People often claim that nothing has intrinsic value while simultaneously believing that things have intrinsic value. — Leontiskos

I don't believe things have intrinsic value, though I understand that I see things as valuable like I see things as yellow. It is an aspect of the sort of creatures we are, to see things as valuable.

What they mean to affirm is, "Nothing can be publicly and scientifically demonstrated to have intrinsic value." — Leontiskos

Why do you think that? Could it be you aren't as good a mind reader as you think yourself to be?

...for the honest point of departure for reasoning is always what we believe to be true, even though provability also has its place. — Leontiskos

Sure. So I believe value is something our minds project on the things in the world, rather than that things in the world have intrinsic value. Certainly there is much in the world that I see as valuable, because I'm the sort of creature that models the world that way. Do you have more than a naive intuition, that value is 'out there' rather than in the eye of the beholder?

To deny the existence of intrinsically valuable things makes no sense to me. — Leontiskos

Try this. Suppose your impression of things as valuable is like your impression that things have color - an aspect of how your brain models the world. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I see things as valuable, like I see things as red?

Why think there is information available to us, other than that which can come to us via configurations of physical stuff?
— wonderer1

All kinds of things. A lot of what we nowadays take for granted, or at least, see around us all the time, not long ago only existed in the domain of the possible, penetrated by the insights of geniuses who navigated a course from the possible, the potential, to the actual, by peering into that domain, which at the time did not yet exist, and then realising it, in the sense of 'making it real'. One parameter of that is physical, and it's an important parameter, but not the only one. — Wayfarer

Poetic, but it doesn't come across to me as a response coming from having seriously considered the question.

"Domain of the possible"? Is that a metaphor, or something reified in your thinking?

...penetrated by the insights of geniuses who navigated a course from the possible, the potential, to the actual, by peering into that domain, which at the time did not yet exist...

The bolded part doesn't seem to make sense if taken ontologically. Are you conflating epistemic with ontic?

Well, that didn't take long – 3 out of 18 dominoes have fallen so far. — 180 Proof

I wonder if we are about to see a race to see who can get their plea bargaining done before that door closes.

Chesebro...

Another one bites the dust.

As you've made a claim that 'Meaning depends on a physical interpretive context' so I'm asking, what do you mean by that? — Wayfarer

The state of a brain seems a pretty key factor.

But how does it come to be so encoded, what is it that does the encoding and what interprets the code? I think you will find that they are very big questions, so I'm not trying to elicit an answer - like Feynmann says! - so much as a recognition that the answer is not obvious, and also not something that can be understood in terms of physics. — Wayfarer

Yeah, a lot of other sciences besides physics are important in developing understanding. So yes they are big questions with complicated explanations. Work on answering them is ongoing.

As far as I can discern, the only instances of codes are the biological code - DNA - and in languages. — Wayfarer

We can apply our ability to interpret to things other than codes. For example fossils.

Divine command theory has a conception of the good. It conceives of the good as that which is divinely commanded. — Leontiskos

It's also associated with claims of horrendous things being divinely commanded.

'Physical' meaning what, exactly? — Wayfarer

What do you mean by 'exactly'? I've grown to think more and more like Feynman:

“You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.”
― Richard P. Feynman

I think you most likely have an intuitive sense of what people mean by physical, and you'll just have to work with your intuition, because I can't give you mine. I also think you know enough about physics to know that any exact claim would be unjustifiable.

I can encode information - a recipe, a formula, a set of instructions - in all manner of physical forms, even in different media, binary, analog, engraved on brass. In each case, the physical medium and the symbolic form may be completely different, while the information content remains the same. — Wayfarer

Right. You have a variety of ways of interpreting things, which can be applied to a variety of ways information can be encoded in the structure of physical stuff. That's one of the more interesting things about homo sapien brains.

So how can the information be physical? — Wayfarer

By being encoded in the structure of physical stuff.

Why think there is information available to us, other than that which can come to us via configurations of physical stuff?

I don't think that, "Because once upon a time someone said he had it all figured out, and other people believed him.", amounts to a good reason.

What's encoded in configurations of physical reality is that we are all social primates here. As Plantinga points out (though I think more unintentionally than intentionally) the likelihood - that there is good reason to question the reliability of our cognitive faculties - is high. Just look at the Israel thread to see how often people jump to wrong conclusions.

No, I see subjects only in subject-object relations. There is no being a subject without having an intentional relation to an object known, willed, hoped for, etc. All of this is essentially intentional. Nothing about it demands physicality. — Dfpolis

You seem to simply beg the question that intentionality can exist without physicality. The problem is that you can't provide any evidence of intentionality without physicality, so it seems you take the possibility of intentionality sans physicality on faith.

So, what you are doing is generalizing from a single form of knowing, to all knowing. Clearly, there is no logical justification for this kind of induction. — Dfpolis

There is no deductive justification, but it remains an unfalsified hypothesis (that knowing depends on an information processing substrate). Feel free to try to present some evidence falsifying the hypothesis.

Think about information. While it can be physically encoded, it is not physical. What computers process is not information in virtue of any physical property. Label a bit’s physical states a and b, and ask what the byte aababbab means? Reading left to right and interpreting a as 0, and b as 1, the byte means 00101101. Interpreting a as 1 and b as 0, it is 11010010. Reading right to left, it means 10110100 or 01001011. Thus, a, an arbitrary physical state, lacks intrinsic meaning. — Dfpolis

Meaning depends on a physical interpretive context. The fact that aababbab doesn't have any clear meaning outside a physical interpretive context isn't relevant to anything. To treat it as an eight bit number, something would have to translate whatever a and b are to valid bits (binary digits) which can only take the value 0 or 1. As soon as a physical interpretive context is assigned to aababbab then aababbab will have the meaning it has within that context.

Since information is not it's encoding, there is no contradiction in having intelligibility without a physical substrate. — Dfpolis

As far as I can tell there is no intelligibility outside a physically interpretive context so I think that you need to provide some reason to believe that there can be intelligibility outside a physically interpretive context.

Finally, your assumption that human intentionality supervenes on brain states is demonstrably false. Consider my seeing an apple. The same modification of my brain state encodes both my seeing an apple and my retinal state being modified. So, one neural state underpins two distinct conceptual states. — Dfpolis

You seem to be getting inputs and outputs confused. Your retinal state supervenes on the physical effect of an apple reflecting light from a light source into your eye. Your brain state supervenes on your retinal state. When you are thinking about the apple you see, you will have a different neural state than when contemplating light striking your retina. so I don't know what you have in mind when talking about one neural state underpinning two distinct conceptual states.

It is relevant because it shows that matter is not essential to all objects of thought. Ask yourself how physical states can determine immaterial contents. For example, what kind of physical state can encode Goedel's concept of unprovability? — Dfpolis

Physical ink arranged on physical paper serves just fine for encoding Godel's theorems. Neural states can encode the concept. You are just presupposing without supporting evidence that "objects of thought sans a physical information processing substrate" refers to anything.

Anyway, I don't expect saying this to make any appreciable difference in your thinking in the short term, and I'm quite confident that you aren't going to be able to provide any evidence supporting your view. So this seems like a good place to agree to disagree. I'm not very inclined to get into long winded discussions like this, so I'll likely let you have the last word.

This is an important point; we are bedeviled by polemics. the battle between the "too otherworldly" and the "too this-worldly". On account of this state of conflict and confusion we are killing ourselves or at least allowing ourselves to be killed. — Janus

:100:

What becomes apparent in this sort of process analysis is that it is very hard to define the boundaries of a "person" as a system. If I write a reminder to myself on a post-it note and this later causes me to remember an errand I have to run, is this my being determined by the environment or a form of self-determination? — Count Timothy von Icarus

To take that a little farther, suppose you ask your spouse to remind you of something which you subsequently forget. It is only due to your spouse's timely reminder that you manage to do what you had wanted to do.

