding from AIER who also funded Philip Morris)...and so on...

No-one shies away from citing government figures of industry-sponsored trials.

The pharmaceutical industry spend an average of $233 million per year, on lobbying the US federal government; $414 million on contributions to presidential and congressional electoral candidates, national party committees, and outside spending groups; and $877 million on contributions to state candidates and committees. It dwarfs, for example, the AIER's purported role in the Great Barrington Declaration by several hundred thousand orders of magnitude, yet it's the dissenters that get put under the spotlight and the mainstream treadmill of lobbying money and cushy consultancy posts is waived through...nothing to see here. It's pathetic.

The Great Barrington Declaration (which I don't actually agree with, by the way - I'm using it as an example of the discourse, not an example of good policy) was trodden into the dirt for receiving web hosting and administrative support from AIER (who, again, I've got absolutely no time for) totalling some thousand at most. The government appointed CDC declarations are treated as gospel despite receiving over a billion dollars from the very industry whose products their pronouncements are about - and no-on even so much as raises an eyebrow.

By contact tracing. — Banno

I'm confused (or surprised, whichever turns out to be the case). Are you saying that there's a $1000 dollar fine just for attending a social gathering just knowing you've been in contact with someone who's had Covid (having been contacted on your tracing app)? In England it was never even a legal requirement to isolate, only a recommendation.

The asymptomatic, the socially isolated (as measured by 'pings'), the negatively tested, the bearers of natural antibodies, the vaccinated. All have good reason to believe they're less infectious than average, yet all have a small chance of being infectious despite their status. But only one of the five gets their freedom (in all cases - sometimes tests are allowed, sometimes not). It's the one that earns money for the pharmaceutical companies. The very same pharmaceutical companies who spent an unprecedented amount of money last year lobbying the very governments who make the decisions about who's free and who isn't.

Corporations are getting away with lobbying government into choosing solutions that massively favour them at a time when we desperately need more careful planning and social welfare spending than ever. If that's not something we should be opposing then I've totally misunderstood what left-wing politics was about.

I understand your concerns, but I do not share them. The evidence I've seen is that vaccination reduces viral load and hence transmission. — Banno

The discourse around this topic has become so toxic, it's refreshing to hear someone disagree in such respectful terms. I appreciate that.

Money heading off to Pfizer and friends might be regretted eventually. Nationalise 'em, I say. — Banno

I was pitching for up-against-the-wall-come-the-revolution, but yeah...nationalise sounds more pragmatic!

No, it was about an actual cat. — Michael

So in the scenario where it turns out there's no cat, the statement was about a cat? What cat? Who is it's owner? Did it have any kittens?

But what do you mean by "an actual cat" when you say "'the cat is black' isn't about an actual cat"? — Michael

In that context I simply mean a cat which everyone in the language game agrees is there.

For clarity, in the wider sense (as in "there's no such thing as the actual cat"), I mean an object in a model of the world where the objects we see are determinable by some means to exist outside of our Markov blanket as they appear to us from inside it. I think such a model is problematic in certain circumstances so I don't use it in things like philosophical discussions, or in my research work. I do, however, use it to make a cup of tea or get on the train, it's pragmatically very good.

As usual, different meanings in different contexts.

The post I linked to was a response to your post about "deciding post hoc"? — Michael

Oops! Looking again then...

What you seem to be saying is that either 1) we never have veridical experiences, or 2) if hallucinations are possible then a veridical experience isn't access to the facts.

Whether or not the first is true seems a topic for another discussion, but the second is an invalid inference. — Michael

I agree. I'm not saying that it's not possible to have veridical experiences. I'm saying that because we don't know at the time whether an experience is veridical or not, it doesn't make sense to say that our expressions refer to the external objects of that experience. Those object might not even exist, we can't possibly be referring to them, we must, rather, be referring to our beliefs, our mental images of them. It's those that actually exist at the time.

Are you saying that in the second scenario the person isn't pointing to a real cat with their finger? — Michael

I'm saying they might not be. Although you've introduced 'real' now, a whole different kettle of fish. I think Frodo is 'real' in some senses of the word, we'd need to be clearer about what you mean by 'real' before I can properly answer that.

If a person is hallucinating a cat and points to where they see a cat then they’re not pointing to a real cat; they’re pointing to empty air or to the ground or to nothing or whatever. — Michael

Right. So in the first scenario "the cat is black" is not about the cat (there isn't one).

So it's incorrect to say that the statement "the cat is black" is about the cat. At best, it might be about the cat, or it might not be. We won't know until we determine whether the cat was a hallucination or not.

My issue with this way of looking at things is that it sets up a situation where we don't know what we're talking about at the time of saying it. Which seems silly.

Also, in the second scenario, what was "the cat is black" about? It sounds like in the second scenario we find out that "the cat is black" turns out after all to have been about our belief, not an actual cat. So why didn't we know that at the time. We can't be wrong about our beliefs so I'd know at the time if I was referring to a belief.

there’s still this post where I address the issue of hallucinations and veridical experiences. — Michael

The discussion about the temporal mess of deciding post hoc what a statement was about was supposed to be an answer to that. Sorry.

OK. So how do you personally resolve the issue I've outlined in my argument above.

At T1 you say "John is a bachelor" - you want to say that this statement is not about your beliefs but rather that it's about John, the man.

At T2 you disover that there's no such person, you were deceived (a hallucination, or a trick).

There's no problem with my system because at T2, your belief is still a real thing (albeit historical).

There's a problem (I see) with your system because at T2 you have the change what your statement at T1 was about. It can't have been referring to John, the actual man, because there was no John.

So do you retrospectively change what your statement was about, go back and change what was the case in the past? If so, are there other situations where we can change what was actually the case in the past?

Note we're not revising our belief about what was the case. Your claim is that your statement "John is a bachelor" actually is about John, not just that you believe it to be but might revise that belief later if contrary evidence arises.

Doesn't 'John is a bachelor' mean, by implication 'John is a man who has not participated in the kind of series of events that are generically referred to as "getting wed"'? — Janus

That's the matter under discussion. My contention is that it means ' John is a man who I believe has not participated in the kind of series of events that are generically referred to as "getting wed"'

My argument is given above so I won't repeat it here.

What I've yet to hear is (what I consider to be) any counter argument beyond just "it isn't".

there are actual events that distinguish a bachelor from a non-bachelor; meaning it's not merely that a bachelor is someone who the linguistic community refers to as such. — Janus

Yep. I agree with all that. Only I'm not arguing about what a bachelor is. I'm arguing about what "John is a bachelor" means.

One reason I've been away from the forum a few months is I accused a private equity investor of money laundering (because he was obviously laundering money and trying to use our engineering documents and concepts to do so ... then tried to make me actively help launder money by offering a million Euro bribe), which created a shit storm that persists to this day. — boethius

Fuck! Well done.

Turns out Nazi's were totally correct about the use of coercive medical interventions (whatever people want to call it), relentless propaganda and blaming everything on a scapegoat that in turn solicits unquestioning loyalty to government power insofar as governments can deliver on harms to those scapegoats.

I guess the idea now is that the Nazi's were just wrong about the reasons for their coercion, wrong about their particular version of "peer reviewed science", and wrong about the class of people targeted for scapegoatism and second class citizenship ... but they were right about the basic setup, as long as the reasons happen to be claimed as "correct" this time? That's the European policy? — boethius

Yeah, as I said some way back...

I'm afraid I'm quite baffled as to why the pronouncements of the medical industry are taken as such gospel truths. We wouldn't treat the oil industry, or arms manufacturers the same way. If any policy favours either of those we're (quite rightly) immediately deeply suspicious. We suspect lobbying pressure, we suspect insider dealing, we suspect backhanders, share deals etc. The pharmaceutical industry spends four, five times more than either of those on lobbying and yet those same suspicions when levied against them are treated as mad conspiracies.

Edit - "baffled" is rhetorical. I'm not baffled at all. We fear death, the medical industry offers us a way to postpone it, we fear rejecting them. — Isaac

A little fear was all it took.

Governments and their corporate sponsors are presiding over the largest transfer of wealth the world's ever seen and the left-wing want to keep the front page firmly focussed on the trivial medical decisions of a handful of the population.

