Comments

  • Is there an external material world ?
    If the proposition "it is raining" does not exist then it is not raining. — Michael

    Time again. There were dinosaurs and it was raining, but there were no (propositional) utterances there and then.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    what a proposition/truth-bearer is. Is it a physical entity? Is it a mental concept? Is it a Platonic Idea? Is it some magical substance that is able to "attach" to concrete utterances? — Michael

    The latter, but not magic... more like money.

    Logic is licence to print (utter) valid tokens.

    And to invalidate/falsify/exclude/delete/negate their negations.
  • Fitch's "paradox" of knowability
    (1) Some affirmations of any true statement are justified.

    (2) Some future affirmations of any true statement not previously affirmed justifiably are justified.

    (3) ...................................................

    (4) Some previous affirmations of any true statement not previously affirmed justifiably are justified.


    Modalities excised (or easily so). Missing line exposed.
  • Fitch's "paradox" of knowability
    ↪Banno


    Hocus pocus.
  • Fitch's "paradox" of knowability
    makes it clear that the move from "knowable" to "Known" is modal. — Banno

    Yes but modality is obscure. Give us the Venn diagram.

    (1) All true statements might be known — Banno

    Or maybe

    (1) Some judgements of true statements are knowledge.

    ??
  • Fitch's "paradox" of knowability
    All true statements are knowable. (1)
    All unknown true statements are knowable. (2, from 1)
    .......................................................................... (3)
    All unknown true statements are known. (4)
  • Fitch's "paradox" of knowability
    They are just difficult — Banno

    They were conceived in sin.
  • Fitch's "paradox" of knowability
    many arguments are clearer when presented formally. — Banno

    But far fewer when the formalism is modal.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    ↪Michael


    Ah but then your usage of "sensations" implies picture-type qualities inside. Mine didn't.

    I meant, brain activity is acts of perception.

    But still yes: brain activity isn't and doesn't produce sensations in your sense.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    Are you saying that we don't have qualitative experiences? — Michael

    Yes if that means having pictures (or qualities) inside as well as outside.

    No if it means experiencing changes in perceptual readiness, i.e. learning.

    That brain activity doesn't produce sensations? — Michael

    Yes. What's wrong with: brain activity is sensations?
  • Is there an external material world ?
    the what we see in the second sense — Michael

    is the myth, the internal picture that doesn't happen.

    What happens is a readiness to order and classify and predict, along any number of respects or dimensions.

    Does that apple have the colour we see it to have — Michael

    Does it belong where we are inclined to place it in our colour scheme?

    Sure, that's not a reasonable (direct) question, but neither is (the indirect one), does that apple belong on the same rung of our colour scheme as our sensation of the apple?
  • Is there an external material world ?
    Not everyone can do that. The inability is called aphantasia. — Tate

    Not everyone can distinguish fact from fiction. But that inability is quite normal. In perception, it manifests as the mental image myth. (Leading to the binding problem.)

    If I see a rock through a TV screen then I'm seeing a rock, but I'm seeing it indirectly. — Michael

    The trouble is, 'indirect' is too suggestive of two or more 'directs'. Would it help to say 'non-direct'?

    Someone contesting indirect realism doesn't necessarily want to claim that knowledge about the rock flows specifically from the rock to the person. It might result rather from the vast network of interactions and interpretations in the background.

    Someone contesting direct realism doesn't necessarily want to claim that knowledge about the rock flows specifically from rock to TV screen to person. It might result rather from the vast network of interactions and interpretations in the background.

    aphantasia

    Didn't they have a hit with "John Wayne is big leggy"?
  • Is there an external material world ?
    they come from your imagination. — Marchesk

    So they are fictional, like characters in a fictional story? They don't literally exist?

    Good. But likewise, also, arguably, the so-called images alleged to occur when you are fully (rather than preparing or rehearsing for) using your eyes.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    I do wonder though, what is visualization if it's not "pictures in the head"? — Marchesk

    Using your eyes.

    Or preparing to.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    Even the naked eye is a middle-man between the external world object and the brain/mental experience. — Michael

    Pictures in the head. Where would philosophy be without them?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    Yes. — Isaac

    Then drop the causation and correlation talk. Was my point. It makes dualists think you recognise a second res.
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    And my point was just that neuro-physiologists are unwitting dualists when they quite unnecessarily call a spade the cause or correlate of a spade.
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    You reminded me of that very thing not two posts back. — Isaac

    But you retracted.

    So, anyway. You do believe (that it is accurate enough to say) that

    such memory logging is consciousness. — bongo fury

    ?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    If I say 'a race' is lots of runners all starting simultaneously and aiming for the same line, then an answer to the question 'what causes a race?' might be "a load of runners, a finish line, and a starting pistol going off". Put those three things together, you'll have a race. — Isaac

    But you said what a race is. Have you said what consciousness is?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    I suppose it would be more accurate to have said [...] cause consciousness. — Isaac

    Why?
  • Welcome Robot Overlords
    Personally, I believe memory logging of higher order Bayesian (or Bayesian-like) inferences is what causes consciousness. — Isaac

    I thought you believed that such memory logging is consciousness.
  • Does anyone know the name of this concept?
    Anti-difference-of-degree-ism — emancipate

    Or anti-binary-ism. The implication being, usually, that everything is relative. E.g.

