Yeah, but these losses are not the same - it's the difference between amputating both your legs (Sleepy Joe) and cutting off your head (Donny Bone Spurs). — 180 Proof

It may be more like the cutting out your tongue and cutting off your fingers if voting for Biden. Voting for an old racist white guy that has been in power for nearly fifty years after you've been complaining about systemic racism and white privilege just relegates your words into meaningless dribble. Everyone reading your words would have a difficult time believing anything you say or type, so your tongue and fingers basically become useless appendages.

Actually voting for either one is like cutting out your eyes and ears as people in both groups just dont bother to listen or read what others and each other are saying and are becoming more divisive every election cycle.

So the formulation should be "it is an absolute eternal fact that there are (other than this one absolute eternal fact) no absolute eternal facts. — Janus

Still a useless contradiction.

It amazes me to see all of the mental gymnastics being performed in order to deny the existence of truths or facts while at the same time asserting a truth or fact that there are no truths or facts.

Its not assumed. It is innate. Words are inherently about things and this relationship with the things that they are about can only be either true or false. If your words aren't about things then you aren't saying anything at all. You're just making scribbles and noises.

There's nothing wrong with that, no cause to stop theorising or throw logic away, but we assume it, we cannot prove it with itself. — Isaac

So this is an example of a statement that isn't just the case here and now, but also the case indefinitely. What did you assume to assert this?

In order to demonstrate that a position is begging the question it only need appear to be the case here and now and the position holds. It doesn't require that my conclusion is an eternal and absolute fact, it might turn out not to be the case tomorrow, that wouldn't make any difference to the refutation today. — Isaac

Then it is an eternal, absolute fact that at one moment in the universe's history this was the case.

So it appears that you can never NOT assume that some statement is either true or false as these are inherent properties of statements.

If a statement is neither true or false then it isnt a statement at all. Its just scribbles on a screen.

Statement E = There are no absolute eternal facts

E is either true or false
— TheMadFool

You've begged the question. It being the case that E is either true or false assumes that there are absolute eternal facts (ie E must be either true or false). Without that assumption you cannot have the premise that E must be either true or false, E might be true sometimes but false others. — Isaac

Did you not just demonstrate that there are absolute eternal facts - that E being true or false is dependent upon the assumption that there are eternal facts. Can E ever be true or false without having assumed that there are eternal facts?

A. TheMadFool states that "There are no absolute eternal facts" is either true or false
B. Issac states that that is begging the question.

B. is either true or false.

If it is neither, then what use is the statement? What purpose did you have in stating it?

One could even say that if it is neither then B. isn't about A at all. You both would be talking past each other.

The thing that most people tend to forget is any experience or view isn't a direct, clear, unfiltered understanding about the world independent of your body's interaction with it. It always includes information about your body's relation with the world.

When looking at another person's brain, how much of the information, and what part of the information, in your consciousness is only about the brain you are viewing and not about your brain too? How can you separate the information about the observed brain from the information about your brain when looking at another brain?

Think of the sights and sounds that you see and hear on your TV. The image depends not just on what is being viewed, but the quality and settings on the camera obtaining the view and the quality and settings on the TV. Both the camera and the TV together make measurements and then display them. What is displayed is wholly dependent upon what type of measuring device you are using and what device you're using to display the information.

Raw information has no form. It only takes form when needing to be used and how it is used is dependent upon the medium used to represent the raw information (TV sets or minds). Using different senses to observe the same event gives you different forms of the same information. Thunder and lightning are just different forms of the same event - an electrostatic discharge in the atmosphere. Electrostatic discharges have existed well before there were any eyes and ears to measure them. Once eyes and ears evolved, lightning and thunder existed.

Lightning and thunder are even thought of as separate events because based on our location, they can occur at different times, even though it is the same electrostatic charge that caused them both.

I don't know why anyone would say that qualia aren't useful as they contain such useful information about the body's relationships with the world.

We may be in agreement here, and differ only in semantics. Atomic theory is fundamental to the understanding of molecules. Quantum theory is fundamental to the study of atoms. What is fundamental is what is the directly prior set of rules and causality that arise to the current focus of study. What is fundamental to consciousness is the functioning of the brain. — Philosophim

This leads to an infinite regress. You never end up getting at any fundamental understanding if it is always a step lower than your present understanding. Fundamental understanding would be fleeting and unattainable. This leaves us with simply understanding, and some understanding is only useful in a particular domain. Any distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental understanding is incoherent.

I hope the prior explanation answers this as well. Consciousness arises from the brain. No where else. You do not need to be around other people to be conscious. The causal explanation is also the same as you mentioned. Atoms cause molecules by their interaction. Molecules cause neuronal cells by their interaction. Neuronal cells cause a brain. And certain parts of the brain cause consciousness. This is straight forward science. — Philosophim

What exactly do you mean by "arises from the brain"?
What exactly do you mean by "caused by their interaction?

Is it a temporal or spatial change that you are talking about? In other words, does the change occur over time, or over space? For instance, a thrown ball causes the window to break. The broken window was caused by something else interacting with it. In one moment it wasn't broken and in the next it was only after interacting with a ball, which isn't part of the window, but a separate entity. So if this is a temporal change, where is the mind in relation to the brain like the window is in relation to the ball? If this were the type of causation you are talking about then the mind is a separate entity from the brain, like the ball and the window. Temporal change is a relationship between two or more different things interacting to create a new thing that is not the same thing as the things by themselves.

Is it a spatial change, which really is just another change in views (conscious sensory models). There is no such distinction between different spatial-scales outside of our minds. Our minds are what make the distinctions between macro and micro, just as they do about present and past, but they have no ontological reality outside of our minds.

So in essence, spatial causation is really just different conscious sensory models of the same thing used for different purposes. There would be no separate entity of mind and brain. They are one and the same, just from different views. One might say an apple is red, but on the inside it is white. A view is from somewhere, so some view will contain information about the local environment relative to that spatial-temporal point within that environment. My view of your mind includes the visual of a brain. Your view of your mind does not. Why? And what does it mean to say that "you" have a view of "your" mind? Where is the you? You say that you are your brain, or part of it. So does this mean that somewhere in the brain is a view of a mind? Why don't we ever find such a thing when looking deep inside the brain?

Yes, so prior I was speaking in general terms. As in, mind/brain. The brain is composed of several different functioning sections that serve the body in different way. Sight is located in a different area then sound for example. Higher level thought is in the Neo Cortex, while the most primitive of bodily functions are handled by the brain stem. That is why a person can still breath even though they are in a coma.

Technically, consciousness would be the same. Certain areas of the brain create consciousness, while others do not. — Philosophim

Sight and sound are part of consciousness, not part of brains. Neurons are part of brains. Brains and their neurons are what are seen, so what would it mean for the sight of a brain to be in the brain?

Scientists even tell us that color has no ontological reality outside of our minds, yet they exist in minds. How does something that is colorless cause color? And how did camouflage evolve?

And if different aspects of consciousness are in different parts of the brain, then consciousness would entail multiple parts of the brain. There must be somewhere where sound and sight come together into a collective whole because I can both see and hear you at the same conscious instant and in the same conscious space.

You seem to be equating a mind as something different from the physical brain. It is not. No mind can exist without a brain. I was pointing out that you noted whether we examine something from a distance or close, its functionally the same thing. Thus brain and mind are the same. — Philosophim

Then I need an explanation of what you mean by "the brain causes the mind", or "the mind arises from the brain". Some causal events create new entities that are not the same as what caused them. Your mother and father caused you, but you are a separate entity from them both. This is what I was talking about the distinction between temporal causation and spatial causation.

Absolutely. Everything is physical Harry. What is there that is not physical? Do you think that when an ant makes a choice, it is not physical? When a cell chooses to eat another that there is some extra universal essence at play? A dog has a consciousness right? Mice, lizards, etc. We are made up of cells, which are molecules, and atoms. So is every living creature. Its all matter and energy.

Finally, your consciousness is physical. You can prove it right now. Stand up and walk somewhere. Look back. Is your consciousness where you just were? Or is it where you are now? It resides up there with you. You have to feed it and take care of it, or it grows weak, becomes confused, and dies. Make sure to use it well before its expiration date. — Philosophim

Then what does it mean to be "physical"? If everything were "physical" then "physical" seems like a useless term.

There is a way this cauliflower tastes to you right now. Well, no. the taste changes even as you eat it, even as the texture changes as you chew. — Banno

Cant you say that for anything, including your brain states?? Observed brains and their neurons change.

So qualia don't exist, but they change? What is it that is changing then?

Intuition pump #2: the wine-tasting machine.
As a tool for convincing those who disagree, this strikes me as singularly useless. Dennett will say there is nothing missing form the machine description; advocates of qualia will say that there is...

Except that they cannot say what it is that is missing; qualia are after all ineffable. But this never stops their advocates from talking about them... — Banno

How do neural activity explain the quality of taste? Sound like we taking about Suffern things altogether. Why would there be a report of taste if neural activity explained it all?

I agree 100%. I am merely trying to break down what Dennet is saying. It doesn't mean I agree with him. I would define things as "Identities for particular purposes". — Philosophim

I think that fits with my use of the term, "measurement". Colors, shapes, sounds, tastes, smells and tactile sensations and feelings are all measurements for a particular purpose. I think Outlander was using "sensory data", which I also like. In essence, consciousness is working memory that contains sensory information (measurements) for achieving a particular goal (purpose).

The "personal experience", or the subjective nature of the identities has to do with how the identities present themselves as including information about location relative to the body, or sensory/measuring device.

Dennet isn't interested in studying the identity of consciousness as a personal experience, because he's not a psychologist. He's trying to get to the mechanical underpinnings that lead directly to consciousness. Of course, the mechanical underpinnings of the mind have further underpinnings like chemistry and physics. Even the atoms break down into quarks and electrons. Now Dennet may need fundamental chemistry to understand the mechanical processes, but he generally doesn't need that to observe how the mechanical processes work.

Of course, a psychologist or sociologist might be more interested in how consciousnesses work together. At that point, you don't necessarily need to understand the underlying physical workings of consciousness, just its expression. The identification becomes important depending on what you're trying to find out. In Dennets case, he's trying to find the underpinnings behind the personal consciousness we experience. So of course the result is not his concern, but the cause. — Philosophim

But that's the problem - explaining how "mechanical" processes causally influence, or interacts with, "personal experiences". How can you even get started with providing a good theory if you're just going to deny the existence, or at least the importance, of the very thing that you are trying to explain by observing its underpinnings (underpinnings of what, and for what purpose?)?

How can one even say that they are the causal underpinnings of consciousness when they can't even explain how the cause is causally related with the effect?

You seem to be saying that the "mechanical" processes have further underpinnings what I would assume that you would refer to as "physical". These terms are sensory terms. They could actually mean that what we are talking about are measurements. Everything that is "mechanical" or "physical" is a measurement, or an amalgam of measurements. Coffee is its taste, smell, temperature, visual (black liquid) and sound of being poured or sipped. You might point to coffee's chemistry and atomic structure, as a means of innovating the production of coffee, but it is all ultimately for the "personal experience" of the taste and smell of coffee for which the underpinnings are investigated.

The "parts" and "wholes" are comparisons of views, or a comparison of measuring scales, like comparing millimeters to light-years and nano-seconds to centuries. Each of these measurements "make up" the larger scales, but those smaller measurements just aren't useful on such large scales, and vice versa. So I would reject your use of "fundamental" and instead say that there are certain scales that are useful, depending on what purpose we are trying to achieve.

But what if consciousness doesn't operate at the molecular level? — Harry Hindu

That would need to be proven. So far, all every bit of scientific evidence points to consciousness being a physical process of the mind. You can zap a brain with electricity and change what a person is sensing and feeling. Check out videos and records when people have to have open brain surgery. Look up Phineus Gage https://www.verywellmind.com/phineas-gage-2795244

You are your brain. There is zero evidence that there is something separate from molecules and energy. Beyond Dennet, there is no, "what if" about this. Now if you wish to believe there is a soul or something separate, that's fine. Personally believe what you want to get you through your day and be a good person. But that is a personal belief, and has no basis in fact or reality. This is indisputable at this point in our scientific understanding. Any objection to this has no grounds in reality. — Philosophim

I think you misunderstood. Brains are not molecular-sized objects. Neurons are. And neurons are made up of atoms, which are made up of quarks. A brain is a part of an organism. Organisms are part of a social group or species, etc. Between which layer does consciousness lie, and how do you explain the causal relationship between the upper and lower (underpinning) layers?

Do you see the contradiction you made? You made the same mistake you just warned me about. There is no separation between mind and brain. When we observe it at a particular level, we see a brain. When we measure our personal experience, we observe a mind. But they're really just the same thing, looked at in a different way.

Of course to get TECHNICAL, we could say that the mind is merely one part of the brain. After all, there's a lot going on there that we don't really have any say or control over. So far I haven't been able to control my digestion or fat storage production. That's all regulated by the brain, but not the mind part of my brain.

But the mind part of the brain is a physical real thing. If we understand the mechanics behind it, we could understand how we work a lot better. — Philosophim

Unfortunately, I don't see the contradiction. I need a better explanation. But it does seem that you contradicted yourself. You said before that I am my brain, but now you say that I am merely one part of my brain. Some would argue that they are their body, as a brain isn't very useful without a body.

If your part of the brain doesn't regulate digestion then are you saying that you don't make conscious choices about what and when to eat and then dump the waste? Do you regularly piss and shit your pants with no control? Are choices "physical"? How does a choice causally influence what the stomach digests?

Dennet isn't saying that we can't use observation. We have to observe the underlying mechanical process after all. What he means by "fundamental" is "its small component parts that make up the whole." Its like H2O are elementary (fundamental) parts of water. You can't do science with "water", but you can do science with H20. Water is the "illusion" (Dennet's poor word choice that I personally wouldn't use) and H20 are the fundamental building blocks. Same with your brain and consciousness. I think everyone can accept that. — Philosophim

The "small component parts" would still be part of the "illusion", so Dennett can't ever escape his own visual illusion - even when talking about "fundamental" parts of a whole. His and your explanation sound visual to me. You can only hypothesize about the components by observing the "illusion".

And calling them elementary parts of water while in the same breath calling water an illusion just makes those elementary parts part of the illusion. It makes no sense whatsoever to call them elementary parts when the whole that they are part of is an illusion. That means that the parts aren't parts or components of anything at all, if what they compose is an illusion.

Water is the "illusion" (Dennet's poor word choice that I personally wouldn't use) — Philosophim

That's fine. What word would you choose to use?

Sure, Dennet isn't denying this either. I swim in water, I don't swim in H20. The idea of H20 for my day to day purposes isn't going to matter. But if I'm a scientist, the fundamentals of why I'm able to swim in water deal with the molecular chemistry and forces involved. Dennet is trying to understand how consciousness, "the illusion" functions on a molecular chemistry level so he can understand it at a scientific level. And thank goodness. Can you imagine if we had people denying the idea of chemistry for water? We would never figure it out!

Now does that mean that the "illusion" is useless to study? Not at all. For my purposes, water is great to drink. Its just useless for Dennet's purposes, which is to discover the underlying fundamentals that produce the result. — Philosophim

But what if consciousness doesn't operate at the molecular level? Does studying the solar system give you complete knowledge into how the Milky Way galaxy works?

You seem to think that there are no such things as macro-sized objects, or processes - only microscopic ones, and that these things can't look different depending on which size scale, or distance, we are observing them from.

Observing a process from far away vs close up changes the way the process appears, but it is still the same process. The difference is not based the observed process being different from different vantage points, but our sensory systems' relationship with the process being different from different vantage points.

In other words, people here keep making category errors about what it is that they are talking about. We can only ever talk about anything in the world AFTER it has interacted with our body. In essence what we talk about is this interaction - never some process prior to its interaction with our body or some other measuring device. We can only talk about our measurements of the world, of which consciousness is a type of measurement. This means that brains and their neurons would be our conscious description and measurement of other minds. It's not other brains out there (naive realism), it's other minds, and brains are how some consciousness measures other minds (indirect realism).

Far better, tactically, to declare that there simply are no qualia at all. — Dennett

If that were the case then language wouldn't be visual in nature. "The grey matter between your ears" is a visual description, pointing to how things like other minds appear within consciousness. I don't see how such a description could ever be used if qualia didn't exist. When talking about neurons, Dennett can't seem to keep from talking in visual terms, as it appears from his own perspective. To then go and say that qualia don't exist just undermines anything else he asserts. Only a p-zombie could say such a thing and mean it.

Check my fire example for one. Another example is the screen you are observing right now. Does the light of this forum post explain the fundamental mechanical process that is letting you observe it right now? No. That is all Dennet is saying. Underlying the screen is a series of small pixels that are being turned into RBGY colors based on 1's and 0's on your machine. We don't see that. We see, "the illusion" of the entire process constructed into something more manageable and meaningful for us. — Philosophim

But how did you come to understand the underlying "mechanical" processes if not by some kind of observation? It sounds to me that you are simply talking about different views of the same thing. A view from the micro is no more "fundamental" than a view from the macro. To label one as "fundamental" and the other as "illusory" is simply projecting value on a particular view of the same thing. You are ascribing to another form of dualism - the fundamental vs the illusory. You haven't rejected dualism. You ended up embracing it.

The "illusion" of the entire process has causal power. It isn't the underlying mechanical processes of pixels displaying colors based on 1's and 0's that then drives my behavior to respond. It is the words that I read that drives my behavior. I don't point to the alternating state of 1's and 0's as the reason I am responding. I point to the meaning of your words as the reason.

Who has better evidence of me being conscious? If we cannot understand it by our own perception, which perception is he talking about - my perception of my consciousness, or your perception of my consciousness? — Harry Hindu

In other words, who has "fundamental" evidence of me being conscious?

All Dennet is saying is that consciousness cannot be fundamentally understood by our own perception of it. — Philosophim

I doubt that this is what Dennett is saying. If consciousness cannot be understood by our perception of it, then what does that say about our other perceptions of the world? Dennett ends up pulling out the rug from under centuries of observable science.

"I don’t deny the existence of consciousness; of course, consciousness exists; it just isn’t what most people think it is, as I have said many times."
It appears to me that Dennett is actually saying that consciousness exists, and then goes on about explaining that our interpretation of it is wrong, and that is what an illusion is.

A mirage is an illusion only when it is misinterpreted. It doesn't make the mirage not real. Eventually we are able to work out what the mirage really is, and then it becomes what you expect to perceive as a product of refracted light interacting with your visual system.

So I agree with Dennett in that science has barely begun to scratch the surface of what consciousness really is to the point where you can predict it's emergence based on prior conditions, like you can do with predicting that you will see a mirage given the proper environmental conditions.

The illusion lies more in how we interpret how the world actually is compared to how we observe it. Naive realism is the illusion - believing that how you perceive the world is how the world actually is, rather than how your consciousness is when observing the world.

The ultimate question that needs to be answered is how is it that evidence for my consciousness from my perspective is different than evidence for my consciousness from your perspective. I don't need to observe my brain or my behavior to know that I am conscious, but you do. Who has better evidence of me being conscious? If we cannot understand it by our own perception, which perception is he talking about - my perception of my consciousness, or your perception of my consciousness?

Time is an illusion. Change is real.

An object/process doesnt move forwards or backwards through time. It simply changes and how it changes is a property of the process, not of time.

Again, what is the observable difference between time being reversed and some process undergoing change? How can you tell if the process is really time reversed or simply undergoing natural changes between two or more process-defining states?

If your bank account had money deposited and then withdrawn, your bank account didn't move backwards in time. Depositing and withdrawing are natural states of bank accounts changing, not a state of time moving forwards or backwards.

"Going back in time" is incoherent unless the entire universe is going in reverse. Any particular process undergoes changes at a frequency relative to other processes. What is the observable difference between a process oscillating between two states and a process going forwards and backwards in time?

Walking forwards and then backwards is changing my state, but I'm still moving forward in time because the change in state is relative to the change going on in the rest of the universe. I didn't move backwards in time relative to you, I just changed my spatial state relative to you. Only if the entire universe reversed its process would it make sense to say that "time" is reversed.

If the mathematical entity -- the wavefunction -- is doing its job in yielding accurate predictions of statistical outcomes, it corresponds to something real. — Kenosha Kid

Only in the very limited scope of the quantum, not in making predictions in the macro world. The wavefunction is useless in predicting what trajectory to take when aiming a rocket at the Moon or predicting the identity of who committed a crime. What role could the wavfunction play in a "theory of everything"? Why is classical physics still useful in yielding accurate predictions? Does that not mean that classical physics is doing its job? Then why are they incompatible?

Then don't describe it as empirical. What it is is a strongly held belief — Kenosha Kid

And the output of the detectors only becomes known when it is consciously observed by a person. The hypothesis of a measurement before this conscious observation lacks compelling theoretical or empirical grounding.
After all, QM offers no reason why the whole system—electrons, slits and detectors combined—wouldn’t be in an entangled superposition before someone looks at the detectors’ output.

The particle-like behaviour evident in measurement is not that the electron ceases to be a wave at all, but that the wave somehow reduces to a single Eigenstate of the measurement operator. — Kenosha Kid

"Somehow"? So if its always a certain state, and only changes its state when interacting with a measuring device, which would also be made of waves, then what is so special about a measuring device (which is just a large group of electrons) that changes the nature of an electron? And how do you know that what you are talking about isn't the measurement, but what is actually measured, if the end result is an effect of electrons interacting with a measuring device which you dont get when the electron isn't measured?

If the voltage of the cathode is reduced such that only one electron fires out, say, per ten seconds, eventually the same pattern builds up. From this we deduce that each electron is a wave. — Kenosha Kid

Her you talk about single electrons, as if they are a particle before going through the slits.
And I don't see whet you addressed the issue where a single wave can interfere with itself after passing through double-slits, but a single electron, which you claim is a wave, cannot. What makes an electron wave different in that it cannot interfere with itself, but a wave of electrons (a wave of waves?) can interfere with itself? And if a wave can consist of smaller waves, then what does say about electron waves?

What prevents the electron waves in the beam from interfering with the electron waves that make up the board with the slits and the electron waves that make up the screen? Why does the wave only interfere with itself if all the other parts of the experiment are an assortment electron waves?

Progressives? Who are they - the ones voting for an old racist white guy that has been in politics for nearly 50 years?

The REAL progressives are the ones that are sick and tired of the two-party status quo and looking for and voting for alternatives. It can be lonely being a progressive in 2020.

45% think it is necessary to have faith in a God in order to be moral. — Banno

Another 45% think it is necessary to be a registered Democrat, or believe in the myth of white privilege, in order to be moral.

Politics... :roll:

To be moral, you don't have to be anything, except moral,

Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous,
elephants abstract or biscuits teleological.

"Nat Dyer looks at the humanity of a philosopher who tried to make philosophy more human"

Nor is philosophy more or less human.

If time is a loop, what about space?

With time as a loop, the distinction between cause and effect becomes irrelevant as every cause is also an effect, even the "first" cause, and asserting a first or last effect would be incoherent. If time is a loop then declaring one cause or another as the first cause would be arbitrary.

This would apply to space as well, as there would be no real "fundamental" aspect to space. This means that the macro world is just as "fundamental" as the quantum world.

This means that the distinction between top down versus bottom up processing would be arbitrary. They would be part of the same loop and designating part of the loop as top or bottom would be based on one's view In the process.

There is no cutoff, which is fine as I am not exploring the realm of the classical limit. It is sufficient to know that a classical limit exists. The relevance of the macroscopic screen is merely that it explores microstates, nothing more. — Kenosha Kid

The back screen is a macroscopic object that cannot be treated precisely with quantum mechanics — Kenosha Kid

Yet the screen, double slits and the electron emitter are all macro objects composed of electrons and all have an effect on the outcome of the experiment.

Looks like QM has limits as well.

We only conceived of atoms in order to explain observations of macro-sized objects and QM was conceived of to explain the behavior of atomic sized objects. Seems to me that if the theories were compatible they would seamlessly integrate, like genetics and evolution (micro vs macro explanations of the same process).

Why would there be limitations if this is suppose to be a theory explaining the fundamentals of reality, if it's not that both classical and QM are explaining different views/measurements of the same thing?

Random examples I can think of are voting to take away the rights of a demographic like gender, sexual orientation, religion, place of birth, race, etc.. — coolguy8472

I'm looking more for an example of what "voting to take away the rights of others" actually entails. What would such an item on the ballot say?

No, I did something that has apparently never occurred to you: I got an education. — Kenosha Kid

Looks more like you got an indoctrination, a process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.

Any theory that doesnt attempt to explain the role of the observer/measurer in an event involving observation/measurement is missing half of the explanation, especially when we observe changing measuring devices changes the observed outcome.

I think rather that how a language is learned, and that it may be learned, is the source of the habit of taking people at their word, but itself is not an example of taking people at their word. — Srap Tasmaner

Then I'm not clear on what you mean by "taking people at their word".

I don't think a child learning the names of the colors is called on to believe that we are telling them the truth, neither in the sense that we are not lying about what we believe the names to be, nor in the sense that these are indeed the real names of the colors. I want to say that the question of truth just does not arise here at all. — Srap Tasmaner

The truth is that this scribble or sound, red, is used to point to, or communicate something that isn't that scribble or sound, namely a particular color.

