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.

You are saying that you don't surmise that "reason has a gender" is that correct? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Yes, the faculty of reason is not related to gender.

I don't get the impression that reason has a gender.

On a serious not, though, it is true that even today (not even mentioning the Western tradition), women tend not to be too interested in these kinds of subjects. Not that most men are either, but proportionally it's still very skewed to males.

It's maybe not unlike the phenomena that women like to do work with children on a higher proportion that men.

Again - generalities - but, curious. I wish more women did like philosophy, not limited to ethics.

This sounds awfully close to Lacan's conception on the subject. You'd only be missing what he calls "the symbolic", the other two are as stated.

We could call money a useful fiction. Something which is considered valuable solely by our considering pieces of paper to be of worth.

I think that your distinction between real imaginary and imaginary real is not needed. You can use one term to encompass both ideas.

:up:

Thanks.

Yes, I think this essay is very important, it points to historical aspects in philosophy which are barely known.

Because of this, a lot of debate arises that are based on incoherent ideas.

If you have any questions, need clarification or want more sources or videos or anything like that, I'll be happy to help.

According to Google Ngram, the noun "race" appeared before 1700, and had little in common with our use of the term. "Race" could apply to the ancestors of a Scottish family, for example. The adjectives "racist", "racism", and "racial" did not appear in print until the middle of the 20th century. Our categories were not the categories of Hume's time. — Bitter Crank

I didn't know that. Thanks for informing me.

He thought some groups of people were superior to others in certain respects, thus speaks of the lack of creativity in black people and things of that nature.

On the other hand, had he been born in the middle of the 20th century, I doubt he would believe the same things. He'd likely have other questionable views as do we, if we are honest.

We can't know what biases we have which will be considered objectionable.

The founders of the Imperial College of London, Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin's Bulldog) and Alfred Beit, a German Jew, who richly endowed the Imperial College, are being scrutinized for rejection because they fail the test of purity--the same test that most people prior to the 21st Century (if then) would fail--the test of having the proper progressive anti-racist views of the present moment — Bitter Crank

This is sad. It's an inaccurate portrayal of history, which not only should be remembered for its great moments and figures, which existed no doubt, but also to see how much we've progressed in some areas of social life, not others. Erasing the past for such things is Disneyfication.

In 2222, the participants of The Philosophy Forum may look back to our time and say, "The people of 2022 had appalling views about artificial intelligence and mechanized beings." (In their time, "humanist", "humane", and "humanism" -- never mind David Hume -- had come to mean something much different, much more negative and socially destructive, than those words mean to us.) Are the pricks of 2222 superior to the pricks of 2022? No. — Bitter Crank

Absolutely.

Or the way we treat many animals and plants. Still lots to improve with feminism, racism, classism and things we can't even see are wrong.

Like @Wayfarer said, this current trend of hyper PC-ism, while in some cases good in intent, is misunderstanding human nature.

We tend to have this tendency to want to look for Saints - people who are morally perfect - might as well look for a pet ghost while we're at it.

There are no saints here. I've read that perhaps Spinoza was an extremely ethical person, but surely he must have shared a few of his societies quite appalling views.

I think Hume should be mentioned in this conversation. It's quite clear that almost everybody who knew him, really liked him, he was optimistic, witty, sharp, honest, etc. Just reading him, one gets the sense that he was a unique personality and a good person.

Yet he was also a racist.

But, if we are going to have the standards we have today, apply to the important figures of the past, we won't read anything.

We can't. It's part of being the creatures we are. For Kant, roughly, the thing in itself is an object of thought. For Schopenhauer it was something which we are acquainted with by being creatures with experience and understanding.

It's a very difficult topic.

Well, it it's modern form, correct. However, Berkeley pointed it out in a forceful manner. As did Schopenhauer and Kant, to name a few. Without us, reality is extremely nebulous.

I'm not downplaying QM at all, though we should keep in mind the many layers of the world and how explanation in one domain need not translate into another.

The problem of observation remains intact on all domains, I think.

I think we should be skeptical of drawing too much massive conclusions about QM. It's true that the particle-wave phenomena is strange and utterly unintelligible to us - to the extent that some even postulate other universes to make sense of it.

But the manifest world we live in, that is, the world of everyday experience, does not appear to follow QM at the level of large objects, for that Newton and to a somewhat lesser extent, Einstein suffices.

We are still left with puzzles about a tree falling in the forest, and what ontological status it has if no one is around to hear it, but it's a stretch to tie this to QM.

It's obvious to state, but easy to forget, but QM focuses on extremely, extremely small stuff. There are experiments now with supposedly visible objects following this strange behavior, but it drops off eventually.

Both men are in a league of their own, and their influence on literally everything in the Western world (and, now, the entire world) is really beyond comprehension. — Xtrix

:up:



I don't know much about the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages, but I'm guessing that given the socio-economic dimensions, the church would want some way to expand theology in some manner, and it just so happened that Aristotle was around to be interpreted or abused however way the church authorities wanted.

Perhaps one could make a case that Aristotle actually dampened down some of the more irrational aspects of theological dogma, but someone with knowledge about this could say either way.

Not that Plato being chosen instead of Aristotle would've necessarily been better, he can be abused too.

But placed in proper context, these two figures are among the most important people in all human history, it's truly remarkable.

It get's quite tricky with him, because he does appear to imply that in having experience, we are acquainted with nature of the world itself, through our bodies. As I understand him when I read him, and my interpretation has been heavily influenced by Magee, it's analogous to the idea that, say, in moving my arm, or breathing, and noticing this, would be like to feel what nature as a whole feels as will.

To put it less obscurely, if I stone could feel, it would not be unlike the knowledge we have of ourselves when we move our arms or walk: it says little, but then at bottom, the will is a simple striving.

What makes it complicated is this, he says:

"Meanwhile it is to be carefully noted, and I have always kept it in mind, that even the inward observation we have of our own will still does not by any means furnish an exhaustive and adequate knowledge of the thing-in-itself… In the first place, such knowledge is tied to the form of the representation; it is perception or observation, and as such falls apart into subject and object… Hence even in inner knowledge there still occurs a difference between the being-in-itself of its object and the observation or perception of this object in the knowing subject."

WWR Vol.2 pp. 196-197


So we are are a step removed from the thing-in-itself, our experience of will is the closest we can get to the nature of the whole, but between our experience of the will and nature itself, there could be a difference larger than Schopenhauer assumes.

I think Philip Mainlander discusses this topic quite well. It might be that we have to speak of wills in the plural, and if this is the case, then the knowing subject and willing are whole only to themselves, and not to nature at large.

But as you say, there is no logical contradiction is what Schopenhauer is saying, that I can see.

Agreed.

:up:

I tried to attribute a metaphysics to him in my work. :groan:

That quote is practically a classic for me. The issue is that, his conclusions seem magical to many, who think innate ideas, physic continuity and other ideas, can't be explained by current science (maybe ever).

People who disagree with him tend to be externalists, which is contrary to what scientists actually do.

It's in the final part of this essay, but is only touched upon. You can continue here or start a new thread.

Both are fine with me.

I'm thinking a few of the chapters in New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind as well as the first two chapters in Power and Prospects are really good on this topic.

Or whatever essay you have in mind. It's all good.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2254605

As far as I know, I don't believe they have a "ordinary camera" on it, by that meaning any type of camera which can give us images like we got images from Pluto.

It's going to have a device that allows it to see infrared, which will be used as a picture, I'm assuming computers do some extra work to make the images look good. Unclear on how this process works.

:clap: :clap:

Now we wait for the final cool down stage for several months, and hope we are around to get some data back!

percept is usually understood as the product of mind's interpretation of sensory stimuli, the awareness of an object or event, such as grass outside your window or a car zooming by. This is distinct from the stimulus or the raw sense data (if that's a thing). And it is again distinct from the "what-it-is-likeness" of experience, which is what Nagel, Searle, Chalmers, etc. put forward as the phenomenal experience, or qualia, the thing outside the reach of physical accounting (unless we wave our hands and invoke something like "panpsychism"). (If all this seems confusing, then I've made my point.) — SophistiCat

I think that those are perhaps too many distinctions, which makes the topic more difficult than it needs be. The first sentence you write makes sense to me, and is what I take Russell to be talking about.

"This is distinct from the stimulus or the raw sense data". Why isn't the sensory stimulus raw sense data?

The whole "what it's likeness" is a complication here. It's supposed to point out that "there is something it is like" for a person (you, me, anyone) to see the colour red, or read this sentence. I can see red and am writing and reading this sentence, is there "something it is like to do this"? Sure, I guess, I don't think it says much, but I don't doubt my experiences.

Yes, Chomsky says little about this, outside of mentioning this quote of Russell's or citing Strawson's essays and books, he doesn't see a big problem here.

As far as he is concerned, materialism has been dead since at least Newton, but not for any reasons having to do with the "hard problem." — SophistiCat

Because then it meant that it was an intuitive description of the world - and crucially excluded the mental.

Since that doesn't hold up any longer, then if we want to use the word "physical", we can adopt Strawson's use of the word and say, that the physical is everything that is, unless someone can say way something isn't physical. This includes experience, at the highest grade of certainty.

Or we can say that physicalism is what physics studies and that experience is an illusion or not real. This is incoherent to me, but, it's an option.

By then it becomes terminological, and not too substantive, I think.

To be clear, it's not that consciousness isn't a hard problem - it is - but so is gravity, electromagnetism, creativity, free will, and so on. There isn't the hard problem, but many.

Well, what the argument means to show is that phenomenal experience (which p-z's hypothetically lack) cannot be accounted for by materialism/physicalism as presently understood, and therefore materialism/physicalism is false/incomplete. (How it does that is what I don't quite understand.) — SophistiCat

That's correct. Not false, simply not all-encompassing.

Why don't they ask for a "physical explanation" of why music makes us feel good? Or a "physical explanation" of why we have dreams? And so on.

It's becomes a bit silly. Physics is the study of abstract properties of matter, and this phenomena are simple structures, nothing as complex as biology. It isn't reasonable to expect it to explain things way outside its purview.

I mean, it helps to read Russell, Locke, Hume, Cudworth in addition to all you mention, lectures, interviews and so on.

Not that he can't be understood without all the extra work, far from it, but as you read these people, you realize that what he cites and interprets, tends to be spot on. Which doesn't mean one can't disagree with him, of course you can.

It's just that there's a lot of misunderstanding about Newton, Descartes and Hume in academia, it's surprising when you read primary sources or detailed scholarship.

Thanks, appreciated. :cool:

He's speaking of naturalism a la scienticism, think Dennett or the Churchlands. On this view, then UG does seems at odds with "naturalism". But that naturalism is not the one that actually exists.

One label Chomsky uses consistently in philosophy is "methodological naturalism". However, he is not of the camp that "evolution explains everything" at all. He cites a very interesting article by Lewontin related to this.

(Chomsky doesn't say much about the subject in this essay, except perhaps where he brings up Mary's Room puzzle. But here, as elsewhere, he just writes down some notes and quotes, adds that he disagrees with some influential analyses of the problem, and leaves it at that. The relevance of this discussion to the rest of the essay is unclear.) — SophistiCat

You're right, because he also doesn't see what the big issue is with qualia. He agrees with Russell here:

Russell held that there are “three grades of certainty. The highest grade belongs to my own percepts; the second grade to the percepts of other people; the third to events which are not percepts of anybody," constructions of the mind established in the course of efforts to make sense of what we perceive.”

Then he goes on to say: "...we recognize their existence [of our own percepts] , at the highest grade of certainty in fact."

Both quotes on pp.181.

One could call a percept a "quale", but Chomsky doesn't. A percept means a moment of experience, such as you reading this sentence as you currently are. Or looking at the window and seeing green grass, or hearing a car zoom by, etc.

I'm unclear why this is confusing, outside of the terminology itself. It's been overwhelmingly taken for granted up until the 20th century, when it suddenly became a problem to a small group of people.

Panpsychism is just glorified magical thinking, in my opinion. It's not the exoticism of the concept that bothers me, but its explanatory nullity. — SophistiCat

I agree. I studied it for several years, but was not convinced, also on your grounds of it not explaining much.

I just don't understand the argument, i.e. what it is that conceivability actually implies and why we should care. — SophistiCat

I thought the whole argument was meant to show that experience isn't necessary for a human being to exist as they do. But I also do not see the force to this argument, nor understand the attention given to it.

People who sleepwalk are not examples of P-zombies, because they don't behave like conscious people in all outward respects. — SophistiCat

That's likely true.

Yep, that's correct.

He's very open minded and considers almost all approaches to consciousness.

Others who use this term are misled by it, as if experience were "not physical" or "spooky".