Has anyone, with two X chromosomes and no Y, spoken up in this thread?

Well, it's not altogether clear even that human thoughts "have intentionality" ... :chin: — 180 Proof

The SEP goes on to say:

‘Intentionality’ is a philosopher’s word: ever since the idea, if not the word itself, was introduced into philosophy by Franz Brentano in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it has been used to refer to the puzzles of representation, all of which lie at the interface between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language.

So do we blame old Franz for creating all of this confusion? :gasp:

Another thought regarding which I'll preface with an exverpt from the SEP entry:

In philosophy, intentionality is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. To say of an individual’s mental states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations or that they have contents. Furthermore, to the extent that a speaker utters words from some natural language or draws pictures or symbols from a formal language for the purpose of conveying to others the contents of her mental states, these artifacts used by a speaker too have contents or intentionality.

Do the outputs of ChatGPT have intentionality? Why or why not?

The general problem in the argument is framing things as True or Not True in relation to phenomenon instead of understanding it as an abstract game that helps guide us through ‘reality’ rather than something that is directly applicable to ‘reality’. — I like sushi

What are your thoughts on replacing "true" and "false" with "more accurate" and "less accurate"?

Throwing away the notions of true or false altogether seems a bit extreme to me. Wouldn't we, in effect, be throwing out logic as well?

Offhand, I can't think of a better word than strategies. Suggestions are welcome. — Mark S

Your request, that I suggest alternative vocabulary, is fair enough. However, I don't consider myself very qualified to offer a very good alternative, because I think moralistic emotional reactions are largely a function of how the limbic system (paleomammalian cortex) interacts with neocortex, and that isn't an area I've studied sufficiently to speak with much confidence.

Furthermore, the interactions between limbic system and neocortex seem fairly complex, with some capability for each system to override the other. (i.e. Conscious reasoning can somewhat suppress being overridden by the limbic system, but conscious reasoning is also somewhat at the mercy of the limbic system.)

That said, I'd think something like, "evolved in automated biasing of neocortex by the limbic system", might be along the right lines, though it's fairly unwieldy.

2. If naturalism is true, then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes. — Wayfarer

Sorry about the piecemeal response. I'm at work right now, and addressing things as I have small windows of time.

I disagree with your premise above. Naturalism being true does not entail being able to fully explain all physical systems and in particular there are insurmountable issues to fully explaining complex systems, and brains are the most complicated physical systems we know of. Naturalism being true only requires beliefs being *caused*, by what at the lowest level are non-rational causes.

The basis of the argument is, then, that if materialism were correct, our thoughts would be the product of physical processes which are in themselves devoid of any purpose or intentionality (in line with the axioms of materialism, which holds that everything in the Universe is the product of physical laws and product of non-intentional and non-purposive processes). — Wayfarer

Assuming you are using "intentionality" as discussed in the SEP, this 3blue1brown video provides a good sketch of how the outputs of a neural network can be *about* numerical digits in the visual field provided as inputs to the neural network. So intentionality can be recognized as emerging at relatively low levels in our neurological information processing.

The argument from reason challenges the proposition that everything that exists, and in particular thought and reason, can be explained solely in terms of natural or physical processes. It is, therefore, an argument against materialist philosophy of mind. According to the argument, if such theories were true, our thoughts, and so also our reasoning, would be determined on the molecular level by neurochemistry, leaving no role for the free exercise of reason. — Wayfarer

This appears to be begging the question, by presuming that the exercise of reason is something different than information processing occurring in our brains.

Smuggling in a dualism which isn't part of the materialist view doesn't do anything to contradict a materialist view.

Then there is the issue of "free exercise of reason", which suggests to me a desire to maintain a belief in libertarian free will. However, giving up a naive notion of libertarian free will is a small price to pay for the more accurate understanding that comes with a well informed materialist perspective. (Assuming we want to compare appeals to consequences.)

You could be more specific. But what I said summarizes all there is. — Mark S

The problem with using "strategy" in this context is that it suggests that moralistic fast thinking on the part of humans is part of someone's conscious plan, when it is actually a result of unthinking evolutionary processes.

I didn't see an answer to my question in there.

:up:

I guess I have a problem with your use of "strategy".

Whose strategy is it?

Do you have a different explanation of the content of the fast moral thinking adaptation? — Mark S

Inasmuch as evolution might be said to have a 'purpose' that purpose is to produce individuals with a high probability of success in passing on their genes. When evolution is occuring in a species which gets a lot of benefit from social cooperation we can expect evolutionary changes that take advantage of that environmental niche of living as a member of a social species. However, it isn't realistic to think cooperation is the 'purpose' of that evolution. A relatively high level of cooperation is just a side effect of evolution in such an environmental niche.

Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains fast moral thinking, not slow moral thinking. — Mark S

I think your sense of what is an explanation of what is a bit unrealistic. I think the adaptiveness of fast moral thinking (considered within an evolutionary framework) is more accurate as an explanation for human moral thinking.

It seems to me you're suggesting there's something interesting there that I'm too ignorant/dumb to see it. — Eugen

I used to think that it made sense to see people as being somewhere along a one dimensional line from smart to dumb, but that was 36 years ago. Now I recognize that all of us have different constellations of cognitive strengths and weaknesses that determine what ways of learning we are better or worse at.

Could you please shed some light onto it for me, please? — Eugen

I think it is largely a matter of intuitively grokking what Chomsky meant, and I'd suggest that the best way for you to do that might be to think about the problems you would run into if you tried to provide a full explanation of what it is like for you to see a sunset.

There is no hard problem because <<How is it like to see a sunset?>> is a non-question" :vomit: — Eugen

What Chomsky is doing with that statement is attempting to foster a recognition in his listeners. It didn't work in your case, but that's just the way it goes.

Matthew 13:1-8

Dude, I was sarcastic... of course I won't start the classic silly debate ''Hey, we can get to flying from parts that don't fly." — Eugen

Cool. So we can consider it a bare assertion when you say:

The hard problem states it's illogical to get consciousness from non-consciousness, and there is absolutely no answer to that to this moment.

Really? How come? I want details, please! — Eugen

Lay out your argument and I will point the fallacy out for you.

The hard problem states it's illogical to get consciousness from non-consciousness, and there is absolutely no answer to that to this moment. — Eugen

Sure there is an answer. The hard problem, as you state it, commits a fallacy of composition. (Or fallacy of division, depending on the details.)

I'm planning to create an OP, but it's going to take a few days. It's a deep topic. — Wayfarer

I'm looking forward to it. :up:

I'm aware of that book, but no, haven't read it. — Wayfarer

Bummer, it'd make it easier to communicate some things to you if you had. Yes, Kahneman is quite brilliant, and presents important things to understand about intuition, and does so a whole lot better than I could.

Anyway, maybe we could switch to discussing the argument from reason that you mentioned?

I will add that the principle difference between the neo-Kantian Cassirer, and standard view of physicalism, is that the latter sees mind and being as the emergent products of physical processes which are understood to be inherently non-intentional and non-teleological. — Wayfarer

Are you using "non-intentional" in the sense of intentionality or in a sense related to motivation, or other?

If in the sense of intentionality, then I could make a case that intentionality supervenes on neural networks. It seems likely it would take some charitable consideration and effort on your part to understand it, but it is well worth understanding for those interested in understanding themselves. (Particularly if interested in the nature of intuition.)

Of course we all have different brains, and as a consequence, different constellations of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. This impacts what we find interesting, and I'm certainly not suggesting you should be interested in the things I'm interested in.

Have at it. :up: — Pantagruel

Thanks Pantagruel.

Getting back to this:

I don’t think there is one. There are major gaps and conundrums in physics, even without considering the very tenuous connection it might have with how or if mind ‘emerges from’ neural networks, and the implications of that. I think the sense of what is physical, in this context, is post-Cartesian. This is the view that emerges from first of all dividing the world into the two domains of extended matter and ‘thinking substance’ and then by demonstrating the conceptual difficulties with the ‘thinking substance’ (a.k.a. ‘ghost in the machine’.) So having eliminated that problematical conception of the mind, there is purportedly nothing left other than ‘the physical’ in terms of which mind can be explained.

Do you think that is near the mark? — Wayfarer

I interpret the sentence I bolded to be suggesting that I am proposing a sort of 'physicalism of the gaps'. That is not at all the case. What I would like to see is more people developing the cognitive toolkit to recognize that an understanding of human thought and consciousness, as supervening on physical processes, is extraordinarily explanatory and not just a simplistic parsimony.

Sure there are gaps and conundrums in all sciences and not just physics, but despite there being unknowns in many areas, I think it is important to understand what Sean Carroll was attempting to communicate with his article, The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood.

The connection between physics, and the information processing that occurs in neural networks, is no more tenuous than the connection between physics, and the information processing occuring in the device you are using to read this post. However, the ability to recognize the explanatory power of neural networks in understanding human thought, supervenes on a fairly broad knowledge of science generally. So I don't hold out much hope of this being persuasive to people who lack the knowledge base required for such recognition to occur.

Still it seems worth trying to communicate this idea, despite the difficulty in doing so, and perhaps talking about things at the level of psychology might be somewhat effective at conveying aspects of my thinking on this subject. Have you read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow?

Any objection to your thread being used as Wayfarer and I have been discussing?

So, the odd thing is that even if we can have intuitive intellectual knowledge of reality, we cannot be certain that we can, no matter how certain we might feel about it. — Janus

:100: :up:

Do you think that is near the mark? — Wayfarer

No, I don't. However, before I go into detail, do you think one of us should start a new OP? Or is there an old thread of yours appropriate to discuss things in?

