Comments

  • Emergence
    Until they can perceive time, i.e. they develop a temporal mind — L'éléphant
    Expound on this. I've no idea what you mean by "perceive time" or "temporal mind".

    ... becoming self-aware/conscious/sentient. — universeness
    I think "self-awareness" (i.e. real-time self-modeling) has to be built into an artificial system, it's not an emergent (i.e. "becoming") property or capability – and isn't necessary for intelligent performance (e.g. large language models). Why do you assume machines (or synthetic organisms) can, in effect, "wake-up sentient"?
  • Emergence
    o.o
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I'm still sticking with my prediction from a couple of months ago about the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 2024 despite Biden's lame-duck postponing announcenent today.
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781912
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    Plato's zeteticism — Fooloso4
    From what I can tell the word was coined and used by the Flat Earth society in the 19th century and still today (Rationalwiki). Anyway, right, this is not the place to resolve a terminological dispute.
  • In the brain
    ... isn't anything that occurs a phenomenon? Something that happens ... — Bylaw
    Events are phenomena, abstractions are not.

    Maps are also territories ...
    "Maps are" abstract, or imaginary, "territories" like memories. We cannot 'experience' abstractions because our 'experiences' are structured by abstractions. Do you believe that 'real numbers' or a 'map of Middle-Earth" are phenomena?
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    ↪Fooloso4
    The bodies of both thinkers' works convince me otherwise.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Tucker Carlson for President in 2024? Watch out Defendent-1, he effin' made you, Donnie! :lol:

    In the US of Absurdia, this shitstorm might get even more furious in the next few months.

    Nice move, Rupert. :shade:
  • Why Monism?
    ↪Fooloso4
    :up: :up:
  • Is truth always context independent ?
    It's sentences that are true or false.

    What a sentence says is dependent on it's circumstances (context, language, purpose, consequence, and so on)

    Hence it is sentences that are "context driven"; not truth.     — Banno
    ↪Banno


    :100: :fire:

    Thanks (even though its lost on most of them).
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    ↪Fooloso4
    I'm skeptical of your assumption that 'being skeptical of X' makes one a skeptic in a philosophical sense. Neither Freddy (perspectival-fictionalist?) nor Plato (concept realist?) seem to me to be philosophical skeptics such Academics or Pyrrhonians, Cartesians or Humeans. Maybe I'm reading too much into your remark?
  • In the brain
    ↪universeness
    :up:
  • Is The US A One-Party State?
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:
  • Knocking back The Simulation Theory
    ↪invicta
    Why assume "the simulation" had a "creator"?

    Why not assume this simulation" is a fractal of an infinite continuum of other fractal simulations that is self-organizing (à la 'eternal inflation')?

    And even if this simulation was "created", so what? – nothing existential changes for us simulated inhabitants.

    I guess I don't see the point of this thought-experiment – it's like asking 'What if there are an even number of grains of sand on this planet's beaches or odd number of stars in the Milky Way?'
  • Is The US A One-Party State?
    Yes, of course it's a one-party state – "the establishment" – with the two wings colluding to protect America's fundamentally rigged poltical-economic system (i.e. plutonomy).
    After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. — Calvin Coolidge, 1925
    i.e. "The Business Party" (Chomsky).
  • Knocking back The Simulation Theory
    ↪invicta
    Okay, so then the OP's question is moot.
  • Knocking back The Simulation Theory
    What existential difference does it make whether or not the universe is a simulation? If I am a simulation, then the simulation of the universe I inhabit is real (i.e. ineluctable).
  • In the brain
    ↪universeness
    :cool:
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    I agree that the sensations that we experience are nervous system-dependent. But the question is how. — lorenzo sleakes
    This is a scientific problem and not a question philosophers alone can answer, or even pose adequately, insofar as philosophy's domain is conceptual-interpretive, not theoretical-testable.
  • In the brain
    ↪universeness
    Very good response. I think it's best to pause here, not because we're at an impasse but due to us both looking through different ends of the tele / micro scope – you from a computer science background and me from a cognitive science (& philosophy of mind) background. It seems we're on the same page though, namely that the computational-mechanical model of perceptual / (meta)cognition is insufficient, or completely wrong. Notions of 'extra stuff', however, are incoherent and render speculations on (meta)cognition – its "emergent properties" as you say, universeness – theoretically DOA. In other words, I'm not any flavor of mysterian, mind-body dualist, panpsychist or idealist.

    Anyway, apologies for dumping a reading list on you; I just wanted to share possibly common points of reference since the devil is definitely in the details here. I suspect 'human brain functioning' will be the toughest nut to crack by a (hybrid classical-quantum computing) AGI, though whether or not human neuroscientists & philosophers will be intelligent enough to comprehend AGI's 'brain model' or have to accept it as an explanatory black box that nonetheless gives us orders of magnitude more neurocognitive control, I suppose, remains to be seen. I suspect (hope?) the status quo, my friend, is about to be smashed by converging devepments of AI-tech, nano-tech, bio-tech & cognitive neuroscience. No doubt, AGI will know more about our minds than we will ever comprehend about its thinking (thus, as I say, artificial-autonomous-alien general intelligence, of A³GI). :nerd:
  • Life is more than who we are?
    So a person's identity is all that matters? — TiredThinker
    A "person's identity" is the precondition of "all that matters" to her.

    Life isn't about more?
    IMO, "life" isn't "about" anything "more" than living-as-an-end-in-itself (like e.g. health, playing, caring, flourishing, etc).
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them. — Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, System of Nature, or the Laws of the Moral and Physical World (1770)
  • The Wave
    I am part, thinks the wave, of a vast, ancient ocean. I am not ocean but ocean is me. — Art48
    :fire:

    Some say that at beach we merge with ocean. I suppose I’ll have to wait and see. But If I merge, I won’t be there to see. Hm. Que sera, sera.
    Watching the breakers slide back into the eternally recurring surf I have no doubt what ultimately happens to ocean waves.

    :death: :flower:

    This ontological metaphor really haunts me ...

    sparks, fire ...
    light rays, sun ...
    waves, ocean ...
    ten thousand things, dao ...
    natura naturata, natura naturans ...

    Tat Tvam Asi     — 180 Proof
    Also, pedantic note: "the universe" =/= "existence" ... analogously, the latter is like a field and the former a dissipating structure with respect to that field (i.e. ocean and waves, respectively; or continuum and sets). — 180 Proof
    Read Laozi & Zhuangzi.
    Read Epicurus-Lucretius & Seneca-Epictetus.
    Read Spinoza & Nietzsche.
    Read P. Foot & M. Nussbaum.

    Like waves on the ocean, humans belong to nature – for better and worse. Yeah, we "stand out" but not so much that we are separate from or rise above nature anymore than ocean waves are separate from or rise above the ocean.     — 180 Proof
    'Is there something greater than me?' asked a wave on the ocean beneath the bright, silent Milky Way. — 180 Proof
    'The everyday world' - nature natured 'sub specie durationis' - is like a wave on the surface of the deep, or an effect, caused by the oceanic Substance - nature naturing 'sub specie aeternitatis'; illustrating, though this analogy is absurdly limited, the perdurance of ephemeral surface waves relative to the long lasting ocean (i.e. Modes of Attributes relative to Substance) and that thereby, however relatively ephemeral surface waves seem, they are not non-existent in the sense S conceives of the difference between existing and the real. — 180 Proof

    NB: IIRC, while sitting on the beach in Oceanside (California) beside the pier on a bright breezy spring day, some months shy of my twenty-first, oceanic thoughts like those above (especially the OP) first struck me as the blue rhythms of that shimmering surf mesmerized me. That day I forgot all about my old heartbreak for the first time in almost two years, bemusing with that new 'insight'. Study of Schopenhauer, Bergson, Whitehead, Spinoza, Nietzsche (again), Epicurus-Lucretius (again) & Laozi (again) was yet to come to help me reflect further and search patiently for a suitable vocabulary for this 'ecstatic' condition. Ever since then, and living far from any coastline, I still watch the clouds above dreamed of by the waves below.
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    ↪L'éléphant
    :up:
  • Unjustified Skepticism
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    Are you familiar with On Certainty by Wittgenstein? Or Susan Haack's Evidence and Inquiry?
  • Life is more than who we are?
    ↪TiredThinker
    Unless one is naive, I think so.
  • In the brain
    Would you consider the IPO model useful here or of little value? — universeness
    I think that model is too linear to be analogous. Are you familiar with Douglas Hofstadter's writings on 'tangled hierarchies' model of cognition (e.g. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought)? Artificial neural networks seem to me much closer analogues to the processing of (meta)cognition than von Neumann architecture 'programs'. In the 'sketch' at the bottom of my last post I use bidirectional arrows to simplistically suggest nonlinear relationships (i.e. self-recursion / self-referencing) among the 'nodes'.

    Btw, a more empirical, less speculative, model of '(meta)cognitive brain functions' is – I've found it most informative and insightful in the last fifteen or so years – the monumental Being No One (or it's nontechnical summary The Ego Tunnel (re phenomenal self model)) by Thomas Metzinger. I highly recommend his work if you're not familiar with it. I want to stress that while I appreciate that perceptual cognition, etc in primate brains is computational, I'm also convinced that these brains are not computers in the (mostly) linear 'IPO' sense – just as David Deutsch points out that it does not follow from the computability of fundamental physical laws (re: constructor theory) that the universe is a computer simulation.
  • Nothing is hidden
    ↪plaque flag
    :up:
  • In the brain
    ↪Bylaw
    To my mind: a "memory" is a map and "phenomenon" is the territory. A "rememberance" isn't an appearance to the senses (i.e. phenomenon).

    ↪Bylaw
    The peripheral nervous system. The brain 'binds' disparate sense-data from all bodily senses into 'experience' that is temporarily held in 'working memory' to begin with. I see perceptual cognition something like this: phenomena —> data —> experience <——> memory traces <——> information (signal:noise) ... etc.
  • Nothing is hidden
    ↪plaque flag
    Yes. Yes.

    ↪plaque flag
    More or less Witty's thesis in Philosophical Investigations. Also, Peirce's semiotics (sort of). Check out plane of immanence, a brief wiki summarizing Deleuze's 'Humean transformation of the Spinozist concept' at the core of his philosophy. Also, Deleuze's two short books on Spinoza are quite good until you can get around to reading the Ethics (especially Part One: "Of God" which your 'ontological' OP concerns).
  • Nothing is hidden
    We are given a blur and try to make it less blurry. — plaque flag
    :fire:
  • In the brain
    ↪I like sushi
    "Sense of the world" is not "memories are phenomena in the brain". My comment "makes sense" when read in context.
  • Where Philosophy Went Wrong
    God is indeed everywhere! — invicta
    If "everywhere", then nowhere. Btw, which "god" are you talking about?
  • Modified Version of Anselm's Ontological Argument
    ↪Epicero
    Neither are sound arguments.
  • Where Philosophy Went Wrong
    There are a multitude of places where philosophy 'went wrong'! — creativesoul
    And yet that's 'what's right' with it! :up:

    "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." ~Beckett
  • Life is more than who we are?
    ↪TiredThinker
    Maybe. So what? A truism at most. Read Beckett or Kafka, Chekov or Houellebecq. :smirk:
  • Nothing is hidden
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover


    Sub specie aeternitatus ... Deus, sive natura ... ~Spinoza

    People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. ~Einstein

    Nothing is hidden — plaque flag
    Like 'possible moves' in Chess or Go ... :fire:

    It is only when immanence is no longer immanence to anything other than itself that we can speak of a plane of immanence. ~Deleuze

    ↪plaque flag
    :cool: :up:
  • Where Philosophy Went Wrong
    ↪Manuel
    :up:
  • Ontological arguments for idealism
    Instead of learning from his errors or, at least, thanking me (& others) for making them explicit, just more grievance-whining for his wounded pride after having been Jedi mind-tricked into conceding to my three years-long criticism:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/792659

    Apparently, I'm still living la vita loca & rent-free in the tin-foil hatted head of the leader of TPF's Quantum-Woo Crew. :lol: :party: :up:
  • Philosophy of Law; Legislation, Access to Just Remedy, Application of Rights, Legal deliberation.
    ↪javi2541997
    What is law outside of the political? Mythology, utopia. (ahistorical)

    What is politics outside of the legal? Tyranny, piracy. (historical)

    I'm not aware of a philosophy of law (e.g. property) that does not presuppose a political philosophy (e.g. republicanism). Are you? :chin:
  • Philosophy of Law; Legislation, Access to Just Remedy, Application of Rights, Legal deliberation.
    ↪javi2541997
    By 'philosophy of X' I understand conceptual analysis, discursive interpretation and/or methodology of X; my 'plumbing-fortress' metaphor (à la "prisons built out of bricks of law") for enfolding philosophy of law into political philosophy, which I interpret to be the broader domain of inquiry, makes the latter primary and the former derivative, just as legal theory (or law-making) is subordinate to – dependent upon – political science (or politics).
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