Richly cognitively endowed, yes. So far as the manifest image goes, it works rather well for ordinary affairs- day to day stuff.

It becomes hard once we begin attributing our manifest image to a mind independent world, that's when our ideas should be suspect.

These are different domains of intellect and cognition, I think. Chomsky calls it a "science forming faculty".

If I have trouble explaining myself, I may well have trouble ironing out these issues. I'm working on that for a project I want to write, but requires much more reading and thinking.

In any case, thanks for the exchange, you always seem to get the main gist of what I'm saying, which is a relief, frankly.

That makes sense to me, in so far as things like this can make sense. That koan proceeds to take apart what we take for granted.

What is curious is to see how far can we push our ordinary commonsense understanding in everyday affairs.

The issue, as Magee put it, is to not confuse an epistemology (what we experience) for an ontology (what there is). This is what happens to certain strands of empiricism, the textual evidence for Locke and Hume is much more subtle though.

As Chomsky puts it in a related essay to this one, we have a "given" in experience. The thing is that the given is already formed by us. So it's not actually given.

It's as Tallis says somewhere, "there is no given without a taken."

There's nothing else in nature remotely like h. sapiens, but this seems a forbidden truth. I think it's one of the pernicious consequences of adopting Darwinism as a philosophy, which it is not. — Wayfarer

I agree.

We mostly disagree on terminology: "naturalism", "empiricism", etc.

But the terminological oddities are mine, you use them as they are commonly employed in contemporary philosophy. I think these terms are misused, but it's splitting hairs.

I mean, our vocabulary changes with the times, that makes sense. And we can still use the word "soul", as in, "that moved my soul". If it has religious implications, implying supernatural causes, that is, causes not found in nature at large, then it's not going to be attractive to many people.

Of course, this depends on how we think about "nature", which can be very varied.

I think one can hold that view that we are quite special creatures, we have the capacity for reflection and explicit knowledge. But we are still part of the world.



That's a supremely difficult question and answers will depend on sensibilities.

Let's take a mountain. Plainly a "mountain", as a word and as a concept, is human specific. There likely is more to concepts than words, but words are necessary at least.

I see a mountain. But now I close my eyes. There's still a mountain there, I can touch it, hear it, and so on. But suppose I lost my sense of touch and smell and proceed so on down the line, there's precious little left to say, as far as our sense go.

But now consider this: deaf-blind people, who acquire the capacity to read braille, show a remarkable capacity for a very rich inner life, based on some small bumps on a page. Likewise by merely putting there hands on your throat, they can understand the words you say.

The stimulus is poor (as Chomsky would say) , the reply is rich. That strongly hints, at least to me, that we overwhelmingly add things to the world, that aren't there absent us.

What would the opposite look like? If the world was rich, and our nature poor, I'd expect all species to have essentially the same cognitive capacities, which doesn't seem to be the case.

I mean, I think we can use the word "truth", with a lower case "t". I'm seeing letters on a screen is true, at one level of description. Photons are hitting my eye, likewise, etc.

But this is different from "Truth", which many seek to know.

:up:

I'm sympathetic to that view and it seems to me to be reasonable, again, given the creatures that we are.

I mean, this whole problem with "Truth", can send people down a rabbit hole. We can say some things about the world, which are subject to revision and refinement.

But there are far more questions than answers.

A global presence does not indicate aggression. — frank

You are right.

Britain was destroyed in WWII and the last solo act they tried at Suez in 56', was sternly rebuked by Eisenhower, who was stuck with the war in Korea. Since then, they essentially follow Washington's orders, with very marginal exceptions.

The US has been the world's peace keeper since WW2. As it declines, there will be turmoil. — frank

That's the way it's framed.

It was good for parts of Western Europe (though there were problems here, often glossed over), Australia and Japan.

Latin America, Africa, The Middle East and South East Asia might beg to differ.

I think the US has serious internal troubles it could fix first, instead of getting into everyone's business, especially in this day and age.

I think an alliance with Europe makes sense for certain circumstances. As would an alliance with any other country make sense for other circumstances.

Risking a nuclear war to make a statement is insane to me.

So you're reading that as a sign of American aggression in the present, instead if the result of global conditions throughout the 20th Century, which is what it really is. — frank

It's the condition of the US as of last year. If you can show me massive cuts in military spending, then you can say that US power is going down, literally.

If they maintain bases all over the world, there isn't a measurable decrease in power.

Not to mention the US is essentially the driver of Japanese and South Korean foreign policy and the vast majority of Western Europe too, to this day.

You're not making much sense to me at this point. — frank

You're saying that the reason Russia wants to invade Ukraine is because the US is in decline. I don't see the evidence for this claim.

The biggest factor I've seen, is that Ukraine want to join NATO. Which renders a hostile military force at the borders of Russia.

What should they say "yes thank you?"

That's comparing the US military to all the other ones in the world. Has the budget for the Pentagon gone down?

What does China emerging as the bigger market have to do with Russia's plan's with Ukraine? Russia's power has vastly diminished since the USSR.

I don't know how this has anything to do with the crisis in Ukraine.

If you weren't so hell bent on seeing the world through the lens of the Cuban missile crisis, you might notice the plethora of signs that the USA is in decline. Putin noticed it. That's why he's preparing to invade Ukraine. — frank

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive

Refusing to cooperate by not sending more weapons, as Germany has done. Asking for more diplomacy instead of causing tensions to rise by repeatedly saying an invasion is imminent.

Is wanting to stop escalations to a potential nuclear catastrophe funny somehow?

I'm missing in on the joke.

I don't disagree at all. I mean, for me everything is essentially a mystery, science included. It's not as if science makes sense, as I've been saying through-out this thread (we don't understand the world, physics is mathematical, math is...?, etc.) .

I have a conflict with Peirce's quote:

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."

I don't doubt colours exist, objects exist, music (for us) exists, etc. But my reason tells me otherwise. We add all these things to the world and would not exist as postulated by us, absent us. It's maddening because it's a constant conflict between feeling and reasons.

There have been some instances in which the EU has managed to stop the US doing its most possible damage, I'm thinking of the time the UK refused to join the US in bombing Syria, that stopped a large(er) scale operation from developing.

Not that the US and, in this case, even more Russia, didn't do its fair share of atrocities in Syria, but it could have been even worse, which is kind of hard to say given how bad Syria is now.

But I think there should be at least some attempts by a few EU countries to stop this inertia, something, is better than nothing, obviously.

But signs aren't good.

Historically, simplifying a great deal and looking at tendencies while skipping major figures, I think that Descartes invoked God as an assurance that we can't obviously be mistaken about our common beliefs. Though we can't explain mind, we can say a great deal about bodes.

Along comes Locke and says, we can't go that far, yes, ultimately, we are in the hands of the Almighty for ultimate causes, because we just don't understand them.

But already there are seeds that, by merely looking at ordinary objects, we have trouble, we can't really say if secondary qualities exist in the objects or not, but it doesn't matter for our practical affairs. Nor do we know essences - if they even exist.

Then Hume comes along and says, all we have empirical verifiable evidence for is constant conjunction, but this does not mean that's all there is to causality, it's merely what we can say with confidence about it.

Many things, including experiencing one object being the same after two different instances of perception are a "fiction" - his word - meaning, more than can be empirically verified, but a sensible postulate. Along with this, he points out that our individuating objects as one being different from another, is another fiction, useful, but not at all certain.

Beyond that, going through Kant and beyond, the project seems to me to simultaneously show how little we can say confidently about the world, while sticking to causal relations, connected by us and assumed to belong to the world - and we've had great success.

But as each major figure advances, the key is, as you say, being utterly baffled by what we assume to be true and realizing, after close scrutiny, that our common sense beliefs do not hold up to the mind-independent world. I think the case is both, our understanding is in fact incomplete and we have to catch ourselves from sweeping things under the rug. Today we hear people say "that obviously follows from learning/natural selection/laws of physics".