:up:

You'd probably need to start with a definition of 'physical' which I suspect will be very difficult to derive. — Wayfarer

I wouldn't be approaching things from a foundationalist perspective. As an anti-foundationalist I'm fine with settling for, whatever passes for the consensus of physicists, as a definiton of physical. I think we could have an informative discussion while leaving the definition of physical a bit fuzzy.

Hence the requirement for noesis, philosophical ascent. The culmination of those states is in 'seeing things as they truly are', of arriving at an insight into the totality, an epiphany or a great 'aha' moment. This is not necessarily confined to mysticism. There are episodes in the history of science where individuals had sudden noetic insights into the nature of things which lead to great breakthroughs in scientific understanding. An example would be Copernicus' realisation that the orbits of planets were elliptical whilst searching for the Platonic ideals in his observational data; Nikolai Tesla's mystical vision of the Sun and the interchangeability of matter and energy which preceeded Einstein's discovery of the same fact. There are no doubt many other examples, at least some of which resulted in the overthrow of the current paradigm... — Wayfarer

Damn you! You are not going to allow me to escape having this discussion, are you? :wink:

So suppose I said I had such a "sudden noetic insights into the nature of things which lead to great breakthroughs in scientific understanding"? Now I admit that the "which lead to" bit, only fits with a bit of squinting. I didn't propagate my insight to any significant extent. So my insight only lead to relevant scientific breakthroughs, in the sense that other people gaining similar insight over the last 36 years has resulted in a lot of scientific progress.

Now suppose that insight was about how minds emerge from the physical interactions occurring in neural networks.

How would that discussion go?

Perhaps there is a mode of certainty that transcends discursive understanding. — Pantagruel

Some kind of "intellectual intuition?" — Pantagruel

I wouldn't say "intellectual intuition" so much as well "trained and tested intuition", though admittedly some might see those as fairly synonymous. Have you read Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow?

Isn't it past your bedtime?

All that being said, I think that's a whole different thing than what I typically call determinism. — T Clark

Yeah, I know I haven't taken the time to layout the the way I'm using terms, and it's unsurprising that we are talking past each other to some extent. So as some clarification...

1. I consider it quite plausible that the world is indeterministic in light of what I know of physics.

2. I have a lot of history of arguing for 'determinism' in the context of discussing free will. Undoubtedly that is coloring the way I've approached the discussion.

I should have pared down what I quoted.

My response was intended as allusion to, "not like selling drugs".

I got the wife comment.

No conscious invertebrates? Don't they have to deal with lots of information flowing in? — RogueAI

The article also says...

The arthropod eye, on the other hand, has one of the best-studied examples of selective signal enhancement. It sharpens the signals related to visual edges and suppresses other visual signals, generating an outline sketch of the world.

To expand on that, it's a way of saying that visual data is processed in the eye of arthropod to yield a relatively low data output stream, but data reduced in a way that preserves salient features of the visual field.

So, in the case of those arthropods and vision, their brains don't have to deal with nearly as much data as vertebrate species do. Information processing is expensive in terms of energy consumption. There are lots of niches in which an energy efficient 'design' can hold it's own against more intelligent but less energy efficient designs.

What do you mean? This place is full of people pushing all kinds of mind altering stuff.

What is the evolutionary benefit of consciousness? — RogueAI

See here. (Although that may require a subscription. If so, Google is your friend. I used "the evolutionary adaptiveness of consciousness".)

If I may interject a question as someone with only a superficial understanding of Kant...

Isn't it a bit of an overstatement to say we know *nothing* of the thing-in-itself? Why not a more nuanced view, in which we know a limited amount about things-in-themselves, but some of us know more than others, depending on the thing under consideration.

Here is the IEP entry.

Do you mean that determinists still blame others for their actions erroneously? Assuming it is, I would say that perhaps they can't help doing that, even if there might not be any rational warrant for it. — Janus

Yes, blaming reactions are naturally ocurring instinctive emotional reactions that have historically been adaptive for our species and are adaptive still. Being emotional reactions, they aren't particularly conducive to us seeing things objectively. They are evolutionarily adaptive because they are strongly motivating to action. So yes, we can't help doing that.

However, understanding the nature of blame reactions allows for nuance and skill in modulating how one behaves in response to a having a blaming state of mind - from philosophising - to unleashing the angry ape.

I don't understand what you are saying in your last sentence. — Janus

What I was trying to convey in saying, "Of course that's fallacious in all sorts of way. Not least, it's an appeal to consequences.", is that I don't expect people to see what I said prior as a rational argument. Just reinforcing that this is a matter of subjective preference on my part.

As a layperson, I can well imagine the ambition to discover some kind of secular and universal formula for morality. It reminds me of the alchemist's quest to turn base metal into gold. — Tom Storm

:up: