Maybe it's normal to try to push our present conceptual scheme to its limits before giving up and calling for new ways of thinking.

I'm pretty unsatisfied with Dennett because he doesn't really push the envelope. His ambitions seem to be limited to casting doubt that we need new ideas. — frank

I mean, one thing is to read his essays. But to listen to his lectures or interviews, I find it pretty remarkable. He's like "it's obvious that this and this will happen in such systems" and "of course this will happen given natural selection."

He even said regarding Chomsky and mysteries-for-humans, something like "it doesn't follow, I mean, do apes have language, can they ask all the questions we can ask?"

As if being able to ask a question means we can answer them. I find it embarrassing. But, many like him and think it's worth pursuing his ideas.

So in the past, "physical" was things like billiard balls. Now it covers the whole range of the objects of theory. :up: If we don't have a theory for it, it's non-physical. — frank

Yep, exactly.

This is f*cking crazy. It boils down to who has more projected power and a bigger phallus (to not use the more vulgar word).

And for what? I don't see how this doesn't escalate if they start shooting bullets.

The point I saw Chomsky making about this was that Chalmers' approach seems to suggest that we understand matter as thoroughly as possible, and we don't. I don't think Chalmers does assume that. — frank

The first sentence is crucial, in that we do not "understand matter as thoroughly as possible." That is exactly right. In fact, as Strawson and Chomsky point out, it was precisely this very assumption that made Descartes postulate a second substance, res cogitans.

It turns out he was wrong then, Dennett and the Churchlands are making the same mistake now, only with updated physics.

See what I mean? — frank

In the essay, he doesn't pick put Chalmers specifically, he quotes the "hard problem". So while Chalmers may have been the one to coin it in this manner, Chomsky's comments need not be directed at him at all.

For Chomsky, as these terms are commonly used today, "physical" stands in for what we more or less theoretically understand, physics, biology, etc.

"Non-physical" stand in for those things we don't understand the mind, consciousness, thinking, etc.

Close. I think we may get to the point in which we have some type of theory of consciousness, perhaps someone discovers which brain regions are strictly necessary for it - though we have anesthesia - or someone may come up with a model as to how certain patterns in brain matter lead to experience. Maybe.

But it's not going to be in a way in which we're going to say "I get it". If we look at matter outside our bodies, we have no idea how that stuff out there, could have experience in certain configurations.

So we may get a theory, perhaps, but how can something "objective" could lead to something "subjective", goes beyond our comprehension, it seems to me.

Not only Putin, he's bad enough. The US destroys countries, as seen by mid 20th to early 21st century history. It can do that because it has the power to do so, the UK before them and France, Spain, etc. were no better.

No one wants to risk it, but then do you think Russia (or anyone else) will stand for mass casualties loss in terms of troops and complete humiliation in a war against NATO?

Nor would the US. Nevertheless, we've had awfully close calls before. A repeated high risk situation cannot sustain itself without error. Hope I'm being paranoid....

As long as we are speaking of nuclear powers it doesn't matter much. I don't know how they plan to fight a war without quite soon threatening to use them if one side sees itself in trouble...

A Treatise on Human Nature - David Hume

The Five Books of (Robert) Moses - Arthur Nersesian

As I already said earlier, I don't think that Chomsky, in this essay at least, engages with the issues that animate debates between Nagel, Chalmers, McGinn, etc. on the one side, and Dennett, Churchlands, etc. on the other. Calling Chomsky's position "mysterianism" is misleading. Indeed, going by the evidence of this essay, I am not sure that he is even familiar with that other "mysterianism." — SophistiCat

Correct. He calls it a "truism", he doesn't like the term mysterian. Mcginn and others adopted it because the labels stuck. He has spoken about Dennett and Nagel and others in different essays.

If you think that he is advancing a "mysterian" thesis, how would you summarize it? It is not all that clear to me that he is developing a consistent thesis throughout the essay, but here is how I might tentatively reconstruct it. As Chomsky tells it, up until Newton, natural philosophy was following our intuitive understanding of how the world works. At one point he makes a connection with our innate intuitions, as revealed in psychological studies - folk physics and the like. More often, he talks about a "conception of the world as a machine"; how naturally intuitive that is is not obvious to me, but apparently he believes it to be so. — SophistiCat

It's the simple view that there are things we can know and things we cannot, given that we are natural creatures. Not in this essay, but in a different one, he distinguishes between "problems" and "mysteries", problems are those questions we can ask and (hopefully) answer. "Mysteries" are those we can ask and not answer, such as say, free will or how is it possible for matter to think? Then there are questions we can't even ask, because we don't know how to phrase them.

This would give an "updated" view on the intuitive aspect:

https://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/COMPLETE-REPORT-Goswami-Childrens-Cognitive-Development-and-Learning.pdf

Particularly "naive physics" p.6.

This is a very dubious claim, by the way: to equate 18th century European philosophers' thinking with innate, animalistic intuitions. So, neither Aristotle nor three millennia of human civilization made a dent in their thinking? — SophistiCat

The 17th century scientific revolution was a reaction to Aristotelean physics, which postulated occult forces that no longer made sense. But of course, Aristotle was taken very seriously and was considered by many to be among the greatest of thinkers, no doubt about that. Aristotle was likely highlighting other aspects of our innate "folk psychology", putting emphasis on different aspects of the world, which were not satisfactory for many of the 17th century figures.

Action at a distance is not that big a deal any more. We throw around concepts like "force" and "energy" as if knew what we were talking about. And that's just the average person; physicists, mathematicians and other specialists develop even more advanced intuitions in their areas.

There could be a case to be made for a core of innate intuitions, but what would be the significance of it? That we can transcend our nature-endowed intuitions is perhaps the defining trait of our species. So what is all this hand-wringing about the unintelligibility of the universe? — SophistiCat

I agree that we just use these concepts without being troubled anymore. The issue, I think, is that we tend to be quite puzzled by QM - we don't understand how the heck the world could act like this. Yeah, well, we don't understand gravity either, we just got used to it. But it took over a hundred years to develop this attitude. Maybe in a few decades QM will simply be accepted as is, and we won't be puzzled by it anymore.

I'd only quibble that I don't think physicists have intuitions about how gravity works, they have intuitions about how theories about gravity work and how they can relate to other phenomena in the world. The intuition would be on the theory side.

The main topic of the essay, as I read it, is that we've lowered the standards of science, we no longer seek to understand the world, but seek theories about aspects of the world. That's a big lowering of standards of explanation.

As for your last question, I think, in the end, the point is going to be person dependent. For me, it's quite crazy that we understand so little and that the world exists at all, it's baffling to me. There's no reason to expect any species to evolve having a capacity to ask and answer questions about the world at all, there's no obvious benefit to doing these things.

Heck, we might be the only intelligent species in the universe, as some biologists say.

Which makes me grateful for the parts of the world we can understand to an extent, due to the advances of modern science.

The point is that people like Sean Carroll or Daniel Dennett say they follow Hume, so they too "repeat what someone else wrote three hundred years ago", it's just that they do so quite poorly on elementary reading, literally.

Of course, all the classical figures made plenty of mistakes, that's clear. I don't think anyone today would be a Humean empiricist nor a Cartesian rationalist, much less a Platonist in the exact same terms and ideas they used back then.

We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We modify the terms for contemporary issues.

Admitting the mistakes they made - while being aware of the mistakes we're surely making now - it's evident they have things to teach us that we're forgotten or are thinking about in muddled way.

Philosophy is one of the few traditions that engages with people thousands of years ago and continues in the great debate concerning the most difficult questions people have been asking for a long time.

While not obligatory by any means, not engaging with such classics, likely makes one's philosophy poorer.

Alpha cis-gender xim hetero-male :cool:

Ah. Sure. Assuming - and this we have to always keep in mind - that we are correct with our reasons, what you suggest would be the right way to approach the topic.

The idea in any system which imposes an ideology, is to show these things for what they are, social constructions made, in large part but not entirely, by people in power, usually wanting things to stay as they are.

So we should try and show why such imposed systems are faulty, and this is an area for which reason, under right guidance and evidence, can help us clear up confusions and wrong thinking.

The thing is, in many examples you raised the proper values or at least reactions in accordance to the values can be directly taught without undertaking the due process of reasoning. — D2OTSSUMMERBUG

Ok. We are on the same page, yes "due process of reasoning", I agree. In the sense, reason is something to be refined and grown even more by experience and growing our moral spheres ever wider. How far we can continue doing this, in principle, is hard to say.

I believe that under such circumstance, the "random kids on the street" would divert the topic into mere racism and give a pc answer because that's the only way they've been instructed to reason, which is now doubtfully reason any more. — D2OTSSUMMERBUG

That could be the case in many instances. We are thrown into a culture we don't choose and always pick up stuff from this culture that is likely mistaken or at least misleading.

What should be done, a bit like Socrates in the Meno with the slave, is to show how these reasons are bad or if not that, then faulty. Of course, Socrates was trying to show the boy that he had knowledge of geometry without being aware of it. But this applies to ethics too, I think.

So here, the way to proceed would be something like asking "Do you think it is important to get our historical facts right?" Depending on the answer, we can reply many ways. The end line of such an argument would be to establish that not portraying Hamilton properly is bad and these are the reasons why: inaccurate history, false perception of ourselves, lying, etc. Of course, ideally we would like people to make the connections as we speak to them, instead of forcing a conclusion.

Whether we return to the original conclusion that we'd better call the police doesn't matter - it is our ability to recognize and approach the limit of rules and symbols which in modern times have developed to appear so comprehensive that really distinguishes fundemental reasoning and the rest. — D2OTSSUMMERBUG

I don't understand what you mean after you say "police doesn't matter -...". Sure, if we don't want to force our conclusions on people, we may wish to make them reason for themselves. They may conclude it's better not to call the police after all.

But if you could rephrase that last sentence, I might be able to reply.

No no no, sorry for my lack of clarity. I agree that our attitudes and beliefs are shaped by our patriarchic society, no doubt.

What I'm saying is the ability to use reason and discriminate between good reasons and bad reasons does not depend on gender. This doesn't mean that the thinking involved isn't shaped by society, it is.

The problem here would be how to set apart the faculty of reason from thinking. That's devilishly difficult. If I call the police because someone stole something, most people will say, I had good reasons for doing so, that's independent of gender.

If you use force and prevent a kid from crossing a highway, that would be good reason too.

If someone says that women should not get a job because women's place in society must be to be a housewife, that's not a good reason.

There are places today were such arguments are still made, particularly by more sexist societies, but what I'm wagering is that, if you get a random kid on the street and explain the issue, most of the time, they would be able to tell the difference between good and bad reasons.

But the thoughts that are used by reason, can be lousy and unfounded.

That's roughly the gist of it.

but he rejects (as he says in the video you linked to) a great deal of this thinking as well. He re-interprets Plato's reincarnation of the soul to be essentially referring to genetic endowment. — Xtrix

Correct.

He also rejects the notion of transparent ideas, or the notion that we can introspect into our ideas perfectly clearly, this is also common with the empiricists incidentally, but it's not true.

I think that if we have a disagreement (foreseeing one which is possible and good), would have to be on what we think philosophy can do for the study of mind. Besides some topics in linguistics and perhaps some psychological studies, we just know too little about the mind.

I think this is fertile area for conceptual analysis, which can help clear up some confused notions get a better framework for analyzing different aspects of the world and so on. Chomsky tends to go to physics for a lot of clarification on many of these things, I think that that approach makes sense, but it can be limiting to an extent. Here, I know I'm playing with fire.

So in this case, you tend to go with Heidegger's philosophy, I tend to like Tallis' approach. But I honestly think, however self-flattering this may sound, that in this area, we have lots of fertile stuff to think about and try to clear up, acknowledging that we're likely wrong in many important aspects.

But if you think philosophy is either much more than this, or much less, then we'd disagree. I know you haven't said anything, I'm just thinking out loud...

"The epistemic naturalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth century was science, and attempt to construct an empirical theory of mind…” (Chomsky, 2000: 80)

“We plainly cannot read back into earlier periods a distinction between science and philosophy that developed later. We would not use the term “visual naturalism” to refer to the empirical study of the growth and functioning of the visual system… implying that there was some coherent alternative for the same realm of problems.”

Eh. I wouldn't phrase it like this, nor do I think he would agree. I don't think he would mind being called a "rationalistic idealist" like he labels Cudworth, though he prefers "methodological naturalism."

Remember he says that the shift from "magic" to "science" is subtle.

And he does actually refer to Descartes and Cudworth for innate ideas, saying that he agrees with this tradition. What he says is that this tradition should be fleshed out.

These things are astonishing for him and for I think most people in the world who have babies, they are shocked to see how the baby does things or says things they weren't taught.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXLo9gJq-U&t=328s

Min. 37:43 onward.

That is the underlying cause behind the acrimonious debate in this thread. "Innate ideas" are a no-go for empiricism as they're intractable to naturalism, which long ago banished Platonism to the dustbin of history. Hence: — Wayfarer

I mean, I agree with you if by naturalism you mean what is meant by Dennett and Carrol and so on. I don't think that's "real naturalism", but this is terminological quibble.

What's a bit interesting, is that these things (innate ideas) are assumed for other creatures. We take it for granted that a puppy knows not to go over a ledge, or that a cat "knows" how to avoid falling on its back and so on - this isn't learning.

What's quite ironic in all of this - these so called "naturalists" and "empiricists" - who look at say, Hume, with much admiration, is that they don't read him, or they read him badly, not only with regard to mysteries, but regarding "innate ideas".

This is Hume, worth quoting in full:

"But though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are also many parts of it, which they derive from the original hand of nature; which much exceed the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions; and in which they improve, little or nothing, by the longest practice and experience. These we denominateInstincts, and are so apt to admire as something very extraordinary, and inexplicable by all the disquisitions of human understanding. But our wonder will, perhaps, cease or diminish, when we consider, that the experimental reasoning itself, which we possess in common with beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power, that acts in us unknown to ourselves; and in its chief operations, is not directed by any such relations or comparisons of ideas, as are the proper objects of our intellectual faculties. Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct, which teaches a man to avoid the fire; as much as that, which teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation, and the whole economy and order of its nursery."

Bold letter added by me.

Sure man, it's all about what you find plausible and credible based on your own experience of the world.

Because they assume that all there is is “understanding” in the theoretical sense. Therefore, if we understand a theory, we understand everything that matters about that phenomenon. Tell that to a painter about colours, they are “just” light, or to a mother who has lost a son that she lacks serotonin or tell any person that’s burning that it’s just particles moving fastly, so don’t worry about pain. In short, such an attitude assumes science can say MUCH more than it does. I think it is obvious that understanding is not close to being exhausted by theoretical accounts. And I also think it is equally obvious that we don’t really understand much of anything, hence the infinite "why" questions, which must be answered with a “that's the way it is” type replies. Because we just don’t know.

Yeah, in theory. But once one goes off to a civilian population, and another is returned, all go off. It’s playing with fire, to put it very lightly.