Did your spouse play a causal role in you doing what you did?

More generally, don't we play a causal role in each other's thinking, and subsequent behavior?

Yes, that is my position. It is possible that I am wrong, that I do not recognize wisdom because I am not wise. By the same token, unless someone is wise they may be wrong when attributing wisdom to Aristotle or anyone else. Is there anyone here able to make that determination? — Fooloso4

I don't see wisdom as a binary matter. I see degrees of wisdom, in different ways, in a lot of people. Was Aristotle committing a nirvana fallacy?

Sure, we do have a good understanding of how vision works in terms of the processes involved. But I am talking about the experience of yellow or blue, such as seeing the sky on sunny day, that phenomenon of blueness is not encountered in the theory of how photons hit the retina and then goes to the brain and so on. — Manuel

Ah ok. As far as the way light spectrums are symbolized in our minds with the qualia we experience, that is certainly less well understood, and I suspect we are a long way from having the technology needed to figure that out in detail, but I certainly don't think that is a good reason to think it a matter of brute fact.

Regarding free will, Peter Tse has done some serious neuroscientific thinking on that. However I'd guess most people would need to adjust their idea of what is meant by "free will" to agree that free will is what Peter Tse is talking about.

To put it in a trivial manner, we see red and yellow objects, this is as evident as things can be, but we do not find red or yellow in the fundamental constituents of the universe. Too bad. We have to accept both. — Manuel

This aspects of our visual system is pretty well understood. There is a somewhat complicated relationship between the wavelengths arriving at a spot on our retina and the color we see. Understanding of this relationship is what allows you to see yellow on your computer display even though your computer display doesn't emit any light with the wavelength corresponding to yellow.

We certainly can be scientifically informed about the details of how it works. We don't treat it as a brute fact because an explanation is available to anyone willing to put in the effort.

Great thread topic!

I’m even more concerned about who’s driving the chariot?
Who’s in charge, and where are we going, and why? — 0 thru 9

I will be the technopope, so you can breath easy. :naughty:

Because the essential requirement for thought is a subject and an object. The object of thought need not be material, as we can think mathematical concepts that do not involve matter. — Dfpolis

You haven't established that thinking of mathematical concepts can occur without supervening on matter. You seem to simply be considering a "subject" as a pure abstraction without recognizing the subject's supervenience on matter. I'm not seeing how the fact that the object of thought need not be material is of much relevance.

So, while content may be encoded in matter, that presents more of a problem (how does the physical inform the intentional?) than a solution. — Dfpolis

The physical informs by developing intentional outputs. See this video on neural nets producing outputs that are about numerals in a visual field. Intentionality shows up at a relatively low level of neural network processing.

Aristotle used no faith based premises to deduce that God was "self-thinking thought." Greek religion at the time was pantheism. — Dfpolis

I'll leave discussing Aristotle to Fooloso4.

How is it useful to know that my thoughts supervene on celestial motions? If you take supervenience seriously, you have to take astrology seriously. — Dfpolis

With a well informed perspective on the matter, a person understands that the physical effect of celestial objects on the functioning of our brains is generally so negligible that we are justified in ignoring it. It is disappointing to receive sophistry like this as a response.

That is abstraction, not subservience. — Dfpolis

Superveniences are a class of abstractions. It's not a case of being one or the other. This from Joshua Greene might be helpful:

Supervenience is a shorthand abstraction, native to Anglo-American philosophy, that provides a general framework for thinking about how everything relates to everything else. The technical definition of supervenience is somewhat awkward:

Supervenience is a relationship between two sets of properties. Call them Set A and Set B. The Set A properties supervene on the Set B properties if and only if no two things can differ in their A properties without also differing in their B properties.

This definition, while admirably precise, makes it hard to see what supervenience is really about, which is the relationships among different levels of reality. Take, for example, a computer screen displaying a picture. At a high level, at the level of images, a screen may depict an image of a dog sitting in a rowboat, curled up next to a life vest. The screen's content can also be described as an arrangement of pixels, a set of locations and corresponding colors. The image supervenes on the pixels. This is because a screen's image-level properties (its dogginess, its rowboatness) cannot differ from another screen's image-level properties unless the two screens also differ in their pixel-level properties.

The pixels and the image are, in a very real sense, the same thing. But — and this is key — their relationship is asymmetrical. The image supervenes on the pixels, but the pixels do not supervene on the image. This is because screens can differ in their pixel-level properties without differing in their image-level properties. For example, the same image may be displayed at two different sizes or resolutions. And if you knock out a few pixels, it's still the same image. (Changing a few pixels will not protect you from charges of copyright infringement.) Perhaps the easiest way to think about the asymmetry of supervenience is in terms of what determines what. Determining the pixels completely determines the image, but determining the image does not completely determine the pixels.

It simply isn't feasible for us to discuss the physical behavior of a whole brain at the level of particle physics.
— wonderer1

True, but irrelevant to the philosophical question of how physicality and intentionality relate. To study that you need to inspect, not ignore, their relation. — Dfpolis

To think that you have done a serious inspection while ignoring neuroscience is just fooling yourself.

Since philosophers were able to discuss this for millennia without the concept of supervenience, it can hardly be necessary. — Dfpolis

Fallacious appeal to tradition.

No, because mind of God is not a human mind, but only analogous to our minds. God does not now in the same way as humans do. — Dfpolis

Do you recognize the special pleading?

Aquinas discusses this at length. You may not agree with Aquinas, but unless you know his theory, you cannot have an informed opinion.

You didn't qualify "informed opinion". I certainly can and do have opinions informed by much that Aquinas didn't understand. Why try to change the subject to Aquinas' uninformed opinions?

I almost agreed. The problem is "supervene" instead of "depend." "Supervene" is a weasel word used to avoid discussing causal relations. Like correlation, it avoids, rather than addresses the dynamics. — Dfpolis

"Supervene" is a pragmatic word for considering things from a more simplistic but useful view. For example I can usefully discuss the workings of logic gates without concerning myself with whether the logic gates are instantiated with transistors and resistors, or vacuum tubes, or relays. Logic gates don't exist without some sort of physical substrate to supervene upon, but there are contexts where consideration of the substrate details is relatively unimportant.

It simply isn't feasible for us to discuss the physical behavior of a whole brain at the level of particle physics. So talking in terms of supervenient properties is simply a pragmatic necessity

I have no problem saying that rational thought depends on the neural representation and processing of data. Aristotle and Aquinas both insisted that thought depended on physical representations (their phantasms). — Dfpolis

The question is, will you be consistent and agree that the mind of a god has an isomorphic dependency?

Furthermore, will you recognize that a god dependent on some sort of information processing substrate is not in itself an unmoved mover?

Since descriptions that are not grounded in reality are fictions, we need to accept that the Laws of Physics are approximate descriptions of aspects of nature. Otherwise, physics is a form of fiction. You can call these aspects of nature "regularities," but traditionally, they have been called "the Laws of Nature." — Dfpolis

One problem I see with the Laws metaphor is related to whether or not there are real physical properties of things. Does an electron have charge, spin, and mass, or do laws dictate the behaviors of things such that electrons having charge spin and mass is only an illusion.

My working hypothesis is that subatomic particles actually have properties that determine how they interact, and to add Laws on top would be overdetermination. The notion of Laws of Physics seems to fit better with the notion that we exist within a simulation rather than within a physical world.

A premise is a starting point, not a conclusion. I am happy to say that the most uncontroversial starting points can be used to deduce God's existence, but that does not make them theological in the sense of being faith-based. — Dfpolis

Why think a mind is something that can exist without an information processing substrate to supervene upon? I.e. why think that a belief that God is metaphysically possible is not faith based?

I like your posts by the way, so I don't mean to come off rude. — plaque flag

I saw what I responded to as platitudinal and surprising coming from you, so I engaged in conversational research. Don't worry about it. :cool:

That's assuming that those stories were invented (?) for the purposes that you claim. — baker

No, I tried to make clear that I'm not assuming that the original story tellers had such a purpose, and make clear that I recognize a difference between the purpose of the original storytellers, and the way religions make use of the stories.

Has it ever occured to you that those stories, even when they are in the form of descriptions or explanations, are actually instructions, statements of the norms of the particular communities that told those stories? — baker

Sure. I was a member of such a community when I was young. These days I recommend avoiding such a parochial view. There is a much more evidenced basis for understanding our natures, available to us these days.

People keep saying things like this. Where's the evidence that they really made up those stories, and for those stated purposes? — baker

The evidence is in the multitude of different mutually contradictory stories. They can all be wrong, but they can't all be right.

How implausible the stories are is evidence for them being a product of relatively uninformed thinkers.

I can see how you might have interpreted me as suggesting that the original story tellers told their stories for religion's purposes. That isn't what I intended to convey, so let me try to clarify. I probably should have put "that our relatively uninformed ancestors came up with" in paretheses. Religions (communities of religious followers) propagate claims about the nature of ourselves which are based on stories that the religion originating story tellers told.

What religion doesn't make claims about what we are?

The work being done on "self"-organization does not falsify the existence of actual laws of nature. it applies them. It is on the basis of the laws discovered today that we explain the origin and evolution of the universe and the evolution of life. — Dfpolis

This is not uncontroversial. https://iep.utm.edu/lawofnat/:

Laws of Nature
Laws of Nature are to be distinguished both from Scientific Laws and from Natural Laws. Neither Natural Laws, as invoked in legal or ethical theories, nor Scientific Laws, which some researchers consider to be scientists’ attempts to state or approximate the Laws of Nature, will be discussed in this article. Instead, it explores issues in contemporary metaphysics.

Within metaphysics, there are two competing theories of Laws of Nature. On one account, the Regularity Theory, Laws of Nature are statements of the uniformities or regularities in the world; they are mere descriptions of the way the world is. On the other account, the Necessitarian Theory, Laws of Nature are the “principles” which govern the natural phenomena of the world. That is, the natural world “obeys” the Laws of Nature. This seemingly innocuous difference marks one of the most profound gulfs within contemporary philosophy, and has quite unexpected, and wide-ranging, implications.

Some of these implications involve accidental truths, false existentials, the correspondence theory of truth, and the concept of free will. Perhaps the most important implication of each theory is whether the universe is a cosmic coincidence or driven by specific, eternal laws of nature. Each side takes a different stance on each of these issues, and to adopt either theory is to give up one or more strong beliefs about the nature of the world.

If you reject them, you reject the foundations of cosmology, physics and chemistry. — Dfpolis

No, you simply conceive of the foundations of cosmology, physics, and chemistry differently.

But do you see how that's self-cancelling relativism ? If you argue for it, then that's just 'your' logic, no ? — plaque flag

It hardly seems like self cancelling relativism to me - just a matter of the fact that people have different brains informed about different things. If I argue for it it won't be with 'just my logic', it will be with evidence that I am somewhat informed about. Recognition of that evidence might well inform your logic.

So why think it self-cancelling relativism?

I don't know what criterion of objectivity you are referring to.

Have you read the letter referred to? It seems mostly concerned with the way the media and IIT proponents have been interacting. I don't see any reason, based on the letter, to think that the signatories would agree with your take.

My take: ‘theories of consciousness’ can’t conform with modern scientific practice, which begins with the assumption of the separation of knower and known. — Wayfarer

Do you think those "100 notable scientific researchers" would agree?

An interesting book by a 60s-70s author whose name is rapidly receding in the past: ‘The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler. — Wayfarer

I took a look at the Wikipedia page for the book, and I didn't get a very flattering impression. The title didn't sound like something which someone well informed about the thought processes of scientists would chose. There is a lot of work involved in developing intuitive faculties that can solve problems 'in the background'.

Looking into the background of Koestler himself, I didn't see any reason to think he was someone with relevant expertise.

I don't think I'll be looking into it further, but thanks for bringing it to my attention.

There is a Zen poem that says: "You cannot catch hold of it, nor can you get rid of it. In not being able to get it, you get it. When you speak, it is silent. When you are silent, it speaks." And the last two lines are the most important - ideas and concepts only complicate things. That's why philosophy is so bad at defining these phenomena - we can talk about it, but it doesn't make much sense. — Jake Mura

I think it makes a lot of sense, when I read "it" as "intuition". (or deep learning)

:cheer:

The other thought that occurred to me was that not all ways of thinking are methodical. — Janus

:up:

Some of my best work related thinking has ocurred when I'm not thinking about the topic, and possibly even while I was sleeping. It's commonly been the case, that when I'm in the shower getting ready for work, that I've recognized a way to understand or deal with some problem - an understanding that I hadn't had before I got in the shower.

This might be clearer once you have read through the PI. — Luke

Perhaps.

The don't access my mental image. Their brain creates their own mental image in response to perceiving my picture.

To argue the US cares about democracy or the people of Ukraine is laughable — Mikie

What gives you that idea?

How does your mental image inform others of anything? — Luke

By stimulating the other to develop their own mental image which is approximate to mine.

Only an approximation, because I can't create pictures with anywhere near the complexity of my mental imagery. However, approximations can easily get the message across, to someone with a mind prepared to flesh out the approximation well. Scribbles will often do well enough, under the right circumstances.

In PI 280 is it a painting of the painter’s mental image or of the stage set or of both? — Luke

I haven't read that far yet, so this is only my response and not any sort of claim about Witt's view...

I'm inclined to say that there is some degree of isomorphism between the stage set, the mental image and the picture. Seeing the stage set caused the painter to develop a mental image. That mental image played a causal role in the painter painting what he painted. I'd think this describes what it means for a painting to be "of the stage set". I'd be inclined to say it was a painting of both, but in different senses.

:100:

I don’t disagree, but I think it’s a mistake to call the mental image a picture. The mental image is not a representation and it cannot inform others. — Luke

Why not approximately inform others? I guess I wouldn't expect a painting to be anything other than an approximation of the painter's mental image.

Perdurantist. New one on me. — Mww

I'm surprised the subject hasn't come up around here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdurantism:

Perdurantism or perdurance theory is a philosophical theory of persistence and identity.[1] The debate over persistence currently involves three competing theories—one three-dimensionalist theory called "endurantism" and two four-dimensionalist theories called "perdurantism" and "exdurantism". For a perdurantist, all objects are considered to be four-dimensional worms and they make up the different regions of spacetime. It is a fusion of all the perdurant's instantaneous time slices compiled and blended into a complete mereological whole. Perdurantism posits that temporal parts alone are what ultimately change. Katherine Hawley in How Things Persist states that change is "the possession of different properties by different temporal parts of an object".[2]

Take any perdurant and isolate a part of its spatial region. That isolated spatial part has a corresponding temporal part to match it. We can imagine an object, or four-dimensional worm: an apple. This object is not just spatially extended but temporally extended. The complete view of the apple includes its coming to be from the blossom, its development, and its final decay. Each of these stages is a temporal time slice of the apple, but by viewing an object as temporally extended, perdurantism views the object in its entirety.

The use of "endure" and "perdure" to distinguish two ways in which an object can be thought to persist can be traced to David Kellogg Lewis (1986)...

As you noted earlier, that mental picture might change, so how could you establish whether or not the physical painting matches it? — Luke

I would expect that in painting the picture he'd likely recognize inaccuracies to the way the painting represents the mental image and recognize that the painting is not the mental image.

:up:

I too would be interested in hearing more along those lines.