The problem here, is that the gap between physics and biology to the psychology of a human being, in terms of complexity, is just massive.

So, communist or not, America objects all the same to Russia selling gas and oil to Europe because it's about billions of dollars that US energy corporations could pocket while at the same time putting up oil and gas prices at home. A nice double profit for the monopolist clique, in other words. — Apollodorus

Absolutely. Though there's the extra factor of "nationalistic pride", that's just present in all confrontations between power states. It's natural, I suppose, but it's very dangerous. Sure, US moneyed interests want a bigger stake of the profits, but there's also the "you do what we say" element. Again, applies to all powerful states, in varying degrees.

So Putin may be a kind of dictator, but I think it is fair to say that he is defending Russia's interests (as well as his own). In any case, it is wrong to say that it's got nothing to do with oil and gas.

As I pointed out on the other thread, what tends to happen is that certain interest groups in America or Britain decide to label someone “enemy”, after which they mobilize NATO followed by scores of smaller countries that depend on the bigger guys for financial assistance or military “protection”. — Apollodorus

That's the way to view conflicts, I think. From the perspective of each states' elite interests. That's what drives foreign policy.

And what's ironic or strange or whatever word you want to use, is that, as soon as one enemy is dealt with or ignored, a new one pops up. Remember Obama making fun of Romney in 2012 for saying that he was focusing too much on Russia and was "living in the Cold War era". How quickly did those comments sour.

As regards Ukraine, its economic situation isn't exactly brilliant, so it is doubtful that it would be any worse under Russian control. What EU membership usually means for a country like Ukraine is that millions will emigrate to Germany, France, and other EU countries with stronger economies whilst its own economy will be taken over by multinational (mainly Anglo-American) corporations. — Apollodorus

Yeah, they have it very tough. It's not as if the EU is paradise, as an institution. Better than Russia, sure, but it's far from being ideal.

It's hard to say what Ukraine should do, in terms of how to compromise and how to have some element of autonomy, which they should have. Not an enviable position to be in.

On the other hand, you might note that the apple falling makes sense to you, but shouldn't. — Srap Tasmaner

It's close to this, not exactly though. The apple falling does make sense to us and probably should, given (probably, I'm totally guessing) elementary survival needs. If we needed to question the need for apples falling, we would probably be killed.

Or, in the case of the falling apple, there ought to be an explanation for why we don't find its behavior surprising. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes.

We see surprise in other intelligent animals rather intermittently and for very few phenomena.

The issue becomes if we begin to question this. Why do apples fall and not rise? There's nothing in experience that guarantees that apples won't go up next time they "break away" from a tree.

It's a bit tough to phrase out, but you more than get the gist here. I'm impressed. It's really about being baffled, I think. Most people - this isn't a criticism by the way - just aren't. Things work the way they do because that's what they do.

I get that attitude too, but it misses out or overlooks on important aspects about ourselves and the world.

And there again it's a question of how our various capacities hook up one with another -- not everything you understand can readily be put into words, for instance.

What then, after all, are we up to when doing philosophy? — Srap Tasmaner

Everybody has different interests. Some like to have clarity of thought, others want to unite the sciences. Many care about ethics, etc, etc.

Speaking for myself, I suppose it's taking the given and seeing that it's extremely far from being a "free lunch".

And, as you suggest, maybe we can't, but that's just the way it is, and the products of our imagination, in one sense, reach beyond what we can imagine, in another sense. If so, that in itself is an interesting result. — Srap Tasmaner

I think so.

I mean, it's the question Hawking asks: "what breathes fire into the equations"? They're mathematical theories that happen to link up with the world, somehow. That's modern physics.

We can come up with nice artistic illustrations that may help a bit. I like them, seeing equations only few people get doesn't really excite my mind.

On the other hand, the cognitive scientists are going to tell us that all we've ever understood are theories we generate unconsciously. But there may still be a difference in kind, if our "native" theorizing hooks up to particular cognitive capacities that our scientific theories don't. — Srap Tasmaner

It's hard to doubt that most of what we "process" goes on outside our immediate awareness.

For me, as pertaining to this essay and how I view the subject, is this: say you're at a park, seeing some people play football (soccer). They pass the ball one to other. We see a foot strike the ball with a certain force, we project the ball will go to the other person.

Say one of the people playing kicks the ball really hard and the ball goes off in the distance, that's not confusing. We get that, we "understand" at this level, that if a person kicks a rubber object, these things will follow.

The problem starts when we become puzzled about this common sense. It may even begin by seeing an apple falling from a tree and asking why does it drop instead of going up or shooting sideways?

After that, all bets are off.

There are many factors, of which I don't know of, but you bring up which are important.

It's not unlike Venezuela in some respects. Why do major powers care about Venezuela so much and not Colombia? They rabble on and on about "communism", but it's about oil. No oil, no big power would care about Venezuela.

If we think about it, Ukraine has nothing to do with the North Atlantic or NATO, and Russian occupation or control of Ukraine poses absolutely no threat to the national security of America or Britain. So, why are these two countries leading the crusade against Russia, with some even calling for regime change? — Apollodorus

Exactly right. What's the big threat? For Ukraine, I can understand the fear. But to think that Russia is going to pose any kind of military threat to the West, is incoherent at best.

If Russia loses a war with NATO and its regime is toppled, US and UK energy corporations will be the first to get their hands on Russian resources. And, possibly, China, if China remains neutral or sides with NATO. — Apollodorus

Well, here is my fear. How long could a war last between Russia and NATO before nukes are used? It's not as if Russia can beat NATO and would stand for mass causality loss and national humiliation.

It will be interesting to see if China shifts its views, as the situation in Taiwan is pretty bad too. Not as bad as Ukraine right now, but not good.

It's very hard to say. Hume, for instance, argues that what we get are perceptions and form ideas out of these. But for many ideas, the imagination must play a role, such as registering an object as being the same throughout time.

So we could have a realism in which we take what we directly experience as "more true" to what's in the world than what our ideas add to this. But one must imagine that when great new theories are put forth, it's only possible because of our imagination, thus, there's something about it which is more accurate as to the nature of the world than perception.

Animals can't formulate theories and are stuck in the present. As we gain sophistication in terms of mental power, we pierce further in the universe.

So I don't know. Maybe imagination has nothing to do with what's out there, and what matters are theories that get things right, we happen to get help by ways of using it. On the other hand, perhaps there's no understanding at all, without imagination.

We don't know enough to be able to say definitely in such a dense topic.

I want to say, first, that I approve of your sense of wonder. — Srap Tasmaner

Thanks. I fully agree with Raymond Tallis when he says "In the beginning was astonishment."



That looks accurate to me and it makes sense, once we move away from intuitions - including "naïve realism" - to see what's "really" there, we lack the capacity to form a good picture as it forces us into a world which we don't experience as science describes.

We see red and blue, not photons hitting the eye. We see stable objects, not objects in two states at once, etc.

As for us yet not having a good metaphor, that's true. We cannot shrink to QM scales and are forced to use analogies from the manifest image, like dropping a pebble on a lake, and speaking of "waves" in the quantum world in a similar-ish manner, just to get a picture.

Even this image is not quite correct, so we need to get an even stranger analogy and distort that to some extent, to even get any "picture" at all.

Here's actually a very good video directed at newbies to QM (I'm not far from being one), but I think the imagery used here may approximate what you have in mind. He's an excellent popularizer, I think:

The "useful imagery" begins at 3:00 min, but especially at 4:40.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlEovwE1oHI&t=500s

As for your last sentence, that's likely really crucial. This is where Cartesian "creativity" comes in or the "imagination" as Hume uses the phrase.

Descartes in no small measure postulated his second substance in an attempt to try and make sense of this, as even by his standards, mechanistic materialism could not explain it. For Hume, the imagination is a mystery.

