It’s not clear to me whether this situation is the result of a lack of definitions, or an excessive focus on definitions. — Jamal

Maybe it's that you and I have a different approach to philosophy. Now that you've started actively participating in discussions again, it seems to me you focus more specific philosophers and works. In those cases, the context of the discussion can take care of a lot of the potential misunderstandings. I came to philosophy with my own understanding of how the world works, the nature of reality, how discussions should proceed. I also came from a profession where, given an audience which is often non-technical, defining terms was very important.

I think I use the writings of philosophers differently than some others on the forum do. I use them to test my understanding. If I find someone whose ideas resonate with mine, they can help me refine and extend my understanding. That's why Collingwood and Lao Tzu are so important to me. I've always disliked Kant, but more recently I've found that some of his ideas are similar to those of Lao Tzu. His somewhat different approach has been interesting. I think maybe the discussions I start, and often those I join, are more free form and are not tied down to specific works and philosophers. I often avoid those more specific discussions because I don't know enough to participate usefully.

I understand. This looks like stipulative definition, which I was mostly ignoring, treating it as something separate. — Jamal

That makes sense.

Or maybe what you’re referring to is the exception in my main thesis, those times when a term is so ambiguous that you need to prevent confusion with a clear statement that this, not that, is what you mean. — Jamal

I think that's part of it too.

Given we could agree (possibly) on the above, I'm not sure how there'd be any difference in saying that the purpose of consciousness is X, simply by restricting our frame of reference to the functioning of the organism. — Isaac

Reading your post, I couldn't remember how we got on this point. Going back and looking didn't help. So we can leave it there, as long as we agree that "reason" and "purpose" mean function and not goal, I'm ok with where we are.

An easy decision. An adolescent style of rigidity and dogmatism. Thought everything fit nicely into a flowchart. Constantly uncharitable, frequently insulting. — Mikie

I'll let the moderators make the judgements about banning, but I strongly disagree with your judgement about the quality of his philosophy. I think he brought something valuable to the forum. Again - that's not a criticism of this decision.

For the record, you are also often uncharitable and frequently insulting.

People who get stuck on specific definitions are often irritating pedants and seem to miss the point. — Tom Storm

Hey! I resemble that remark.

Although I seemed to be starting out by “defining my terms,” in the way that some people in philosophical discussions demand, what I was really doing was explicating a concept that we’re all familiar with, and I was not aiming for comprehensiveness. I was beginning an analysis of a term which we already understand and know how to use; or, to put it differently, I was beginning to describe what we look for in a definition. It may have been a useful exercise, but not because you didn’t already know what a definition is, and not because there’s a likelihood we would end up talking past each other without it. — Jamal

As one of those who might be characterized as demanding definitions, I have some thoughts. The first is one I've expressed here often - many, I would say most, of the frustrating, fruitless discussions we have here on the forum start out with disagreements about the meaning of words and then never make any progress toward actually dealing with any interesting philosophical issues. I don't disagree that discussions where we work out among ourselves what particular terms mean are valuable. I have started a few discussions for that purpose - What does "mysticism" mean; What does "consciousness" mean; What does "real" mean. They were among the more satisfying discussions I've participated in.

On the other hand, I often start discussions about specific issues I want to examine, often something to do with metaphysics. In my OPs I often make it clear exactly what I intend the meaning of specific words are for the purposes of that particular discussion. Then I obnoxiously and legalistically defend that position, sometimes asking moderators to help. I do that because I want to talk about a specific concept or subject and I don't want to argue about what "metaphysics" really means. If I don't make those kinds of requirements, the thread will just turn into an argument about something I'm not interested in.

When I am participating in someone else's discussion, I try to follow their rules. If I am unclear about how they are using a word, I'll ask or I'll say what it means to me. If I don't like the definition of a particular word they are using, I can bug off if it bothers me enough. I often like rough and tumble rhetorical competitions - jokes, insults, and name-calling. But sometimes I just want to get down to work.

I vote 'property'. — bert1

Here's how Wikipedia defines "property." "In logic and philosophy (especially metaphysics), a property is a characteristic of an object; a red object is said to have the property of redness." That's consistent with what I mean when I say "consciousness." As I see it, "conscious" is a characteristic, but consciousness is not. It seems clear to me that consciousness is a thing of some sort. We usually treat it as such.

I'm not sure if we can take this any further.

That may well be true of us-as-human. But the behaviour we don't drive might be driven by the consciousness of other entities. — bert1

I'm not sure what you mean.

Yes, I like that idea. It's what would go into my category of 'random' still though. Random, as in coincidence, no reason. — Isaac

That's a bit of an overstatement. Enlarged relative brain size might contribute to increased intelligence, but what that does is provide a new trait for natural selection to work on. Many of our most important traits started out that way. The bones that transmit sound in our ears started out in one of our ancestors jaw.

It may be before you came into this conversation, but I started out down this evolutionary route as an attempt to firm up bert1's original dissatisfaction with the explanations given, his sense that there was a 'why?' still unanswered. — Isaac

I generally reject "why" as a legitimate question for science. Science does "how." The image I see is one of a push from behind rather than a pull towards something specific. Like I said previously - It's an engine, not a steering wheel. We get where we get, but there was never a plan or reason for it. We make up the destination after the trip is done. This is a major theme in the history of theories of evolution - rejection of any directionality or teleology. That's one of the reasons it was so radical a theory. There's no room for purpose.

that's a topic for another conversation. — Isaac

Yes.

I agree, I think that's perfectly likely, but as I said above, in the context of this question in the OP, it wouldn't even arise if randomness (or lack of reason) were one of the options. — Isaac

Randomness is an essential factor in Darwin's theory and continues as one in modern understandings of evolution. Again, that's why it was such an overwhelming understanding.

1) 'there are no reasons (it just happened)' - the sort of option you're suggesting
2) 'because it confers some evolutionary advantage' - the kind of functionalist account — Isaac

Perhaps the ultimate point in evolutionary theory - Useful outcome does not imply goal, purpose, or reason. This is a fight that has been going on at least since 1859.

So I suppose the extent to which one is content with an evolutionary frame is the extent to which one is willing to allow for other influence. With behaviour that might be culture. With anything we might have randomness, or God, or our alien simulation managers... — Isaac

I remember an essay by Stephen Jay Gould. In it he described what happens when animals get larger. Their brains tend to get larger at a faster rate than their bodies in general. Conclusion - selection for a larger body might coincidently select for a even larger brain. Not really random, but not selected either.

For me, I think evolutionary psychology is almost all bollocks. I think that because cultural influences are just too obviously at least a possible factor. — Isaac

What Stephen Pinker says about language makes sense to me - humans have an instinct to learn language. The structures of our nervous systems and minds are built that way. Obviously, social factors also are involved. Pinker's views are not accepted by everyone. @apokrisis in particular believes language behavior can be explained by a generalized cognitive function. As always, apokrisis, forgive me if I misrepresented your views.

With consciousness, however, I can't really think of that conflicting influence. We could invoke randomness (it just turned up), but then we'd also have to explain why humans who didn't have it weren't easily able to outbreed those that did.

We could argue, as Dennet does, that it's an illusion, there's nothing to find a purpose to. But I dislike defining things away.

I don't dispute the plausibility of non-evolutionary accounts, they just seem far more complicated, have more loose ends, and don't seem to explain anything that isn't covered in a functional account. — Isaac

I seems to me, with no specific evidence, that consciousness could arise out of interactions between abilities for abstract thinking, language, and other higher level neurological function. Again - that's speculation. Which isn't to say that consciousness doesn't provide an evolutionary advantage.

That's exactly what I wanted to say! — Vera Mont

Can you expand on that? Is this something specific to consciousness, or do you think it equally unjustified to assign an evolutionary purpose to osmosis, or active sodium ion transportation? — Isaac

Sorry to take so long to respond. I didn't get a notice.

There's a long history in evolutionary biology of people off-handedly assigning evolutionary reasons why certain traits were selected with no evidence. A famous example was that mallard ducks sexual practices include males forcing females to have sex. People claimed that that trait was genetically controlled and could be the reason human males rape human females. So, my criticism wasn't about the particular example you selected, but the process of assigning evolutionary justifications in general. Obviously, eyes evolved so we could see. Many other traits have much less obvious purposes or even no purposes at all.

if you want to find inspiration, you must work. — Noble Dust

As Bear Bryant said, "Victory is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration." Wait, no, he said "When the going gets tough, the tough get going," or was that Picasso.

And welcome to the forum.
— T Clark

This is Paul who ran old PF. He's been around (if you consider both forums) longer than any of us. Good to see you active again, Paul. — Baden

Nice to meet you @Paul.

As I noted, I don't think you and @Mikie are arguing fairly. You just keep throwing out rhetorical obstacles to try to trip me up rather than trying address my arguments.

I'm done.

Seems a quibble. — fdrake

Thanks for the summary. I don't think it's a quibble, it's metaphysics. One way or the other I'm ready to be done with it.

There are better translations. — Fooloso4

:snort:

I have no objections to the version you provided. It doesn't change the meaning of the verse. There is this commentary at the end of it:

The tale of Cook Ding is in some respects the central tale of the Zhuangzi. It belongs to a set of stories that are sometimes referred to as the “knack passages” of the text. In these tales, individuals penetrate to a state of some sort of unity with the Dao by means of the performance of some thoroughly mastered skill, which they have acquired through long practice of an art (which may be called a dao, as in “the dao of archery,” and so forth). The passages celebrate the power of spontaneously performed skill mastery to provide communion with the spontaneous processes of Nature. — Chuang Tzu - The Tale of Cook Ding

Note "spontaneously performed skill."

I would still like to know where you found the claim that the Tao Te Ching occurred spontaneously.

If Lao Tzu lived in accordance with the Tao, then, no, no plans or intention were requried.
— T Clark — Fooloso4

Reread what I wrote. I never said Lao Tzu had no plans or intentions for writing the Tao Te Ching and I don't know of anywhere it says he didn't.

You and @Mikie should both be ashamed at such rotten arguments. I'm all done.

So we’re replacing “plans and intentions” with “instinct and natural line,” etc. Fine.

When I first started playing guitar, I needed to think about what I was doing and where my fingers went, etc. After years of playing, I don’t have to do that any more.

So guitar playing is now…supernatural? Beyond all understanding? Causeless? Influence-less? Done for no reason and without any motivation? I start playing, and have no memory of how or why I picked it up— I just play. Come on. — Mikie

This is really pitiful.

You just keep restating your conclusion over and over as if it were an argument.

Nuff said. I'm done.

Russell isn’t saying actions have no cause either. — Mikie

He said "In the following paper I wish, first, to maintain that the word is so inextricably bound up with misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the philosophical vocabulary desirable." That's pretty definitive, your rationalization notwithstanding.

True, some actions could be magic. — Mikie

Now you're just throwing out a straw man to paint me as a mystic. Dirty, dirty.

I think it’s a misunderstanding of eastern thought, and as I see it happens frequently. In the same way that new agers latch on to quantum mechanics. — Mikie

Another non-argument by innuendo. You should be ashamed.

The story says otherwise. — Fooloso4

Here is Thomas Merton's version of the story. I've hidden it because it's long:

Were plans and intentions required to compile and organize the work called the Tao Te Ching? — Fooloso4

If Lao Tzu lived in accordance with the Tao, then, no, no plans or intention were requried.

It did not happen spontaneously. — Fooloso4

According to the Tao Te Ching, it did. Again, you are using the conclusions you favor as arguments in this discussion.

Are plans and intentions required to read and attempt to understand the Tao Te Ching? — Fooloso4

They aren't required, but they're hard to avoid for us normal non-sage humans.

Consider Zhuangzi's Cook Ting. Did he learn his butchering skill without plans or intentions? — Fooloso4

Almost certainly.

Good. If that makes you feel better ... — Alkis Piskas

I thought it was just me. — RogueAI

I'm sure there are many of us.

Also, I didn't see any complimetary close from your part. — Alkis Piskas

I usually thank the AI when I am done. I have two reasons 1) I feel uncomfortable when I don't and 2) I want to keep on the good side of our future machine overlords.

Whatever wu wei means, and there is nothing close to a consensus on this, it does not exclude the plans and intentions of the authors of the Tao Te Ching to commit to putting things into words. — Fooloso4

It's true, the Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, and other Taoist texts are ambiguous. That's considered, as the cliche goes, a feature, not a bug. I don't claim to be, and I'm certain you don't claim to be, an expert on the plans and intentions of Lao Tzu. I just take him at his word.

I will point out that your argument begs the question. You state authoritatively that Lao Tzu had plans and intentions to put things in writing, but whether plans and intentions are required to act is the question on the table.

Defend your choice with your preferred ethical system. — Paul

The correct solution would be for me to give both my tickets to two children. If they wouldn't let me do that, I would refuse to go and tell them to give the tickets to someone else. That's what I say I would do and it would be the right thing to do, but we won't ever know what I'd really do.

Yes, I know I'm not playing by the rules you laid out. Like most such thought experiments made up by philosophers, this one is over-simplistic, unrealistic, and misleading. The correct answer is "none of the above."

And welcome to the forum.

Quite specific — Vera Mont

Thanks. When I pointed out to you that your claims were just as vague as mine, I hoped that would be the end of the discussion. Now you've put in the effort to be more specific and probably expect that I will do the same, but I'm not really interested in putting in that effort. I stand behind my claims from behind an impenetrable shield of ambiguity.

There is a nice Wikipedia article that discusses the propensity large language models like ChatGPT have to hallucinate, and what the different source of those hallucinations might be. — Pierre-Normand

Thanks for the link. Interesting article.

In artificial intelligence (AI), a hallucination or artificial hallucination (also occasionally called delusion) is a confident response by an AI that does not seem to be justified by its training data. — Wikipedia - Hallucination (artificial intelligence)

A couple of thought about this 1) "Delusion" seems more accurate than "hallucination," but I won't argue the point. Looks like "hallucination" in this context has entered the language. 2) The phrase "does not seem to be justified by its training data," gives me pause. I don't care if it's not justified by its training data, I care if it's not true.

Personally, I'm equally interested in better understanding how, on account of their fundamental design as mere predictors of the likely next word in a text, taking into account the full context provided by the partial text, they are often able to generate non-hallucinated answers that are cogent, coherent, relevant, well informed, and may include references and links that are quoted perfectly despite having zero access to those links beyond the general patterns that they have abstracted from them when exposed to those references in their massive amounts of textual training data, ranging possibly in the petabytes in the case of GPT-4, or the equivalent of over one billion e-books. — Pierre-Normand

I agree, Chat GPT and how it works is interesting. I've used it to explain difficult topics in physics and the ability to question and requestion and get patient answers is really useful. On the other hand, I think that how it doesn't work is much more interesting, by which I mean alarming. I foresee the programs' creators tweaking their code to correct these problems. I confidently predict what will happen is that the errors will decrease to the point that people have confidence in the programs but that they will still pop up no matter how much effort is put in. At some point not long after full acceptance, decisions will be made using information that will have catastrophic consequences.

To me, the kinds of answers we are seeing here call the whole enterprise into question, not that I think it will stop development.

Not only the US; rabid conservatism has been showing up all over the world, polluting democracies everywhere. Hungary - so recently liberated from what the communist ideal was corrupted to by Russian aspirations to world domination - has recently become the poster child for right-wing assholity. The UK has divorced its entire continent under a conservative government... What did Boris think, he could get people to row the whole island over to Virginia Beach?

This a backlash to everything progressive that's been accomplished in the last six or seven decades. It's aided by electronic media and sensationalist news reportage. — Vera Mont

These are the vague accusations I was speaking of.

Yeah, if wu wei requires that we abandon the law of causality, it really is woowoo. I don’t interpret it that way— I see it as a kind of “flow” situation.

But yes, if you think there are actions which have “no cause,” then I don’t see how we can continue. — Mikie

Here's what one noted mystic had to say in 1912:

In the following paper I wish, first, to maintain that the word is so inextricably bound up with misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the philosophical vocabulary desirable; secondly, to inquire what principle, if any, is employed in science in place of the supposed "law of causality" which philosophers imagine to be employed; thirdly, to exhibit certain confusions, especially in regard to teleology and determinism, which appear to me to be connected with erroneous notions as to causality. — Bertrand Russell - On the Notion of Cause

To put things in perspective, there are Taoist teachers and authors. There is certainly intention and purpose in what they do. — Fooloso4

To put things in the proper perspective, there have been a lot of "Taoist teachers and authors" over the years who have said a lot of things. Going to the source though, The Tao Te Ching:

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is. — The Tao Te Ching, Verse 27 - Stephen Mitchell version

That's the essense of wu wei - following intuition with no plans or intentions.

No opinions. — I like sushi

This is clearly not true.

My what? — Vera Mont

Accusations.

That's a lot of vague accusations at unidentified perpetrators.
It doesn't really clear things up. — Vera Mont

No vaguer or less specific than yours.

Tell about that. — Vera Mont

Universal access to abortion. Lack of respect for traditional values - patriotism, religion, marriage. Normalization of unconventional ways of life - transgenderism, gay marriage. Anti-family policies. Anti-gun policies. Pornography and the sexualization of culture and children. Lack of respect for the work ethic. Failure to support working people. Contempt for working class and white people.

How much of the "goofiness" is due to the goofiness of the nerds and geeks who code this stuff and the creeps who pay for its execution? — BC

I think the goofiness is an unintended but not unpredictable result of the whole AI enterprise. That never struck me as strongly until I read about the false links.

Their stated purpose deserves to be intensively cross examined -- and quite possibly doubted. — BC

I don't disagree, but I doubt it will happen effectively.

Humans are all bullshit generators -- it's both a bug and a feature. Large problems arise when we start believing our own bullshit. — BC

I would say it a bit differently—large problems arise when we don't recognize the limits of our understanding.

they are not useful. This reinforces the view that, for all the "clever", they are bullshit generators - they do not care about truth. — Banno

This sounds like something you might say about me.

A rule to prevent the AI from generating fake links would seem like a low-hanging fruit in this respect. Links are clearly distinguished from normal text, both in their formal syntax and in how they are generated (they couldn't be constructed from lexical tokens the same way as text or they would almost always be wrong). And where there is a preexisting distinction, a rule can readily be attached. — SophistiCat

Yes, the inclusion of fake links provides an additional level of creepiness to the whole process. I think it highlights some of the deep concerns about AI. It's not that they'll become conscious, it's that they'll become goofy. If you put our important infrastructure in the hands of goofy entities, lots of very bad things could happen.

I'm generally a big fan of goofiness. [joke] That's why I keep voting for Donald Trump.[/joke] But I don't want it controlling our nuclear weapons.

This a backlash to everything progressive that's been accomplished in the last six or seven decades. — Vera Mont

I don't see it as being as bad as you indicate. In the US in particular, conservative values have been marginalized and their expression restricted for a long time. When you hold something down, cover it up, it never gets resolved. It's like how all the ethnic and nationalist passions were held down in Yugoslavia. Once they were released, it lead to war and genocide. Getting these things out in the open is probably a useful, if painful, thing.

I think "progress" is probably inevitable, for better or worse.

I didn’t read 13 oages of posts. — I like sushi

If you won't even scan through them to see where the conversation stands and what's been said before, you shouldn't post. No, that's not a requirement of the forum, but it's how you get people to take you seriously.

Consciousness is the label we give to the re-telling of recent mental events with a first-person protagonist. — Isaac

This is a good way of putting it.

It evolved to give a coherent meta-model to various predictive processing streams so that responses could be coordinated better in the longer term — Isaac

I think assigning a specific evolutionary purpose to consciousness is unjustified.

we use the term 'feels like' in conversations such as these as it's something we've learned to say in these circumstances from a particular position — Isaac

Again - This is true of all words.

My point is that philosophy imagines that consciousness is a thing in order to make our part in the world more under our control than it is, more certain. It makes us seem like a given entity, the cause of action and the meaning behind speech. What would be an issue if you pictured a world without "consciousness"? We are aware of (part of) ourselves. We can talk to ourselves. We can focus on sensations. There is more, but why does it have to be consciousness? What are we missing without it? — Antony Nickles

My response to this is the same as my response to @Isaac. This is how all things become things, by us imagining them as such, naming them.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that the idea of "consciousness" as something specific, knowable in a "we-can-find-out-about-it" way, as if looking further (perhaps with science!) we could see it (me), as if it has agency or causality, this idea is created so that we can have surety, not about consciousness (its existence), or our self-awareness, but so we can be certain about what others are going to do, about our understanding of ourselves. — Antony Nickles

As I noted previously, we could say the same thing about any thing.

We don't have to prove we have a self by being responsible for what we say, because we have "consciousness" which handles intention and meaning and judgment, etc. for us. — Antony Nickles

I don't think consciousness handles intention and judgement, it just attaches meaning, labels, to them using language.

The self is not a thing like an object. — Antony Nickles

The point of what I wrote in the post you quoted is that, yes, the self is a thing just like any other thing. It comes into existence just like every other thing, by being thought of, conceptualized, by a person. When it comes to how language creates truth, some quote Wittgenstein, I quote Lao Tzu:

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things. — Tao Te Ching, Verse 1 - Stephen Mitchell version