I mean, it’s not interesting to me, insofar as I agree with this approach to philosophy and see people who disagree with the main points to be very mistaken. However, if I had to attack it, I don’t see any alternative to people who currently ridicule “mysteriansim”, like Dennett or the Churchlands. I’d say that we don’t know what we don’t know beforehand, and that many times in the past something seemed impossible, yet was achieved by a lot. Therefore, those who say that there are forever mysteries, will be proven wrong as was done before. That would be the idea. I think this completely misses the point, and implies that Hume, Newton, Leibniz, Locke and others, were stupid in the way they reasoned, which hasn’t improved to my knowledge- which is a remarkable conclusion. But I can see those arguments, and they make sense, even if I think they are way wrong. So in short, read those two authors, or even better, read Alex Rosenberg.

It was part of a way for the US to take over Europe's security concerns, probably to prevent another war. But its mission was explicitly to stop the USSR's sphere of influence. But of course, WWII caused all of this.

But after the USSR collapsed, it doesn't have a good reason to exist. more so with the overwhelming military advantage the US has over other countries.

I saw a video about this but did not read a study - at least not one I can recall at the moment. Given that the exposure of the dogs to certain words ("sit", "paw", "down", etc.) is very frequent, they'd associate such sounds to an act of some kind. But if you go beyond that, it would be meaningless, they can't associate very many words we use to some object or act, it's way too much. And the way dogs interpret language is likely very very different from the human case.

There's one quite important philosophical conclusion in all this, and this is the notion of "innate ideas", already argued for by Plato, Descartes, Cudworth, Leibniz and so forth. The only thing I'd be cautious with in your account is the notion of "learning", it's more akin to growth. Babies grow into the language they are exposed to. And of course, young children have a much easier time acquiring a new language while young than after say, young adulthood.

This is an excellent interview with Chomsky by an excellent philosopher Bryan Magee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXLo9gJq-U

The relevant part on learning is from minute 5:26, probably goes on for a minute or two.

I'll get back to you, have to go.

:victory:

Yeah, the book and science are very good.

His philosophy isn't, it's the type of thinking you and I very much disagree with.

But don't let that get in the way of the rest of it, it's pretty interesting. :cool:

Very little, I think. Maybe sometime in the future some great technology will arise that may help us make sense of it, but I'm skeptical.

My take on this topic - which tends to be controversial - is that aside from hints and suggestions, looking at the brain tells us very little about higher cognitive faculties. It's not nothing, obviously, but little in terms of what we would like to know, such as the question you are asking.

What's curious here, about this activation pattern, is that (I don't think it's in this book, but in another essay whose name I've forgotten) similar sounding noise doesn't activate it. For instance, if I say:

Under space roaring goes doesn't anywhere nothing.

Here each individual word makes sense, but the sentence is gibberish.

On the other hand, if I quote Chomsky's famous:

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

The sentence makes syntactic sense but doesn't mean anything. I'm blanking on the study, but if I find it, I'll post it here.

When they do tests with subjects, they show them ordinary languages that they don't know. If it's a human language, the brain activates. But if they produce sentences that breaks these rules, the subjects don't register it as a language.

This of course leads to even deeper questions, such as, why don't we register every sound as something significant and meaningful and say, don't confuse others sounds with language? There must be an innate property we have, that accounts for this.

So other than a general comment about, human language being an extremely sophisticated, unique to humans' phenomena, I can't really answer the question.

There's neurophysiological evidence for this:

"Consider speech processing. Babies are immensely attracted to language. They probably begin to learn it inside the womb, because even newborns can distinguish sentences in their mother tongue from those in a foreign language. Language acquisition happens so fast that a long line of
prestigious scientists, from Darwin to Chomsky and Pinker, has postulated a special organ, a “language acquisition device” specialized for language learning and unique to the human brain. My wife, Ghislaine Dehaene Lambertz, and I tested this idea directly, by using fMRI to look inside babies’ brains while they listened to their maternal language. Swaddled onto a comfortable mattress, their ears protected from the machine’s noise by a massive headset, two-month-old infants quietly listened to infant-directed speech while we took snapshots of their brain activity every three seconds.

To our amazement, the activation was huge and definitely not restricted to the primary auditory area. On the contrary, an entire network of cortical regions lit up (figure 34). The activity nicely traced the contours of the classical language areas, at exactly the same place as in the adult’s brain. Speech inputs were already routed to the left hemisphere’s temporal and frontal language areas, while equally complex stimuli such as Mozart music were channeled to other regions of the right hemisphere. Even Broca’s area, in the left inferior prefrontal cortex, was already stirred up by language. This region was mature enough to activate in two-month-old babies. It was later found to be one of the earliest-maturing and best-connected regions of the baby’s prefrontal cortex."

Consciousness and the Brain - Stanislas Dehaene

pp.253

More info can be found in this very interesting book, pp.253-257

http://www.softouch.on.ca/kb/data/Consciousness%20and%20the%20Brain.pdf

Jeez! Those really suck.

Hope you're OK.

If you have anti-anxiety meds, that could help.

Relax and come back when you're feeling better. Good luck.

This is a problem, one need not say for the millionth time, why Putin is bad person, war criminal, etc. As far as I can see, this applies to all leaders of Big Powers. It comes with the territory. Not excusing it, though placing it in proper context.

On the other hand, why does NATO need to expand? What for? It was founded on the idea of "containing" the Soviet Union. Well, that fell, but NATO is still here.

Who's the enemy for the US and Western Europe? Russia and China? Yeah, maybe. But with nuclear weapons involved, all this becomes very silly.

As for Russia, yeah they're going to exercise power near its border, and those countries have a right to defense and help, but this should be done carefully. That's not what's happening now.

It's lunacy.

Nobody does. Ideally NATO could back off wanting to include Ukraine while boasting that they "stopped Russian aggression", whereas Russia can then claim that they "stopped NATO expansion."

But at this point, given these political times, anything can happen...

U.S. Puts 8,500 Troops on High Alert as Tension Rises Between NATO & Russia over Ukraine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwEfqRa7uXk

The way the USSR was broken off was very problematic, leading - in part - to the mess we are in now.

I don't deny that thinking - whatever it is - can be different for different people - including women and I also recognize that much of what we value or view as correct now, is influenced by patriarchic institutions, I don't think enters touches reason itself.

So yes, sociological factors enter into what society we have, I do think that our reasoning faculties are essentially the same - of course, you'll have some people with insight and the like, but that can pop up in any person.

:up:

Yeah, his CTMU is a word salad. And him saying the Universe is a language is not even wrong. If by language one has in mind the stuff people do.

He has impressive IQ scores, but he cannot explain his ideas in a simple manner, no matter how hard he tries.

It is very worrisome. I know these topics can be very tiring - the boy who cried wolf type of thing - but, there's only so many risky situations that need arise before an accident happens.

And right now, NATO especially, but also Russia, are seeing who can take a bigger piss.

It would be better to see these images by far. But we have to get there. It would be a shame to miss out.

:clap:

Hopefully NATO and Russia avoid a nuclear war. It would be nice to see this before we vanish...

I'm not familiar, his division is into the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic? — hypericin

Yep. It's extremely dense though and its value is very questionable, but there are lectures and books written about it.

They are opposites. Mental objects which cast a shadow into the physical world, vs physical objects which cast a shadow into the mental world. — hypericin

What physical object wouldn't cast a shadow of the mental world?

Well, the Netherlands is, all in all, pretty advanced in terms of human rights, more so than most other developed countries, which does not mean there isn't still much to do everywhere.

Sure. And it's also the case that housework and caring for children is still very uneven.

Though if you look at professional philosophers today, there are more men writing than women. It might be related to the constant arguing and competition, as you point out.

Sure, the issues addressed by different groups of people will vary and having a different perspective will make you have a different way of viewing things, but I don't think this applies to reason proper, which includes judgement, inferences, deduction, etc.

Values are different. But it's an interesting topic.