Comments

  • Facing up to the Problem of Illusionism
    An analogy used is that the illusion is like a computer desktop, which is a useful abstraction for users, while the underlying computer system is quite different from the visual interface. — Marchesk

    I hear this a lot. But I wonder how, and even whether, it is meant to deflate qualia talk and Cartesian theatre talk. A visual interface is pictures we look at, and locating them in the head implies a homunculus to view them, whether or not they are to be read as depicting realistically or figuratively.

    Kind of an own goal.
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    Do you also think that consciousness is a property of only complex nervous systems and is thus entirely absent in insects,birds and other simpler organisms? — StarsFromMemory

    Entirely, or largely? (Complexity being relative in this context.)
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    Vote!...

    Do you think that consciousness (in any important sense) goes (in any degree) right down to the level of bacteria and virus?

    Grateful for any votes on this, for the reason mentioned.
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    ↪Coben
    Sorry.
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    Well, sure, most people in the thread are making assertions, claims, guesses about ontology. — Coben

    And I was urging against that kind of response to the OP.

    As it happens, though, doing ontology, in the straightforward sense of inferring domains of objects to serve as the potential targets of our word-pointing, i.e. doing semantics, would be my suggestion for roughly where to look for the emergence of consciousness in (e.g.) human infants.
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    ? — Coben

    Metaphysics.
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    But consciousness may not be a trait in this sense, it may merely be a facet of what gets called matter. — Coben

    Woo.

    there's never a hard line where something suddenly becomes / ceases to be "consciousness" — Pfhorrest

    True, but it's arguable there is a very wide zone of uncertainty separating perfectly clear cases of consciousness from equally clear counter-cases.

    Denial of this alleged clarity at either end, i.e. as proposed by the pan-psychists doubting unconsciousness of rocks at one end, and possibly by Dennett (at least as he dares to paint himself) doubting consciousness of adult humans at the other, may turn out to be the right conclusion. But it (denial of clarity, and embrace of a continuum) seems to me to be caused by slippery slope logic only, and unnecessarily.

    So I like the thread question, and I hope that it ends up puncturing anthropomorphism about robots and insects more than inspiring it.
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    I think even the most rudimentary forms of consciousness are only in organisms that possess a nervous system — StarsFromMemory

    How far down, then, for you? Ants? Robotic AI ants? Smart phones?

    Just curious, for the reason mentioned.
  • Can Consciousness really go all the way down to level of bacterias and virus?
    ... so the picture that is painted in their minds... — Peter Russell

    In their what, now??

    We really only understand one kind of consciousness - our own. — Echarmion

    Fewer, surely?

    Can consciousness really go all the way down to the level of bacteria and virus? — StarsFromMemory

    Good question. I find that admission of such a possibility usually indicates zero prospect of any interesting discussion on this topic, as it sets the bar far too low - in relation to the psychology, anyway: it shifts the discussion away from the fascinating psychology, into metaphysical woo. So thanks for asking it.
  • Does anybody actually agree here?
    It's the people who nearly agree with us we can't stand :wink:
  • Is negation the same as affirmation?
    What else, then, should I have done? — Alice

    show him that [you] won't be fooled into admitting some continuity, between his standard and meaningful contributions to the discourse, and the nonsense. — bongo fury

    In what way was I beguiled? — Alice

    As though the nonsense might have been there all along and be seeping all through: in the prior discussions and in the game of syntactic replication and recognition still in play. On which spurious basis (that of such a continuity) Bob and [@Tristan L] both might hope to worry [you] and other sensible people with "yes I agree and therefore the opposite". — bongo fury

    Do you not agree with me that I disagree with Bob, whereas he says that I agree with him?” — Alice

    Well, if Bob's apologists are now claiming, after all, that he is not to be trusted even with coherent reference to utterances, then no, I think you are unwise to suggest you are having a meaningful agreement or disagreement with Bob about anything. You may as well just treat him as a non-speaker of the language, who fails to observe basic distinctions of meaning. This claim by his apologists is of course belated and half-hearted, because they wanted to insinuate a continuity between sense and nonsense.

    As we know from many terms of service, not exercising a right doesn’t mean waiving it. — Tristan L

    I disagree. Rights (like reference) are inferred from practice.

    Bob might be an aspiring sophist, but I’m more and more inclined to think that he is more interested in radical monism — Tristan L

    Arguably the same thing. Point words indiscriminately and they point at everything (and nothing).

    Only by applying PSAN with radical thoroughness could he hope to be taken seriously. — Tristan L

    No, in applying the rule he needs to compromise, and suggest coherent reference to utterances, otherwise he can't introduce contradictions in any hope of impressing as a sophist, i.e. as feigning inference and not mere nonsense.

    trying to define negation — Tristan L

    1) As a word's (or other symbol's) happening not to point at an object

    2) As some corresponding negative's (or antonym's) happening to point at the object

    Each of which probably implies the other, in some way that would help explain global patterns of word-pointing. Such as, the tendency of a scheme of words towards "sorting" of a domain of objects, through pointing out of (more or less) mutually exclusive but jointly exhaustive sub-domains.     — bongo fury
  • Is negation the same as affirmation?
    By the way, I’m very well aware that the Principle of the Sameness of Affirmation and Negation (PSAN) applies on the object-logical level and all meta-logical levels, too. And if I say ‘all’, I really mean ALL. — Bob

    So Bob claims permission (by this principle) to mis-quote, as well as to mis-disquote? Is that the case?

    If so, does he carry out the threat? Does he say things like,

    Yes, Alice, you are right, you said to me, quite clearly, and I quote, "Bob, please do mess with my phone!"

    ?

    If so (if he says this kind of thing, and by the way whether or not he also constantly contradicts himself), then I'm surprised that either you or Alice were beguiled into conceding,

    Heck, we don’t even agree whether we agree or disagree, — Alice

    ... thus needlessly encouraging Bob in his efforts as an aspiring sophist. Without him consistently waiving the nonsense principle when it comes to quotation, I doubt that Bob could (as he seems to) hope to get his principle taken seriously.

    If not - if his avowed principle is mere bluff, as I hope you are assuring us here,

    Yes, he mis-disquotes her, but he doesn’t mis-quote her. I’m not changing my stance on that, — Tristan L

    ... then, as I say, this is the basis on which we might persuade Bob that he has no reason to think his proposed principle to be a plausible fit with his way of talking.
  • Is negation the same as affirmation?
    Bob gave every appearance of being prepared to agree (in a non-surprising way) about these [expressing sentences]. About which phonetic sequences agree with (replicate, quote) which others, and about which ones disagree with (fail to quote) which others. — bongo fury
    But he claims that certain pairs of sentences have the same meaning which Alice, you and I think have opposite meanings, doesn’t he? — Tristan L

    Yes, he mis-disquotes Alice, but does he mis-quote her? Are you changing your stance on that?
  • Is negation the same as affirmation?
    That is, Alice can expose Bob by pointing out that he applies a not-standard interpretation to her sentences. — Tristan L

    More importantly she needs to show him that she won't be fooled into admitting some continuity, between his standard and meaningful contributions to the discourse, and the nonsense.

    As though the nonsense might have been there all along and be seeping all through: in the prior discussions and in the game of syntactic replication and recognition still in play. On which spurious basis (that of such a continuity) Bob and you both might hope to worry Alice and other sensible people with "yes I agree and therefore the opposite". No, either you don't agree, or you don't infer the opposite. Look at your syntax (which is semantics of a kind, a classification) if you need reminding of your ability to make sense. (Alice can say this, and not have to threaten to slap anyone, which I guess was to make the same point, i.e. that Bob understands better than he pretends?)
  • Is negation the same as affirmation?
    Was Alice being misquoted, or merely mis-disquoted (misread, misinterpreted, misunderstood)?

    The latter, so I don't think she needed to admit, in an open ended way,

    Heck, we don’t even agree whether we agree or disagree, — Tristan L

    when that apparently meant disagreement about "points expressed",

    including the point expressed by this very sentence as well as the one expressed by what Bob is about to say. — Tristan L

    ... but not necessarily about the sentences doing the expressing. Bob gave every appearance of being prepared to agree (in a non-surprising way) about these. About which phonetic sequences agree with (replicate, quote) which others, and about which ones disagree with (fail to quote) which others. So there was no cause for dismay. No need to grant to Bob the degree and kind of disruption he claimed.

    After all, it was only by observing - non-pathologically - such syntactic game rules that he fooled anybody into thinking that any rules of logical inference had been set in some pathological motion. As opposed to having been willfully or unfortunately (but not paradoxically) unobservable for him.

    I.e. the implication that we have already shown ourselves vulnerable to accepting or colluding with misquotation is the sleight of hand / misdirection on offer, I think.

    I.e. Bob's sophistry consists in trying to imply that his daft self-contradiction undermines all of the agreement and cooperation assumed in the discourse. But daring to confuse misinterpretation with misquotation is where it gets badly exposed.
  • The Epistemology of Visual Thinking in Mathematics
    Worth a look. — Banno

    No doubt. At all.

    "Discover" seemed weird though...

    One can discover a truth without being the first to discover it (in this context); it is enough that one comes to believe it in an independent, reliable and rational way.

    In that case, why not "understand"? Perhaps because he associates that with "prove"?

    The difference between merely discovering a truth and proving it is a matter of transparency: for proving or following a proof the subject must be aware of the way in which the conclusion is reached and the soundness of that way; this is not required for discovery.

    Ok, but then what has happened to "in an independent, reliable and rational way"?

    Also, somewhat of a wtf at this,

    While there is no reason to think that mental arithmetic (mental calculation in the integers and rational numbers) typically involves much visual thinking,

    ... said reaction not much assuaged even by a chapter in here entitled Mental Number Lines, which (dashing my hopes) rather suggests that the (same) author is among those who, incomprehensibly to the rest of us,

    form a number line representation [only] once we have acquired a written numeral system.

    Perhaps it is largely in this group of people that we find those benighted politicians and educators who would (unlike probably the author, to be fair) invite children to approach mental arithmetic as an abacus or column digit system? Instead of (what seems more natural and profitable to the rest of us) as a matter of travelling between locations on a line?

    I wonder in what kind of ratio the two kinds of people size up... 50 50?
  • Is negation the same as affirmation?
    Yes, Alice's side.
  • Is negation the same as affirmation?
    Yes, it isn't.
  • Do colors exist?
    whenever they talk about red they are referring to their red. — sime

    So what? Aren't they ready to gloss it (if pressed, and with cheerful inconsistency as you say) as: their red and/or your red and/or the type of stimulus? Don't they probably agree with Ramachandran that a simple sci-fi brain bridge would settle the curious question whether they are using the same type of internal colour quality as you are using to identify the same type of external stimulus? (As opposed to using a different type of internal colour quality to identify the same type of external stimulus, as in Locke's colour inversion scenario?)

    If so, the inconsistency hardly seems basic or conceptual, but merely a reasonable way to skirt an issue that only a sci-fi device could settle.

    Therefore consider the irrealist alternative; namely that ontological disagreements are partly the result of our collectively inconsistent use of language. — sime

    Delighted to hear more about this alternative... even though I would be hoping for it to unweave the internal qualia rainbow rather than indulge it as you and Locke and Ramachandran and most people seem inclined to.
  • Does the in-between disprove the extremes
    'Male' and 'female' are genetic classifications, — Virgo Avalytikh

    And as such they are ever subject to clarification and revision in terms of genotype and phenotype and the implied correlation.

    You could try simply identifying them (male and female) with presence or absence of a Y chromosome, which is indeed an impressively clear and easily maintained distinction. That might stabilise matters. Make the classification less open to question. Not that a gradual (or even continuous) scale going from one to the other is inconceivable, but there are precious few real intermediate examples to deal with.

    However, if you then say,

    The Y chromosome is the male-making chromosome. — Virgo Avalytikh

    ... then it's clear you expect to correlate gene with phene. (The one making the other.) So biology doesn't simplify the issue as much as you seem to hope. You need to acknowledge not only the clear chromosomal dichotomy but also a definition of 'male' in phenotypic terms which is likely to smear along countless gradual scales of differentiation, none of which has nature been considerate enough to simplify, by removing examples from the central zone.

    This doesn't mean you can't, if you wish to, claim that possession of what you define as relatively male phenotypic qualities is associated with possession of a Y chromosome. Or that received cultural stereotypes reflect such real associations.

    It just means you might be overestimating the scientific basis for the stereotypes.

    Dawkins is great on this danger: http://www.evolbiol.ru/document/1301 (2.4 Genes aren't us).
  • Truth
    sometimes folk use "that's true" for "I agree with you".
    — Banno

    ...But never, in my experience, for "that is what people in the future will come to think when science has advanced sufficiently far".     — Isaac

    Isn't that exactly how you use it when you speculate (with or without committing) as to the relative merits of competing (and perhaps currently unfalsifiable) theories?

    If you're not defining 'true' by how it is used, then I'm not interested in going any further because I don't hold with trying to define what things should mean, only what they do mean. — Isaac

    Perhaps Banno and Davidson are saying that any term (including 'true' and 'mean') means only what it should mean, and/or what it will eventually mean (when science has advanced sufficiently far)?

    Ok, I don't fancy the odds that Banno will agree to that. But I'm always surprised when anyone takes "what they do mean" to be a matter of fact. So I hope someone would question that.
  • On behalf of definitions and defining terms.
    Limit
  • On behalf of definitions and defining terms.
    Word
  • Flaw in Searle's Chinese Room Argument
    Searle argument simply [works on refutes] a wrong model of understanding [as syntax] which he obviously takes as being [universally too widely] accepted as correct, but that is a wrong assumption, which once might have been true though. But today it really should be clear he simply starts with the wrong model and then proves the wrong model is wrong, it’s a farce. — Zelebg

    He might agree with that :wink:
  • Flaw in Searle's Chinese Room Argument
    Then Searle's argument makes a wrong presupposition that it is an adequate model of how understanding works. — Zelebg

    It doesn't offer a model of understanding, though. It uses a clear case of non-understanding (you processing symbols in a language you don't understand) to show that showing syntax isn't showing semantics.

    So I don't see what your gremlins are. Semantics? You don't see meaning and understanding as required for consciousness? Ok...
  • Flaw in Searle's Chinese Room Argument
    That’s worse. Then it makes a wrong presupposition — Zelebg

    What does? My post or Searle's argument?

    ... that his example — Zelebg

    What, the Chinese Room?

    ... is an adequate model of how understanding works. — Zelebg

    So - not the Chinese Room?

    Can you be a bit clearer?
  • Flaw in Searle's Chinese Room Argument
    It’s like arguing chemistry is just stupid atoms following laws of physics, so they can not possibly give rise to things like biology, language or consciousness. Where is the confusion? — Zelebg

    Oh, so right there. Searle doesn't say that symbol manipulation can not possibly give rise to consciousness. Only that it needs to at least produce meaning within the system (have a proper semantics). And showing symbol manipulation isn't showing a semantics.
  • Flaw in Searle's Chinese Room Argument
    signal-meaning pairs, — Zelebg

    Whatever flaws you might ever turn up, the point is Searle caught cognitive scientists confusing semantics with syntax. Signal-meaning pairs, as you put it, with signal-signal pairs. Understanding, with signal-processing. Intentionality, with script-reading, or program following.

    If that's what you are doing too, as I expect, you are in the respectable company of nearly everybody. It's a catastrophically tempting confusion.

    The semantic ability that humans alone (so far) excel in, and start delighting in in infancy, is kind of like a game of word-fetch. Understanding how words are tossed into the world and predicting where they have landed. When AI robots can interact with the world with enough facility to find a ball in a garden, they might be in the position to start learning to sniff out meanings.

    You seem to be hoping to by-pass that evolution and achieve results merely by suggestive labelling of the modules of an obviously non-conscious computer system. So Searle's argument clearly hasn't alerted you to any important difference between semantics and syntax. And, unfortunately, it isn't guaranteed to have that effect.
  • Truth
    ↪Banno


    Ha ha, probably :joke:
  • Truth
    All else is sophistry. — Banno

    Or worse still, semantics! :wink:

    You propose that if we let the beast semantics on our land at all, we shackle it with the T-schema? Allow, if we must, theoretical talk of linguistic entities and their semantic relations with cats and mats, but be prepared to exchange it for talk about only the cats and mats, as in proper science?

    Fine if so, but mustn't you then stay out of arguments about kinds of assertion and belief, and how we learn to recognise them?

    Ready to hear why not.
  • Truth
    ↪Banno


    Are you in the state of denying the redundancy theory?
  • Truth
    #2 Can we justify justification? — Monist

    Not, according to Carroll's Tortoise
  • Mathematicist Genesis
    This reminds me vaguely of a philosophical or logical problem I read about once, and can't remember the resolution to at the moment. — Pfhorrest

    This?

    can't remember the resolution — Pfhorrest

    Lack of one is cool for inscriptionalism. No sign of a consensus on wiki.
  • Schools for Leaders, their need and their conspicuous absence

    Agathon: I'm afraid the word is bad. You have been condemned to death.

    Allen: Ah, it saddens me that I should cause debate in the senate.

    Agathon: No debate. Unanimous.

    Allen: Really?

    Agathon: First ballot.

    Allen: Hmmm. I had counted on a little more support.

    Simmias: The senate is furious over your ideas for a Utopian state.

    Allen: I guess I should never have suggested having a philosopher-king.

    Simmias: Especially when you kept pointing to yourself and clearing your throat.
     — Woody Allen, 'My Apology'
  • An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
    ↪sime


    Yes, if the thread is about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms
  • An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
    It's a complex, ill-posed and frankly outdated assertion. Firstly, an observation O can only materially entail the contradiction of a hypothesis H in a closed finite world. For in an open-world, the meaning of the material implication O => ~H isn't empirically reducible to observations, and is instead an auxiliary hypothesis, A, which isn't itself entailed by some other observation on pain of infinite regress. So in an open world we have A => ( O => ~H) , and hence O => (~A OR ~H) — sime

    And secondly?
  • An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
    this problem that you're referring to. — creativesoul

    I am?

    But the question is whether there is any problem with saying that a particular piece of butter (a particular statement) satisfies "melts at some temperature less than 100°C" (satisfies "renders counter-examples verifiable") even though it never got the chance to melt (to render a counter-example verifiable), because I ate it cold (because it had no counter-examples). — bongo fury

    Just to be clear, the question was meant to be rhetorical, and the answer no.
  • An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
    I find no issue with that, so it's something to keep in mind. If we arrive at something which contradicts it, we aught pause and reconsider. — creativesoul

    Missing the point of the thread, which I take to be: what clarification of that vague and ambiguous assertion (the one you are pleased that I find vaguely agreeable) would convey the scope and central tendency of the un-packings that Popper and his followers would likely give it, so that the wiki article might (with this clarification) better help the reader avoid common mis-readings and (from the falsificationist point of view) spurious objections, such as yours.

    I might worry that my formula had failed its task in your case, if you didn't already admit to being uninterested in likely falsificationist unpackings of the assertion.
  • An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
    To be falsifiable is to be able to be shown as false.

    Agree?     — creativesoul

    Well yeah, vaguely, but that's exactly where the thread started. My formula (with modal inflection if required, but it's implied, so 6 words, and I think I win) is just a straight guess at a gloss that would (to me) explain and justify the widespread acceptance of the notion.

    "Butter melts at less than one hundred degrees" — creativesoul

    But the question is whether there is any problem with saying that a particular piece of butter (a particular statement) satisfies "melts at some temperature less than 100°C" (satisfies "renders counter-examples verifiable") even though it never got the chance to melt (to render a counter-example verifiable), because I ate it cold (because it had no counter-examples).
  • An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
    It would take observation of particles produced by sub atomic decay that did not subsequently 'exhibit' identical properties to falsify the statement — creativesoul

    Yes, but not to qualify it as falsifiable. It takes heat to melt a piece of butter, but not to qualify it as "melts at less than 100°C", even though I ate it cold.
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