ethology (a combination of the game theory with the theory of evolution) — Linkey

Ethology is the study of animal behavior.

Roger Penrose has suggested that quantum effects are working in the nervous system of living organisms. Currently there is some experimental evidence in favour of this hypothesis: — Linkey

I took a quick look at your linked articles. Most of them talk about quantum biology in general with only a brief discussion of effects on cognition. They point out that potential quantum mental effects are speculative and controversial. Here is a quote from one of them:

At first sight, it does seem unlikely that delicate quantum effects, such as coherence, tunnelling, entanglement or spin could play significant roles in a warm, wet, brain. However, the Nobel Prize winning UK mathematician, Roger Penrose, together with the American anaesthetist, Stuart Hameroff, made probably the most audacious claim for quantum biology in recent years in their proposal that quantum coherence in neuronal microtubules is capable of quantum computing and is the substrate for consciousness [371,372]. This proposal has generated a great deal of discussion and criticism [4], and it is fair to say that it has not received significant support in either the physics or neuroscience community and so will not be considered further in this review. — Quantum Biology: An Update and Perspective

If this is true, then we can assume that there is quantum entanglement between the brains of related individuals in nature; — Linkey

By what logic can we make that inference?

↪T Clark If you speak to enough people some will tell you this. — I like sushi

Cognitive science and psychology say no.

Hey @Baden and @fdrake”, I find @Carlo Roosen"’s posts and discussions interesting and worthwhile.

When I woke up after a heart surgery, 5 years ago, my memory was completely blank. I didn't know my own name. No memory no thinking, yet I was perfectly conscious. Since that time this happens to me on a daily basis, although my memory does not drop out completely anymore. Without thoughts, I can eat my lunch, make coffee perfectly. When somebode asks something simple, I can answer. But cooking a meal is challenging, because I need to make decisions. — Carlo Roosen

If you’re interested in knowing more, I highly recommend a book – “The Feeling of What Happens,” by Antonio Damasio. He goes into a discussion of these kinds of symptoms in detail.

You will come to understand, if you have not already, that some people cannot 'think' without words. — I like sushi

I don’t think this is true. Do you have a reference I can take a look at?

Tarsky (aka alcontali, I believe) took it to the next level. — SophistiCat

Hatred for the US is pretty common here on the forum.

And since I've started a feedback thread - It bothers me when moderators attack posters and threaten punishment in the main forum rather than through the standard moderation process, i.e. in private. It doesn't happen often but several different moderators have done it. One consequence is that it can sometimes be hard to figure out whether someone is speaking as a moderator or just a forum member.

It sounds like we’re in agreement. — Joshs

As you noted, we are in agreement, but, you know how it goes when you think of the perfect response after the argument is over. To whit:

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, — Emerson - Self-Reliance

The solution is we delete your posts and ban you. — Baden

Whatever the merits of your position, which I have doubts about, it’s not appropriate for you to take them up in public. You should deal with them in PMs. Isn’t that the normal approach with moderation?

It sounds like we’re in agreement. — Joshs

Yay!

If all it is entirely personal, then why would you or I judge others for making bad or wrong discussions or celebrate good actions? — Tom Storm

We wouldn't. I don't see much value in judging other people, which isn't to say I never do. It does make sense to respond to their behavior - "Hey! Stop that!" or "Thank you."

how can you be sure that what makes that situation right or wrong draws from the same rules, criteria and justifications as the previous time, or compared with 20 years ago? — Joshs

Why does it matter? Why can't I change my understanding?

But here's the thing, we are discussing how moral behaviour works and this concept of 'the good' keeps arising. What is it? I am interested in how doing wrong make sense if there is no foundational basis or transcendent source of the good. — Tom Storm

You and I have been through this before and you don't agree with my formulation - right vs. wrong behavior is a personal decision. Anything else isn't morality at all, it's social control - what society does to keep the skids greased.

Determining right from wrong in a particular situation is easy. What is not so simple is recognizing the subtle way our criteria of ethical correctness shift over time. — Joshs

I don't know what this means. The only time I need to know right from wrong is in some "particular situation."

Whether you or I can make reasonable choices on occasion is not really the point. — Tom Storm

But it's not "on occasion." It's almost always. I don't think I've ever done wrong by accident - because I didn't know it was wrong. It's not that I've never done wrong, but when I did it, I knew it. It isn't that hard to tell.

Uncovering this seems to be the role of a philosopher, not the work of a couple of assholes on the internet. — Tom Storm

Whether or not you and I are philosophers, we are acting as philosophers here on the forum. We are trying to hold ourselves to the same standards we hold philosophers to. Little kids playing football are football players. From what I've seen, many philosophers are at least as big assholes as you and I are.

Merkins — Banno

Cookies.

Seems to me that people are forever banging on about 'the good', as if it were out there to be discovered, or simply a matter of common sense, but actually, it seems slippery, a contingent thing, a piece of construction work. — Tom Storm

I doubt that you - Our aw shucks, I’m not a philosopher, Aussie Everyman – has trouble knowing the difference between right and wrong very often.

