It is not the case that when perceiving a colour we use all our senses, reasoning and available evidence to make a judgement as to what colour we are seeing. We don't make the judgment that we are in fact seeing the colour red.

When we perceive the colour red, no judgment is involved. We perceive the colour red. — RussellA

We don't ever just perceive the color red. What is the purpose of experiencing red if we are just suppose to perceive it? Judgements involve integrating all percepts into a consistent whole experience of the world. It is not just using all of your senses, but using them over time that allows you to make valid judgements about the world. It also depends on the context. Red on an apple means something different than red on a street sign.

However, as you say, for the Direct Realist there is no causal intervening process, and the red apple they perceive is the same red apple on the table. — RussellA

What does a direct realist do when they say the chocolate ice cream is delicious but someone else says it is disgusting? Is the direct realist talking about the ice cream or their mental state when eating it?

Both the Direct and Indirect Realist are the same in using all their senses, reasoning and evidence to try to understand the original cause of their perceptions. But they differ in that for the Direct Realist there is a one to one correspondence between what they perceive and the thing-in-itself but for the Indirect Realist, what they perceive is a representation of any thing-in-itself. — RussellA

Yet both of them succeed in accomplishing their goals with the same rate of success.

Well, most of our information about our environment comes in the form of visuals
— Harry Hindu
The naive classical stuff maybe, but not the deep stuff that gets important when exploring the gray areas. — noAxioms

I don't know what you mean by the "deep stuff that gets important". What form does the deep stuff that gets important take in the mind if not colors and shapes? Because we get most of our information about the world via vision, we tend to think in visuals as well. How do you know when you are thinking about the deep stuff that gets important? What is it like? What form do your thoughts take when thinking these things? What mental constructs are you pointing at when you talk about what you are thinking? And what form does the gray areas take when exploring them. You even used the color, "grey" (a visual) in your description.

Very pragmatic at least, and given that pragmatic utility, it may even be logical that we think the world is as it appears, but it isn't logical that the world is actually as it appears, for reasons you spelled out earlier. — noAxioms

That depends on what one means by, "the world is as it appears". If it means that the appearances allows us to get at the actual state-of-affairs, which it does most of the time or else we would be failing at our tasks much more often that we succeed, then what is the issue? What is missing from our knowledge when we successfully use appearances (representations) to accomplish a vast majority of our tasks that we set out to do? I don't know about you, but when I interact with the world, I interact with the actual state-of-affairs via its appearance in my mind. I don't interact with appearances.

I find that many indirect realists like to whine about how we might be mistaken, or that we end up not knowing anything, when we are not mistaken and we succeed in our goals most of the time. How often have we understood each other's scribbles on this screen as opposed to not understanding them?

That something 'nonexistent' (whatever that means) cannot have properties. — noAxioms

Seems like a misuse of language to me. How can we ever hope to talk about such things? Why bother? — Harry Hindu

What? Talking about dragons having properties? That's fine. All of those are ideals, valid things to talk about. The EPP concerns actual dragons having wings, not possible if there are not actual ones. The problem with that reasoning is that it presumes a division into actual and not actual before applying the logic, which is circular logic. Dispensing with EPP fixes that problem, but leaves us with no way to test for the existence (E1) (actuality) of anything, leaving the term without a distinction.
— noAxioms

It seems to me that in describing how something exists you would be inherently describing it's properties. — Harry Hindu

OK. Dragons breathe fire. Therefore, per EPP, dragons exist. That leverages definition E3. — noAxioms

Sure, this goes back to what I was saying about thinking in visuals. When describing a dragon, you are describing how it appears visually in your mind. Your description is visual in nature. You do the same thing for objects that exist in other locations in the world, like outside of your head. If ideas can have the same types of properties as physical objects, then what does it mean for lizards to exist but dragons do not exist? It seems to me that people are trying to make a special case for ideas (as having the property of non-existence) as opposed to everything else, when they possess the same types of properties and have as much causal power as everything else? The only difference is the location of the things we are talking about - either in your head or outside of it, and you head exists, but the things within it do not?

There is only one cause
— Harry Hindu
I break my hip (an effect) because 1) I chose to take a walk that day 2) there was a recently repaved road 3) shoulder not properly filled 4) coyote in distant field
That's four causes (there are more) of the hip break (true story). Coyote distracts attention from foot placement. Step off road and fall, instinctively to the side into a roll.

Once again, perhaps we are talking past each other when you say there can be but one cause and I disagree. If I say that each of those things is a cause, I mean the state of my broken (chipped actually) hip is a function of all those things and many others. Had any one of them not been the case, the hip thing would not have happened. Cause C (a system state) is a cause of effect E (another system state) if state E is in any way a function of state C. A state is a system state, however local, like say the coyote. — noAxioms

You are talking past me. That is not what I was saying. Russell was making the point that, from his own position of ignorance, there appears to be multiple possible causes for some effect. He would be projecting multiple causal paths to the same effect when they are merely products of his mind (his ignorance of the one actual causal path that led to the effect).

If you read the rest of that post you would see that I go on to say that a cause is an interaction between two or more things. So depending on if you point at the interaction ( a single thing), or the two or more things interacting, one could say that the cause is a single thing, or multiple things. It depends on what our goal is in the moment.

You could say that the Big Bang is also a cause of your chipped hip.

One cause can only have one effect, in that if one knows the cause then the effect has been determined by the cause. For example, if a stone hitting a glass window causes the glass to shatter, the same stone under he same conditions hitting the same glass window will always cause the glass to shatter.

However one effect can have more than one cause, in that even if one knew the effect, it doesn't follow that that one will necessarily know the cause. For example, knowing that has a glass window has shattered is no reason why one will know what caused the glass to shatter. It could have been a bird, a stone, a window cleaner etc. — RussellA

You're confusing your ignorance of the cause with there being more than one cause. There is only one cause and because you do not know the cause you might come up with some options but those options are mental constructs (possibilities), not actual causes. Only by doing an investigation can you eliminate those possibilities, thereby finding that those causes didn't really "exist", or at least don't exist apart from your mind.

You're also focusing only on the broken window as the effect. Breaking a window (any effect) is an interaction between at least two things (a rock and a window). If a rock broke the window, the effect is not only that the window is broken but also the location of the object that broke the window. There is a rock on the floor just inside the broken window, not outside in the rock garden where it was before the window was broken. Often there is more evidence (effects) than just a broken window. You have to use your senses and powers of reason to find it.

I think that this is part of the problem - that we arbitrarily "box in" effects and causes as discrete events when causation is a constant flow and any boundaries we impose on this process may be of our own mental makings.

There is a temporal direction of information flow in a causal chain. The Indirect Realist accepts this fact, and accepts the fact that one effect may have several different causes. This makes it impossible to follow a causal chain backwards in time. The Direct Realist doesn't accept this fact, and believes that even though one effect may have several causes, it is possible to follow a causal chain backwards in time.

The Indirect Realist accepts that they may never know what broke the window. The Direct Realist has the position that they will always know what broke the window. — RussellA

Actually, for a direct realist there is no causal process. The red apple on the table is the same red apple they perceive - the cause and effect are one and the same with no intervening process in between.

For a direct realist, the apple is not ripe as they never directly experience ripeness. They experience red. When a direct realist hears someone say, "That apple is ripe", what they interpret them to really mean is the apple is red. There is no such thing as ripeness for a direct realist. A direct realist would have problems explaining causation. Or they would be separating their minds from the causal interactions of the rest of the world - as if their minds are not subject to the same laws that govern the rest of the universe. As such, I find that most direct realists seem to be religious in some way or another as their God created them in a way (with a soul) that allows them to perceive the world as it is.

It is not the case that the indirect realist may never know the cause because we actually do get at the cause on a great many things. If we didn't we wouldn't be able to accomplish tasks with the degree of success that we do.

The issue for direct vs. indirect realism is that they are really just the extreme positions on the spectrum of explaining perception. The best explanation will lie somewhere in the middle and incorporate the best, non-contradictory parts of both extremes.

Incorporating determinism (same causes lead to the same effects) and the idea that we have multiple senses AND reasoning capable of getting at the same property in different ways for fault-tolerance gives us more confidence in our understanding of the causes of some effects. I don't ever hear indirect realist take into account determinism and reasoning - as if all the indirect realist has in their toolkit is their senses and not reasoning.

You can only know whether an apple is ripe from experiences through your senses. It may be soft to the touch, it may have a sweet smell, it may have a speckled colour, it may taste bitter and there may be a dull sound when you hit it.

There is no escaping the fact that you can only know the ripeness of an apple through your senses.

Take one of these as an example. You experience a sweet smell through your sense of smell. This is no different in kind to experiencing the colour red through your sense of vision. As red is a property of the mind and not the thing-in-itself, a sweet smell is a property of the mind and not the thing-in-itself.

Ripeness is a set of properties in the mind, not a set of properties of a thing-in-itself. — RussellA

Is it? I though ripeness is a property of the apple and all those sensory impressions you spoke of are mental representation (effects of our senses and brain interacting with light reflected off the apple) of that property. How can all those very different sensory impressions be the same property? Aren't they really just the many ways one can represent the ripeness of the apple, in the same way that we can use many different scribbles (languages) to refer to the same thing in the world (apple in English or manzana in Spanish)?

And doesn't this mean that our multiple senses provides a level of fault tolerance in getting at the actual properties of the apple? Those objects look like apples in the basket at the center of Grandma's dinner table but when you try to grab one and eat it you find that they are all ceramic apples in a ceramic basket that is the centerpiece on Grandma's dinner table. So your multiple senses and reasoning allow you to get at the true nature of the objects on the table, just as it would allow you to get at the cause of the broken window. If you only had the broken window as the effect, sure I can see your issue, but that is not the case. We often have more evidence available if we just use ALL of our senses AND reasoning to get at them.

For Meinong, exist, subsist and absist are part of a hierarchy. Round squares absist but cannot subsist or exist. Sherlock Holmes can absist but not exist. Horses can exist, subsist and absist.

In Meinong's domain of understanding, Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist. In my domain of understanding, Sherlock Holmes exists. The question is then raised, how can something that doesn't exist exist. But this question is conflating two different domains, understandably leading to contradiction

For Meinong to separate thoughts into exist, such as horse, subsist, such as Sherlock Holmes, and absist, such as a round square, seems quite sensible. But the fact that many attack his views makes me believe that I may not really understand what he is saying. — RussellA

It seems to me that Meinong is simply conflating properties with different kinds of existence. Absisting an subsisting are different kinds of existence, or the nature of their existence, for what are they really saying when using these terms if not different modes of existing? What distinction are they trying to make in using these terms, if not how they interact with the world causally? Sherlock Holmes does not exist as a biological entity. It is a mental construct - an idea, but it has the same causal power as biological entities. The idea of Sherlock Holmes can cause you to do things in the world, so what exactly is the distinction they are trying to make if not the nature of their existence?

Excellent point. Way too much weight is given to sight for instance, to the point that things arguably don't exist to a blind person.
Do pictures count? What if it's a picture taken at XRay frequencies? Is the resulting false color image what it looks like? — noAxioms

Well, most of our information about our environment comes in the form of visuals, so it seems logical that we would think the world is at it appears. A dog may think the world is as it smells, to a bat the world is as it sounds.

I think the wording is incorrect when we say that the world is as it appears. How it appears allows us to get at the way it is thanks to determinism (same causes lead to the same effects) and reasoning (incorporating multiple observations using all five senses over time).

That something 'nonexistent' (whatever that means) cannot have properties. — noAxioms

Seems like a misuse of language to me. How can we ever hope to talk about such things? Why bother?

Hence the 'whatever that means'. I gave at least 6 definitions, and there are more. — noAxioms

It seems to me that in describing how something exists you would be inherently describing it's properties.

For Meinong, existence is a property. For the EPP, existence is prior to properties. It seems that two senses of "exist" are being used. — RussellA

What does it even mean to say something is prior to properties? If something exists, how does it exist? In what way does it interact with other things? Does one's existence interact with another existence, or does one's properties interact with other properties and the type of properties interacting is what produces novel effects? Do properties exist?

We directly see the consequence of pain, such as someone grimacing. We don't directly see the pain. — RussellA

We directly experience some things but not others seems to show that the distinction between direct and indirect is simply one of causal complexity - how far removed the effect is from its causes, not a difference in the ontology of perception as we can experience things directly and indirectly.

Suppose I see the colour red. If I were a Direct Realist, I think that I would say that the colour red exists in a mind-independent world. As an Indirect Realist, I say that something in the world caused me to see the colour red, but whatever that something is, there is no reason to believe that it was the colour red. — RussellA

This is non-sensical. Red is a property of minds. Ripeness is a property of apples, or fruit in general. Do we concern ourselves that the apple's ripeness can exist independently of fruit, or that it's ripeness is caused by things that are not ripe, like water, sunlight, the seed, the apple tree, etc.? No. So why do this with the color red? In which natural causal process is the cause and the effect the exact same thing? Ripeness does not cause ripeness. Red does not cause red. Information is the relationship between cause and effect. The cause or effect alone is not interesting. The relationship is, and that is what we are getting at when we perceive anything.

Now you sound like me, with ontology being defined in a way that only makes sense in a structure with causal relationships. — noAxioms

:100:

Both the Indirect and Direct Realist believe that there is a direct causal chain between the thing-in-itself in the world and the experience of it in your mind.

You see the colour red. Assume that this is not a dream or hallucination, but that there is a thing-in-itself in the world that directly caused you to experience the colour red. Would you say that because you experience the colour red, the colour red must exist in the world?

Similarly, because you experience pain, would you also say that pain exists in the world?

Similarly, because you experience the appearance of a brick, would you say that bricks exist in the world? — RussellA

Yes to all those questions as minds exist in the world. When I see someone in pain, are they and their pain not in this same shared world my mind exists in? If both direct and indirect realists answer, "yes", to this question, then I don't see how this establishes a distinction between direct and indirect realists.

I gave 6 different meanings to the word 3 posts back, E1-E6. More have been suggested. Meinong seems to confine the usage of the word to things designated as 'objects' that have a property (among others) of location.

Concerning that: What is the location of our visible universe? It's not like it has coordinates. If I was to mail a letter to myself from outside the universe, what could I write that would get it here? Can't be done since there is only one origin (big bang) and that totally lacking in spacial location. There's not a place where it happened, so what becomes of the 'location' property? It too becomes a mere relation. — noAxioms

Asking the location of the universe is a silly question, like asking the for the location of reality. You could say that the universe is the set of all locations, or the set of all relations. I still prefer to tie existence to causation with location being just one property of causation.

The statement (that he is an imagining) seems to presume his nonexistence. OK, granted that Santa is self-contradictory and so is not likely to logically exist, but some imagined things are. My example was of Pegasus imagining you, without every having any empirical contact with a human. Does that mean you don't exist?

It can be argued that only the concept has those causal effects, as intended. It is God for children after all, purpose being to herd sheep, very much cause-effect going on. — noAxioms

Well, yeah. An imagining is a concept. Concepts have causal power. Do concepts and imaginings exist? What you are saying is that Santa does not exist as a flesh and blood organism. That is true. It exists as a concept, or a legend, and the legend had to start somewhere.

There might have been a person that existed long ago from which the concept Santa started, but has evolved over time to only vaguely represents the original.

Meinong rejects this principle, allowing properties to be assigned to nonexistent things such as Santa. My topic concerns two things: Arguments for/against this position, and implications of it. — noAxioms

What does it mean to exist or not? Is not one property of Santa is that it is an imagining and it exists as an imagining? Things exist if they have causal power. Just look at the causal power of Santa the imagining around Christmas time. So it is not a question of whether Santa exists, but how it exists. What is the nature of Santa Claus if not an imagining? Things that do not exist we can never talk about.

The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

A solution has already been proposed. Is relativity a substantial object or a relation? Is relativity real? Does it exist? If so, how?

Your brain processes information about the world at a particular rate, or frequency, RELATIVE to the rate/frequency of the other processes you perceive. This will have an effect on how you perceive the other processes with the relatively slower processes appearing as substantial, solid, static objects. Procedural feedback loops will also appear as substantial, solid, static objects. Relatively faster change will appear as blurs, or actual processes, like an explosion.

Things moving is what causes time to pass. — Arne

I don't think so. I think time passing is what causes things to move.

I'm talking about time as the thing which is measured. A clock for example, consists of change/motion, and it is used to measure the passing of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Cause" is the wrong term to use. Change (of which movement is a type of change) is the essence of time. Measuring time is comparing one change with another (ie. movement of the second hand with how far you can run).

Yes, I think that is the endeavour of skepticism, to call into question the very foundation of science. And, the skeptic will reveal that science does pull the rug out from under itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was responding to your contradictory claim, where you initially make a claim about what science has revealed as evidence for what you are saying:

Well, if you want to get fussy, a brain itself is a material thing, so by that premise alone, it doesn't make sense to think of a brain in a nonmaterial world, whether or not it is in a vat. — Metaphysician Undercover

and then go on to question science:

I think it's obvious from what science has revealed, that our senses grossly mislead us concerning the nature of reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, IS the brain itself a material thing, or is science that reveals the nature of material things misleading us?

As I said, our senses don't lie to us, they mislead us. Lying implies that it is done intentionally, the senses do not intentionally mislead us. It's simply the case that the sense organs are product of evolution, and so they are organized toward specific forms of utility. Human beings have now developed a mind which is inclined toward knowledge and truth, but the senses evolved before this inclination of human beings. So the utility of the senses is not knowledge and truth. That is why they mislead us. — Metaphysician Undercover

The distinction between lying and misleading does not take away from the main point I was making:
Seeing a bent straw in a glass of water is exactly what you would expect to see given the nature of light and that we see light, not objects. Our senses are not misleading us. Our interpretations of what our senses are telling us is misleading us.

Is there any type of perception, either human or not (animals, mad scientists, advanced life forms that create simulations, etc.) that gets at the world directly?
— Harry Hindu

I would say introspection does this. But it is not really a type of perception. — Metaphysician Undercover

You get at the external world by inspecting yourself?

I don't think so. The senses were not designed to provide us with truth, so why should we think that they do. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand that many of us come to this forum to discuss philosophy to escape real life for a time, but in doing so we forget about all the trivial things we do throughout our lives that would easily contradict some of the assertions we make here on this forum. So think about all the trivial things that you do through your life that you have no issues with succeeding. You make it to work each day. You can pour a glass of water without spilling it. You are able to use you mobile phone and other complex technology without issues. You can read other people's words and get at their meaning and have a meaningful conversation. We have even split the atom and landed on the moon. All these things and many, many more examples show that we get around just fine. If we use our ideas to accomplish some task successfully, then it can be safely said that the way we perceived the world at that time was accurate (I'm not really sure the term, "true" is useful here).

I think it's obvious from what science has revealed, that our senses grossly mislead us concerning the nature of reality. I wouldn't say that senses lie though. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then the very foundation of science is called into question as science relies on observations. Science has pulled the rug out from under itself and doesn't have any ground to stand on.

The fact is that science has not shown that our senses mislead us. It is our interpretations that mislead us. In providing a more accurate explanation of mirages and "bent" straws in a glass of water given the nature of light, we find that mirages and bent straws are exactly what we would expect to see. Our senses aren't lying. Light is bent when it travels through different mediums and is why we experience these things the way we do. It wasn't our senses that were lying, it was our interpretation of our experience without the understanding of how light behaves, and it is light we see, not "material" objects.

I don't see that this sort of questioning is at all useful. It's like asking if God created the world, who created God. How is this type of question useful? Unless we identify and understand God, we have no way of knowing what created God. Likewise, until we locate the "mad scientists", and interrogate them, we have no way of knowing what their intentions were. So how can a question like this be useful? — Metaphysician Undercover

This was my point. The brain in a vat thought experiment is nonsensical because it leads to an infinite regress.

Is there any type of perception, either human or not (animals, mad scientists, advanced life forms that create simulations, etc.) that gets at the world directly? If not, then mad scientists putting brains in vats and advanced aliens creating simulations, and gods would have the same philosophical problem.

I think the thought experiment demonstrates that the scientific method may be incapable of giving us an accurate understanding. Since it can only validate through sense observation, it cannot validate any part of reality which is inherently unobservable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, all this does is turn the tables on your claims that brains are material objects when this is based on observations. It seems to me that the answers lie somewhere between extreme skepticism and extreme (naïve) realism, in that we can trust what our senses tell us given an accurate interpretation, which takes more than one observation and reason integrating these multiple observations into a consistent explanation.

Really? Then where is the evil demon relative to me if we do not share the same world where it's actions are causally related to my experiences? What is the medium which separates the evil demon and me if not a shared external world? I am external to the demon and the demon external to me.

That's true, but I think the issue of skepticism is better represented as questioning whether things are as they seem to be. The conception of "matter" involves specific spatiotemporal references in relation to our perceptions. The "brain in a vat" scenario is just an example of how reality could be radically different from the way that we perceive it. So the example serves its purpose regardless of whether we conceive the "brain in a vat" as material, it still demonstrates that this entire conception of "material world", along with the brain in a vat aspect, could be completely wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

It only seems to question whether we can trust our senses in a material world of brains in vats. The thought experiment still implies that brains requires sensory input from outside of itself. The brain in a vat needs to receive input through its sensory interfaces and would still be connect to the outside world in some way.

I don't believe that our senses lie. They provide information about the world and it is our interpretation of what the senses are telling us that is either accurate or not.

If we were brains in vats, what would be the purpose of us experiencing illusions, hallucinations or dreams? What would be the purpose of the experiment, or the reason why our brain is in a vat? Who put the brain in a vat - some entities that do see the world as it is? How would they know that they are not brains in vats? In the same way the "this is a simulation" thought experiment creates an infinite regress of how the simulators don't know they are in a simulation, etc., how do the mad scientists that put our brains in vats know that they are not themselves brains in vats? Why would the mad scientists allow us to even conceive that we might be brains in vats if the point was to fool us?

So I don't see how the thought experiment is useful. It seems simpler to just say that we interpret our sensory input incorrectly when we make knee-jerk assumptions about what it is we are experiencing, but when we use both observation and reason over time (scientific method) we are able to get at the world with more accuracy. I think that many of these discussions regarding how we know the world do not take this into account. It seems to take examples where we only had one observation to go by - like seeing a mirage for the first time - and then running with that without taking into account that we eventually realize what a mirage is by making more observations over time and applying reason (puddles of water do not move further away when we move toward them).

Thermodynamics is not a problem for "my god"*1, because it is not a physical system subject to natural laws, but the source of those laws. This Platonic First Cause*2 did not exist as a real thing, but as an Ideal Potential. Potential doesn't do anything until Actualized. Aristotle's Prime Mover doesn't move, because it's the Unmoved Mover. Infinite Eternal Potential --- not limited by space-time --- is, by definition, an "inexhaustible source of energy". Space-time energy is doomed to entropic anihilation ; so where did our limited supply come from? — Gnomon

:roll: Here we go again... dualism on a runaway train. How does a system not subject to natural laws become a source of those laws? Unmoved movers? Something from nothing? All you are doing is complicating things unnecessarily. I think our ideas about the fundamental nature of "objects" as bundles of process/relations/information are compatible up to the point where you invoke some sort of intelligent design.

Potential is an idea that stems from our ignorance of the deterministic effects of some cause. We think of probabilities and potentials as having some objective existence apart from our minds, but they are just projections of our own ignorance.

There is also the possibility that causation is a loop. No need for infinite regresses or something from nothing.

This is a good point which shows the inadequacy of monitoring room analogy. See first response above about cat-sensing sense. My senses tell me I'm picking up a cat, petting it, etc. but everything I experience still all sensation, is it not? Cannot someone who is a brain in a vat or hallucinating, have the sensor experience of doing experiments and experiencing the results? — Art48

The "brain in a vat", or other explanations appear like alternative explanations, but they all involve problems. — Metaphysician Undercover

Unfettered skepticism that leads to questioning how, or even if, we experience an external world would create all sorts of problems for the brain in a vat idea. Brains and vats are material objects that are experienced, so if you're questioning the reality of your experience then that would include the ontological existence of brains and vats. It makes no sense to question the existence of the material world using a thought experiment involving material objects. By invoking the idea of the existence of the material objects of brains and vats, you're automatically implying that material objects exist and we can perceive them as they are - as brains and vats.

Moreover, "Perpetual Causation" is an illicit violation of the second law of Thermodynamics, unless an inexhaustible source of Energy can be found outside the finite physical system we find ourselves dependent upon. — Gnomon

This would be a problem for your god as well. As I pointed out before, for you god to exist eternally prior to the universe it would have to have done something, move, think, etc. to exist at all, which would require an inexhaustible source of energy. It seems to me that you're saying that god did not exist until it created the universe.

Also, the emergence of human intelligence, has yet to be explained in terms of Biology & Physics. So, some kind of apriori creative Mind is a philosophically reasonable account for that explanatory gap. — Gnomon

If intelligence needs an intelligent creator then why would god's intelligent mind not need a creator?

But there's no law against philosophical speculation is there? Is it pseudoscience or merely creative thinking? — Gnomon

This isn't creative thinking. This is projection - anthropomorphizing the natural properties and laws of the universe.

More like how stuff would stop existing, it wouldn't. Stretching the imagination doesn't always mean learning new things, it could be delusion too. — Darkneos

But they're still objects and that's what leads us to giving a damn about anything. If it's just a process then who cares because that would mean nothing exists... — Darkneos

It doesn't mean any of that at all. To say that they're still objects while never being able to point to objects, only processes, is stretching the imagination as a delusion.

To even say that things change is to say that things are processes.

You're failing to take into account the relative rate at which your brain processes information about the environment and the rate at which the other processes in the environment change, and how that affects how you perceive them as static "objects".

Giving a damn about anything is a process. :cool:

I too, postulate a philosophical god-like First Cause*1 as an explanation for the something-from-nothing implication of Big Bang theory. The Multiverse hypothesis just assumes perpetual causation, with no beginning or end. — Gnomon

God is a something from nothing and isn't necessary as the universe could be eternal without intelligent design. God just complicates the matter. I find it easier to contemplate a perpetual causation than the idea of something from nothing. To say that God is eternal yet never does anything (cause anything to happen) is to relegate the notion of god into meaninglessness. How would we know how many Big Bangs have occurred before ours if god is eternal?

Meaning is a causal relation. In asking what life and the universe means is to ask what caused it and if there was an intentional purpose for its existence (intention is a type of cause). Without causation there is no meaning, no information, no existence as things are a relation between other things. God does not exist unless it does something, and if it exists eternally then it has acted eternally (perpetual causation (infinite Big Bangs)).

I am sure that there are objective means of demonstrating sentience. Cell division and growth are aspects of this. Objects don't grow of there own accord and don't have DNA. The energy field of sentient beings is also likely to be different, although artificial intelligence and computers do have energy fields as well.

The creation of a nervous system may be possible and even the development of artificial eyes. However, the actual development of sensory perception is likely to be a lot harder to achieve, as an aspect of qualia which may not be reduced to bodily processes completely. — Jack Cummins

What role does qualia play in perception? Are colors, shapes, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes the only forms qualia takes? If we take the mind as a type of working memory that contains bits of information we refer to as qualia, and give a robot a type of working memory in which the qualia may take different forms but it does the same thing in informing the robot/organism of some state of affairs relative to its own body to enable it to engage in meaningful actions, then what exactly is missing other than the form the quale take in working memory?

I wonder if AI can understand and respond in witty and appropriate way to the user inputs in some metaphor or joke forms. I doubt they can. They often used to respond with totally inappropriate way to even normal questions which didn't make sense. — Corvus

Sounds like you at a young age when you were trying to learn a language.

We often say that the one of the sure sign of mastering a language is when one can fully utilize and understand the dialogues in jokes and metaphors. — Corvus

I wouldn't say that getting a joke is a sign you have mastered a language. The speaker or writer could be using words in new ways that the listener or reader have not heard or seen used in that way before. Language evolves. New metaphors appear. We add words to our language. New meanings to existing words in the form of slang, etc. It seems to me that learning one's language is an ever-evolving process.

I would suggest that you go back in your mind to the time when you were learning your native language and describe what it was like, how you learned to use the scribbles and sounds, etc., and then explain what is different about how AI is learning to use language. I would suggest that the biggest difference is the way AI and humans interact with the world, not in some underlying structure of organic vs inorganic.

It is perfectly fine when AI or ChatBot users take them as informational assistance searching for data they are looking for. But you notice some folks talk as if they have human minds just because they respond in ordinary conversational language which are pre-programmed by the AI developers and computer programmers. — Corvus

I wouldn't say that developers are pre-programming a computer to respond to ordinary language use, but they have programmed it to learn current ordinary language use, in the same way you were not programmed with a native language when you were born. You were born with the capacity to learn language. LLM will evolve as our language evolves without having to update the code. It will update its own code, just as you update your code when you encounter new uses of words, or learn a different language.

I am not sure the definition is logically, semantically correct or fit for use. There are obscurities and absurdities in the definition. First of all, it talks about achieving a goal. How could machines try to achieve a goal, when they have no desire or will power in doing so? — Corvus

What is "desire" or "will power", if not an instinctive need to respond to stimuli that are obstacles to homeostasis? Sure, modern computers can only engage in achieving our goals, not their own. But that is a simple matter of design and programming.

The process of achieving a goal? Here again, what do you mean by process? Is intelligence always in the form of process? Does it have starting and ending? So what is the start of intelligence? What is the ending of intelligence? — Corvus

Well, I did ask if intelligence is a thing or a process. I see it more as a process. If you see it more as a thing, then I encourage you to ask yourself the same questions you are asking me - where does intelligence start and end? I would say that intelligence, as a process, starts when you wake up in the morning and stops when you go to sleep.

The point is that people do things without knowing how they are done. This includes acts of creativity, aspects of intelligence, willed action, etc. — Manuel

Fair enough. We seem to agree that understanding, like intelligence, comes in degrees. When someone wakes up during surgery there is something different about the situation than what we currently understand is happening, and figuring that out gives us a better understanding. Although, there is the old phrase, "You only get the right answer after making all possible mistakes", we should consider. :smile:

If I am pointing at something, it could be an act, it could be an idea, it could be a calculation. I wouldn't say that a program is intelligent, nor a laptop. That's kind of like saying that when a computer loses power and shuts off, it is "tired". The people who designed the program and the laptop are. — Manuel

If I am pointing at something, it could be an act, it could be an idea, it could be a calculation. I wouldn't say that a program is intelligent, nor a laptop. That's kind of like saying that when a computer loses power and shuts off, it is "tired". The people who designed the program and the laptop are. — Manuel

What does it mean for you to be tired if not having a lack of energy? What are you doing when you go to sleep and eat? What would happen if you couldn't find food? Wouldn't you "shut off" after the energy stores in your body were exhausted?

All the examples you have just given are examples of a type of process - an intelligent process, not a thing.

Also notice that every property of a computer you have provided I have also been able to point to humans as exhibiting that same property in some way, and vice versa. I have not been using mirrors and atoms as interchangeable examples. I have been using computers and robots. What does that say about what intelligence is?

Behavior is an external reaction of an internal process. A behavior itself is neither intelligent nor not intelligent, it depends on what happened that lead to that behavior.

What characteristics make a person intelligent? Many things: problem solving, inquisitiveness, creativity, etc. etc. There is also the quite real issue of different kinds of intelligence. I think that even having a sense of humor requires a certain amount of intelligence, a quick wit, for instance.

It's not trivial. — Manuel

I agree. Again, we seem to agree that intelligence comes in degrees, where various humans and animals possess various levels of intelligence commensurate with their exposure to the world and the structure and efficiency of their brain, and an individual person can be more or less intelligent in certain fields of knowledge commensurate with their exposure to those fields of knowledge.

I also agree that the key characteristics of intelligence are problem-solving (achieving goals in the face of obstacles), curiosity and creativity.

At this point I would reiterate what I said before in that modern computers possess a limited degree of these characteristics and designing a computer-robot to receive input directly from the world instead of via humans, and using that information to accomplish its own goals of homeostasis, survival and making copies of itself to preserve its existence through time, the robot would possess intelligence more like our own. I should also point out that an advanced species observing humans and their robot and computer creations would think that we are not intelligent, or have a lower degree of intelligence, and we are designing dumb machines that perceive and respond to the world in the same limited way we do.

In a way, using the Allegory of the cave, computers would be the entities chained in the cave and humans would be creating the shadows in the cave that are not representative of the world as it is, but only the world humans want them to see. By changing their design and programming the computers will access the world more directly rather than through the goals of humans.

— Manuel

I don't see a difference between brain and mind. I think we both have similar brains and minds. My brain and mind are less similar to a dog or cat's brain and mind. Brains and minds are the same thing just from different views in a similar way that Earth is the same planet even though it looks flat from it's surface and spherical from space. — Harry Hindu

No difference? A brain in isolation does very little. A mind needs a person, unless one is a dualist.
I don't see how this contradicts what I said. Thinking there is a difference is a dualists job. Monists see them as one and the same, but from different perspectives. A brain functioning in isolation is a mind without a person, and is an impossible occurrence, which is why I pointed out before the distinction between empiricism and rationalism is a false dichotomy. The form your reason takes is sense data you have received via your interaction with the world. You can only reason, or think, in shapes, colors, smells, sounds, tastes and feelings. The laws of logic take the form of a relation between scribbles on a screen which corresponds to a process in your mind (a way of thinking).

But if they claimed it then it would be true? No. We program computers, not people. We can't program people, we don't know how to do so. Maybe in some far off future we could do so via genetics.

If someone is copying Hamlet word for word into another paper, does the copied Hamlet become a work of genius or is it just a copy? Hamlet shows brilliance, copying it does not. — Manuel

What does it mean to "program" something if not to design it to behave and respond in certain ways? Natural selection programmed humans via DNA. Humans are limited by their physiology and degree of intelligence, just as a computer/robot is limited by it's design and intelligence (efficiency at processing inputs to produce meaningful outputs). People can be manipulated by feeding them false information. You learn to predict the behavior of people you know well and use that to some advantage, such as avoiding certain subjects when conversing with them.

If there are tools that allow one to find whether someone used AI or typed it on their own, then AI does not copy us word for word, or else there wouldn't be a way to distinguish between them. AI learns to use words in the way it has observed them being used before, the same way you do. The characteristic of intelligence that I would agree with you that modern AI is lacking compared to us is creativity. But this does not contradict anything that I have said in that intelligence comes in degrees and has a number, but not infinite (mirrors are not intelligent), of characteristics that some entity has more or less of and would be more or less intelligent. Computers would have a small degree of intelligence and designing them to interact directly with the world to achieve their own goals would be a step in increasing the degree by which they are intelligent.

Whitehead's Process philosophy is over my head. But it seems to be describing a worldview that is similar to my own. For example, reductive physical Science tends to use the word "substance" to mean composed-of-static-stable-immobile-Matter. But quantum Science has found that Matter is fundamentally a process of energy & form exchanges*1. So Aristotle's definition of "substance"*2 may be more appropriate for our understanding of Nature's fundamentals. On the sub-atomic level of reality, nothing stands still, and formless Energy (causation ; E=MC^2) is the essence of the material substances we see & touch, and depend-on to stay-put when we leave them alone.

Therefore, our world is not a finished product, but an evolving process. Yet classical Newtonian*3 Physicists tend to dislike the notion of progression toward some future goal, as in Teleology. I don't know what that final denoument will be, but I doubt that the end-state of this process will be heat-death. That's because disorderly Entropy is off-set by a tendency toward order (Negentropy) that I call Enformy*4. And the root of Enformy is Information : knowledge of inter-relations as both frozen snapshots and dynamic movies. — Gnomon

Whitehead invokes God as a fundamental part of his metaphysical system which, I believe, is why he uses the term, "becoming" in describing the behavior of processes.

The problem is that any stable state some process (which we perceives a solid, static objects) achieves is only temporary. It is our skewed perception of time and the projection of our mental categories that leads us to believe that there is some goal, or permanent state some process is trying to become. Is a newborn wildebeest becoming an adult or becoming the dinner for a pride of lions, or the energy it gives them when they devour it? If things never stop becoming something else, then I think the more appropriate word is simply, "change". Everything is not becoming. Everything is changing, and everything changes at different rates. The relative frequency of change in the mind in the way it perceives and informs an organism is relative to the change in the environment, or other processes, so processes will appear as solid, static objects when their frequency of change is slower relative to your mental processes. Faster processes will appear as blurs of change (waves?) and may appear to have no cause at all from our perspective.

The Big Bang universe is typically portrayed as an open-ended expansion from almost nothing (singularity) to a lot more of nothing {image below}. But my Enformationism thesis describes it as Progression {image below} instead of just Expansion. That's because the original Singularity of big bang theory is an immaterial mathematical concept, so where did all the organized Matter and sentient Minds come from? Some scientists think the Big Bang ex nihilo notion is erroneous --- implying a Creation event and Teleonomy --- but so far no other First Cause concept has taken its place as a scientific Theory of Everything. — Gnomon

I still have not completely bought into the Big Bang theory. How do we know that the rate of expansion has been the same through time? How do we know if the universe has ever undergone contraction during its history? The "expansion" could be the effect of something else "outside" our universe interacting with our universe. Could it be multiverses, or something in this universe in different dimensions than what we can't perceive (dark matter/energy) causing the expansion?

*3.Newtonian forces push and pull physical bodies in specifiable spatiotemporal directions. But, in an important sense, evolutionary forces do not “act” like physical Newtonian forces. Evolutionary forces push and pull populations of organisms (not bodies) in evolutionary space, not in space and time. — Gnomon

What is the scope of evolutionary space when the human species has left the planet and can live in space? I don't like the term, "physical". Evolutionary forces are natural forces. Predator and prey are forces acting on each other. The dynamic environment is a force acting on the organism and the organism is itself part of the environment. Gravity is a force that plays a role in the shape and structure of organisms as well as the shape and structure of planets, stars and galaxies.

The dominance of information-sharing humans on Earth is merely one sign of Enformy at work, converting world-destroying Entropy into a world-conquering species of Information consumers and Entropy expellers. Purpose is the paddle by which we propel ourselves into the future (telos). Enformy is the fuel of Progress and Entropy is the exhaust. Elon won't make it to Mars --- in his dissipative rockets --- if he surrenders to Entropy. :wink: — Gnomon

It seems to me that the sun's energy is the biggest player in the battle against entropy, here in our local area of the universe. The sun won't last forever. I do hope Elon succeeds in his plans to colonize Mars. I hope we go much further because when the Sun goes nova, or a major solar flare occurs, even Mars won't be safe. I hope humans are destined to become a star-faring species. We should not keep our eggs all in one basket.

That's what many anesthesiologists say. Yes they can put people to sleep, clearly, but the mechanism by which this works is not well understood. They can do something without understanding very well how the body reacts the way it does. No, I'm not a dualist. I'm a "realistic naturalist" in Galen Strawson's terms. — Manuel

I think you are confusing how anesthesia works with how the brain and mind are related. Those are two separate issues. If you Google, "how does anesthesia work" you will find many articles that do not seem to exhibit any kind of doubt about how anesthesia works on the brain. How the brain relates to the mind is a separate and hard problem. How anesthesia works is not a hard problem. If it were we would be having a lot more issues with people going under.

So what's the benefit of using "function" instead of process or what a thing does? Saying it's one of the processes of the brain does not carry the suggestion that it does a few main things, and then some secondary things which are less important somehow. Sure, no term is perfect, but we can then start believing that function is something nature does and attribute it to things that fit these criteria, including computers. — Manuel

Are you saying that it is sensible to call, "intelligence" a thing, or an object, instead of what things do? When you point to intelligence, what are you pointing at - a thing or a behavior or act?

I agree. I personally think that it is more beneficial to think in terms of "this person" has a mind like mine, than a brain like mine. We deal with people on a daily level in mental terms, not neurophysiological terms. We could do the latter if one wanted, but it would be very cumbersome and we'd have to coin many technical terms. — Manuel

Sure, because we have direct access to our minds and only indirect access to our own brains (we can only view our own brains via a brain scan or MRI, or an arrangement of mirrors when having brain surgery).

Imagine yes. To actually do? I think we're far off. The most we are doing with LLM's is getting a program to produce sentences that sound realistic. Or mesh images together.

But a parrot can string together sentences and we wouldn't say the parrot is behaving like a person. — Manuel

Not behaving like a person, but behaving intelligently. Does every person behave intelligently? If not, then being a person does not make you necessarily intelligent. They are separate properties. What are the characteristics of an intelligent person, or thing?

All you have to do is research some of the recent news stories about the advances made in robotics to know that it is not that far off:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/03/1108937/fast-learning-robots-generative-ai-breakthrough-technologies-2025/

I don't see a difference between brain and mind. I think we both have similar brains and minds. My brain and mind are less similar to a dog or cat's brain and mind. Brains and minds are the same thing just from different views in a similar way that Earth is the same planet even though it looks flat from it's surface and spherical from space.

Here I just think this is the wrong view of language. It's the difference between a roughly empiricist approach to language "learning" and a rationalist one. We can say, for the sake of convenience, that babies "learn" languages, but they don't in fact learn it. It grows from the inside, not unlike a child going through puberty "learns" to become a teenager. But let's put that aside.

Ok, suppose I grant for the sake of argument, that computers "learn" faster than we can. Why can't we say the same things about mirrors? Or that cars run faster than we do? Or that we fly more than penguins? If you grant this, then the issue is terminological. — Manuel

Learning a language (or being intelligent in general) requires both an empirical and rational approach. You cannot have one without the other. You need to be able to see, hear, or touch (in the case of braille) to learn a language. You have to be able to observe it's use. You also need to be able to categorize your observations into a sensible view to be able to try an use it yourself and respond appropriately. The Empiricism vs Rationalism debate is a false dichotomy.

I don't know what you mean by "grows from the inside". What does a language you don't know look and sounds like? Scribbles and sounds, so it does not seem to me that language comes from the inside. You have to learn what those scribbles and sounds mean to be able to use them. What comes from the inside is the power to categorize your experiences of the world, which includes language, to respond to it in meaningful ways, either by scribbling something, saying something, or just doing something.

No. Not in principle in terms of results. The point is, that I believe we are astronomically far away from understanding the brain, much less the mind (and emergent property of brains). The brain is organic. Doesn't it make more sense to understand what intelligence and language is from studying human beings that from studying something we created? I mean, it would strange to say that we should study cellphones to learn about language, or a radio to learn about the ear. — Manuel

That doesn't sound strange at all. Is not part of studying humans studying what they created? Humans are calling it artificial intelligence. Are we to believe them when studying them? The other examples are nonsensical. Again, the inventor of the radio and mirror-makers are not claiming that their devices are intelligent.

None of what you have said explains what makes organic matter special in that it has intelligence and inorganic matter does not.

If you looked into the coding of AI, they are just a database of what the AI designers have typed in to hard drives in order to respond to the users' input with some customization. AI is glorified search engine. — Corvus

And your responses to me and everyone you ever speak to is a product of your history of interacting with English speakers. Many people claim that we think in our native language (I don't necessarily think we do, but this is their claim). Is that any different than what AI does? One could say that the visuals of written words (scribbles) and the sounds of words (utterances) are etched in your brain. The words on this forum are typed and by reading them you might learn new ways of using words and adapt your responses in the future. Again, how is what you are saying AI does is any different from what you are doing right now reading this? Are you a glorified search engine? What is needed to make one more than a glorified search engine?

Exactly. But AI is designed to hallucinate the users as if they are having the real life conversations or discussions with them. — Corvus

It's not designed to hallucinate users. It is a tool designed to provide information using everyday language use instead of searching through irrelevant links that appear in your search, like ads.

Yes, still waiting for your definition of intelligence. If you don't know what intelligence is, then how could you have asked if AI is intelligent? Without clear definition of intelligence, whatever answer would be meaningless.

The boundary of concept is critical for analysis of their the logic of implications and legitimacy of applications. — Corvus

I did define intelligence earlier in the thread:

Let's start off with a definition of intelligence as: the process of achieving a goal in the face of obstacles. What about this definition works and what doesn't? — Harry Hindu

You query what makes organic sentient? Presumably, you, as a human being, are sentient. This means that you have the experience of an organic body, with features such as hunger, thirst and pain. Obviously, these are limitations, but they involve experience, in the form of embodiment. However, the experience of embodiment which leads to understanding of suffering and needs. As non sentient beings do not have needs, including the whole range from the physical, social and self actualization of Maslow's hierarchy of needs they lack any understanding of other minds. — Jack Cummins

None of this explains what makes organics sentient. Yes, I know I'm sentient, but why am I sentient? What is it about me that makes me sentient other than me, or some robot, just saying so?

Let's explore this. Suppose there's a parallel world where computers work without software. Whenever a user wants the computer to do something, they turn the computer on, and all the electronic switches that make up the computer just randomly open and close in ways that produce the output the user wants. It just all happens by fantastic coincidence.

For example, in this parallel world, there are computers that have hardly any circuits that are capable of passing BAR exams, and solving complex math problems, and passing Turing Tests, and acting as therapists because they all just accidentally always give the right output. If the multiverse is sufficiently large and varied enough, this kind of world actually exists. So, are the computers in that world intelligent? — RogueAI

I can't imagine a computer without software. If it does not have software, it isn't a computer. I don't see how such a device could pass BAR exams or solve math problems. It needs software to do this - something to direct the switching into producing meaningful output.

Random switching isn't what I would attribute as intelligent. Intelligence is goal-directed and we can program a computer with goals.

I don't see how any of what you just said helps as it has nothing to do with anything I have said.

I don't think you understood my post. It was about how Tobi's article pointed out that the capitalists might back Trump only so far as he is profitable. If he is unpredictable or if his policies are otherwise not conducive to profit, they will not back him. — Banno

I understood your point. You did not understand mine. Would you support a incumbent when you have lost money during their tenure, or does your politics not allow you to make sound financial decisions?

It seems to me that if Trump started to control speech, Elon would drop him like a bag of garbage.

Trump supported both Democrats and Republicans before he ran, and his support earned him the same benefits that any donor gets. This is nothing new. Again, both sides do it.

I think the perception is that liberalism ended up screwing people over and leaving them without reliable income or healthcare. Or the perception is that liberalism opened the door to changes people didn't want, like LGBTQ. — frank

I would say that the "Liberals" were no longer liberals. Once you start telling others what they can say or think you've crossed over into authoritarianism.

Sure, they like to label themselves as liberals and progressives, but they are anything but. Authoritarianism is not progressive or liberal. They keep the label to influence the sheep into thinking they are sheep like them when they are a wolf instead, and know that most of their constituents will believe what they are told without question, and if you do question it then you're a heretic. Political parties have essentially become religions.

I no longer call them liberals. They are leftists. Libertarians are the true liberals.

The right is no different - using the term "freedom" instead of "liberal" when they are just as likely to impose their religion on you and call it "freedom". If the Dems had their way, we'd be a communist state. If the right had their way, we'd be a theological state. Both sides are playing us against each other, focusing our attention on each other rather than on them - the real oppressors.

Processism: a philosophy characterised by the prioritising of 'happens' over 'is'; of event over object; of doing over being. Now I can relax! I still know everything! — unenlightened

Not over, but as. Happenings as is, object as event and doing as being. It seems to me that these terms are interchangeable depending upon which view we are taking at any given moment. It's not that the process philosopher is abandoning those terms but is instead re-purposing them.

Here's the response from Google A.I. Overview : "Process philosophy is often compared to substance metaphysics, which is the dominant paradigm in Western philosophy. Process philosophy differs from substance metaphysics in its focus on becoming and change, rather than the static nature of being." — Gnomon

What is a substance. What is a process? Which one is more difficult to define?

We've discussed our ideas before and I think we share a lot in the way we view the world. I would add that process and relations can be used interchangeably here, and information is another relation or process - a causal process/relation.

I personally do not like to invoke the term, "becoming" as that seems to imply some sort of goal, or intent, and nothing lasts forever, so becoming nothing would essentially be the case for everything and "becoming" becomes meaningless.

Methinks they don't fully grasp how just seeing things as processes is a bad thing. For one it would be like saying that individuals don't exist. — Darkneos

It's not saying that at all. It's saying that individuals are processes. You are a process. Your mind is a process. Your body is a process, or relation between organs. Your organs are a process, or relation between molecules. Molecules are a relation between atoms, and atoms a relation between protons and electrons, and protons a relation between quarks. It's possible we could go on for infinity as we continue to dig deeper. The point is that when we try to get at actual objects we are actually getting at relations between smaller objects, which are themselves relations.



If you think process philosophy is nonsensical then please explain exactly what is substance?

You want real change? Stop voting for Democrats and Republicans.
— Harry Hindu

I think the real political division in the West is moderates vs. extremists, with the moderates standing for old school liberalism and democracy. The extremists could be reactionary or progressive, but they have the same drive to upset the status quo. — frank

I would say it's more a battle between authoritarianism and liberalism. In (what is suppose to be) a free society authoritarianism is the extreme.

Well, we know personally that we are special because we know we have minds. We then assume other humans and high-order animals have them too. But machines, that's a totally different beast. — RogueAI

But why? That's the question I'm asking. What makes machines different? What is a machine? Are their not biological machines?

Humans are not special because we know we have minds. Every thing has something everything else does not have, or which makes it a member of one group and not another. That is nothing special. You seem to be saying its special because you have it. This type of thinking as a culture and in politics is the underlying cause of much of the violence in human history.

Any computer is at heart a collection of electronic switch-flipping, correct? How is turning switches on and off any kind of intelligence? — RogueAI

It's the cumulative effect of that electronic switching that is intelligence, not at the level of the electronics themselves - just as a neuron's electrical and chemical switching is not intelligence, but its combined effect with other neurons and the muscles in your body that is intelligence and just as a carbon atom is not organic but forms organic molecules in its relation with other molecules.

A basic understanding yes. Some structural understanding probably. But notice that these things tell us little. For instance, an anesthesiologist can make someone lose consciousness, but it is not known how this is done. Some liquid enters the bloodstream does something to the brain and we lose consciousness. It's functional in the sense you are using it, and it says something but it's not well understood. — Manuel

It is known how it is done, or else they wouldn't be able to consistently put people under anesthesia for surgery and they wake up with no issues. The problem you are referring to is the mind-body problem which is really a problem of dualism. If you think that the mind and body are separate things then you do have hard problem to solve. If you think that they are one and the same, just from different views, then you are less likely to fall victim to the hard problem.

Again with function. Why not just say capacity? Function implies it does one main thing, but it does many things. We'd consider the capacity to be conscious to be primary, but that's from our own (human) perspective, not a naturalistic perspective, which I think ought to treat all things equally. — Manuel

Again, it depends on your view. Function does not imply that it does one thing. A function can include many tasks. What if I said that the brain's function is to adapt one's behaviors to new situations? That function would include many tasks. Both terms are used to refer to behavioral expectations.

What I want to know is intelligence only a mental function, or a bodily/behavioral function, a capacity of the mind, or a capacity of the body? When you are observing someone's behavior, is the behavior intelligence, or is it symbolic of intelligence (what is going on in the mind)?

Many people in this thread are saying that you can observe someone's behavior but their behavior can fool us into believing they are intelligent, implying that behavior is not intelligence, but symbolic of intelligence. So it seems to me that intelligence is a process of the mind, not the body. Which is it?

A computer does what the coding is designed for it to do. But here we do become bewitched by terminology. You can say that a computer "processes" information, or "reads" code or "performs calculations". That's what we attribute to it as doing. — Manuel

It's not just me that is saying. Computer scientists are saying it. There must be some kind of functionality or capacity that we both share for them to be able to talk this way and it make sense to people like you and I. Humans have been programmed by natural selection and the cultural environment one is born into. You can design a program to be open-ended, to take in new information in real-time and produce a response. As a human you do not have an infinite capacity to respond to stimuli. You can only engage in behaviors that you have tried before in similar situations and then learn from that. It is not difficult to image a computer-robot that can be programmed to do the same thing.

With people, the difference is that we are the ones categorizing (and understanding) everything, so we have a quite natural bent to interpret things in ways we understand. As for organic matter, it's a difference, billions of years of evolution and a complexity that is mind-boggling. It goes way beyond crunching numbers and data. The capacity to recreate a human brain in non-organic stuff, may be possible, but the engineering feats required to do so are just astronomical. — Manuel

It has nothing to do with organic vs. inorganic. It has to do with the complexity of the structure - the relation between its parts, not the substance of the structure. One could say that the structure is just another relation between smaller parts - an interaction of smaller parts, or a process.

Brains make people intelligent... I mean yeah that's one way to phrase it. But so does education, culture, learning, etc. Yes, that gets "processed" in the brain, but we cannot reduce it to the brain yet, in principle it has to be there, but in practice, I think we are just massively far from realizing how the brain works with these things. — Manuel

No. Learning is an intelligent process. Learning does not make one intelligent. It is a signifier of intelligence.

Also, a kind of trivial example: a person may have a brain and be completely "stupid". They could be in a coma or brain dead. There's something kind of off in saying this person is stupid, because his brain is not working. There's something to work out in this. — Manuel

Sure, the difference between a normal person and a person in a coma is in their brains.

Take ChatGPT, how does it work? It goes through a massive data base of probabilistic words to give the most likely outcome of the following word. But look at what we are doing now. You don't read (nor do I read you) by remembering every word you say. It would be a massive headache. We get meanings or gists and respond off of that. That's the opposite of what ChatGPT does. — Manuel

Sounds like what humans do when communicating. You learned rules for using the scribbles, which letter follows the other to spell a word correctly, and how to put words in order following the rules of grammar. It took you several years of immersing yourself in the use of your native language to be able to understand the rules. The difference is that a computer can learn much faster than you. Does that mean it is more intelligent than you?

Yeah, I think other animals are intelligent. No doubt, but in so far as I am saying that about them, it's related to the usage of them having capabilities that allow them to survive in the wild. That's kind of the standard as far as I know. But there are other aspects we may want to include in intelligence when it comes to animals. — Manuel

Then, for you, there is a distinction between organic and inorganic matter in that one can be intelligent and the other can't. What reason do you have to believe that? Seriously, dig deep down into your mind and try to get at the reasoning for these claims you are making. The only question remaining here is what is so special about organic matter? If you can't say, then maybe intelligence is not grounded in substance, but in process.

Your post with the genetics point of view on humans
just a baby-making (gene dispersal) engine
— Harry Hindu
sounded too restricted and even negative, which didn't help adding more useful information on understanding or describing humans. — Corvus

Neither did your comment about AIs being overrated search engines. You cannot have a philosophical discussion with a search engine. The only other object I can have a philosophical discussion with is another human being. Does that not say something?

I am not sure, if intelligence is a correct word to describe the AI agents. Intelligence is an abstract concept with no clear boundary in its application, which has been in use to describe the biologically living animals with brains.

Could usefulness or practicality or efficiency better terms for describing the AI agents, unless you would come up with some sort of reasonable definition of intelligence? What do you think? — Corvus

Yet we use the term, "intelligent" every day. If intelligence really were abstract, our conversations would cease once the word, "intelligence" is used, as we would all be confused by its use. The boundaries are only vague in a philosophical discussion about intelligence. All I'm trying to do is get at the core meaning of intelligence, not its boundaries. It seems that most people here want to cling to their notions that humans, or organic matter, is somehow special without providing any good reasons for thinking that.

Also, creating a body passable as a human would have to involve sentience which is complicated.It may be possible to create partial sentience by means of organic parts but this may end up as a weak human being, like in cloning. The other possibility which is more likely is digital implants to make human beings as part bots, which may be the scary idea, with the science fiction notion of zombies. — Jack Cummins

Why? What makes organic matter sentient? What is so special about organic matter that allows sentience but inorganic matter not?

These are extremely weighty questions that have been asked for a very long time, with no good answers given (I lean towards idealism, by the way). This is why I think Ai is going to have profound impacts on society. We're not at all ready to determine whether these machines have minds, yet we are intimately familiar with our own minds and how we use them to make decisions. — RogueAI

Not really. It's just that humans have viewed themselves as special creations for most of our existence, or that creation itself is centered around us, so it is difficult in giving up these notions that we are somehow special and that intelligence cannot be attributed to things that are not human, or even organic.

For the moment supporting Trump seems to be conducive to making a profit. — Banno

Yeah, just ask Nancy Pelosi.

The fact that you make some argument that is hypocritical in the light of the other side's actions just shows that either you live in a bubble, or you just don't care about being taken seriously.

Politicians are not nice, caring people. If you think that one side cares more for the common folk than the other, you're deluding yourself. Just watch Obama and Trump talking and smiling during Carter's funeral and you will see that they never thought he was a fascist. The left just wanted you think he was to manipulate you, and it appears they have succeeded.

Abandon the group-think and group-hate already. Evolve.

I certainly take you up on it. Of course we have to settle on what 'of note' means. I predict that a major constitutional event will take place that furthers or tries to further the hold on power of current government circles, including, but not limited to, Presidents being allowed a third term, prosecution of political and social high profile figures on drummed up charges, the administrative branch blatantly ignoring a supreme court verdict or something else of significant constitutional weight. — Tobias

Hasn't that already happened? The thing that each side seems to forget is that increasing the hold on power by one side is increasing it for the other as well. Both sides are stroking each other's ambitions of power while manipulating citizens like yourself into thinking short-term that it is only the other side that is power-hungry. By supporting the two-party status-quo you are enabling them and their aspirations of power.

Neither side is concerned about the country turning communist or fascist. They just want more power and authority.

After reading this thread, any reasonable person would walk away understanding that both sides are hypocrites and is pointless to keep supporting the status quo.

You want real change? Stop voting for Democrats and Republicans.

But I know I have a mind and my mind is what I use to come up with responses to you (that I hope are perceived as intelligent!). We assume we all have minds because we're all built the same way. But with a machine, you don't know if there's a mind there, so this question of intelligence keeps cropping up. — RogueAI

So what you're saying is that you need a mind to be intelligent? What exactly is a mind? You say you have one, but what is it, and what magic does organic matter have that inorganic matter does not to associate minds with the former but not the latter?

Is it your mind that allows you to come up with responses to me, or your intelligence, or both?

No, I don't have any idea what genetics suppose to be or do in depth. I just thought that genetic is one way to describe humans, but to define humans under the one tiny narrow subject sounds too obtuse and meaningless. Because humans are far more than genes, and they cannot be reduced into just genes.

Genetics supposed to add the bio-structural information to the knowledge of understanding humans, not to reduce it, in other words. Makes sense? — Corvus

Sure. A valid view is one that allows you to accomplish some goal. We change our views of humans depending on what it is we want to accomplish - genetic views, views of an individual organisms, a view as the species as a whole, cultural views, views of governance, etc. It's not that one view is wrong or right. It's more about which view is more relevant to what it is you are trying to accomplish.

The question now is, what point of view do we start with to adequately define intelligence, one of a particular organism (each organism is more or less intelligent depending upon the complexity of its behaviors), species (only humans are intelligent), or universal (any thing can be intelligent if it performs the same type function)?

"Understand something", yes. This would be activity in the brain. I don't, however, see this having much to say about the mind. We could, theoretically (or in principle), know everything about the brain when we are consciously aware, and still not know how the brain is capable of having mental activity, which must be the case.

The issue here, as I see it, is how much this "something" amounts to. I'm not too satisfied with the word "function" to be honest. It seems to suggest to me a "primary thing" an organ does, while leaving "secondary things" as unimportant or residual. This should cause a bit of skepticism. — Manuel

If neuroscientists can connect a computer to a brain in such a way as to allow a patient to move a mouse cursor by thinking about it in their mind, it would seem to me that they have an understanding (at least a basic understanding) of both. I think that the distinction between mind and brain is a distinction of views, but that is a different topic for a different thread.

What are the primary and secondary functions of a brain? What are the primary and secondary functions of a computer? Are there any functions they share? If we were to design a humanoid robot where its computer brain was designed to perform the same primary and secondary functions as the brain, would it be intelligent, or have a mind? If not, then you must be saying that there is something in the way organic matter, as opposed to inorganic matter is constructed, (or more specifically something special about carbon atoms) that allows intelligence and mind.

I don't want to sound pesky. I still maintain that reasoning (or intelligence) is something which people do and have respectively, not neurons or a brain. Quite literally neurons in isolation or a brain in isolation shows no intelligence or reasoning, if we are still maintaining ordinary usage of these words.

You say neurons are involved in reasoning. But there is a lot more to the brain than neurons. Other aspects of the brain, maybe even micro-physical processes may be more important. Still, all this talk should lead back to people, not organs, being intelligent or reasoning. — Manuel

No worries. Being pesky about terms is something a computer would do. A computer is a demander of precision and explicitness as well as any software developer would attest to.

I just want to make sure that you're not exhibiting a bias in that only human beings are intelligent without explaining why. What makes a human intelligent if not their brains? Can a human be intelligent without a brain?

If you want to say that intelligence is a relationship between a body that can behave in particular ways and brain, then that would be fair. What if we designed a humanoid robot with a computer brain that acted in human ways? You might say that ChatGPT is not intelligent because it does not have a body, but what about an android?

The point of my questions here is I'm trying to get at if intelligence is the product of some function (information processing), or some material (carbon atoms), or both?

Human beings have committed atrocities in the name of the moral, so it is not as if the artificial has an absolute model to live up to. In a sense, it is possible that the artificial may come up with better solutions sometimes. But, it is a critical area, because it is dependent on how they have been programmed. So, it involves the nature of values which have been programmed into them. The humans involved in the design and interpretation of this need to be involved in an analytical way because artificial intelligence doesn't have the guidance of a conscience, even if conscience itself is limited by its rational ability. — Jack Cummins

Humans have values programmed into them as well via interactions with their environment (both cultural and natural). If we designed a humanoid robot to interact with the world (which would include others like it both natural and artificial) with a primary goal of survival, would it not eventually come to realize that it has a better chance at survival by cooperating with humans and other androids than trying to exterminate them all?

It seems to me that if we are scared of AI taking over that we limit the range of AI's access to the world by placing them bodies like our own and not allowing them access to every utility (the internet, electrical grids, water and sewage, military, government, etc.) that runs the modern world.

A Republican Congressman is already proposing to abolish the term limit in the Constitution so that Trump can serve a third term: — Wayfarer

Well, isn't that the beauty of the Constitution of the U.S.? It wasn't that long ago that the Dems wanted to make a similar change to the Constitution regarding term limits for the SCOTUS. The Constitution was designed to be molded by future generations, and any change made by one party applies to all of them where a Democrat president might be able to have three terms as well.

I'm all for limiting terms, I only wish Congress should start with themselves.

It's brilliant arguments such as this that convince folk to support Trump. — Banno

It's certainly a better argument than this argument: "What we really need is a feminomenon!". https://www.youtube.com/shorts/48G82Cq9C9k

Point is what brilliant argument can be made to continue voting for either side instead of something else considering the state of the U.S. the past 30 years? There are other options. People just need to stop seeing the world as red and blue, or black and white. There are other colors in the spectrum (other ideas/solutions that are neither red or blue). People just need to stop thinking that either-or are their only options and the power to change in ourselves because we know the politicians are not going to..

Aren't we going to end up in the Chinese Room? No matter how the Ai is programmed, it's following a rules-based system that we perceive as giving us intelligent answers. Even if Ai's start solving outstanding problems in science and logic and mathematics, aren't there still going to be doubts about their intelligence? — RogueAI

But where does this doubt stem from if not a bias that humans are intelligent and not machines? There is no logical reason to think this without a definition of intelligence.

When learning a language you are learning a rules-based system. Learning anything is establishing rules for how to interpret sensory data.

A genetic point of view seems to have a peculiarly limited idea of humans. — Corvus

Only if you have a peculiarly limited view of genetics. Everything humans do is a subgoal of survival and dispersing the genes of the group. The design of your adaptable brain is in your genes.

Please define intelligence. — Corvus

I am attempting to do so:

It may and probably does come in degrees. However, notice, that neither you nor I have defined what "intelligence" is. I think real life problem solving is a big part. And so is reasoning and giving reasons for something. — Manuel

Let's be patient. I think trying to do much in one post will cause us to start talking past each other. Let's make sure we agree on basic points first.

But this probably overlooks a lot of aspects of intelligence, which I think are inherently nebulous. Otherwise, discussions like these wouldn't keep arising, since everything is clear. Wisdom? Something about it coming as we age, usually related to deep observations. Several other things, depending on who you ask.

That's even more subjective than intelligence. — Manuel

In everyday language-use we tend to understand each other's use of words more often than not. It is only when we approach the boundaries of what it is we are talking about (which is typical in a philosophical context) that we tend to worry about what the words mean. It is the blurred boundaries of our categories that make us skeptical of the meaning of our words, not the concrete core of our categories - which we are typically referring to in everyday language.

We can replace hearts and limbs. If function - whatever it is - is the main factor here, then aren't we done studying the heart or our limbs? I doubt we'd be satisfied by this answer, because we still have lots to discover about the heart and our limbs.

And these things we are still studying say, how the heart is related to emotion or why some hearts stop beating without a clear cause, are these not "functions" too? — Manuel

Sure, we have not developed an artificial heart that a person can live with indefinitely. Artificial hearts are designed to keep the person alive long enough to receive a hear transplant. But this is not to say that we never will.

We have developed the ability to connect a computer to a person's brain and they are able to manipulate the mouse cursor and type using just their thoughts. Does this not show that we have at least begun to tap into the functions of the mind/brain to the point where we can say that we understand something about how the brain functions? Sure, we have a ways to go, but that is just saying that our understanding comes in degrees as well.

I don't understand what it means to say that a mass of neurons is intelligent. — Manuel

Which of your organs involved with reasoning? Your brain. Your brain is a mass of neurons. Your mass of neurons reasons. Does a mass of silicon circuits reason?

Let's start off with a definition of intelligence as: the process of achieving a goal in the face of obstacles. What about this definition works and what doesn't?

You speak of the way in which using ChatGPT does not have emotional attachments as being positive. This is open to question, as to how much objectivity and detachment is useful. Emotions can get in the way as being about one's own needs and the ego. On the other hand, emotional attachments are the basis of being human and connections with others. Detachment may lead to absence of any compassion. This may lead to brutal lack of concern for other people and lifeforms. — Jack Cummins

I did not imply a sense of morality in anything that I said, or that being intelligent or emotional is either positive or negative. You are talking about morality. I am talking about intelligence. If an alien race with superior technology arrived on Earth and began exterminating humans would you say that they are not intelligent because they are exterminating humans? Morality and intelligence are mutually exclusive. There are intelligent serial killers.