But it appears that gone are the times when mainstream society would think that operating that way is not ethical. — baker

Yep.

JCVI statement 19th July - ‘any decision on deployment of vaccines must be made on the basis that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks to those people who are vaccinated’

JCVI view on the health benefits of universal vaccination in children - ‘the health benefits in this population are small, and the benefits to the wider population are highly uncertain. At this time, JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks’.

Government response two weeks later - new guidance issued for the rollout to include healthy 16-17 year-olds with no new data presented.

JCVI statement in response September 3rd - ‘there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms’.

Government response - fuck off and take the fucking vaccine

Again, that we expect this from governments is lamentable but unsurprising. That we expect independent socially-minded people to actively do their dirty work for them is shocking.

I hadn't dared to post Norman's work, I'm glad someone did. Another perfectly decent career down the pan. He hasn't had a single paper accepted by any journal since publishing his query about the validity of these statistics. A perfectly normal (actually slighter higher than average) acceptance rate up to that point. But apparently nothing to see here...

Since it's out now - his evidence to the UK's Parliamentary committee - https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/13847/pdf/

If those within my house start to divide, and take sides with an external actor who sews division within my house, should I become the oppressor they said I was all along, so they can say to the world "I told you so!"? Or should I fall by being the better angel of my of my nature? Should I let them have what they pray for? Is that a false dilemma? — James Riley

Yes. Your mistake is treating people's lives as if they're the plot of 'Top Gun'. There's no 'your house'/'my house'. America is made mostly of people (who suffer from the oppression of their government), Australia likewise is populated by human beings who suffer at the hands of a disgraceful government and its corporate sponsors. The rest of the world's people suffer likewise (though often at the hands of the US than their own governments). People. All the same people. Not Russians vs Americans. Not your house vs my house.

Whatever his personal motives, Assange highlighted actions which, if allowed to continue, would harm people. Sending the message that such actions will be severely punished by governments the world over will harm people. There's no us vs. them except in the storyline they want you to swallow. But then your proclivity for swallowing simplistic us vs. them narratives you're fed so that you can play out your John Wayne fantasy has been noted before.

Then let’s phrase your scenario appropriately:

Well then how do you talk about X? If I show you a box and tell you there's a flower in it, you say "the flower is green", but I believe that there's no flower in the box. How can you have been talking about the actual green flower? I believe that there is no actual green flower.


What do your beliefs have to do with what InPitzotl talks about and what his words refer to? — Michael

That's not the correct phrasing. In the scenario (at T2), I've shown InPitzotl the empty box. We believe there's no flower in it.

If you say he is actually pointing to the actual rain at T1 you're required to change the past when you realise, at T2 that there's no rain. — Isaac


I said that if it’s raining then he’s referring to the actual rain. — Michael

So what a person is actually referring to can never be established (since we can never know for sure if it's actually raining)? This is still the same problem, at T1 (before we know if it's actually raining), we can't say what the statement refers to, because it only refers to the actual rain if it's actually raining and we don't know that at T1. Are you in the habit of making statements and not knowing what they're referring to?

a man who has not been wed is a man who has not participated in the series of events involved in being wed — Janus

Yep. a description of the steps necessary to achieve a state is not the same as an investigation into the meaning of the word. If it were philology and science would be the same topic.

There was no argument in that cartoon — InPitzotl

the smoke you were blowing — InPitzotl

...is an argument. Or did you think it was one of your famous 'independent facts' that my position is just blowing smoke?

Nope; not if there is no actual flower. But it is about the contents of that box. In this case, the truth value of "the flower is green" is undefined, as that statement has no referent, but the reason it has no referent is because that box doesn't have a flower in it. — InPitzotl

The point is that you only know that at T2 when you see the empty box. so at T1 you are making a statement whose proper referent you don't know. But your claim is that you do know the referent of "it's raining" - the rain, even at T1.

You said
"Most of the time, it's used to getinform the listener to believethat it's raining (by which I mean have a tendency to act as if it's rainingto convey information necessary for the listener to adapt to the rain - put a coat on to avoid getting wet, carry an umbrella to avoid getting wet, write a historically accurate poem about it...)." — InPitzotl
...in response — Isaac

FTFY. — InPitzotl

We're going round in circles. To inform someone is to get them to believe something, it's just a subset of getting someone to believe something where you also believe that thing.

we have in place a strong and competent tracing system. Folk who have been identified as potentially carrying the Dreaded Lurgy are asked to get tested and isolate pending the result. If someone were to attend a venue during that period they would receive a $1000 fine. — Banno

How 'identified'?

Look, the point being made here is simple. (and also answers @EricH's question earlier). There's a whole host of solutions to this crisis - better investment in healthcare, proper equipping of ICUs, removing barriers to healthcare in minority and poor communities, transparent and believable information about hygiene practices, efficient and fast lockdowns, social distancing, masking, and vaccines.

Of that list, vaccines, are a very effective aid to reducing disease severity in those at risk. Their effect on transmission in actual population settings hasn't even been established, their benefit to the under 25s is marginal if present at all, their potential to end the crisis has been labelled "a myth" by the government's own experts...

...yet all we hear about is their promotion, how anyone not taking them is public enemy number one. Nothing about the government's abject failure to provide equitable healthcare, zip about the food industry's ruthless complicity in the obesity and heart disease that makes so many more vulnerable to this, nada about the pharmaceutical companies' sickening profiteering at the expense of poorer countries...

There's one thing which will determine if you are liable to spread the virus to others, and that's having the virus. Whether or not you are likely to have the virus can be determined by a test. Any other means of determining if you're a likely threat is a secondary proxy of less value. There's one thing which determines if you're immune and that's having the appropriate antibodies, that too can be tested for, any other measure is a secondary proxy of less value.

So why vaccine mandates, why vaccine passports? Why use these second-best proxy measures of infectivity and immunity?

Why do governments push the one solution that earns the largest government lobby group the world has ever seen billions of dollars...? Do we really need to ask?

Why do the media push the one solution which earns one of their largest advertising revenue stream billions of dollars, media companies on whose board sit the same people as sit on the board of the global pharmaceutical companies (just for good measure)...? Again, no mystery.

Why do the medical scientific journals and establishments, mainly funded and overseen by the pharmaceutical industry, keep publishing data supportive of this one solution and reject, or smear, data opposed to it...? Not much mystery there either.

Why do the government agencies like the FDA who have a known 'revolving door' system of cushy corporate consultancy positions as rewards for those favourable to the industry, come out in support of the industry solution...? Not exactly rocket science.

Why do independent left-wing voices, supposedly concerned about things like social welfare, fighting corporate overreach and government 'sponsorship' rackets, act like they're in Pfizers PR department...? That's the mystery that's actually interesting. That's what keeps me coming back to pick at it.

You'd have to have a farcical showtrial first, before you could tell. — James Riley

Yes, indeed. Likewise one would need to actually be eaten before one could really predict the outcome of jumping into the lion enclosure. So hard to tell...it's 50/50 between a powerless journalist being imprisoned for literally anything they can pin on him or the most powerful government in the world conceding to an open and frank discussion of their war crimes...a real tough call...all to play for!

Maybe this is a good time to separate doers and deniers? — jorndoe

Good idea.

If people are falling for misinformation, then stop whining about them and do something to make the information more convincing. — Isaac

if you cannot tell the difference between the grotesque murder of the journalist and the effort to bring to justice Assange — tim wood

If you can't tell the difference between an effort to bring someone to justice and a farcical showtrial to gloss over attempts to silence journalism then you disqualify yourself from reasonable discussion.

On the basis of PCR? — Isaac


No. — Banno

On what basis then? Must I wring blood from the stone!

Wrong government - that was NT. — Banno

I see. Although not relevant anymore if the fine's not based on PCR anyway. Presumably in NT then one could walk into a bar vaccinated but infected and suffer no legal opposition?

As I've already said...

This seems to be another common theme here, judging other people's intents using your beliefs. Other people act on the basis of their beliefs, not yours. — Isaac

You're baffled because you think I believe the things you believe and then can't understand why I reach a different conclusion. I don't believe the things you believe. That's why my conclusions are different.

Since you and I are epistemic peers (I assume?) our disagreement is not resolvable by anything other than reason from shared beliefs. Such discussion seems to be out of fashion these days, replaced by the latest fad for believing everything our governments tell us and yelling for the public flogging of anyone who disagrees.

My 'position' has been laid out a dozen times, supported entirely by reputable medical journals and scientists qualified in the relevant fields. Disagreement trails off into either silence or insult, I've nothing left but bored potshots half-heartedly lobbed.

The public discourse on these matters is an absolute disgrace, if the world wanted to walk right into a populist, right-wing world order it could not have found a better way.

Do as your government tells you, don't question the mainstream narrative, publicly shame those that do... Do you see the zeitgeist leading to a new era of enlightened socialism?

You accept this yourself in your scenario where you say that there isn’t actually a flower in the box (apparently contradicting your own arguments). — Michael

I've always argued that (when said by me) that "there's no flower in the box" means 'I believe there's no flower in the box'. Likewise, "it's raining" (when said by me) means 'I believe it's raining' - No contradiction.

If the independent fact is that there isn’t actually a flower, as in your scenario, then InPitzotl isn’t pointing at/referring to anything, even though he believes and says he is. — Michael

Right. So he isn't pointing/referring to the actual rain in the sentence "it's raining" at T1 contrary to his claims.

If you say he is actually pointing to the actual rain at T1 you're required to change the past when you realise, at T2 that there's no rain.

Alternatively, if he's pointing/referring to his belief that it's raining at T1 we have no temporal problems on realising at T2 that there is no rain, the belief was still there, we can picture it (with super advanced fMRI, perhaps), record it on a USB stick - it's still actually real no matter what happens at T2.

With your system we have to retrospectively change what was the case in the past. We say at T1 that he's pointing/referring to the actual rain, but when, at T2, we discover there was no rain, we somehow go back into the past and change what he was actually pointing at

Apologies for butting in, but I'd like to comment on this.

That we can point at nothing isn't that we can't point at something. If there is a flower then I can point to it. If there isn't a flower then there's nothing to point to (other than the floor or empty air or whatever).

There's nothing in principle different between pointing to a green flower with my finger and using the phrase "the green flower." — Michael

Don't mind the interjection at all, fill your boots. I don't understand it though.

At T1 you point (by reference in a statement) to a flower - you want to say it's the actual flower you're pointing to

At T2 you find out there's no flower, so now it's not the actual flower you're pointing to, it's nothing

You can't then go back in time and change what the event at T1 was. It was (apparently) pointing at a flower, so where's the flower you were pointing at at T1?

To translate back into knowledge claims...

At T1 you say "it's raining" referring (apparently) to the actual rain

At T2 you find out you were deceived and there was no rain

Where's the actual rain you were referring to at T1, can we water the garden with it?

When a fully vaccinated but infected man shows up at a establishment with a vaccine passport, he gets let in, — NOS4A2


I can't verify your laws, but here if someone did so they would receive a $1000 fine. — Banno

Really? On the basis of PCR? That seems like opening a hornet's nest of counter claims. Didn't your government only just return three detainment camp escapees, despite them testing negative, on the grounds that "the tests aren't perfect"? Imperfect enough to imprison as a precaution, yet perfect enough to make you $1000 the poorer (typical capitalist response - you can do what you like if $1000 is pocket money, but if it's your life savings you'd better hope to God you're no falsely accused - best just stay in, not worth the risk). It sounds like a legal (and ethical) nightmare!

I'd just add that it doesn't then follow that we perceive images or, alternatively, respond to images. Instead we respond to things that we perceive, such as red flowers. — Andrew M

But the latter doesn't follow either. I mean, I agree it doesn't necessarily follow that we respond to images (as in 'I have an image of my house on this USB stick'), simply from the fact that such a definition is plausible, but then it also doesn't necessarily follow that we respond to things we perceive from the the fact that such an definition is only plausible. Neither case has been made nor refuted.

I think a lot is made here of the status of an intermediary in the process of perception, which seems to be to be wrongly hinged on epistemological concerns when it's rightly more ontological.

That something causes us to respond when seeing (what we call) a red flower is not in dispute. That there are intermediary step between the flower an our conscious 'logging' of having seen it is also (I hope) not in dispute.

But here all we have is a causal chain, flower>conscious logging event. There's no reason why we shouldn't extend that chain - seed>flower>conscious logging event - are we now properly said to be conscious of the seed? Does that become the proper object of our perception because it is primary in the chain of events?

So if I, instead of extending the chain, further dissemble it. Flower>retinal ganglia firing>conscious logging event, why can I not say the proper object of the conscious logging event is the firing of the retinal ganglia? We previously stopped the chain of causality at flower (not seed).

The ontological commitment seems to be that the proper object is the first outside of our body. We could just as easily say it's the first outside of our conscious awareness.

This is my takeaway from the above paragraph:
Reveal — InPitzotl

Yeah, the 'it's just obvious to any right thinking person' argument.

I disagree with the postulate that to talk about x, I must have "direct access" to x, whatever "direct access" means. — InPitzotl

Well then how do you talk about X? If I show you a box and tell you there's a flower in it, you say "the flower is green", but there's no flower in the box. How can you have been talking about the actual green flower? There is no actual green flower. There's no referent for your sentence. You were talking about your 'mental image' of a flower which I had tricked you into thinking existed.

If I say "I'll put my hat on the subject of your next sentence" and you say "the flower in your box is green" where do I put my hat? Your claim is that your sentence is about an actual flower, so I should be able to put my hat on something, so following your claim, where do I put my hat?

It's of no consequence in normal conversation, but it's clearly what we actually do when we say "it's raining". — Isaac

I have no idea what the antecedent to the underlined "it" is supposed to be. — InPitzotl

The behaviour, the act of speaking.

In this case the end is obviously being able to eat my lunch. The attempt to induce false belief was a means. — InPitzotl

No, the end is to become satiated, the means is by eating your lunch. Or the ends is to remain alive

How do you even put one foot in front of another without a belief that doing so is an appropriate next step for you? — Isaac

Wrong question... the accusation here was that you were tunnel visioned, not blind. — InPitzotl

, the means is by satiating your hunger... we could go on all day.

You said

Most of the time, it's used to get the listener to believe it's raining (by which I mean have a tendency to act as if it's raining - put a coat on, carry an umbrella, write a poem about it...). — InPitzotl

...in response to my claim that we communicated a belief, ie arguing that we didn't communicate a belief (otherwise the appropriate response would heave been something like "yes, I see what you're saying...")
You gave this father saying "it's raining" by way of example, so I'm expecting an example proving that we're not communicating beliefs. This doesn't now seem to be such an example.

I am locked inside a windowless room, can say "iff it is raining then John is right and Jane is wrong and iff it is not raining then Jane is right and John is wrong." — Michael

You can say that, yes. It would mean "iff I come to believe it is raining (after meeting my threshold of satisfactory justification) then John is right and Jane is wrong and iff it is not raining then Jane is right and John is wrong." It would mean that because that is the only context in which you could possibly use the term.

And sometimes we do have access to the facts; sometimes it rains and sometimes we experience that rain. What is that if not access to the facts? — Michael

So we can't be wrong? If I say "it's raining", after having experienced the rain, I'm not referring to my belief, but rather really am referring to the direct fact that it's raining. If so then what happens when I find out I was just hallucinating? Does what really happened change post hoc?

John isn't made wet by you believing that he is; he's made wet by being actually covered in water. — Michael

2. is a statement, not the wetness of John.

It can be the case that one person believes that John is wet and one person believes that John is not wet, but the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction entail that only one of them is right. — Michael

Yes, I agree.

Either the person who believes that John is wet is right (and has knowledge)... — Michael

This just begs the question. The matter of discussion is whether this is the case, just restating that you believe that to be the case doesn't progress the discussion at all.

It's the same. "Bachelor' means an unmarried man' is the same as "Bachelor' means a man who has not been wed' since — Janus

Neither are what you claimed. You gave us a list of behaviours which would lead to being a bachelor, that's not that same thing a a definition of what the word means. A series of biophysical changes are necessary for a seed to be a tree, they're not what the word 'tree' means.