For that reason we invent a term, I call it fundamental reality. It is about the things we don't understand. It is perfectly fine to have a term for the collection of things we have no name for — Carlo Roosen

As Lao Tzu noted, an alias. And as I indicated, I see that as a trick we use to say what can't be said. If you forget the irony while you're saying it, you've gotten lost. And again, it's not about things we don't understand, it's about things that can't be understood, that perhaps are not things at all. It's not for things we have no name for, it's for things that can't be named.

One of the things we can say about fundamental reality is that if you know what you are looking for, you can find conformation that it is there. And those conformations regularly do align. So there must be *something* out there, we cannot say everything is just an imagination. — Carlo Roosen

As I said previously, it is a defensible position that no fundamental reality exists. I started a discussion about it many years ago.

I believe what I say is obvious and simple — Carlo Roosen

It is not obvious to me. Actually, that's probably not true. I think I understand what you're saying, but it's different from my understanding of what Kant was saying.

why do you think that? — Carlo Roosen

There has been a lot of condescension directed at you.

I modified the text, it was not fair — Carlo Roosen

For what it's worth, I don't think you've been treated fairly in this discussion.

Is there an uncomplicated explanation to the puzzle of how we can talk about things we cannot talk about? — RussellA

As Lao Tzu wrote, "I know not its name, I give its alias, Tao."

Who started saying that we cannot talk about things? T Clark is alone in this, I believe. — Carlo Roosen

Yes, I said it. He was responding to me. I don't know if I'm alone. Certainly not in general. Probably not on the forum. Perhaps in this discussion.

I don't see the issue you have. — Carlo Roosen

I wasn't using it to raise an issue, I just thought you might be interested.

Why not? — Carlo Roosen

Because the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

Also "unknowable" is still a word. And "you cannot say anything about fundamental reality" is a contradiction in itself. — Carlo Roosen

As I noted, it's a joke. This is an excerpt from Ellen Marie Chen's translation of Verse 25 of the Tao Te Ching.

There was something nebulous existing (yu wu hun ch’eng),
Born before heaven and earth.
Silent, empty,
Standing alone (tu), altering not (pu kaki),
Moving cyclically without becoming exhausted (pu tai),
Which may be called the mother of all under heaven.

I know not its name,
I give its alias (tzu), Tao.
If forced to picture it,
I say it is “great” (ta). — From Tao Te Ching - Verse 25

It is quite possible to speak of things that you don't know. Language doesn't have a problem. The "unknown" you can speak of, just as "future", "surprise". — Carlo Roosen

But it's not unknown, it's unknowable.

Also there is a few things that we can say about fundamental reality, — Carlo Roosen

No.

He cannot speak of that which he speaks of ... yet he does. Explain. — I like sushi

I always think of it as a joke. We all recognize it's impossible, but then do it anyway.

There is the paradox within Kant's CPR that Kant doesn't properly answer, though gives an attempt in B276, of how we can know that there are things-in-themselves if we can never know what they are. — RussellA

If this is a paradox, I don't think it is a very complicated one. We don't know there are things-in-themselves. It's not unreasonable to say that they don't exist, i.e. they are not things at all. Of course, it's impossible to talk about them yet here we are talking about them. You can call that a paradox, but I think of it as a joke that we're all in on.

For me the important thing is to stay close to what you can perceive directly. Kant did not invent this theory out of thin air, he observed his mind while it was operating. — Carlo Roosen

I don't think this is true. The noumena/phenomena distinction is not based on empirical observation, it's metaphysics. It's not true, it's interesting and useful. Here's a link to an article you might be interested in - "Kant's Doctrine of the A Priori in the Light of Contemporary Biology" by Konrad Lorenz.

https://archive.org/details/KantsDoctrineOfTheAPrioriInTheLightOfContemporaryBiologyKonradLorenz

After reading it, I have rethought the way I look at this issue.

mercans — Banno

Muricans.

As for the business, I don't see the difference in what I say and what you say. With the cookies in a certain configuration, that "E" or "F" is a label we give to the form. Fundamental reality provides everything that is needed for these letters to appear, so in that sense they really do exist. But when we call it "E" or "F", we create something in our conceptual reality that is not there in fundamental reality. — Carlo Roosen

Again, I think you've missed the point. Here you are conceptualizing "fundamental reality," but you're not allowed to do that. You can't even really think about it, and yet here you are thinking about it. So what you're thinking about isn't fundamental reality. It's not cookies or patterns or anything. All you can talk about is how it is impossible to talk about it. There is nothing else to say.

Are you familiar with the "Tao Te Ching" written by Lao Tzu more than two thousand years ago. The first lines of the first verse is "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao, the name that can be named is not the eternal name." The Tao represents the unformed, undifferentiated, unconceptualized, inchoate ground of being - what was there before there was anything to think about it. Lao Tzu calls the Tao "non-being," and the multiplicity of things we perceive here in the world as "being." The implication is that the Tao doesn't exist, which makes sense to me. The idea that there is no objective reality is not a radical one in philosophy.

Many philosophers have been struggling with this, but this is really all there is to it, I believe. — Carlo Roosen

Welcome to the forum. To start, a single cookie is not a cookie, it's a period.

Down to business. I think you've oversimplified what Kant had to say and have missed the important point. Kant is not the only one who recognizes that the world at its most basic level is unspeakable. It cannot be put into words. When you put things into words, conceptualize them, you create something different from the thing itself. "Moon" is not the moon. As I see it, this is the fundamental fact in understanding our relationship to reality.

Will take your advise re: "...you to look at them" — kazan

Here’s a link to Lorenz's "Kant's Doctrine of the A Priori in the Light of Contemporary Biology." It’s much shorter than the book I mentioned and covers the same general subject.

https://archive.org/details/KantsDoctrineOfTheAPrioriInTheLightOfContemporaryBiologyKonradLorenz

Interesting. As I mentioned to F Drake, I'm glad I retired before I had to figure out how to write competent and effective engineering reports using LLMs.

4 is a valid alternative, although it does mean that logic/science would not work to describe uncausal things. — Brendan Golledge

Logic and science do not require the concept of causation. Whether or not the idea of causation is needed is a very big subject. We've discussed it quite a few times here on the forum.

5 seems to me to be the same as 2. If the universe is infinitely old and one thing causes another, then that is an infinite regression of causes. — Brendan Golledge

They seem different to me. Or maybe 5 is a combination of 2 and 4.

I think inductive logic can argue for plausibility, but it can't prove unique truth. — Brendan Golledge

Ultimately, premises in deductive logic are generated either by assumption or by inductive logic.

I developed this philosophy to counter my natural sourness. — Brendan Golledge

I consider myself the Polyanna of the forum.

Any other examples or expansions on this or other rationales of how/why reality is perceived/perceiveable in a particular way, in Lorenz's book? — kazan

Sorry, I pushed “post comment” by mistake and posted it before I was ready. Lorenz’s book has lots of examples, but it would make more sense for you to look at them rather than me to try to lay them out.

keeping with the speculative part of this OP, is: Might living things have extra senses that are currently not recognized but influence the experience of everything? — kazan

There’s nothing in the book that relates to that.

Any other examples or expansions on this or other rationales of how/why reality is perceived/perceiveable in a particular way, in Lorenz's book? — kazan

First off, I only saw this post by accident. If you want me to respond to your post, you need to tag me.

That makes sense. I've thought about how I might have used it if it was around while I was still working. I'm glad I don't have to worry about it.

tl;dr, I fully agree with the proposed site rules amendment, which seems to me warranted regardless of the degree of accuracy or reliability of LLM outputs. — Pierre-Normand

You clearly have put a lot of thought and effort into how LLMs work and how to make them work better. That seems like a useful exercise. It also raises a question. Do you actually use LLMs to solve problems, answer questions, or discuss issues in the non LLM world or only those directly related to the LLMs themselves.

An interesting, well written post. My thoughts.

About cosmology: If you define logic as, "Rules of correct inference from assumed premises", and you think about ultimate causes, then you run into the problem of needing new premises in order to prove existing premises. Therefore, there are only 3 choices:

1. There exists a cause without a cause
2. There is an infinite regression of causes with no beginning
3. Causality is circular (maybe like someone going back in a time machine to start the big bang) — Brendan Golledge

There are other possible choices.
4. Causation is not a valid, or at least not the only valid, way of thinking about how the universe works. This is mainstream philosophical position.
5. The universe is eternal. It's always been here and always will be. It never began and was never caused.

Whatever option you choose is outside the scope of ordinary logic. A thing without a premise cannot be acted upon by logic, you never get to the end of an infinite regression, and circular logic is ordinarily not considered valid. Therefore, SOMETHING definitely exists which is outside the scope of human reason. — Brendan Golledge

What you say may be true for deductive logic, but not for inductive. Inductive logics job, if you want to look at it that way, is to generate premises for deductive logic to work on.

Humans are hardwired to be social, so it's easy for us to attribute personhood to things that aren't really people. — Brendan Golledge

I think this is important. I have been thinking about a metaphysical argument for God that is similar to your understanding of deism. I just have not put my arguments together well enough to bring it out on the forum yet. Speaking personally, when I see, live in, the world, I often want to express my gratitude for something so wonderful. That is the heart of my understanding of God, although there's more to it than that. To be clear, when I say "metaphysical" I mean that it is not something that can be determined empirically. It is not true or false. That seems similar to how you are describing your attitude toward deism.

This philosophy is perhaps bleak because there is no covenant with the divine, and therefore there is no promise of personal fulfilment. But this religious belief also necessarily implies that there is a whole universe (or possibly multiverses) of beauty and goodness completely outside the scope of my own personal desires. — Brendan Golledge

I love the world. I can't believe how wonderful it is. Seems like you feel something similar. There are many people here on the forum and in the world who have a much sourer take. They are unlikely to find your approach useful.

Hey, @Plex, it’s expected you will participate in discussions you start.