    “but everyone is selfish”. — Skalidris

    meaning "well obviously, but how selfish?".

    Edit: Although, by "selfish" Skalidris already meant "too selfish", which is why they are probably right that "but everyone is selfish" is annoying.
  • Does anyone know the name of this concept?
    Yes, it's getting closer. — Skalidris

    Everything's closer.
  • Does nothingness exist?
    Is there ever an object — Joshs

    You mean a thing?

    or just a field of differentials? — Joshs

    You mean a thing?
  • Does nothingness exist?
    donut holes. — 180 Proof

    negative space in a visual field. — Jackson

    uvwd7jmls5r06qum.png
  • "What is it like." Nagel. What does "like" mean?
    the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism. — Nagel

    Choose:

    the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that the organism sees some aspects of its environment and not others.

    or

    the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that the organism sees some kinds of picture in its Cartesian theatre and not others.
  • The Supernatural and plausibility
    I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. — Turing, 1950
  • The Churchlands
    Can digital computation produce consciousness? No, because digital computation is an observer-dependent phenomenon, while consciousness is observer-independent. — Daemon

    A proper semantics, such as the Chinese Room lacks, is a game of pretend: the pretending of appropriate connections, between words and things, and between tokens of the "same" word. And it depends on observers, because it's in the nature of an act of pretending that there can't be any inherent and un-observed connections between the act itself (the brain shiver) and any of its many plausible interpretations.

    And if semantics is observer-dependent, perhaps consciousness is what we call the fleeting (or more persistent) occasions of forgetting that it was all pretend. It's an aspect of our pretending, and hence observer-dependent as well.

    The Chinese Room lacks the skills to play the game, and other players may or may not discover that it isn't really joining in. It doesn't understand. It depends, like an abacus, on the involvement of the skilled players, to perform its computations, or conversations. They have to do the pretending of appropriate connections, between words and things, and between tokens of the "same" word. So, lacking the skills, the Room lacks the confusion we call consciousness.

    But it isn't obvious that the Room's limitations result from its digital machinery: that it couldn't be enhanced so as to be able to learn to pretend. Some way down the line.
  • Metaphysics of Reason/Logic
    the reality of X or any of its properties — javra

    Properties and relations are where correspondence gets too grand for me. They are too much like verbs and adjectives to be plausible as contenders for ontological commitment along with X, Y and Z. And they aren't required for asserting truths about X, Y and Z.
  • What is information?
    But isn't the information encoded in a message only one part of what is really an indivisible, overarching entity, the conversation? — Pantagruel

    Like the "self-information" or "information content" (surprise value of an individual message) is relative to the overarching "information entropy" (average surprise value in a whole source or channel of messages)?

    Or are you merely surprised (or informed!) that the theory equates surprise value with information?
  • Metaphysics of Reason/Logic
    In other words, what are our reasons for trusting reason? — Paulm12

    Without it our sentences wouldn't face the tribunal of experience as a corpus but only individually. Reason binds them together.

    Or does it correspond to reality — Paulm12

    Not on any grand scale, no.
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    That the material in my hand has the chemical composition it has does not depend on us, but that the material in my hand is money does. That the Sun is larger than the Earth does not depend on us, but that it is illegal to steal does.

    Neither money nor the law is a fiction.     — Michael

    Are there institutional facts about immaterial or imaginary things? Or is that what would make them fictions?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    Institutional facts aren’t fiction. — Michael

    Oh. Are they hallucinations?

    How aren't they fiction? Weren't you stressing their lack of correspondence with actual states of affairs?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    ↪Michael


    So, they are the facts that aren't fiction?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    ↪Michael


    Ah. Ok.

    Are there brute facts that exist only inside such a framework?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    Yes. See above. — Michael

    That passage addresses only institutional facts?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    ↪Michael


    So, no? Ok.

    Are there brute facts outside of such a framework?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    [Searle's] distinction between institutional and non-institutional facts, and which things are institutional and non-institutional facts, is one that holds within the framework of an existing language with existing rules and existing meanings that he will accept is a human institution. — Michael

    Does it hold outside of such a framework? Are there institutional facts outside of such a framework?

    An object becoming a bishop or a combination of letters becoming a word are historical events — RussellA

    I disagree. Tanks rolling over a national border is a historical event. A "tank" token's being pointed at one or more tanks (or a "word" token's being pointed at "tank") is a myth, requiring continual reinforcement, itself no less mythical.

    Inscrutability of reference, and all that.
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    ↪bert1


    Browsing TPF?
  • What motivates panpsychism?
    Please tell me what goes in between unconscious and conscious? — bert1

    Er, semi-conscious?
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