Learning how to use scribbles and sounds to communicate requires that the thing you are pointing to exists in the same frame as the scribble or sound being seen or heard. The child hears "red" and observes the teacher pointing to a red square. How does the child know that she's pointing to the color rather than the shape? The teacher points to another red object that isn't a square and the child begins to understand the relationship between the sound and what it points to.

This is how we learn a language, yet how we end up using it is different.

We don't keep going around imitating the teacher's use of the sound. We don't look for red and then point to it, as that would be redundant information being communicated. The listener can see that the square is red and doesn't need to be told, unless the listener was learning the language. Instead, we use language to point to things and events that are somewhere else, or that have already happened, or haven't happened, because the whole point of language use is to communicate ideas, not what is observed right in front of you. If we talked about something happening right in front of you, that would be redundant information and a waste of time and energy to communicate.

A sports announcer is useful on the radio, when you can't see the plays the players are making, or the score, etc., but provides redundant information if you were watching on TV. There is an expectation that the sound I hear coming from the radio speaker is about some game in another city, and that the relationship is one of truth - that the sound carries information about some football game in a city hundreds of miles away - that I can get at the state of the game by correctly interpreting the sound coming from the speaker, and correctly interpreting the sound can only be done by learning how others learned to point states-of-affairs with those sounds.

I only want to say that you don't need a reason to take someone at their word — Srap Tasmaner

It seems to me that we start off, as children learning a language, taking others at their word, and only when we experience them use words in a way that they don't mean what they say (they lied), that we question whether or not we should take them at their word in the future.

We have to learn how to lie and detect lies and that only comes after learning how to take people at their word.

If humans are inclined to learn and use a language, thanks to natural selection, it seems to me that we instinctively take people at their word until we learn to do otherwise.

Language use evolved from our evolutionary ancestors observing and interpreting the involuntary behaviors of other organisms. Involuntary behaviors cannot lie.

So meaning is causal, as in words mean what they were intended to mean. The existence of some idea and the intent to communicate it is what caused the words to be heard or seen.

Can you offer an example of "language processing"? Understanding language seems to be more ad hoc and associative than algorithmic. Sure language has it's conventions but they are more like habits, well-beaten paths, than they are like well-defined procedures. — Janus

https://becominghuman.ai/a-simple-introduction-to-natural-language-processing-ea66a1747b32

The key word here seems to be "context", but then context is simply integrating all sensory information at once - the sound of someone's voice and the environment they are speaking, etc. - all which require senses to acquire and a brain to process, both of which a human being and a robot have. The only difference is how the brain is programmed - the algorithm, or implementation.

Learning a language is hard for a robot because they don't possess the physiological basis for language use that evolved over millions of years in humans. Humans are programmed by natural selection (and other humans are part of natural selection as humans have an effect on what utterances make it to the next generation based on how useful at communicating some idea they are). Computers are programmed on a much shorter time scale and their programming is updated when an error occurs, just as our programming is updated when an error in understanding or communicating occurs.

The OP is not deriving QM, merely summarising it. Conversation would be pretty limited in scope if you have to re-derive from first principles everything that you intend to discuss every time. — Kenosha Kid

Then either QM is flawed in how it goes about showing that an electron is a wave, or your summarization of QM is flawed. I never asserted that electrons are or are not waves, merely that you didn't show that they were.

Something wherein electrons are not waves, i.e. something that is not quantum mechanics. And by all means, but elsewhere. — Kenosha Kid

You're confused. Its your OP that fails to show that electrons are waves. You've only been able to show that the beam is a wave. So if a requirement of QM is a belief that electrons are waves, then your OP isn't about QM either. That's all I'm saying.

As stated previously, the OP is regarding QM, and nothing outside that framework. Feel free to start a thread on the subject you'd obviously prefer to discuss. — Kenosha Kid

What is it that i obviously want to discuss, KK? The only thing that I've been discussing is the faulty assertions in your OP, but you can believe that I'm talking about something else if it makes sleep better tonight.

This idea of the absolute square is important. It is how we get from the non-physical wavefunction to a real thing, even as abstract as probability. Why is the wavefunction non-physical? Because it has real and imaginary components: u = Re{u} + i*Im{u}, and nothing observed in nature has this feature. — Kenosha Kid

Seems to me that you've admitted that consciousness is involved in some way to say that it has imaginary components, or where else in reality do imaginings exist? Is it me, or are scientists getting really lazy with their use of language?

If the wavefunction represents a fundamental characteristic of nature, then how can you say that nothing else observed in nature has this feature, when observing is what collapses the wavefunction? It's like saying that nothing else has the features of atoms when everything is made of atoms. You're simply talking about different views of the same thing - a view of atoms, waves and electrons from the macro-scale vs the micro-scale vs the quantum-scale. Each theory is simply a description made from one of these views.

Maybe, but that does not fall within the scope of the OP, which concerns quantum mechanics, not alternative theories to quantum mechanics. — Kenosha Kid

Sure it does. It shows that your OP is unfounded in asserting that electrons are waves, and is not the rest of your OP built upon that faulty premise?

Definition of malapropism

1 : the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase especially : the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context "Jesus healing those leopards" is an example of malapropism. (my emphasis) — Janus

Looks like the definition supports my assertion. Thanks.

Similarity of sound and shape are not the only associations; there are many other associations of ideas; that's why I thought the analogy unhelpful, because too simplistic. — Janus

Sure, but that is the type of association that was being talked about and that I was responding to. All I was saying is different associations require different algorithms to resolve the errors made in using them.

Everyone here likely has different goals, so again you're thinking too simplistically. Philosophy is the search for wisdom, not truth, according to my view. Truth is an empirical matter. — Janus

:roll: ...and what is "wisdom" if not applying knowledge that is true? How do you know whether or not you are wise if not empirically? Is not the difference of being wise or not an empirical matter? Maybe if you'd stop trying to be artful with your language use and get more to the point, then we would all be wiser.

You're still missing the point.

All you did was reduce the interval between electrons being emitted and you get the same pattern. The beam is still there, just at a lower voltage, so it is still the beam that is the wave, and not individual electrons.

The second experiment doesn't show that each electron is a wave. It shows that electrons don't appear to move through, or are governed by, space-time like other particles, or maybe it is our view of space-time that is skewed.

I'm afraid not. If there are no other electrons to interfere with, and the electron does not interfere with itself, there is no possibility of interference effects. — Kenosha Kid

LOL. Just read what you wrote, bro.

A brief reminder: when a cathode fires electrons at a screen with two slits, beyond which is another screen, the pattern that builds up on the back screen is bands of light and dark, the dark bands being where few or no electrons strike, the light bands being where more strike. From this we deduce that the electron beam coming from the cathode is a wave.

If the voltage of the cathode is reduced such that only one electron fires out, say, per ten seconds, eventually the same pattern builds up. From this we deduce that each electron is a wave. — Kenosha Kid

You're saying the "beam" is wave and interferes with itself, so if an electron is a wave, then it can interfere with itself.
A wave interfering with itself is how the pattern is created.

The "beam" is the relationship between the individual electrons and according to you is a wave. If the same pattern is created no matter how long the interval between each electron, then it isnt the electron that is a wave because one electron would create the pattern if it were a wave like the "beam" of electrons.

If the voltage of the cathode is reduced such that only one electron fires out, say, per ten seconds, eventually the same pattern builds up. From this we deduce that each electron is a wave. — Kenosha Kid

If the pattern is something that "builds up" then the pattern isn't the result of one electron, but many over time. One electron going through every ten seconds makes one dot on the screen every ten seconds that eventually builds up the pattern over time. So each electron behaves like a particle and the relationship between all the electrons is a wave, not that each electron is a wave, or else you'd get the pattern with the first electron. There would be no "building up" if each electron was a wave.

I didn't mean it as a joke. I was simply pointing out how its impossible for meaningful language to not be about the nature of something.

Any time you intend to say something meaningful, or the way something is or is not, you are committing to an ontology.

the ontology of ontology?

You'd have to ask him. But it certainly looks like DNA is getting copied a lot. — Olivier5

You're the one that made the analogy with DNA. Does DNA intend to copy itself correctly? Copy machines make lots of copies, but where is the intent to make copies - in the copier or in the mind of the human using the copier? The copy machine just does what was designed to do. If something goes wrong, then that was part of the design. You have to call a tech to change the design (replace a part).

Was some use of language "wrong" if the reader or listener understood what was meant to be said?