But it's fundamental to human beings, maybe our most unique trait. It's what we do almost all the time. When it's done by smart people, it can lead to deeper understanding - as Einstein's "happiest thought" demonstrated.

Is this what you think Chomsky means with his "mysteries"? — SophistiCat

It's studying what the classics - up till Newton - and a bit beyond him, took to be a fact about the world, that we could understand it. We can't. What we can understand are theories about the world, which do give us interesting insights - as seen by modern physics. But it's way less than what they (Descartes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Leibniz, etc.) would have wanted and thought possible.

So that we can't understand the world, as opposed to theories about it, is the mystery. Now as you say, we take it for granted, it's not a surprise, because we've gotten used to it.

The claim itself is unremarkable, considering that it has been known and studied for decades. But the implication of the unintelligibility of the world and impossibility of knowledge is nonsense. Intelligibility and knowledge aren't about innate intuitions, or else we would have to say that pretty much our entire body of so-called knowledge isn't actually intelligible to us! This is just language on holiday. — SophistiCat

That's true, now. Not then.

I also agree it is nonsense to argue about the "impossibility of knowledge". Chomsky doesn't say that at all. Otherwise, why would he bother developing linguistics?

Unintelligibility of the world, not about theories concerning it.

He written a decent amount about "language going on holiday". This video is less than an hour long, but he discusses much of what he takes to be confusions in contemporary philosophy, largely based on mistaken technical notions. I'll post it here for anyone interested, but I don't expect anyone to see it all, there's already too much in the essay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHS1NraVsAc

But whose standards are these? Who ever thought that a newborn babe, so to speak, could intuitively grasp how the world works, down to the very foundations?

This is why I am skeptical that this is really what Chomsky was driving at - that he was even driving at any such specific thesis. He seems perfectly happy and engaged with his dilettante notes on the history and philosophy of science, but I don't see him pushing hard for some grand claim. — SophistiCat

By the standards of essentially all the early modern scientists. They had what we still have, an innate "mechanistic" understanding of the world, they thought the world worked like this.

Chomsky is simply quoting distinguished figures from Descartes to Newton, implying he agrees with them. The sources he gives are easy to find and I think back up his interpretation.

It's perhaps difficult now, because we've advanced quite a lot in science, in terms of technique and theory formation. We take too much for granted.

I suppose one should keep in mind that they lived in a time in which they believed in God and that the world existed for a reason. It wouldn't make sense for God to create a world which we can't understand - save by theories about it. We now don't use God.

I think the same arguments can be rephrased by using "nature" instead of God. But this may be a reason for thinking this essay is missing something.

Well, evolution is notorious for its lack of foresight. I also don't think that there was any simple and specific reason for this outcome. — SophistiCat

Yep. Maybe no reasons at all, just chance and luck. If we are the only creature with the capacity for knowledge in the entire universe, which could be the case, then that's pretty mind boggling to me.

Sapir-Whorf has been studied for decades, it turns out to not hold up to scrutiny, which is not to say that different languages may express very specific things differently, for instance, the Aboriginals instead of having a word for "red" say "like blood", and so on. Similar curiosities arise in different cultures.

Correct.

The point I wanted to make is that they pretend to be "objective", but when it comes to war, they never cease to find one they don't like.

That's what's likely happening, we'll find out soon enough I'd guess.

It's very dangerous. I mean, they have to know the consequences of fanning the flames, this isn't Afghanistan anymore.

Europe must step up for once and be assertive, if they care about living.



Ah, ok.

Thanks frank. I'll pass for now, but if I find myself being confused, I'll shoot you a PM. :up:

The Pentagon doesn't control the Western media. Beware of click bait — frank

CNN and MSNBC are an extension of Pentagon PR. Have you ever seen them not wanting go to war? Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, China Rand now Russia.

The one guy who spoke against the Iraq war was fired. Donahue, I believe.

It's not equivalent because the US is a superpower. Russia is not. — frank

Russia has nukes. If a war broke out, I don't see how there isn't an analogy here.

Actually - we can use a real life example, which serves as direct evidence here - the Cuban Missile Crisis highlights just how high the stakes go if a nearby country joins with an enemy.

I don't think so. Putin is not the victim here. If you need to believe he is for some reason, so be it. — frank

What I'm saying is that there's rarely innocence in International Relations when it comes to powerful states.

Because the issue is framed as "Russia bad", "NATO good". That's not real life. I always think it's a good exercise to think "how would I think if I were Russian, or Ukrainian, etc.?"

That's not done nearly enough in Western media, imo.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, one of the conditions for its dissolution was that a promise was made to Russia that "NATO would not move an inch to the East". Well, now NATO is knocking on Ukraine's door.

Sure the US would want to get its citizens out.

But consider this, would the US want Mexico to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? This is a very rough equivalent of NATO for China and Russia.

I think it's clear that the US wouldn't like it, for obvious reasons.

I think if diplomacy was considered more seriously, we needn't have gotten here.

I lean to StreetlightX's approach here in general, though I would express things in a different manner, perhaps emphasizing different things.

Yes, that's what the US keeps saying, that there will be consequences if Russia invades Ukraine. As I see it, they'd have to be crazier than the Taliban to do that, given who they're up against. I mean, it would be inconceivable to me that they would risk it.

It may happen anyway, but I'd be totally shocked.

I hope Germany can help tone down the situation.

Familiar story.

Listen, I agree with the overall thrust of your argument, I don't think the US, has any business with this Ukraine situation. All one hears about is how bad Putin is. Yeah, he's bad, but that doesn't cause a thought to pass through anyone's mind. Everyone nods and adds another insult.

That's easy to do. Much harder is to speak of the many crimes committed by the US, far worse ones.

Having said that, agreed with it, and always keeping it in mind, I do think that Ukraine - and any country really - has a right to security, in case something goes wrong with Russia. If I were Ukrainian, I would like to know my country will be ready for defense, in case anything arises, which might happen, given the current tensions.

Russia, far weaker than the US, is interested in expanding the power they have over each region, that's just a fact. That's what power centers do. But an invasion would be total lunacy, and I don't think Putin is a suicidal maniac. He's a war criminal and a authoritarian, but not suicidal.

What doesn't help, is having NATO go to war with Russia, there are several options to consider first, many of them. But power centers don't like to "look weak".

Each side needs a way to posture to each respective population to "look strong", regardless of how's at fault. I don't know how that's going to come about.

It's mad.

:sweat:

Finally, a post I agree with you with! It's been a while! :joke:

No, but seriously, it was even reported that the Ukrainian PM told Biden to tone down the rhetoric. I think Germany and France have to step it up big time and lower tensions.

If Europe merely goes along with US admirals, then it's hard to prevent a war.

I think this can only be stopped if they can find a solution in which each side saves face to the public.

Not making a "both sides are equally wrong" claim. Diplomatically, you need to give something to each side.

Yeah, I also agree that I wish this thread would close sooner rather than later. We're going to be in suspense for some time though...

I don't like Putin. He's authoritarian, brutish, savage and all other insults which are appropriately thrown his way. That doesn't mean that I think the US Administration is much better - in fact, in regard to foreign policy, arguably worse, due to having much more capacity for the use of force.

This for me isn't a "I'm with X side", I understand others will feel differently. If I were Ukrainian I may very well have a different opinion, likewise if I were Russian, I would likely have a different perspective.

Using "realpolitik", I don't think any powerful state would want an enemy military force at its border - it doesn't make any sense. Like, the US would not like Mexico to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

I think it's sensible to demand that Ukraine not join NATO.

At the same time, I also think it makes sense for Ukraine to ask for help on its borders to Europe.

But now this has gotten too big, and we aren't speaking about rifles anymore.

I hope cool heads prevail. I just don't like such situations to arise with such frequency, as cool heads will eventually not prevail, and then we're all in serious trouble.

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: