One problem with this survey is that modern realism is itself an outgrowth of Kantian Transcendental Idealism. — Joshs

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. I'm not seeing how that's a problem.

Kantian Transcendental Idealism is an outgrowth of Christianity. Do you think that people shouldn't outgrow Christianity?

Philosophy isn't satisfied with this and seeks to find arguments to establish that realism is naïve and untenable. I don't have a philosophical view on this. — Tom Storm

This forum might give the impression that idealism is more popular among philosophers than it actually is. The Philpapers survey says:

External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
Accept or lean toward: non-skeptical realism 760 / 931 (81.6%)
Other 86 / 931 (9.2%)
Accept or lean toward: skepticism 45 / 931 (4.8%)
Accept or lean toward: idealism 40 / 931 (4.3%)

Why does the amount of neurons matter? If consciousness is an emergent property, shouldn't it emerge when there are a million neurons present? — RogueAI

Neuron count plays a role in determining how much information processing capability a brain has, although synapse count would likely be a better indicator. See here.

The differences are more superficial than the similarities. — Vera Mont

Honeybee brains have ~960,000 neurons.
Human brains have ~100,000,000,000 neurons.
That does not seem like a superficial difference to me.

When I was working as an engineer, I had this image that came to me when I was starting a new project. My head had a hole in the top with a funnel. I would pour all the information - text, figures, maps, tables - in at the top of my head. Then I would wait for a while and it would organize it in my head. — T Clark

:up:

Have you read Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit?

A relevant passage:

It is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false. Rather, just as Black’s account suggests, the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on.

[Emphasis added.]

Too much pseudo-intellectualism.

You haven't understood the topic.

Limited time, energy and patience. — Amity

Yep.

At work it's boneheaded. I save the stoneheaded mistakes for the forum.

Interesting. I have no technical expertise in any area, nor do I have much interest in math or science. Does this 'force' me into the simplisticator corner? How much of this is almost a necessary function of one's education, employment or even neurodiversity?

Is there a third option? — Tom Storm

I think taking the idea of sims and coms (thanks 0 thru 9) too seriously would be... ...wait for it... ...simplistic. I suspect it is a matter of all three.

I think all of us are both sims and coms, in ways that vary idiosyncratically. I don't think technical expertise specifically has much to do with it. I do think having real expertise in some way has something to do with it. Maybe having expertise, in dealing with some aspect of how things work in the world specifically, but for all I know, being expert at bonsai or dealing with human BS, is as effective as being an autistic electrical engineer.

I think having expertise can counteract the impact that the Dunning-Kruger effect has on us. Having a field of investigation where we know what we are talking about might make us more aware of when we don't know what we are talking about and at least a bit better at avoiding putting our foot in our mouths.

Perhaps of similar value, is having greater cognizance of when other people don't know what they are talking about. The knowledge of science aspect does play an important role in this case.

On complex matters, I often prefer a suspension of judgement. I'm pretty keen on the answer, 'I don't know' and would prefer it if more people pursued this and just got on with their lives. — Tom Storm

:up: :up: :up:

I don't know how many times I've explained to Christians that I'm perfectly fine with not knowing things, and admitting as much. I guess one thing about engineering for me, that has given me a real appreciation for people who can show me that I'm wrong, is design reviews. These days I go into design reviews hoping that the others on the review team will look super critically at a design I'm presenting, and spot any boneheaded mistakes I've made.*

When I was forum shopping recently I noted your shoshin as a very appealing aspect to this forum.

On matters like QM speculation, the nature of consciousness, etc, the notion of uncertainty is more significant to me (as a skeptic) than trying to force answers. Many of us hold highly complex explanations about matters we are not really qualified to understand. Perhaps this view is just a passive form of simplistication? — Tom Storm

I will leave those considerations of the koan to you. I don't know.

* There are limits. :rage: :wink:

And BTW, I'm a bit stoned, and suspect that was awfully disorganized and stream of consciousness, but I'm a bit stoned.

They are all individuals - except that one silly hemlock. — Vera Mont

:rofl: :up:

Another great Lem novel is Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. — Noble Dust

I love many of Lem's short stories. I think I enjoyed The Cyberiad the most, of what I've read.

First off, did you see my edit?

Secondly... Thank you for being so patient, with me trying to get away without laying my worldview out in much detail. (So to speak.)

I can see I would need to start a new thread to fill in the details, and while I might be up for that, it would be a sciency explanation of how I see humans as existing within a system, and most affectingly, within a system of their fellow humans and the universe at large.

It would help motivate me to take on such a project, if I had confidence it wasn't going to feel like a waste of my time. So how interested are you?

In case it makes a difference, this youtube video conveys some of my views and ethics. However, I recommend waiting until you've got ten minutes to relax and I recommend closing your eyes and letting your mind draw it's own picture while listening.

Awesome! Thank you!

I've only glanced at the wikipedia page, but that is something I definitely want to read.

:pray:

You think mutual and consensual love-making has such power?

How does anyone reinforce behaviour of a concept or thing?
Especially when it isn't one thing but a complexity of things. — Amity

Yes, sex is a powerful reward. Being deeply in love with the other is an awesome bonus on top, but not necessary to sex being rewarding for men. (And I've been so deeply in love that I couldn't imagine wanting to have sex with anyone else, but I had to get over it.)

I don't know what you mean by "behaviour of a concept or thing". Would a tendency for aggressive behavior be a thing?

Behavioral reinforcement.

Edit to add: ...and 'evolutionary success'.

If it coincided with doing whatever the fuck they wanted, they would be exceedingly happy, no? — Amity

Good point! :up:

Something, inspired by what you said, that I want to toss into the thread (and then run away)... :wink:

At least some women reward men for being aggressive with flirtation and/or sex. Should women therefore be considered responsible for 'the patriarchy'?

Funny... As an engineer I saw my primary job as taking the multiplicity of the universe and simplifying it so it could be used to make decisions. I might have hundreds of data points related to the presence, depth, and concentration of chemical contaminants in soil. I had to turn that data into a line on the drawings that showed where we had to excavate soil to remediate the site. — T Clark

:up:

Right. There are many different sorts of tasks involved in getting engineering projects done. I design high accuracy electronic measurement instrumentation. So I was only talking about what I do as an engineer. Not what engineers do in a general way.

So, at the last, 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.' You can't get simpler than that. — mcdoodle

But you can point out that it is simplistic. :wink:

Interesting response! :up:

I haven't read through the Tractacus, but what you said reminded me of the Zen saying, "Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; After one gains insight through the teachings of a master, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; After enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters are waters."

Please explain how "even the slightest movement of the head or offset in distance between observers can cause the three-dimensional universes to have differing content." And how can this purported difference in content cause a difference in simultaneity of months?
— T Clark

I didn't claim the universe was three dimensional, nor did I claim multiple universes. Even the slightest angle results in an arbitrarily large separation at large distances since X sin(a) for a very small angle a can still be a large value if X is large enough. Likewise even a tiny change in reference frames results in a large (months) change in the 3D plane of simultaneity at a sufficiently large distances. — noAxioms

Things like slight angles of the head and difference in position aren't particularly relevant to the special relativity scenario under consideration. The key thing to consider is the difference in the velocity of the two 'observers', and particularly the component of velocity in the direction of Andromeda. (If the two observers were moving past each other in a direction perpendicular to the direction to Andromeda, they would be viewing the same point in Andromeda's history.)

I'd like to have it explained. — Vera Mont

And I'd like to be more suited to explaining. You saying that you would like to have it explained reminds me of being in high school, where a friend asked me every morning, "What do you know?" Every morning my autistic brain would take him literally, and start working on trying to formulate an answer, despite me consciously knowing that my friend wasn't actually seeking an answer to the question he had asked.

So it's a little overwhelming for me to try to explain, and I know that whatever I write in attempting an explanation is going to be grossly simplistic and to me feel wholly inadequate. But with that preface out of the way...

Of great relevance is the monkeysphere.

Many fundamentalist Christians live in rural communities and are satisfied that Fox news is giving them an adequate view of the world, outside what they experience daily. They are substantially uninformed about, and fairly indifferent to, other communities. So while they know African-American gospel music exists, it isn't part of the insular world they are happily living in. Therefore they are largely indifferent to such music.

Edit: Link fixed.

...the thing most notable about bigots is that they're never indifferent - even to things that have no affect whatever on them. — Vera Mont

Doubts are understandable when you don't have the experience needed to have a nuanced view on the matter. The reality though, is a lot more nuanced than what you suggest.

Battling "Patriarchy" is a war against the distorted shadows on the wall of the academic cave. Success or failure will have no consequences. — BC

:up:

Battling ignorance on the other hand...

What, then, do American fundamentalists make of Afro-American gospel music? — Vera Mont

I'd think it largely depends on the race of the believers. It's said, that the most segregated time in America is Sunday mornings. So for white believers the answer might be, "Nothing much."

The implication is that despite one’s actions (or lack thereof) one state of mind is morally superior to another, even if a moral state of mind is biologically and measurably indistinct from an immoral or amoral state of mind. — NOS4A2

This is a bit tangential, since it isn't immoral to have antisocial personality disorder, but...

Identifying individuals with antisocial personality disorder using resting-state FMRI

I mean what it's defined as in dictionaries, reference books eh. — Baden

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says:

patriarchy
1
: social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line
broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
2
: a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy
For 20 years the country was ruled as a patriarchy.

I would guess from your last response that the second definition is not what you meant. However, unless I'm interpreting you incorrectly, the first definition doesn't sound to me like a good fit with what you mean either. Sure there are families which are patriarchial in the first sense, and larger societal groups that advocate for patriarchy in the first sense. However, there are lots of families, if not the majority, who don't fit the first sense of patriarchy in many nations.

So it isn't obvious to me how the dictionary definition helps all that much in understanding your view.

I'm curious as to how you conceive of patriarchy.

The relevance is that there are reasons to think that our species evolved with differences in physical attributes between the sexes, including instincts, which result in societies naturally tending towards 'patriarchy'.

So when you ask:

So, a social system based on competition for status and material resources... ...is not a patriarchy? — Baden

...I wonder what you think competition for status and material resources are based on, and what you mean by "patriarchy". Is patriarchy something that would require genetic engineering and eugenics to eliminate, or a conspiracy by people in power that might be eliminated by social engineering, or...?

That dude in your profile pic... Did evolution result in that guy having instincts that naturally result in 'patriarchy'? (Regardless of whether he approves of evolution having had such a result.)

Why do men take them? I suppose it says something about men, which I took to be the question of the OP, but then you interjected to help the women cross the street because they needed a man to help them from my maybe bad words. — Hanover

:up:

rather than constantly de-railing. — Wayfarer

I will bow out.

Thanks for the thread. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Diverting the thread to AI research and neural networks as a kind of 'general argument for physicalism' is just changing the subject. — Wayfarer

No, that's just the conclusion your insufficiently trained neural nets jumped to. What it is, is providing food for thought (training inputs) that are relevant to forming more accurate intuitions about how our minds/brains work. Admittedly, it is a bit of a, "He who hath ears to hear, let him hear." sort of thing, as I was discussing with Srap.

It's okay if you don't get it. Developing and strengthening new intuitions, to the point that an epiphany/paradigm shift can occur, takes time. Be patient.

By the way, I don't think you responded to my question about your familiarity with shoshin or beginners mind. Does this ring any bells?

Shoshin (Japanese: 初心) is a concept from Zen Buddhism meaning beginner's mind. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying, even at an advanced level, just as a beginner would. The term is especially used in the study of Zen Buddhism and Japanese martial arts,[1] and was popularized outside of Japan by Shunryū Suzuki's 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

The practice of shoshin acts as a counter to the hubris and closed-mindedness often associated with thinking of oneself as an expert.[2] This includes the Einstellung effect, where a person becomes so accustomed to a certain way of doing things that they do not consider or acknowledge new ideas or approaches.[3] The word shoshin is a combination of sho (Japanese: 初), meaning "beginner" or "initial", and shin (Japanese: 心), meaning "mind".[4]

Seems like something a few people here could use some practice at.

Since nothing travels faster than light the "pretend" observation of knowing what happens simultaneously lightyears away in a theoretical frame of reference is simply nonsense. — Benkei

But if it wasn't, at least we would have 2.5 million years to get the Milky Way defense fleet ready.

Robert Kowalski (early developer of Prolog) has been suggesting that instead of trying to get machines to think like us, we ought to consider learning to think more like machines. Wrote a book about it. — Srap Tasmaner

Thanks.

Can you recommend an introductory text? — Janus

I'm not really up to date on the books on the subject. One of the seminal texts, and the book I learned the basics from, is Parallel Distributed Processsing. It was written in 1987, but the first few Amazon reviews I read gave the impression that it is still considered an important introduction to the field. There may well be better introductory texts though, and Amazon's purchasers also read might be of some value.

However, I think that this 20 minute youtube video presents a quite good introduction to how trained neural nets work, and the same videographer has a part 2 video covering how learning in ANNs work. For the purposes of getting a sense of how the subject is relevant to our thinking, the first video might be sufficient.

If you are looking for a book on how research into ANNs can be applied to human thought, I don't know of any such books having been written yet. (Not to say I've looked for one.) I've learned by trial and error.

Right. Going with intuition is relying on the deep learning which has occurred in neural nets between our ears.
— wonderer1

I think that's right, but our intuitions can fool us, so we do need to examine the reasoning and its foundational presuppositions and our desires and aversions that underly our intuitions — Janus

Absolutely our intuitions can fool us. And logic is subject to GIGO, and can fool us as well. Since I have Feynman on the brain, another quote:

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

I would add to what you said above, that we can learn from the study of applications of Artificial Neural Nets (ANNs), to improve the effectiveness with which we use our brains. A key consideration with ANNs is the training set, or the set of inputs that were involved in an ANN learning whatever it learned. Analogously, we can consider the size and scope of the training set that went into the deep learning underlying our intuitions, and consider whether our intuitions are likely to be trustworthy or untrustworthy under whatever the present circumstances are. In doing so we might recognize a benefit to increasing the size and/or scope of our training sets, and improve the training of our neural nets, resulting in an improvement to the reliability to our intuitions in the future.

From what, to what? — Wayfarer

From what seems to me a less accurate view to what seems to me a more accurate view.

Reading Surely You're Joking at I guess 16 or so was a formative experience for me. — Srap Tasmaner

I think it was late 20s for me, but it still played a significant role in my subsequent thinking. I'd like to reread it, but I've been buying books at twice the rate I'm reading them for years. So probably not going to happen.

But I insist the phenomenology of this is hard. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know much about the study of phenomenology in philosophy, so I can't really say anything about that. I suppose I've developed my own thoughts on phenomenology, but they would probably be "in Polish" from the perspective of most phenomenologists.

I have sometimes said that many people on this forum don't seem to believe in disagreement: "if you seem to disagree with me, it can only be because you didn't understand what I said, so I'll say it again." We do recognize that even correct arguments don't always land with an audience, do not compel them with the force of reason, so we try different wordings, different analogies and examples, hoping that one of them will finally do the trick. — Srap Tasmaner

Right. An aspect of my communication strategy, in venues like TPF, is an attempt to lay some subconscious groundwork in people's minds that might allow them to make a paradigm shift in their thinking somewhere down the line, but results are very scattershot.

My point here is only that we don't know what will work, why it will work, and what worked in our case. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree with this to a large extent. Although, in my experience, the more knowledge I have of how the person I am talking to thinks, the greater my ability to put thing in terms that connect for them. (Though that is something I can't really disentangle from my coping with being on the autism spectrum.)

If you grasp the meaning at all, logic is supposed to carry the day, but experience tells us this is not so, though we believe it of ourselves. — Srap Tasmaner

I know what you mean. Although with all the time I have put into thinking about this stuff, I think I am relatively conscious of the importance of catalyzing paradigm shifts (whether in myself or others) in the process of communicating.

To close, I have enjoyed this meeting of the minds immensely. I hope we will have occasion to discuss these sorts of things more in the future.

...If thoughts were produced and stored in the brain, shouldn't neurologists or other specialized scientists,ehen they open or scan the brain, be able to trace them and identify them? Yet, not only there has been the least trace of such an identification but they have not even explained the process of thought, at least not in a provable and undisputed way. As Leibniz would say, they will "never find anything to explain a thought". And think that "perception" that Leibniz talks about is much more concrete and near to physicality that thinking. — Alkis Piskas

Thoughts are more events than things. See the following link for information about scientists detecting thought events:

https://www.eedesignit.com/oh-no-ai-now-reads-minds/

So I still think Hume's horror is hard to shrug off. Our thinking is not what we thought it was. We learn some things about it that are reassuring and some that aren't, but the real problem is there is no transparency here; we're in the land of "for all we know..." — Srap Tasmaner

I can understand that. I started thinking along these lines 36 years ago, when I realized that "there is something weird about my brain" is the best explanation for a bunch of different aspects of my life experience. For me the horror faded away a long time ago.

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; if I can't figure it out, then I go onto something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell -- possibly. It doesn't frighten me. [smiles]

Richard Feynman

:100: