Existence as the referent of true statements
George Dance
ontological existence:
(T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of a true statement.
In the process, I wrote an argument against that as a criterion, on
which I'd appreciate any constructive feedback.
1. The square circle does not exist.
2. Assume that T is true. Then:
2a. The square circle is not a triangle.
2b. Therefore, "The square circle is not a triangle." is a true
statement. (Def. "true statement")
2c. Therefore, a true statement can be made about the square
circle.
2d. Therefore, the square circle is the referent of a true
statement. (Def. T)
2e, Therefore, the square circle exists.
3. If T is true, then the square circle exists. (2)
4. T is not true. (1,3)
Chris Degnen
> I've been recently thinking about one possible criterion of
> ontological existence:
>
> (T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of a true statement.
>
> In the process, I wrote an argument against that as a criterion, on
> which I'd appreciate any constructive feedback.
>
> 1. The square circle does not exist.
"The 'impossible thing' does not exist."
The 'impossible thing' is a referent of a true statement.
Despite seeming to be a 'thing', (i.e. a concept), since its predicate
is that it is impossible, it has no possibility of ever being actual -
of being made or discovered - so this supposedly conceptual thing is
not valid. Impossible things do not have internally consistent
concepts and so do not exist even conceptually.
Jim Burns
> I've been recently thinking about one possible
> criterion of ontological existence:
>
> (T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of
> a true statement.
>
> In the process, I wrote an argument against that
> as a criterion, on which I'd appreciate any
> constructive feedback.
Feedback: Your argument seems clear enough. Things that
do not exist can be referred to by true statements
(such as this one). This contradicts T.
I don't understand why T would be a good candidate for
a criterion of ontological existence. What would an
argument /for/ using T look like?
Is "ontological existence" just a fancier way to
say existence within (or membership in)
the universe of discourse? If that is all it means,
that we can speak of, for example, square circles,
then T is obviously true, by definition, it seems to me,
and your argument below is using a different sense of
the word "exist" -- perhaps "mathematical existence".
If the ontological universe and the universe of discourse
are different things, then "square circles" are
inevitable; that is, "the things that we can speak of"
will not coincide with "the things that exist (ontologically?)".
I don't see why we would want it otherwise. Note that
"things we can speak of which do not exist" includes
"some things that we /must/ speak of in order to learn
/whether/ they exist", such as even integers larger than
two which are not the sum of two primes.
In any case, T seems to be either obviously true or
obviously false, depending on your definition of ontological
existence. In neither case does it seem particularly
useful.
Jim Burns
William Elliot
> I've been recently thinking about one possible criterion of
> ontological existence:
>
> (T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of a true statement.
>
Your imagination dances around the philosophical absurd.
Thus your imaginary dancing exists.
A graviton has not yet been discovered.
Thus the graviton exists and you get the Nobel prize in physics.
Errol
If you believe that ontological arguement validates existence, then
you don't need the sequence of steps, but then you must believe that a
paradox exists and that is not logical.
I do not think that 2e follows from 2d
2b could just as well have been "The square circle does not exist."
and it would be then by your reckoning both true and false
simultaneously
ZerkonXXXX
> I've been recently thinking about one possible criterion of ontological
> existence:
>
> (T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of a true statement.
Ontologically speaking, you are off to a very poor start here by resting
conclusions or making a position with an abstraction (T). I understand
this is commonly done and why, nonetheless this is a version of
'constructive feedback'.
The fact that "The square circle does not exist" is not a self contained
self-referencing truth that can be then made as (T).
First and last, a square exists as physical definition. This physicality
holds the truth not the word as only symbol ie 'square'. Same with
circle. Since a square circle can not exist as physical, any argument to
the contrary, however designed, is either invalid, of bad design or, at
best, becomes paradox.
You can judge which of these may best apply to your position.
mrdilligent
From: Jim Burns
<<George Dance wrote:
> I've been recently thinking about one possible
> criterion of ontological existence:>>
.. .
I like the argument below; it shows some real thought.
But we must take care to realize that any statement, in any medium, is
just an EXPRESSION of the mind. There is no such thing as a true
statement. The statement may express a truth in a mind, or a
falsehood, or any combination of these. A statement which expresses
something actual is a "true statement" only because the mind doing the
expresssing is thinking something actual.
Accuracy, then, lies in the mind; either it represents something
actuual, or some abbrogation of the actual, or a depraved version of
the actual, or just plain a figment of that mind's imagination, an
hallucination. And this is a matter of mental health.
To get to the example itself, there is not only no such thing as a
"square circle," there is no such thing as a circle, period. The
circle is an invention of the human mind, one which got initiated back
around the beginning of civilization.
The felled tree trunk was the first "circle" (or "cone," if you
prefer). Precivilized humans used to use them to roll heavy objects
along the ground. Then it was decided that slabs cut from the tree
trunk could do much the same for lighter objects. Trouble is, tree
trunks and the slabs cut from them are not circular; they have bumps
and angles on the outside of their perimeters. So it was decided to
plane these perimeters to one continous arc so that they would move
more smoothly along the ground.
As it always happens, though, over the years and generations, people
became used to such "wheels," and got very interested in what they
themselves had made, while forgetting that they---man---had made
them. The early Egyptian civilization intensely studied these
"circles" and came up with "pi" for calculating the perimeter of these
"circles." Thousands of years later, at about the time of Kepler, it
was assumed that the cosmos itself was made of many circles, "perfect
circles," at that.
Not true; there is not a circle anywhere to be found other than those
made by man. The sun is a lumpy blob, all planets are lumpy blobs,
and so on. It is hardly a wonder that "pi" is such an "irrational"
number.
Now that is the truth, the truth in my mind, and so the statement
which expresses it is a "true statement."
Here is the rest of Jim Burns" argument:
Jim Burns
> I've been recently thinking about one possible criterion of
> ontological existence:
George, I would appreciate it if you would take a few words
to explain what you mean by "ontological existence". How is
it different from "existence" (if it is)? Does zero have
ontological existence? Do you? Do married bachelors?
Does Anselm's God? Thanks in advance.
> (T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of a
> true statement.
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm not a fan
of criterion T. Nevertheless, I propose improving it to
criterion T2:
(T2) Something exists (ontologically) /if/ it can be the
referent of a statement.
I find it more reasonable that being a referent of a statement
could be /one way/ we "discover" something exists (hence, "if"),
rather than being the referent of a statement encapsulating
all that there is to say about existence ("iff"). Of course,
this doesn't get rid of "square circles".
The requirement that the statement be true seems to be redundant.
Given a statement referring to X, I think it should be obvious
that a true statement also referring to X is possible.
> In the process, I wrote an argument against that as a
> criterion, on which I'd appreciate any constructive feedback.
I offered my feedback in an earlier post. I had no
problem with the argument I see (I still don't), but
I realize now that I am left feeling lost at sea
because I am not sure what the argument is about.
Also, what would an argument /for/ T (or T2) look
like?
Jim Burns
Jim Burns
> Date: Sat, Oct 17 2009 11:35 am
> From: Jim Burns
> <<George Dance wrote:
>
>> I've been recently thinking about one possible
>> criterion of ontological existence:>>
>
Thank you for your kind words.
>
> But we must take care to realize that any statement, in any medium, is
> just an EXPRESSION of the mind. There is no such thing as a true
> statement. The statement may express a truth in a mind, or a
> falsehood, or any combination of these. A statement which expresses
> something actual is a "true statement" only because the mind doing the
> expresssing is thinking something actual.
I think you oversimplify here what a statement is.
In previous ages, I might have mentioned spirits or gods
as counter-examples -- today, well, what about artificial
intelligence? Even without AI, we have today many automated
processes that make "statements" that are "understood" quite
well by other automated processes. (I use scare quotes
because I anticipate objections, but, really, what is a
significant difference between machine- and human-generated
statements, other than an arbitrary boundary?)
And why is the mind doing the expressing thinking
something actual? Not because of anything in the mind
(in general) but because of what is or is not out in
the world.
> Accuracy, then, lies in the mind; either it represents something
> actuual, or some abbrogation of the actual, or a depraved version of
> the actual, or just plain a figment of that mind's imagination, an
> hallucination. And this is a matter of mental health.
>
> To get to the example itself, there is not only no such thing as a
> "square circle," there is no such thing as a circle, period. The
> circle is an invention of the human mind, one which got initiated back
> around the beginning of civilization.
When you say that there is no such thing as a circle, you
are campaigning for a particular sense of "existence", perhaps
the one in which you and I exist and Sherlock Holmes never has.
However, there are other senses of "exist" which also have
their uses. In particular, there is one for which square
circles do not exist but round circles do.
I think your campaigning would be more effective if you
would outline the advantages of your sense of "exist"
being the sole sense used, rather than just asserting
that it is so.
>
> The felled tree trunk was the first "circle" (or "cone," if you
> prefer). Precivilized humans used to use them to roll heavy objects
> along the ground. Then it was decided that slabs cut from the tree
> trunk could do much the same for lighter objects. Trouble is, tree
> trunks and the slabs cut from them are not circular; they have bumps
> and angles on the outside of their perimeters. So it was decided to
> plane these perimeters to one continous arc so that they would move
> more smoothly along the ground.
>
> As it always happens, though, over the years and generations, people
> became used to such "wheels," and got very interested in what they
> themselves had made, while forgetting that they---man---had made
> them. The early Egyptian civilization intensely studied these
> "circles" and came up with "pi" for calculating the perimeter of these
> "circles." Thousands of years later, at about the time of Kepler, it
> was assumed that the cosmos itself was made of many circles, "perfect
> circles," at that.
>
> Not true; there is not a circle anywhere to be found other than those
> made by man. The sun is a lumpy blob, all planets are lumpy blobs,
> and so on. It is hardly a wonder that "pi" is such an "irrational"
> number.
This is a reasonable history of the concept of "circle".
It seems to me that something very like this is true.
We will not see a true circle anywhere, you point out.
But your same story points out why we developed the concept
of circle. How do you suppose that we will manage
without it?
By the way, "pi" can also be called transcendental, which
I find even more suggestive.
>
> Now that is the truth, the truth in my mind, and so the statement
> which expresses it is a "true statement."
What you have expressed agrees with what is in your
mind (I will grant), /but/ that is usually taken to
mean you are not lying, /not/ that what you say is true.
If you disagree with me, I need only point out that
this is the truth in /my/ mind. If you do not concede
the point to me (and I hope you do not, really), then
our impasse can only be resolved out in the world we
hold in common.
Jim Burns
mrdilligent
From: Jim Burns
<<(I use scare quotes
because I anticipate objections, but, really, what is a
significant difference between machine- and human-generated
statements, other than an arbitrary boundary?)>>
You are a smart man to have anticipated objections! I hope I
delineated (in a simplified way, of course) the difference between
machine and living organism (such as man), and therefore the
difference between their "statements."
To my thinking, a statement can only be generated by a living
organism. A living tree can make its own statement, but an artificial
tree cannot; it can only be a HUMAN statement about the human self.
That said, humans can make statements in many media: language, of
course, and mathematics; also drawing or painting or scupting; also in
the choice of clothing one wears, the car one chooses to drive, and so
on. A human can make statements even in the food he cooks!
<<And why is the mind doing the expressing thinking
something actual? Not because of anything in the mind
(in general) but because of what is or is not out in
the world.>>
Yes, of course, to a degree. It can also think about existential
issues (inside his skin) and express these mind-contents in
statements. But without a MIND, there could be no thinking, even
though there could be what is or is not out in the world.
> To get to the example itself, there is not only no such thing as a
> "square circle," there is no such thing as a circle, period. The
> circle is an invention of the human mind, one which got initiated back
> around the beginning of civilization.
<<When you say that there is no such thing as a circle, you
are campaigning for a particular sense of "existence", perhaps
the one in which you and I exist and Sherlock Holmes never has.
However, there are other senses of "exist" which also have
their uses. In particular, there is one for which square
circles do not exist but round circles do.>>
I am not campaigning for anything, unless it be the simple, and oft-
overlooked, truth. As for the word _existence_, it is a badly
misused as well as overused word. In the field of philosophy over the
generations, it has been tangled into the most tightly interwoven
knots.
I once asked a physicist friend of mine if he thought the existence of
God could be analytically proven by set theory; I had in mind a kind
of "Venn diagram" of three circles one of which God (and the universe)
existed but did not crosspartition with human mind; another of which
God was a figment of human imagination which did not crosspartition
with the first set (but did not preclude the first set, either), and
the third a crosspartitioning of the first two sets---something like
that. That was before _existence_ had become such a completely bunged-
up word used by all people, not just a tiny handful of zaney
academics.
Now I have a very different, but very complex, understanding of
existence, with or without the word _existence_. Too complex to lay
out here. But to be simple, does a unicorn exist? No, it does not
and never did exist. Even the brickabrack and toys shaped like a
unicorn does not render the unicorn existence; these are just glazed
clay figurines (which do exist), or stuffed cloth shapes, or
whatever. Sherlock Holmes never existed; he "is" a fictional
character in books, which do exist.
Circles---and all items of human technology, from the first
prehistoric adzes---do exist, but as man's technology, not as
cosmoterrestrial reality. Unicorns and Sherlock Holmes are not
included in man's technology, as humanly delightful as they may be.
We come next to ideas: Do they exist? Yes, some as delusions, some
as distortions of reality (man-made or cosmoterrestrial), some as
facts about man-made reality and some as facts about cosmoterrestrial
reality. What we ostentatiously call "mathematics" is an overall
idea, and as such exists---as each of the above categories, depending
on the idea. But the existence of ideas are METAPHYSICAL. Not made
of a quark's worth of matter.
So physical things exist, and metaphysical entities exist. Assaying
the truth of the first set is pretty easy; not so with the second
set. This is where Kevin's professor's "logical certainty" comes in
handy.
<<I think your campaigning would be more effective if you
would outline the advantages of your sense of "exist"
being the sole sense used, rather than just asserting
that it is so.>>
I would like to think that my outlining here and elsewhere is
OBJECTIVE, and not subjective or partial to any cultural convention.
So if I seem to "assert," it is either for the sake of simplicity (the
thought details that go into such a conclusion are myriad), or it is
because it hasn't occurred to me that the reader may not have gone
through equivalent analyses.
. . .
<<This is a reasonable history of the concept of "circle".
It seems to me that something very like this is true.
We will not see a true circle anywhere, you point out.
But your same story points out why we developed the concept
of circle. How do you suppose that we will manage
without it?>>
I never placed a value judgement for or agaist the circle; only
pointed out that it does not exist (in cosmoterrestrial reality). Or
on the computer/robot. I seek merely to point out the basically
simple, if oft-overlooked, truth.
But, indeed, the circle is VERY useful when properly used! So is pi
for figuiring out the diameters of roundish blobs. So is the
computer, and the robot, too! Hammers are useful, too, when properly
used. But suppose the hammer came to be solely a decorative hanging
on a household wall? Suppose all people used hammers as wheapons to
bludgeon living organisms to death? There are MISuses of these
tools. The misuses are more probable when people do not understand
the truths about them.
<<By the way, "pi" can also be called transcendental, which
I find even more suggestive.>>
Explain please?
Pleasure to talk with you.
James Burns
the main topic, and I suspect my main response will not need
to be made longer, anyway.
mrdilligent wrote:
[...]
> [Jim Burns wrote:]
> <<By the way, "pi" can also be called transcendental, which
> I find even more suggestive.>>
>
> Explain please?
You were talking about the lack of physical true circles.
You mentioned that 'pi' is irrational, which suggested to you
(I gather) the craziness of the things-that-would-be-circles.
Or possibly how badly the things-that-really-are-circles
fit into the physical universe.
I was just returning your serve, pointing out that 'pi' is
also transcendental -- which is very suggestive of something
that exists in a higher realm, and this higher realm is
very suggestive of the 'realm' where some say mathematical
objects such as 'pi' exist.
Of course, none of these suggestions made by looking at
the non-technical definitions of technical words should
be taken seriously. 'Pi' is irrational because there are
no integers p an q such that 'pi' = p/q. 'Pi' is
transcendental because, and only because, there is no
poynomial with integer coefficients, of finite order,
for which 'pi' is a root.
If we want to show that 'pi' is either irrational
or transcendental in some non-mathematical sense, we
must look somewhere other than to the near-random
coincidences of word choices made by writers who
were thinking about something else entirely at the time.
Jim Burns
James Burns
> Date: Sun, Oct 18 2009 11:55 am
> From: Jim Burns
>
>> <<(I use scare quotes
>> because I anticipate objections, but, really, what is a
>> significant difference between machine- and human-generated
>> statements, other than an arbitrary boundary?)>>
>
> You are a smart man to have anticipated objections! I hope I
> delineated (in a simplified way, of course) the difference between
> machine and living organism (such as man), and therefore the
> difference between their "statements."
Perhaps you have, in other threads or on other occasions.
However, I would encourage you to re-read your previous post,
the only other post of yours that I see. Perhaps you thought
you had done so one more time, but I do not see it.
The closest I see to what I was looking for is your "But we
must take care to realize that any statement, in any medium,
is just an EXPRESSION of the mind." I didn't see any support for
this, and I attempted to provide counter-examples.
You made clear, and you make clear again below, that you
believe there is a fundamental difference to be found here.
If I may paraphrase you, the difference between statements with
machine and human origins is one of 'provenance', just as a
cabinet could, in principle, be indetectably similar to an
actual antique but, lacking the proper history, can only be
an imitation.
What I am having trouble finding is the reason this provenance
is important in the case of the statements. (Without this explanation,
it looks like an arbitrary boundary, to me, as I believe
I mentioned before.) In the case of antiques or fine art or
historical documents there are specific reasons "identical"
is nonetheless regarded as "not as good".
> To my thinking, a statement can only be generated by a living
> organism. A living tree can make its own statement, but an artificial
> tree cannot; it can only be a HUMAN statement about the human self.
>
> That said, humans can make statements in many media: language, of
> course, and mathematics; also drawing or painting or scupting; also in
> the choice of clothing one wears, the car one chooses to drive, and so
> on. A human can make statements even in the food he cooks!
>
>> <<And why is the mind doing the expressing thinking
>> something actual? Not because of anything in the mind
>> (in general) but because of what is or is not out in
>> the world.>>
>
> Yes, of course, to a degree. It can also think about existential
> issues (inside his skin) and express these mind-contents in
> statements. But without a MIND, there could be no thinking, even
> though there could be what is or is not out in the world.
This exchange started as an investigation into the nature
/true/ statements. You have asserted that a mind is necessary
to make a statement (I am still reserving judgment on that).
However, even granting that, isn't a mind insufficient for
/true/ statements?
>>>To get to the example itself, there is not only no such thing as a
>>>"square circle," there is no such thing as a circle, period. The
>>>circle is an invention of the human mind, one which got initiated back
>>>around the beginning of civilization.
>
>> <<When you say that there is no such thing as a circle, you
>> are campaigning for a particular sense of "existence", perhaps
>> the one in which you and I exist and Sherlock Holmes never has.
>> However, there are other senses of "exist" which also have
>> their uses. In particular, there is one for which square
>> circles do not exist but round circles do.>>
>
> I am not campaigning for anything, unless it be the simple, and oft-
> overlooked, truth.
I have trouble accepting that.
When you say "there is no such thing as a circle", then
you are giving meanings to your words that are not commonly
used. Given their words' usual meanings, sentences such as
"There are circles." or "Circles exist." are utterly
uncontroversial.
If you are not proposing to change the meaning of some
fairly basic words, such as "exist", then you must be talking
gibberish instead.
> As for the word _existence_, it is a badly
> misused as well as overused word. In the field of philosophy over the
> generations, it has been tangled into the most tightly interwoven
> knots.
Perhaps the problem is that it is used in many different ways.
> I once asked a physicist friend of mine if he thought the existence of
> God could be analytically proven by set theory; I had in mind a kind
> of "Venn diagram" of three circles one of which God (and the universe)
> existed but did not crosspartition with human mind; another of which
> God was a figment of human imagination which did not crosspartition
> with the first set (but did not preclude the first set, either), and
> the third a crosspartitioning of the first two sets---something like
> that. That was before _existence_ had become such a completely bunged-
> up word used by all people, not just a tiny handful of zaney
> academics.
>
> Now I have a very different, but very complex, understanding of
> existence, with or without the word _existence_. Too complex to lay
> out here. But to be simple, does a unicorn exist? No, it does not
> and never did exist. Even the brickabrack and toys shaped like a
> unicorn does not render the unicorn existence; these are just glazed
> clay figurines (which do exist), or stuffed cloth shapes, or
> whatever. Sherlock Holmes never existed; he "is" a fictional
> character in books, which do exist.
>
> Circles---and all items of human technology, from the first
> prehistoric adzes---do exist, but as man's technology, not as
> cosmoterrestrial reality. Unicorns and Sherlock Holmes are not
> included in man's technology, as humanly delightful as they may be.
I wonder why you exclude unicorns and Sherlock Holmes. They are
surely components of stories -- arguably our first technology
and perhaps still our most important technology (though totally
lacking in 21st century flash, of course).
> We come next to ideas: Do they exist? Yes, some as delusions, some
> as distortions of reality (man-made or cosmoterrestrial), some as
> facts about man-made reality and some as facts about cosmoterrestrial
> reality. What we ostentatiously call "mathematics" is an overall
> idea, and as such exists---as each of the above categories, depending
> on the idea. But the existence of ideas are METAPHYSICAL. Not made
> of a quark's worth of matter.
>
> So physical things exist, and metaphysical entities exist. Assaying
> the truth of the first set is pretty easy; not so with the second
> set. This is where Kevin's professor's "logical certainty" comes in
> handy.
You have gone into considerable detail now, letting me
know what your conclusions are. I called what you are doing
"campaigning" because I did not see, and still do not see,
how you arrived at your conclusions--and so I made an analogy
with political campaigns that are long on "Vote for John
Smith!" but short on why I should vote for John Smith.
You can always excuse yourself from explanations, of course.
However, if you do that, you will pretty much guarantee that
your conclusions will remain only yours.
>> <<I think your campaigning would be more effective if you
>> would outline the advantages of your sense of "exist"
>> being the sole sense used, rather than just asserting
>> that it is so.>>
>
> I would like to think that my outlining here and elsewhere is
> OBJECTIVE, and not subjective or partial to any cultural convention.
> So if I seem to "assert," it is either for the sake of simplicity (the
> thought details that go into such a conclusion are myriad), or it is
> because it hasn't occurred to me that the reader may not have gone
> through equivalent analyses.
With that in mind, would you now outline the advantages of
your sense of "exist" being the sole sense used? Please,
give whatever you consider advantages: moral, mathematical,
anything.
>> <<This is a reasonable history of the concept of "circle".
>> It seems to me that something very like this is true.
>> We will not see a true circle anywhere, you point out.
>> But your same story points out why we developed the concept
>> of circle. How do you suppose that we will manage
>> without it?>>
>
> I never placed a value judgement for or agaist the circle; only
> pointed out that it does not exist (in cosmoterrestrial reality).
The usual next step, upon finding that something does not exist,
is to stop using it, stop referring to it, whatever. That doesn't
require a value judgment.
If we are to continue to use the circle in much the same way
as we have been, how would you characterize the difference
-- in how we treat them -- netween existent and non-existent
things?
> Or on the computer/robot. I seek merely to point out the basically
> simple, if oft-overlooked, truth.
>
> But, indeed, the circle is VERY useful when properly used! So is pi
> for figuiring out the diameters of roundish blobs. So is the
> computer, and the robot, too! Hammers are useful, too, when properly
> used. But suppose the hammer came to be solely a decorative hanging
> on a household wall? Suppose all people used hammers as wheapons to
> bludgeon living organisms to death? There are MISuses of these
> tools. The misuses are more probable when people do not understand
> the truths about them.
>
Jim Burns
John Stafford
different words was the idea of a human having a history, and an
anticipated future, and certain death - limited lifetime. Human memory
is not perfect - it gently revises the past, interprets the present, and
anticipates a future and a demise, all of which shape how we make
'truth', for better or worse - it is all too human.
Consider an imaginary machine that uses perfect boolean logic for
decisions regarding justice. How would it determine givens, inputs, the
assumptions of a case? How would it interpret justice? (Keep in mind
that legal scholarship rarely uses the word justice, but addresses it
sideways in order to avoid death by definition, corruption.)
Remember _Les Mis�rables_ and inspector Javert who was the justice
machine.
John Stafford
wrote:
> You were talking about the lack of physical true circles.
> You mentioned that 'pi' is irrational, which suggested to you
> (I gather) the craziness of the things-that-would-be-circles.
We usually consider irrational numbers as the Ancient Greeks did:
incapable of being represented using construction (the compass and
straight edge - and in modern terms, a compass alone). IOW, fractional.
> If we want to show that 'pi' is either irrational
> or transcendental in some non-mathematical sense, we
> must look somewhere other than to the near-random
> coincidences of word choices made by writers who
> were thinking about something else entirely at the time.
Ah, as John Jones takes Pi.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<I'm posting this separately. It doesn't really contribute to
the main topic, and I suspect my main response will not need
to be made longer, anyway.
<<mrdilligent wrote:
[...]
> [Jim Burns wrote:]
> <<By the way, "pi" can also be called transcendental, which
> I find even more suggestive.>>
>
> Explain please?
<<You were talking about the lack of physical true circles.
You mentioned that 'pi' is irrational, which suggested to you
(I gather) the craziness of the things-that-would-be-circles.
Or possibly how badly the things-that-really-are-circles
fit into the physical universe.>>
It was a pun, of course.
<<I was just returning your serve, pointing out that 'pi' is
also transcendental -- which is very suggestive of something
that exists in a higher realm, and this higher realm is
very suggestive of the 'realm' where some say mathematical
objects such as 'pi' exist.>>
I think of the so-called "higher realm" as metaphysical. This "higher
realm" exists abundantly on earth in all critters' affairs, including
man's, as for example, all mathematics, to which there is, as I said,
not a quark's worth of matter (unless you consider the chalk, pencil,
or pixels, etc. used to express a mathematical statement). Not all
metaphysical entities exist on earth, of course; like matter, a great
deal of metaphysics exists in the universe itself, as unknown as it is
to us.
While we are at it (and not so off-topic as you may think), matter
occupies space. Thus physics deals primarily with matter-in-space.
But that which is "outside" of the parameters of physics---
metaphysics---does NOT occupy space. Now an important feature of this
fact is overlooked: metaphysics does not exist spatially OUTSIDE of
space, either. Space, and time as humans conceive it, are simply
irrelevant to matter-in-space, to space in general. Antidualists fail
to consider this; they believe that metaphysics and physics cannot
coexist side by side---in SPACE!
Judging from the origin of coinage---by a Scholastic in the Middle
Ages---the term _metaphysics_ refers to that which has NO mass-
energy, He assigned Aristotle's miscellaneous writings on PHILOSOPHY
and IDEAS to the new coinage he had made as a title for them. Now
just think of all the metaphysical entities we daily deal with that
are legitimately metaphysical and actual. Why, a mere shopping list
or notions of what to wear today are metaphysical! This brings us to
physics, which may CONCERN matter, but the IDEAS that we consider
important about matter are not physical! They, too, are metaphysical.
<<Of course, none of these suggestions made by looking at
the non-technical definitions of technical words should
be taken seriously. 'Pi' is irrational because there are
no integers p an q such that 'pi' = p/q. 'Pi' is
transcendental because, and only because, there is no
poynomial with integer coefficients, of finite order,
for which 'pi' is a root.
<<If we want to show that 'pi' is either irrational
or transcendental in some non-mathematical sense, we
must look somewhere other than to the near-random
coincidences of word choices made by writers who
were thinking about something else entirely at the time.>>
Again, my calling pi "irrational" was an (appropriate IMO) pun.
James Burns
> Just one comment perhaps to jog more thought: as mentioned earlier under
> different words was the idea of a human having a history, and an
> anticipated future, and certain death - limited lifetime. Human memory
> is not perfect - it gently revises the past, interprets the present, and
> anticipates a future and a demise, all of which shape how we make
> 'truth', for better or worse - it is all too human.
I agree. Truth -- when we meet it on the street -- is full of
imperfections. The imperfect circles that we also meet out there,
that mrdilligent has discussed, are a lovely analogy to them.
We imagine the perfect circles that we will never meet -- and we
should be grateful that we can imagine them. Our lives would be
impoverished without them and needlessly complicated. (It is much
easier to imagine a perfect circle than to imagine circles plus
catalogs of imperfections, one catalog to each ball bearing,
each raindrop.)
So it is with perfect truth and perfect justice. They are wonderful
goals, and I am quite satisfied to keep them as goals, even though
I feel pretty certain that I will never meet them on the street.
(Full disclosure: It may be that I am so satisfied because
imperfect street-truth fits in so well with my own views on Truth.
I like the little I know about CS Peirce, especially as regards
truth as a limit point.
(The limit point idea sounds like it is exceptionally rigorous:
there is a theorem from topology whereby the limit points of
a space are filled in by identifying points in the new, larger space
with equivalence classes of sequences from the old, smaller space
that mutually converge. This is one standard way that we step from
the rational numbers to the real numbers.
(As well as being rigorous, there is room for both Truth,
the limit points of our everday truths, and those everyday
imperfection-filled but better-than-yesterday truths.
We hope for better, anyway.
(Also, this fits in very nicely with the sort of convergence
behavior one sees with Bayesian probability work.)
> Consider an imaginary machine that uses perfect boolean logic for
> decisions regarding justice. How would it determine givens, inputs, the
> assumptions of a case? How would it interpret justice? (Keep in mind
> that legal scholarship rarely uses the word justice, but addresses it
> sideways in order to avoid death by definition, corruption.)
>
> Remember _Les Mis�rables_ and inspector Javert who was the justice
> machine.
I think John von Neumann showed that, with enough Boolean logic,
we could get a machine to do pretty much anything at all. So,
it seems to me the question isn't so much what would this perfect
machine decide to do, but what would we imperfect beings tell it to do.
I think that's an excellent question to ask, not that I propose
to answer it all by myself. Also, as you might guess, I think
we will do better and better at approaching Perfect Justice
as history goes on, without (I strongly suspect) ever quite
reaching it.
Jim Burns
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
mrdilligent wrote:
> Date: Sun, Oct 18 2009 11:55 am
> From: Jim Burns
>
>> <<(I use scare quotes
>> because I anticipate objections, but, really, what is a
>> significant difference between machine- and human-generated
>> statements, other than an arbitrary boundary?)>>
>
> You are a smart man to have anticipated objections! I hope I
> delineated (in a simplified way, of course) the difference between
> machine and living organism (such as man), and therefore the
> difference between their "statements."
<<Perhaps you have, in other threads or on other occasions.
However, I would encourage you to re-read your previous post,
the only other post of yours that I see. Perhaps you thought
you had done so one more time, but I do not see it.>>
Sorry, but I have become lost. I believe I defined statements and the
difference between man and machine below.
<<The closest I see to what I was looking for is your "But we
must take care to realize that any statement, in any medium,
is just an EXPRESSION of the mind." I didn't see any support for
this, and I attempted to provide counter-examples.>>
Wasn't this in my first post? It is fairly obvious that language is
only the expression of the human mind; it does not exist as anything
else (or has no other role, if you prefer.) Statements (verbal ones)
are a function of language (or mathematic symbols; same difference).
It doesn't need any other kind of "support."
<<You made clear, and you make clear again below, that you
believe there is a fundamental difference to be found here.
If I may paraphrase you, the difference between statements with
machine and human origins is one of 'provenance', just as a
cabinet could, in principle, be indetectably similar to an
actual antique but, lacking the proper history, can only be
an imitation.>>
I never mentioned provenance, but if you mean there is a difference
between the artificially real (man-made) and the cosmoterrestrially
real, there surely is, and a very important difference. Because this
great difference is overlooked or considered trivial, we
contemporaries get VERY confused about reality, which, as I pointed
out, comes in these two distinctly different sets. This leads to
delusions, such as "there are multiple realities." In fact, there is
only ONE reality (two subsets of it, artificial and real), but
multiple delusions---because of the implicit confusing of the two.
<<What I am having trouble finding is the reason this provenance
is important in the case of the statements. (Without this explanation,
it looks like an arbitrary boundary, to me, as I believe
I mentioned before.) In the case of antiques or fine art or
historical documents there are specific reasons "identical"
is nonetheless regarded as "not as good".>>
Has the above para made it any clearer to you? There is nothing
"arbitrary" about the self-evident. Nor have I ever mentioned one as
being "not as good" relative to the other. It seems you have a
tendency to interpolate from your own head and then claim I hold to
it.
> To my thinking, a statement can only be generated by a living
> organism. A living tree can make its own statement, but an artificial
> tree cannot; it can only be a HUMAN statement about the human self.
>
> That said, humans can make statements in many media: language, of
> course, and mathematics; also drawing or painting or scupting; also in
> the choice of clothing one wears, the car one chooses to drive, and so
> on. A human can make statements even in the food he cooks!
>
. . ..
<<This exchange started as an investigation into the nature
/true/ statements. You have asserted that a mind is necessary
to make a statement (I am still reserving judgment on that).
However, even granting that, isn't a mind insufficient for
/true/ statements?>>
This might be splitting hairs. A great deal has to do with mental
health. In a rather "negative" way, Abrahm Maslow pointed out what
valid mental health of the human would be, if he could just find it.
In essence, he said that a mentally healthy human would be OBJECTIVE,
about self as much as all else; such a human could "turn round on
himself," observing himself and his behavior exactly on the criteria
he observes others and all else. I agree with this.
In the bible we read that one can "see God" only if he has a "pure"
mind. Read _see_ as understand, as in, "Oh, I see what you are
getting at" (because obviously no vision is important here), and read
_pure_ as natural---as inborn. Not neurotic, borderline, or
psychotic. Although this, and just about all, statements in the
bible are grotesquely misunderstood, I happen to agree with the above
meaning. A healthy natural mind can see reality (both sets) as it IS;
a neurotic (or worse) cannot. (Why do you suppose young children can
be so canny about the truth of something they have experienced, like
false teeth or whatever.)
. . .
>
> I am not campaigning for anything, unless it be the simple, and oft-
> overlooked, truth.
I have trouble accepting that.
Why is that? Is it your experience that ALL people have subjective
perceptions and motives?
<<When you say "there is no such thing as a circle", then
you are giving meanings to your words that are not commonly
used. Given their words' usual meanings, sentences such as
"There are circles." or "Circles exist." are utterly
uncontroversial.>>
This gets us into language itself, about which I could write TOMES.
Instead, I will simply say that I use words referentially as much as
possible, even though the MLA went off the millenia-old (if not always
followed largely because of ignorance) referential standard of words
in mid-centurly last. They chose instead "how words are used" as the
"manings" of words. Very few people today use words referentially.
But _circles_ is not part of this, I was referring to exactly that
which is called "circle" by everyone, and they do not exist---I should
have said, in cosmoterrestrial reality, not in artificial reality. Of
course they exist in artificial reality; they are fundamental to man's
technology.
<<If you are not proposing to change the meaning of some
fairly basic words, such as "exist", then you must be talking
gibberish instead.>>
Hah hah! This reminds me of Bill Clinton's "it depends on what "is"
is."
Yes, _exist_ is a basic word, alright; as basic as _the_ or _and_. We
don't suffer much confusion over _the_, and the confusion over _and_
is implicit and hidden, but _exist_ is another story. But no, I do
not propose to change its basic meaning; only to explain how, in
serious discourse, it is to be used; viz., that there are two kinds of
more or less valid existence, artificial-and-real, and
cosmoterrestrial-and-real. A figment of the imagination does not
exist in either category.
A figment of the imagination, whether unicorns or Sherlock Holmes, IS
metaphysical, but it does not exist in metaphysical actuality. An
example of metaphysically actuallity is logic. Not a quark's worth
of matter, but it pervades everything.
Any fiction is much the equivalent of hallucinations, even if we do
not see them as such. (Oh boy, are you gonna have problems with
that!)
> As for the word _existence_, it is a badly
> misused as well as overused word. In the field of philosophy over the
> generations, it has been tangled into the most tightly interwoven
> knots.
<<Perhaps the problem is that it is used in many different ways.>>
Indeed; some in valid ways, and some in invalid ways (cf. Bill
Clinton's weaseling.)
. . . .
>
> Now I have a very different, but very complex, understanding of
> existence, with or without the word _existence_. Too complex to lay
> out here. But to be simple, does a unicorn exist? No, it does not
> and never did exist. Even the brickabrack and toys shaped like a
> unicorn does not render the unicorn existence; these are just glazed
> clay figurines (which do exist), or stuffed cloth shapes, or
> whatever. Sherlock Holmes never existed; he "is" a fictional
> character in books, which do exist.
>
> Circles---and all items of human technology, from the first
> prehistoric adzes---do exist, but as man's technology, not as
> cosmoterrestrial reality. Unicorns and Sherlock Holmes are not
> included in man's technology, as humanly delightful as they may be.
<<I wonder why you exclude unicorns and Sherlock Holmes. They are
surely components of stories -- arguably our first technology
and perhaps still our most important technology (though totally
lacking in 21st century flash, of course).>>
I don't think of stories as technology. Among prehistoric humans,
fiction did not exist; metaphors did. Metaphors (to use the Greek
word for them) are not fiction, but physical and familiar
representations of the abstract. The abstract---the metaphysically
valid---cannot be depicted or explained or talked about in any
statement, only that which is sensorily detectable can be.
There are two valid types of stories, those which are told directly,
as in news stories or essays, and those which are told via metaphor,
as myths were. Greek drama was metaphorical, not fictional. That is
why they were so popular. Metaphorical tales lasted right up until
about, say, the 19th c, when fiction began to enter the field. There
is nothing metaphorical about Sherlock Holmes, and whatever the
unicorn represented metaphorically has by now been hopelessly lost.
Shakespear was metaphorical. Today we have pure fiction and purely
for entertainment for entertainment's sake.
Now you will argue what you learned in school, that metaphors are used
in pure fiction. Well, not true metaphors usually. More like
"imagery." And metaphors are NOT "figures of speach" or "literary
devices." Jim Burns, civilization has taken us to the pathelogically
absurd.
Of course, this post would not be complete if we did not mention that
language is not a human technology, either, but that is another story.
mrdilligent
Burns referred.
Date: Sun, Oct 18 2009 11:55 am
From: Jim Burns
mrdilligent wrote:
>
> But we must take care to realize that any statement, in any medium, is
> just an EXPRESSION of the mind. There is no such thing as a true
> statement. The statement may express a truth in a mind, or a
> falsehood, or any combination of these. A statement which expresses
> something actual is a "true statement" only because the mind doing the
> expresssing is thinking something actual.
<<I think you oversimplify here what a statement is.>>
Oversimplify? No; simplify, yes, because it is impossible to go into
even important details on an ng.
<<In previous ages, I might have mentioned spirits or gods
as counter-examples -->>
Spirits or gods do not equate with statements. Now you are beginning
to sound like Kevin Murphy. :-)
<< today, well, what about artificial
intelligence? Even without AI, we have today many automated
processes that make "statements" that are "understood" quite
well by other automated processes.>>
This ubiquitous contemporary idea makes my blood boil. There is all
this talk about humans and robots: can they work together? Or one or
the other?
We might as well ask whether hammers and/or humans. The robot is just
a TOOL; it is an automated, complex, tool, to be sure, but a tool
nonetheless. AI has NO mind, no real intelllgence. It is just matter
made, by minded man, to follow the mindless rules of matter,
according to a materially encoded set of "glitches" etched into a
material medium to set off the photonic flow inherent in the
computer. We call these encoded "glitches" software, a program for
the computer or robot, etc. to implement. Computers don't understand
one another; their matter simply follows the material "glitches"
provided by other computers. Thus we can have one robot making a tool
becaused a computer lays out the design for it in so many "glitches."
(A simplification for the above reason.)
In my last, I used early Egyptian civ to point out that it ALWAYS
happens as the years and generations pass that people forget that
people made the tool(s), and study the tool(s) intensely, accrediting
to the tool powers that it does not have. Circles or AI.
One of the causes, which we can easily notice today, is the language
WE use to denote what these contraptions do. "Artificial
INTELLIGENCE," "UNDERSTAND," COMMUNICATE and even TALK, LANGUAGE,
and so forth. Why, we have even gone so far as to say that computers
are "smarter" than humans (I wonder why!), and so some day the
computers may take over human doings! And then there is
"consciousness"; do computers have "consciuousness"?
No, because in order to have any level of consciousness---awareness--a
thing or entity must have COGNITION. Machines have NO cognition.
Even a bacterium has cognition.
To simplify, again, a computer is just an elaborate version of our
household circuit panels, only much, much smaller (today), with many
more interconnections. A robot is a complex configuration of matter,
made to do one or more certain tasks (like a hammer or saw at a
simpler level) when guided by some sort of internal or external
computer. The ONLY mind involved is that belonging to man, who
invented the computer/robot because he is lazy about using his own
mind (or at least becomes lazy quickly because he has invented an
artificial brain, much as he one invented artificial hands, etc.).
Computers and robots are fine tools!! But that is all they are,
tools..
James Burns
true that I had much I could have said elsewhere, but
I just do not have time to say everyting I would like
to say, and I suspect you do not either.]
mrdilligent wrote:
> Date: Mon, Oct 19 2009 5:07 pm
> From: James Burns
>> <<The closest I see to what I was looking for is your "But we
>> must take care to realize that any statement, in any medium,
>> is just an EXPRESSION of the mind." I didn't see any support for
>> this, and I attempted to provide counter-examples.>>
>
> Wasn't this in my first post? It is fairly obvious that language is
> only the expression of the human mind; it does not exist as anything
> else (or has no other role, if you prefer.) Statements (verbal ones)
> are a function of language (or mathematic symbols; same difference).
> It doesn't need any other kind of "support."
You find it obvious that only human-generated statements are
real statements. I do not find it obvious. If we have to
leave it at that, then we are stuck. How are we to move forward?
An example of what I do /not/ find helpful is your next paragraph,
the one just after the quote of me. You: "... if you mean there
is a difference between between the artificially real (man-made)
and the cosmoterrestrially real, there surely is, and a very
important difference." I read this, and think, "Great! I'm
about to find out what this difference is." But instead,
you go off to draw conclusions from this difference, without
telling me what it is. Even if we were in complete agreement,
I would find this disappointing. How am I to follow your logic,
if all you share is the end product of your contemplations?
The easy counter-argument, that it is not their origins that
make machine-generated statements not what you call statements,
would call upon Alan Turing and his famous test.
I would go further, though. Machine-generated and machine-
analysed messages are old hat. The Internet would be impossible
without them. They do everything that human-generated messages
would do. In fact, you could replace one of the routers
with a human being and, apart from slowing down, nothing
would change. Well, no, that's not true. According
to you, the very same packets would now be messages, where
they were not before.
Why?
>
> <<You made clear, and you make clear again below, that you
> believe there is a fundamental difference to be found here.
> If I may paraphrase you, the difference between statements with
> machine and human origins is one of 'provenance', just as a
> cabinet could, in principle, be indetectably similar to an
> actual antique but, lacking the proper history, can only be
> an imitation.>>
>
> I never mentioned provenance, but if you mean there is a difference
> between the artificially real (man-made) and the cosmoterrestrially
> real, there surely is, and a very important difference. Because this
> great difference is overlooked or considered trivial, we
> contemporaries get VERY confused about reality, which, as I pointed
> out, comes in these two distinctly different sets. This leads to
> delusions, such as "there are multiple realities." In fact, there is
> only ONE reality (two subsets of it, artificial and real), but
> multiple delusions---because of the implicit confusing of the two.
>
Once upon a time, several hundred years ago, one could have
concluded that, in order to be a scientist, it was necessary
first to be a European.
And, indeed, some did conclude this. If we could speak to them,
we would point out that, even though the only scientists they
know of are European, being European is not a necessary feature
of being a scientist.
Whatever it is that you find obviously different between
machine- and human-generated messages -- perhaps, the richness
of the context within which the message needs to be interpreted --
I suggest to you that you are looking at these differences,
correlating them with their origins and then concluding the
differences are because of their origins.
Of course, I can't do more than suggest, because you haven't
told me what these differences are, beyond letting me
know that they are obvious and important.
Jim Burns
[...]
James Burns
> I found this unsent in my outbox. Perhas this is a post to which Jim
> Burns referred.
>
> Date: Sun, Oct 18 2009 11:55 am
> From: Jim Burns
>
> mrdilligent wrote:
>
>>But we must take care to realize that any statement, in any medium, is
>>just an EXPRESSION of the mind. There is no such thing as a true
>>statement. The statement may express a truth in a mind, or a
>>falsehood, or any combination of these. A statement which expresses
>>something actual is a "true statement" only because the mind doing the
>>expresssing is thinking something actual.
I don't think it would be profitable for either of us to spend
our time going down the road suggested by this post. There
seem to be too many things that you find obvious and I do not.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
Dilligent:
> We come next to ideas: Do they exist? Yes, some as delusions, some
> as distortions of reality (man-made or cosmoterrestrial), some as
> facts about man-made reality and some as facts about cosmoterrestrial
> reality. What we ostentatiously call "mathematics" is an overall
> idea, and as such exists---as each of the above categories, depending
> on the specific idea. But the existence of ideas is METAPHYSICAL. Not made
> of a quark's worth of matter.
>
> So physical things exist, and metaphysical entities exist. Assaying
> the truth of the first set is pretty easy; not so with the second
> set. This is where Kevin's professor's "logical certainty" comes in
> handy.
Burns:
<<You have gone into considerable detail now, letting me
know what your conclusions are. I called what you are doing
"campaigning" because I did not see, and still do not see,
how you arrived at your conclusions--and so I made an analogy
with political campaigns that are long on "Vote for John
Smith!" but short on why I should vote for John Smith.>>
There is NO analogy with political campaigns! Nevertheless, if my
posts are "short" on the "whys," it is only because of what I already
pointed out: the details that go into any apparent conclusion are
MYRIAD, and would fill an entire Web's worth of pp! That, and in some
cases I implicitly assume, not always correctly, that the reader has
had some equivalent experience and/or reading for understanding the
stickum that holds the conclusion together. Surely he should be able
to grasp the self-evident. Perhaps if we continue this discussion
long enough, and we do not forget our own and the other's posts,
enough of the stickum will become explicit.
Besides, may of the "considerable details . . letting me know what
your conclusions are" ARE among the details of how I arrived at my
assertions,. A modicum of bonafide thought would enable you to see
that.
<<You can always excuse yourself from explanations, of course.
However, if you do that, you will pretty much guarantee that
your conclusions will remain only yours.>>
Very peevish, uncharacteristic of you thus far.
I should point out that a discussion or exchange of information is NOT
for mutual agreement! Do I care if someone else agrees with me? Of
course not. Discussions are for LEARNING, and THINKING, and so far, I
have both learned and found grist for my thinking mill in your posts.
I would hope that others do the same from my posts, but it is not for
me to manage.
. . .
> I would like to think that my outlining here and elsewhere is
> OBJECTIVE, and not subjective or partial to any cultural convention.
> So if I seem to "assert," it is either for the sake of simplicity (the
> thought details that go into such a conclusion are myriad), or it is
> because it hasn't occurred to me that the reader may not have gone
> through equivalent analyses.
<<With that in mind, would you now outline the advantages of
your sense of "exist" being the sole sense used? Please,
give whatever you consider advantages: moral, mathematical,
anything.>>
As you have by now certainly come to understand, my sense of _exist_
is not singular, nor has it been used singularly in any of my posts
todate. The advantage of understanding that circles, e.g., do not
exist (or are not found, if you prefer) in cosmoterrestriality is
simply the simple, basic truth, and truths mitigate our otherwise
strong contemporary tendency to suffer delusions. Ditto for unicorns
and Sherlock Holmes.
>
> I never placed a value judgement for or agaist the circle; only
> pointed out that it does not exist (in cosmoterrestrial reality).
<<The usual next step, upon finding that something does not exist,
is to stop using it, stop referring to it, whatever. That doesn't
require a value judgment.>>
WHAAH? Maybe in your world, not in mine. I would continue reading
Sherlock-Holmes stories even though such a person does not exist.
And,, Do you REALLY throw away something simply because you can't
place a value judgment on it? I try to avoid value judgments wherever
possible and feasible.
<<If we are to continue to use the circle in much the same way
as we have been, how would you characterize the difference
-- in how we treat them -- netween existent and non-existent
things?>>
To repeat, knowing the facts, or validity, or truth of something is
knowledge; otherwise it is ignornace, and that is very dangerous.
Let me tell you a personal story that has its counterparts in other
human lives: When I was wee, I began to wonder if Santa Clause really
existed,, as my parents assured me he did. I finally wore my father
down, forcing him to admit there was no such person (but don't tell my
sibling this!) Once I had the TRUTH, I relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed
watching for Santa Clause every Christmas eve.
You see, not knowing causes worry, and believing the untruth causes
dangerous traps (no doubt the source of the worry in those who do not
know one way or the other). But once one has the truth under his
belt, he can use falsehood for safe enjoyment where feasible.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<[I have drastically cut down the size of this post. It's
true that I had much I could have said elsewhere, but
I just do not have time to say everyting I would like
to say, and I suspect you do not either.]>>
By God, I think he's got it; I think he's finally got it.
mrdilligent
From: John Stafford
In article <4ADCE904...@osu.edu>, James Burns <burn...@osu.edu>
wrote:
> You were talking about the lack of physical true circles.
> You mentioned that 'pi' is irrational, which suggested to you
> (I gather) the craziness of the things-that-would-be-circles.
<<We usually consider irrational numbers as the Ancient Greeks did:
incapable of being represented using construction (the compass and
straight edge - and in modern terms, a compass alone). IOW,
fractional.>>
Yes, that, too. Unfortunatelhy, most today have no concept of history
before the Vietnam War---in any area. The world began with the
electronic computer and modern what is called "mathematics."
mrdilligent
From: John Stafford
<<Just one comment perhaps to jog more thought: as mentioned earlier
under
different words was the idea of a human having a history, and an
anticipated future, and certain death - limited lifetime. Human
memory
is not perfect - it gently revises the past, interprets the present,
and
anticipates a future and a demise, all of which shape how we make
'truth', for better or worse - it is all too human.>>
While at the most stringent level this is valid enough, unfortunately
it tends to lead to the pervasively motivating: "Perfection in
anything is unattainable; thus, why bother".
1. At least humans HAVE history; let's get to know it and learn from
its errors (soas not to repeat them).
2. From the standpoint of cosmoterrestrial reality, perfection may be
defined as the constant striving to become better. Evolution is based
on this. Otherwise, we shouldn't be bothering with the "perfection"
of anything, circles or justice or whatever.
3. A lifetime is finite, and finitely short. Let's not fritter it
away (on assumptions, excuses, social conventions, etc.) There is
barely enough time to fit in 1. and 2., above.
. . .
<<Remember _Les Mis�rables_ and inspector Javert who was the justice
machine.>>
Victor Hugo used metaphor as the basis for his novels. One of the
last to do so.
James Burns
> Burns:
>> [...] because I did not see, and still do not see,
>> how you arrived at your conclusions--and so I made an analogy
>> with political campaigns that are long on "Vote for John
>> Smith!" but short on why I should vote for John Smith.>>
>
> There is NO analogy with political campaigns!
I did not make the analogy in order to be insulting. It
was the best way I saw to express my mounting frustration
with what -- to me -- looks like a failure to deliver
the reasons behind your claims.
Are we even speaking the same language? You completely
deny my analogy above, and then in /the very next sentence/
explain why it is true.
> Nevertheless,
> if my posts are "short" on the "whys," it is only because of
> what I already pointed out: the details that go into any
> apparent conclusion are MYRIAD, and would fill an entire
> Web's worth of pp! That, and in some cases I implicitly assume,
> not always correctly, that the reader has had some equivalent
> experience and/or reading for understanding the stickum that
> holds the conclusion together. Surely he should be able
> to grasp the self-evident. Perhaps if we continue this
> discussion long enough, and we do not forget our own and
> the other's posts, enough of the stickum will become explicit.
Too much to put in a newsgroup post -- I can well believe that.
There aren't many topics that is not true of. But also there
aren't many topics that aren't dealt with in posts in some
fashion or other. Can't you at least try to describe this
evidence?
It's easy to see how anyone could mis-estimate the background
of someone else over this very abstract medium, so lacking in
out usual cues. However, I have said I need those details
to understand several times now. Is it because I lack the
assumed backgound? I find I do not care why. I just know I
need more details. Surely you have updated your assumptions
by now?
Perhaps part of the explanation for our difficulties
communicating is that I regard self-evident facts as a mine-field,
while you apparently see them as true in some inarguable
fashion. It is a standard joke that when someone is
presenting a long, complicated argument, you should look at
the place where he says "... and so, X is obviously true."
That is where the error will be.
> Besides, may of the "considerable details . . letting me know what
> your conclusions are" ARE among the details of how I arrived at my
> assertions,. A modicum of bonafide thought would enable you to see
> that.
I had already read each of your posts carefully before I
responded to them the first time, but I have gone back and
reviewed them. I still do not see any details of how you
arrived at your conclusions.
I hope you do not mean that your praise of the conclusions
themselves is some of the details.
>
>> <<You can always excuse yourself from explanations, of course.
>> However, if you do that, you will pretty much guarantee that
>> your conclusions will remain only yours.>>
>
> Very peevish, uncharacteristic of you thus far.
>
> I should point out that a discussion or exchange of information is NOT
> for mutual agreement! Do I care if someone else agrees with me? Of
> course not. Discussions are for LEARNING, and THINKING, and so far, I
> have both learned and found grist for my thinking mill in your posts.
> I would hope that others do the same from my posts, but it is not for
> me to manage.
>
> . . .
>
>
>>>I would like to think that my outlining here and elsewhere is
>>>OBJECTIVE, and not subjective or partial to any cultural convention.
>>>So if I seem to "assert," it is either for the sake of simplicity (the
>>>thought details that go into such a conclusion are myriad), or it is
>>>because it hasn't occurred to me that the reader may not have gone
>>>through equivalent analyses.
>
>
>> <<With that in mind, would you now outline the advantages of
>> your sense of "exist" being the sole sense used? Please,
>> give whatever you consider advantages: moral, mathematical,
>> anything.>>
>
> As you have by now certainly come to understand, my sense of _exist_
> is not singular, nor has it been used singularly in any of my posts
> to date.
I see where I could have expressed myself better.
Please ignore references to your sense(s) of "exist" as
singular and replace them with references to them being
restrictive. I think I have a pretty good case that it
is restrictive. In particular, you refer to circles as
not existing -- isn't this restrictive?
That is to say: what advantages are there to regard
circles (as one example) as not existing? It is not
enough to say "Because they don't!" I am satisfied that
"exist" as I use it has plenty of room for circles
to exist. If there are problems with the way I use it,
you have to tell me what they are.
> The advantage of understanding that circles, e.g., do not
> exist (or are not found, if you prefer) in cosmoterrestriality is
> simply the simple, basic truth, and truths mitigate our otherwise
> strong contemporary tendency to suffer delusions. Ditto for unicorns
> and Sherlock Holmes.
>
>
>>>I never placed a value judgement for or agaist the circle; only
>>>pointed out that it does not exist (in cosmoterrestrial reality).
>
>
>> <<The usual next step, upon finding that something does not exist,
>> is to stop using it, stop referring to it, whatever. That doesn't
>> require a value judgment.>>
>
> WHAAH? Maybe in your world, not in mine. I would continue reading
> Sherlock-Holmes stories even though such a person does not exist.
In my world, Sherlock Holmes exists within Sir Conan Doyle's stories
(as well as other places, movies, television, imaginations).
It is not the same kind of existence that you or I have, but it
allows me to answer questions like "Did Sherlock Holmes have a
mother?" or "Do unicorns have five legs?" Can you do as much?
> And,, Do you REALLY throw away something simply because you
> can't place a value judgment on it? I try to avoid value
> judgments wherever possible and feasible.
I think we are using "value judgment" to mean very different
things. If you want to continue along this line, I think we
must clarify what each of us means.
>> <<If we are to continue to use the circle in much the same way
>> as we have been, how would you characterize the difference
>> -- in how we treat them -- netween existent and non-existent
>> things?>>
>
> To repeat, knowing the facts, or validity, or truth of something is
> knowledge; otherwise it is ignornace, and that is very dangerous.
It is hard for me to see what could be dangerous about treating
circles as though they exist when they do not, if, in all other
ways besides speaking of them, you would treat them the same
whether or not they exist.
>
> Let me tell you a personal story that has its counterparts in other
> human lives: When I was wee, I began to wonder if Santa Clause really
> existed,, as my parents assured me he did. I finally wore my father
> down, forcing him to admit there was no such person (but don't tell my
> sibling this!) Once I had the TRUTH, I relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed
> watching for Santa Clause every Christmas eve.
>
> You see, not knowing causes worry, and believing the untruth causes
> dangerous traps (no doubt the source of the worry in those who do not
> know one way or the other). But once one has the truth under his
> belt, he can use falsehood for safe enjoyment where feasible.
Jim Burns
Michael Gordge
> I've been recently thinking about one possible criterion of
> ontological existence:
What makes you believe that existence changes in meaning just because
you have chosen to preceed it with the adjective ontological? How
stupid can you get?
Hint; Existence can not be denied without contradiction, it is
therefore the axiom of all knowkedge.
Your mission, should you ever choose to awaken from your Kantian
slumber, is to give what is claimed to exist its very own non-
contradicting single seperate identity, and its best that you start
that identification process with a sensation from one of your five
senses, eyes ears nose hands skin. Can you poke it with a stick, does
it move, does it smell, does it make a noise, or is it existing no-
where but in the mind, e.g. the god crap, the leftist retard's the
greater good scam.
MG
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<An example of what I do /not/ find helpful is your next paragraph,
the one just after the quote of me. You: "... if you mean there
is a difference between between the artificially real (man-made)
and the cosmoterrestrially real, there surely is, and a very
important difference." I read this, and think, "Great! I'm
about to find out what this difference is." But instead,
you go off to draw conclusions from this difference, without
telling me what it is. Even if we were in complete agreement,
I would find this disappointing. How am I to follow your logic,
if all you share is the end product of your contemplations?>>
I can understand (sort of) when a contemporary is unfamiliar with
history, but I cannot fathom one whe doesn't understand the self-
evident.
(By "one" and "you," I of course refer to what is said in posts by
"Jim Burns.") Do you mean to tell me that you don't know the
difference between a knife, cell phone, computer, automobile, washing
machine, etc.---human technology, and artificial---and a living tree,
a raspberry bush, a bird, a bee, a sky cloud---what existed long
before humans ever walked this planet, let alone became civilized and
technological, and thus are cosmoterrestrial??? Do you really mean to
ask "what is the difference"??? Do you really need that difference
EXPLAINED?
Just to anticipate what may run through your mind, OF COURSE the
basic materials used to make the artificially real are themselves
cosmoterrestrially real; man must start with matter that "God"
wrought. Even "liquid metal" and other carbon-fused alloys are based
on what IS given. Plastics, for another example, are man-made---
artificially real---but must be made from material that is
cosmoterrestrially real to start with.
mrdilligent
> I did not make the analogy in order to be insulting. It
> was the best way I saw to express my mounting frustration
> with what -- to me -- looks like a failure to deliver
> the reasons behind your claims.
No insult taken. This is just a discussion.
Ok, you seem unable to grasp the self-evident. This tells me that the
contemporary culture has totally confused you. I was born to a
different American culture, one in which HISTORY was important;
history going all the way back to the dawn of evolution.
James Burns
How lucky for me that you took no insult.
However, I was not lucky enough, since you still have
not explained yourself. Your pointing out that I am unable
to grasp the self-evident, that you are wiser than I am,
and so on does nothing to make your theories clearer.
Why not just explain yourself?
Jim Burns
James Burns
> Date: Wed, Oct 21 2009 5:08 pm
> From: James Burns
>
> <<An example of what I do /not/ find helpful is your next paragraph,
> the one just after the quote of me. You: "... if you mean there
> is a difference between between the artificially real (man-made)
> and the cosmoterrestrially real, there surely is, and a very
> important difference." I read this, and think, "Great! I'm
> about to find out what this difference is." But instead,
> you go off to draw conclusions from this difference, without
> telling me what it is. Even if we were in complete agreement,
> I would find this disappointing. How am I to follow your logic,
> if all you share is the end product of your contemplations?>>
>
> I can understand (sort of) when a contemporary is unfamiliar with
> history, but I cannot fathom one whe doesn't understand the self-
> evident.
I get the impression from this that you do not intend to
explain yourself any better than you already have.
Therefore, I have no realistic expectation to understand
you better.
I also do not expect you to come to a better understanding
of me, frankly. It's not that I think I'm an exceptionally
deep thinker -- it just doesn't look like you're interested
in anything outside your self-contained ideology.
But maybe I'm wrong.
>
> (By "one" and "you," I of course refer to what is said in posts by
> "Jim Burns.") Do you mean to tell me that you don't know the
> difference between a knife, cell phone, computer, automobile, washing
> machine, etc.---human technology, and artificial---and a living tree,
> a raspberry bush, a bird, a bee, a sky cloud---what existed long
> before humans ever walked this planet, let alone became civilized and
> technological, and thus are cosmoterrestrial??? Do you really mean to
> ask "what is the difference"??? Do you really need that difference
> EXPLAINED?
There are many differences, some important, some unimportant.
Which one or ones are you referring to?
As it stands, I need you to explain why this difference
or differences have the consequences you claim for them.
A good test case would be "Given a difference X between human
technology and natural objects, circles do not exist
because of Y." and you would supply X and Y.
Maybe you're right, and once you have told me what
X is, I would immediately see what Y was.
>
> Just to anticipate what may run through your mind, OF COURSE the
> basic materials used to make the artificially real are themselves
> cosmoterrestrially real; man must start with matter that "God"
> wrought. Even "liquid metal" and other carbon-fused alloys are based
> on what IS given. Plastics, for another example, are man-made---
> artificially real---but must be made from material that is
> cosmoterrestrially real to start with.
Actually, what really has run through my mind is that
the more important differences between human and natural
objects (important measured by their consequences) tend
to be less important (the importance of these differences
now measured by how well they distinguish objects with
human or natural origins into their correct categories.)
I won't pursue this line of argument right now, as it may
turn out to be pointless, once you reveal which difference X
you are referring to.
Jim Burns
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<Are we even speaking the same language? You completely
deny my analogy above, and then in /the very next sentence/
explain why it is true>>
Yes, we are speaking the same language---perfectly good words in the
English language, delivered (excepting typos) in good grammar.
What differs is mental sets; yours and mine are wholly different from
one another. I now can see much of yours, but you don't "read" mine
at all.
Which brings me back to (human verbal) statements are not true or
false or any mixture of the two; they are the EXPRESSIONS of the mind
(s) from which they come (as translated into words). When one can
"read" another's mental set---THROUGH, but not as---the words used to
express the mental content, he has an advantage. Your mental set seems
to conflate many distinctively different issues, like using politics
as an "analogy." That was no analogy; it was a nonsequitur. My
mental set deconflates specific issues from one another. Like
statements can be made only by LIVING ORGANISMS, humans being but one
species of living organism. Pure matter can make no statement, except
as used by a living organism. (I am thinking of computers here, but
any nonliving matter can be used as an example.)
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<I see where I could have expressed myself better.>>
Me too. For example, I should have said that circles do not exist in
COSMOTERRESTRIAL REALITY. The surely do in artificial reality. But
before civilization happened to the human condition, there were NO
circles whatsoever, and there continue to be no circles on earth or
beyond it other than those drawn or made by technological man.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<Surely you have updated your assumptions
by now?>>
I try very hard to make NO assumptions, at least no unexamined ones
(like implicit assumptions). Of course I do, but when one pops up to
my conscious attention, I examine it.
While I am at it, I should tell you that everything I know, and
everything I think I know, and, indeed, every "conclusion" or
assertion I make, I hold to be no firmer than a working hypothesis.
Will the sun be there tomorrow morning? It is a working hypothesis
that it will. Are there really no circles other than those wrought by
civilized man? It is a working hypothesis that there are not. Etc.
Until the sun does NOT come up in the morning, or until something
really circlular (or spherical) shows up, I will contine to keep these
as working hypotheses.
One never knows when, just around the corner, some little detail will
pop up that throws one's entire view of something awry. I have a
pretty good batting average for being right, but I can be wrong, so I
know from experience that this is the case.
Which is one of the reasons I like to discuss; I find, and use,
discussions dialectically, for learning and thinking,.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<Perhaps part of the explanation for our difficulties
communicating is that I regard self-evident facts as a mine-field,
while you apparently see them as true in some inarguable
fashion. It is a standard joke that when someone is
presenting a long, complicated argument, you should look at
the place where he says "... and so, X is obviously true."
That is where the error will be.>>
It is true, especially these days, that people can insist on the "self-
evidence" of something where there is not the least hint of any
evidence at all. Just a stong subjective ideology. So yes, this sort
of thing can be a "mine field."
On the other hand, there CAN be circumstances which really are self-
evident. To illustrate safely, you go outside and find that it is
raining (you go get your raincoat or umbrella); now, that really is
self-evident.
Here again, I deconflate.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<In my world, Sherlock Holmes exists within Sir Conan Doyle's stories
(as well as other places, movies, television, imaginations).
It is not the same kind of existence that you or I have, but it
allows me to answer questions like "Did Sherlock Holmes have a
mother?" or "Do unicorns have five legs?" Can you do as much?>>
Yes, I see that now---your world, that is. But it would not occur to
me whether or not Sherlock Holmes had a mother, or whether unicorns
have more than four legs. All real living organisms have mothers
(even mitosizing cells are "mothers" to the two resulting cells), so
IF one really wanted to know if the fictional character of Holmes had
a mother, he just has to THINK (emphasis on mind work) that Holmes is
a fictional---imaginary---human and that, as such, he had a fictional
mom. But that kind of thinking is a colossal waste of cognition, IMO;
if Doyle wanted to bring a mother into the story in some way, perhaps
just by allusion, he would have done so. One could with more reason
spend his mental time speculating what kind of parents would raise a
son to become the compulsively detailed, yet arrogantly impatient and
rude, Holmes, I suppose, but is that even worth it?
In any case, it doesn't alter the fact that Sherlock Holmes is a
fictional character---the invention of one real man's mind---and
simply does not exist. The author existed; his novels exist, but the
characters and events in each fictional story do not. They become
figments of our own imaginations if we read the novels, but that
doesn't make the events and characters in the novel existant.
WHY? you ask; well, Sherlock Holmes never lived (existed), and the
events in any story featuring him never happened (existed). An animal
such as the unicorn is not now and never was a real, living (existant)
animal. Thus, to say that these "exist in our imagination" is a
linguistically (and cognitively) lazy statement, and a most inaccurate
use of the word _exist_. In a serious discussion, at any rate.
Nor does Holmes exist in a "restrictive" way. For the most part, the
fictional character Holmes is restricted to Doyle's novels, and to
screen and stage plays of the novels, but that STILL doesn't mean he
exists.
And what REAL animal has five or more legs? A unicorn was conceived
as a horse with a single horn in the middle of its forehead. Do
horses have more than 4 legs? Do dogs, cats, cows, . . . ? So the
EXAMINED assumption, given that "art imitates life," would be that the
fictional and nonexistent unicorn has four legs.
All of the above goes for such as Heaven with pearly gates, movies,
television fare, and all vain imaginings. It even goes for pink
elephants and little green men!
This is not to say that imagination itself does not exist. It is an
important subfaculty of natural cognition, and ALL living organisms
have an imagination. As such, it is a metaphysical entity, not a
material thing. (Do you agree? If you want to talk about that we can
talk about that.) Imagination helps an organism to solve problems,
to think "outside the box." And that is what it should be used
for. The gal who wrote the Harry Potter books solved a major problem
with her first Potter novel---she was broker than broke, and now she
is a multimillionaire. Without imagination, Babbage would not have
conceived a mechanical contraption that helped expedite weaving---and
we would not have the computer today.
But imagination can be misused and abused. Paranoia is one case in
point, seeing a religious figure in a stale toasted cheese sandwich is
another, and seeing pink elephants another. I would put wondering
about Sherlock Holmes' mother and the number of legs a unicorn has in
this category.
I hope you don't require more explanatory details than these!!!
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<In my world, Sherlock Holmes exists within Sir Conan Doyle's stories
(as well as other places, movies, television, imaginations).
It is not the same kind of existence that you or I have, but it
allows me to answer questions like "Did Sherlock Holmes have a
mother?" or "Do unicorns have five legs?" Can you do as much?>>
Yes, I see that now---your world, that is. But it would not occur to
chazwin
> I've been recently thinking about one possible criterion of
> ontological existence:
"Ontological existence" is a tautology
>
> (T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of a true statement.
>
> In the process, I wrote an argument against that as a criterion, on
> which I'd appreciate any constructive feedback.
>
> 1. The square circle does not exist.
> 2. Assume that T is true. Then:
> 2a. The square circle is not a triangle.
i. e. a thing which does not exist is not a thing that does. This is
not symmetrical.
> 2b. Therefore, "The square circle is not a triangle." is a true
> statement. (Def. "true statement")
No - the impossible is not the same as another thing that it does not
compare to.
> 2c. Therefore, a true statement can be made about the square
> circle.
Only that a square is not a circle.
> 2d. Therefore, the square circle is the referent of a true
> statement. (Def. T)
Only in denial.
> 2e, Therefore, the square circle exists.
Therefore go back to step one and think again.
> 3. If T is true, then the square circle exists. (2)
> 4. T is not true. (1,3)
no
Jim Burns
> Date: Thurs, Oct 22 2009 4:27 pm
> From: James Burns
> In any case, it doesn't alter the fact that Sherlock
> Holmes is a fictional character---the invention of one
> real man's mind---and simply does not exist.
Here, in a nutshell, is the logical step that I would like
spelled out: how do you get from "is a fictional character"
to "simply does not exist"?
It seems like I've asked this before, but, for whatever
reason, it is clear that we are not communicating.
I will try to explain myself another way.
(1) Suppose I create a completely new word: "hinkle".
If you were trying to understand what "hinkle" means,
you could ask me for a definition, but it is much more
common to listen to how I use the word and to try to
get a sense of its meaning from that.
Here are some samples:
"I hinkle. You hinkle. Trees hinkle. Sherlock Holmes and
unicorns do not hinkle."
After enough of these, let's assume you develop a
strong sense that "hinkle" means something very like
your use of the word "exist".
(2) Here's another new word: "churble". After listening
to me use it for a while ("Sherlock Holmes and unicorns
churble."), let's assume that you get a sense that
"churble" means something very like my own use of the
word "exist" (which, by the way, is as near to the most
widespread use as I can manage).
(3) My understanding of your position is that the
way you use "exist" is correct and the way I use
"exist" is incorrect. In terms of my new vocabulary,
"hinkle" is correct and "churble" is incorrect.
Of course, there is nothing in their meanings as
meanings that could be either correct or incorrect.
They are entirely my words; there is nothing to
have stopped me from defining me from defining
"hinkle" to mean "having two left arms and painted
blue."
Therefore, my best estimate of what you mean is
that Bad Things Happen when someone uses "churble"
and that these things fail to happen when "hinkle"
is used instead. What are these Bad Things? I
still hope that you will tell me.
(4) I will translate your argument into our new
vocabulary, in hopes that you will see how your
arguments sound to me:
> In any case, it doesn't alter the fact that Sherlock
> Holmes is a fictional character---the invention of one
> real man's mind---and simply does not exist.
> The author existed; his novels exist, but the
> characters and events in each fictional story do not.
> They become figments of our own imaginations if we
> read the novels, but that doesn't make the events
> and characters in the novel existant.
# In any case, it doesn't alter the fact that Sherlock
# Holmes is a fictional character---the invention of one
# real man's mind---and simply does not hinkle.
# The author hinkled; his novels hinkle, but the
# characters and events in each fictional story do not.
# They become figments of our own imaginations if we
# read the novels, but that doesn't make the events
# and characters in the novel hinkling.
These are excellent demonstrative uses of "hinkle"
(and "exist" -- your version), but notice that you
do not even address /my/ use of "exist" (or "churble")
much less tell me what is wrong with it.
> WHY? you ask; well, Sherlock Holmes never lived
> (existed), and the events in any story featuring
> him never happened (existed). An animal such as
> the unicorn is not now and never was a real, living
> (existant) animal. Thus, to say that these
> "exist in our imagination" is a linguistically
> (and cognitively) lazy statement, and a most
> inaccurate use of the word _exist_.
> In a serious discussion, at any rate.
# WHY? you ask; well, Sherlock Holmes never lived
# (hinkled), and the events in any story featuring
# him never happened (hinkled). An animal such as
# the unicorn is not now and never was a real, living
# (hinkling) animal. Thus, to say that these
# "churble in our imagination" is a linguistically
# (and cognitively) lazy statement, and a most
# inaccurate use of the word _hinkle_.
# In a serious discussion, at any rate.
I changed one example here of "exist" to "churble" because
that was a quote of mine wherein I was very clear that
I was using "exist" /my/ way.
And you still have not told me what is wrong with "churble".
> Nor does Holmes exist in a "restrictive" way. For the most
> part, the fictional character Holmes is restricted to Doyle's
> novels, and to screen and stage plays of the novels, but
> that STILL doesn't mean he exists.
# Nor does Holmes hinkle in a "restrictive" way. For the most
# part, the fictional character Holmes is restricted to Doyle's
# novels, and to screen and stage plays of the novels, but
# that STILL doesn't mean he hinkles.
Of course not -- and I have tried to avoid suggesting that he
does hinkle. You have told me he does not hinkle, and I believe
you.
However, that does not begin to address whether or not he
churbles. And, in the matter of the meaning of "churble", unlike
"hinkle", you cannot settle questions based solely on your own
authority as word-creator.
(I am a little confused by your use of "restrictive" above.
When I used it in my previous post, I meant that the circumstances
under which you would judge something to exist are narrower,
fewer -- more restricted, if you please -- than the circumstances
I would judge something to exist. Surely, you don't disagree
with that?)
# And what REAL animal has five or more legs? A unicorn was
# conceived as a horse with a single horn in the middle of
# its forehead. Do horses have more than 4 legs? Do dogs,
# cats, cows, . . . ? So the EXAMINED assumption, given
# that "art imitates life," would be that the fictional and
# non-hinkling unicorn has four legs.
#
# All of the above goes for such as Heaven with pearly gates,
# movies, television fare, and all vain imaginings. It even
# goes for pink elephants and little green men!
#
# This is not to say that imagination itself does not hinkle.
# It is an important subfaculty of natural cognition, and ALL
# living organisms have an imagination. As such, it is a
# metaphysical entity, not a material thing. (Do you agree?
# If you want to talk about that we can talk about that.)
# Imagination helps an organism to solve problems, to think
# "outside the box." And that is what it should be used for.
# The gal who wrote the Harry Potter books solved a major
# problem with her first Potter novel---she was broker than
# broke, and now she is a multimillionaire. Without
# imagination, Babbage would not have conceived a mechanical
# contraption that helped expedite weaving---and we would not
# have the computer today.
#
# But imagination can be misused and abused. Paranoia is one
# case in point, seeing a religious figure in a stale toasted
# cheese sandwich is another, and seeing pink elephants another.
# I would put wondering about Sherlock Holmes' mother and the
# number of legs a unicorn has in this category.
By now, it should be very clear what you mean by "hinkle"
-- errr, excuse me: what you mean when you use "exist".
Also, it is crystal clear to me that, if I intend to
use "exist" your way and not my way, then all the things
that you pointed to as errors would indeed be errors.
However, where do you tell me WHY we should use "hinkle"
in preference to "churble"?
(Before we move on to metaphysical entities, I would
like to feel I understand you when you write about
existing or not existing.)
> I hope you don't require more explanatory details than
> these!!!
I would be overjoyed even to have a good many fewer details
if only those details told me why "hinkle" is so much
better than "churble".
Jim Burns
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<There are many differences [to organismic v material things], some
important, some unimportant. Which one or ones are you referring to?
>>
This is going to be an ATTEMPT to deliver an explanation to you,
because you have asked for a finer explanationan than that I have
already delivered. But I have no illusions that it is going to be
successful, because, for one thing, each reality set---the
cosmoterrestrial and the artificial; also the living organism and
matter alone--is so utterly complex. Not difficult; just multi-,
multi-faceted. I have not yet developed a succinct vocabulary and
logical sequence of statements by which I could impart such involved
explanations in a way that is both comprehensive and comprehendable,
and even if I had, I doubt if many today would comprehend.
Nevertheless, I am going to try. In that effort, I am going to make
a brief statement---a declarative statement which you will be tempted
to call an assertion. Perhaps it is for me, I have been at this topic
for a very long time, and understand it, now, pretty well. At one
time a few decades ago, there would have been few who did not
understand. But common and academic experience for people have
altered greatly since then, and experience and background are
everything to understanding a subject through words alone. So I ask
you to accept the declarative statement---as a hypothesis, only, of
course, and you can, should, also carry the equal and opposite null
hypothesis side by side with it until you have reached your own
views. This declarative statement deals with the organismic mind part
of the explanation, so that I might next try to focus on the non-
minded aspect of reality---artificial or technological reality. By
understanding more of the material side, with which you are more
familiar, you can then use it to compare the organismic mind side, and
eventually come to your own conclusions.
There is only one, very important, difference beween a living organism
and inanimate matter , from which all other differences flow: Animate
matter (living organisms) have the property of COGNITION, while
inanimate (just plain ol') matter does not.
THIS definition is, today, squelched by contemporary culture, which
sees mind epiphenomenally. Well, ok; even if mind originates in the
brain (which I don't agree with), the brain still originates something
metaphysical; just point out to me what *matter* the mind, and its
thought products, is made of. Not the brain; rather, its main
cognitive product, the mind.
Things which are made of only matter lack this property; yes, even
the computer.
To avoid getting into the sticky wicket that mind has become, just
tell me this: What is the difference between a statement on a road
sign, and one on the output device of a computer? Is the road sign
(or any other written message) making the statement? If not, then
neither is the computer.
The road sign is not making a statement; only minded humans are making
the statement by printing the message on the road sign. Well, the
same is true of a computer.
A computer is more complex than a road sign, and automated, but the
principle is the same. (I assume you know something about how
computers work.)
An intermediary question might be, what is the difference between a
card file and a computer database? The card file does the same job by
humans manually filling out and filing the cards, and sorting them for
retrieval, that the computer database does automatedly.
The statements of information on each of the index cards are HUMAN
statements; so also the statements on the electronic database. The
computer makes no statements of its own. In most cases, its output is
comprehended only by HUMANS; not by the computer itself.
A complex sort of human statement that is made for computers is the
program. A program is made out by humans according to what the humans
want the computer to do for them in an automated way rather than in a
humanly manual way. There is virtually no limit to what humans can do
by the automated processes of the computer. One computer designed and
programmed by humans can pass off to another computer designed and
programmed by humans what the humans want the second computer---or
third, fourth, . .. computer(s)--- to do. Say, design a tool
(according to human original design), and then send it to a computer-
operated robot to manufacture. (Best to leave the Internet out of it,
as it is a different variable, and, in any case, is just the result of
a network of individual computers.)
It is true that possibly no human has ever seen, or even clearly
imagined, the particular tool that is finally made, but that is
misleading. The humans want the tool to be able to be used for a
specific purpose, so the humans start out with CRITERIA (or statements
of same) for the tool. Then they program these criteria as a set of
parameters, expressed in numerals, and these numerals then cause the
electronic or photonic flow of the computer to flow through or around
certain "gates." The particular configuration of "gates" that the
purely material flow ends up passing through is what ends up as the
design of tool, and then this design is sent electronically to the
computer-run robot that is to manufacture the tool. None of the
computers or robots know what it is doing; none understands anything
at all.; these computers don't talk to one another; electronic flow
from one computer to another is the medium of TRANSPORT, not of
communication. The magic is all in the current flow and the
configuration of "gates" it flows through, and is no different in
principle from the lighted lamp in your livingroom which receives the
energy to illuminate from the electricity available in that room.
The program that controls the flow of photons through whichever
"gates" is also called "software," which starts out as a diagrammatic
statement on a piece of paper (perhaps electronic paper), which is
then etched materially into some material medium, such as mylar, and
these material etchings materially affect the photonic flow through
these and those "gates." The final output can ONLY be understood by
humans, which have minds. (Assuming they are using them.)
In short, every step of a computer process is material; only the
origin and final outcome is grasped by the human mind. A computer---
or a whole bank of computers and computer-run robots---is nothing more
than a fancy shovel or other simple tool. The advantage of the
computer is that it saves on human grunt work.
The computer is also very, very fast. Photonic current flows at
nearly the speed of light, and even a flow of electrons is superfast.
The current can thus pass through any configuation of "gates" lickety
split, before a human can say "Jack Robinson."
Did you know that a computer keyboard, which LOOKS a lot like a
typewriter keyboard, is actually just a set of circuit breakers? Just
like, in principle, a household fuse box or circuit panel? But we are
fooled, these circuit breakers (which also mediate the "gates" through
which the current does or doesn't pass) are surfacely imprinted with
our oh-so-familiar alphanumeric characters, so we ASSUME that by
typing "B" and getting "B" on our output device that the computer
*knows* alphanumerics, and words, and therefore is intelligent. This,
combined with our SOO anthropocentric language, like _language_ that a
computer _understands_, convinces us that they are the latest state of
evolution, equivalent to man, only *smarter.*
But be assured, there can NEVER be a H.A.L. unless a computer's
current flow can be (humanly) programmed with the criteria of paranoid
schizophrenia and other-controling performance. This would require
humans to study intensely and accurately every detail of linguistic
and other behavior of the paranoid schizophrenic (not his brain), and
then turn these into numerically coded criteria for programming the
computer. This MIGHT produce a convincing version of H.A.L., but I am
skeptical.
You mentioned Alan Turin; his analogy of a living duck to a computer
"playing" Chess. Well, I ask you, a plastic, battery-operated toy
might look like a living duck, quack like a living duck, waddle like a
living duck---but would it BE a living duck?
By confusing the mechanical with a living organism, Turin was mixing
his apples and oranges. (If anything, it works the other way around,
the mechanical mimmicking the natural, not the reverse.)
Computers don't *play* chess; computers don't *play* anything,
period. To play, something has to have a mind. In "Chess," a
computer is merely calculating statistical probabilities. Computers
are excellent tools for calculating numbers, even long and
sophisticated calculus equations, and and were used for this before
they were applied to text and graphics applications, because the
programmers had to figure out how to numeralize text and pictorial
types of data.
The real game of Chess, invented a long time ago in the Orient, is not
a statistical-probabiliities challenge. It was invented as a
streamlined metaphor of living life. A young person by making a
choice---consciously and deliberately or unconsciously and
implicitly---set in motion a set of activities for which there were
consequences. These consequences were not set in stone, so the
person, seeing through experience what the consequences of his chosen
actions were, could learn from them. There is no learning from mere
statistical probabilities. If he did not like what his mind-chosen
actions led to, he could, by mind action, change his actions the next
time a similar opportunity arose, and thereby change the
consequences. Something like, "Be careful of what you pray/wish for;
it might come true."
But the true game of Chess also reveals that, eventually, one runs out
of opportunities to change his choices of action, and thereby seals
his fate: "Check mate." So one should learn from his experience, and
from the experienced consequences of his choices of action, before it
is too late.
There is none of this in computerized "chess." Mind-possessing humans
rarely beat the computer in probability calculations; the computer is,
as mentioned, too fast because of the material current used in it.
The human "player" of computerized Chess is not involved in playing a
real game of Chess, but only in trying to beat the computer in
probability calculations.
That is my PRELIMINARY attempt at pointing out the difference between
living organisms and inanimate matter. It will have to do for now.
Jim Burns
I have only glanced at your post as yet, but
it looks like it may be the sort of thing I
was hoping for. I will have to think about
things before I can make any meaningful response,
of course.
And whether this latest post is or is not
something that addresses the questions I have,
I appreciate the efforts you have put into
trying to answer them.
Jim Burns
Nam Nguyen
> But be assured, there can NEVER be a H.A.L. unless a computer's
> current flow can be (humanly) programmed with the criteria of paranoid
> schizophrenia and other-controling performance. This would require
> humans to study intensely and accurately every detail of linguistic
> and other behavior of the paranoid schizophrenic (not his brain), and
> then turn these into numerically coded criteria for programming the
> computer. This MIGHT produce a convincing version of H.A.L., but I am
> skeptical.
Imho, this isn't quite true. _In principle_, computers could be used
to simulate a "universe" with certain laws and in which intelligent
"beings" could arise. We have to create the "laws" and there's no
guarantee that any intelligence would emerge. But neither could we
exclude any possibility.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<There are many differences [to organismic v material things], some
important, some unimportant. Which one or ones are you referring to?
>>
This is the second phase of my attempt to explain the difference
between a living organism and mindless matter. Of course, the
statement I made in phase 1 still applies for the living organism----
which you have taken as a hypothesis, complete with your own null
hupothesis, rather than as an assertion---while I here conntinue to
focus on the mindless matter, as evinced through human material
technology.
I said that the modern computer is superfast, and too multifaceted for
any human to understand, so, without this understanding, humans tend
to conflate unlike with unlike. This was not always so.
The first gizmo to be called a "computer" officially was the abacus.
It was not a computer, but a calcululator, invented long ago to
facilitate human counting. It was a rectangular frame, with strings
or wires stretching horizontally between the right and left sides of
the frame. Strung through these threads were beads, which were moved
from right to left to arrive at a sum. Of course no one at any time
believed that an abacus had any intelligence of its own; if it was
"AI," it was because the intelligent HUMAN used it as an artifice to
aid the human intelligence in counting. And the abacus was not too
complex to be grasped by human intelligence.
The second, and far more recent, contraption to be called a "computer"
was the Babbage weaving aid. Intelligent humans would arrange the
spools of yarn in such and such a way, and a gadget with spindles
would be moved toward these spools and pluck out threads of the right
color of yarn, "right" having been decided by the HUMANS who operated
this contraption.
Observing this, some humans said to themselves, "If such a machine can
be used to pick out thread colors, why can't one be developed to pick
out human statements that have been expressed on papers?" (Sort the
material papers, and you sort "information.") Eventually this
wondering led to the punch-card computer, by this time run by
electricity, by which individual cards represented, say, answers to a
survey (human statements), and employees would be hired to punch holes
in these cards in certain predetermined places on the cards. Then the
spindled machine would run through the cards picking them up through
their holes, and the results were then tallied: So-many people had
said they bought this brand of coffee (say, just to keep the
illustration simple); so-many other peoople had said they bought
another brand of coffee . . . and some people had had no answer
(statement).
No one then (or now if the punch-card computer is remembered)
believed that such machines might someday take over the world, or even
that they had minds or were intelligent. And such machines were easy
to understand. There had been a play produced called "R.U.R." that
came out, but it was just a science-fiction piece, not to be
considered here. But such punch-card machines were *artificial*
intelligence because cognitive, thus intelligent, HUMANS could
expedite the increasing loads of human statements by these artificial,
mechanical, means.
Meanwhile, during WWII, information-processing "machines" were used to
send materially coded statements by way of giant boards loaded with
lightbulbs that screwed in, and lighted, and screwed out, and were
darkened. Electrical wires running to each of these bulb sockets were
behind these boards. Hordes of housewives were employed to screw in
or out each of these light bulbs according to a set of papers---quite
literally instructions in those days---which were individualized for
each worker. The housewife would look at her instructions and screw
this or that bulb in, and this other and that other bulb out,
alternatively at different times according to the instructions stated
on her bunch of papers. The coded message output was based on so-
many lightbulbs that were "ON" and so-many that were "OFF" at a given
point---this binary system being the basis for assigning codes of on
and off to individual messages. The *messages" to be encoded were
decided by the military brass---cognitive human beings, and the
messges that were encoded by this means and dispatched were read by
cognitive human beings. The advantage to coding these messages was to
keep them from being understood by the enemy, comprised of cognitive
human beings.
As dramatically large (as well as simple) as these lightbulb
"machines" were, I think few who really thought about it believed that
such machines were themselves intelligent, and would someday take over
the world, but, by his time, the stage-presented fiction called
"R.U.R." was having an effect on portions of the populace. The same
populace that was producing and raising the next generation of
computer-interested people.
But these giant lightbulb "machines" were too huge and costly, despite
their simplicty, so a look-see around for alternative ways to
accomplish the same kind of task took place. This alternative way
was, first, the vacuum tube, the same as was used to receive radio
waves carrying sound to, of all things, the "radio." The vacuum tube
led to the production of huffing and puffing behemouths, such as the
Univac, which could do very little in the way of receiving and sorting
human statements, and which therefore had to be electrically hooked
together to make for any useful output. So much electricity and so
many vacuum tubes produce a whole lot of heat, so the giant buildings
which housed them had to be cooled.
But even by now, people no longer could understand computer
technology---it was already too multifaceted---and then, influences
from fiction such as "R.U.R" and the "Buck Rogers" comic strip were
taking their toll of the human populace. More and more computers were
looking threateningly like humans who could think, and eventually,
even more rapidly than humans can. Maybe "R.U.R." was right, and
computerized robots *could* rebel against their human masters and take
over the world.
This is the cultural legacy of those who are adults in the
contemporary world.
Meanwhile this growing belief---untrue ideology---was further aided
and abetted by the advent, first, of the transistor, and then of the
printed circuit, so that more and more statements from more and more
minds of cognitive humans could be fed into, sorted by, and outputted
by smaller and smaller machines. This made these machines MUCH too
multifaceted to be understood by humans, even by computer "experts,"
and bonafide knowledge began to be lost from the collective human
mind, not gained as would be expected. At the same time, more and
more---astronomical amounts of---pure nonsense disguised to look like
real information was being propogated by these shrinking, and still
very dumb, machines. Proopogated en masse by computers on the
intelligent (if lazy and clueless) decisions made by ccognitive human
beings.
But the fundamental principle in the abacus has not changed; only the
material technology has. Computers, even supercomputers, even QUANTUM
computers, are and always will be mindless and routine number-
crunchers, made entirely of mindless matter.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<There are many differences [to organismic v material things], some
important, some unimportant. Which one or ones are you referring to?
>>
Now we come to phase 3 of my attempt to explain to you the difference
between living organisms, in which I will focus, not on computers per
se, but on other artificial devices of mindless matter.
1. Let's consider the astronomical telescope, and we shall use for our
example the most sophisticated telescope ever made by man, the Hubble
Space Telescope.
We are led to believe that this mindless, senseless gizmo sees and
communicates, and that it teaches us Well, it doesn't see and it
doesn't communicate, and if we learn from it, it is really from what
WE see as a consequence of the HST. It works like this: The "lenses"
of the HST include materials which are impressed by wavelengths of
emf, some of it from the visible band, some of it from other bands.
Whatever photons of emf come through one of these "lenses" and are
impressed on the material is tallied by a sorting computer and sent to
one or another of certain pixel-addresses in the computer, which have
been assigned numbers. All of this has been prearranged by the HUMAN
scientists and engineers back on earth. Then the computer(s) on the
HST automatedly transmit, again by frequencies of emf, these pixel
numbers down to receiving computers on earth. These latter computers,
in turn, have been programmed to translate a number into a color, and
the pixels on the screen gradually fill in a "picture" of colors. It
is the same principle as painting by numbers. For that matter, it is
the same principle implemented through the old Brownie camera.
2. Now let us turn to the mindless matter of the universe, that which
is detected by HST cameras, for example.
Such as the HST are truly technological extensions of man's natural
senses, and thus work for man's natural intelligent mind, but we are
really kidding ourselves when we say that telescopes (and computers)
see. WE see---what is right in front of us, or what is lightyears
away from our eyes---through OUR OWN eyes, and as always (or it used
to be), we learn from what we see with our own eyes.
Part of what we see with our own eyes, with the aid of technological
extensions, is that suns and their solar systems come into existence,
stay that way for a while, and then change form, possibly exploding,
or possibly shrinking into a "brown dwarf" or "pulsar." But we never
see a sun or its remnants disappearing altogether. Yet we are
constantly TOLD that suns are born, and that they die! DO THEY???
I contend that only living organisms can be born and can die; i.e.,
the paricular way a living organism comes into existence is through
what we have been calling birth since early Anglo-Saxon days, and the
particular way a living organism goes out of existence is through
death. Moreover, in the case of the latter, the body that has died
more than merely changes form; it eventually disappears virtually
altogether! Maybe some skeletal parts, bones, don't easily
disappear---and can, if fact, remain extant for thousands of years.
But in the main, the mindless matter left by organismic death
entropizes, its constituent parts being randomly strewn around the
earth, solar system, and even the entire universe.
We are also told that galaxies often canabalize one another. I
contend that only living organisms can devour the metabolizing flesh
of their own kind. Galaxies can "collide"---I call it
crosspartition---and when they do, usually much hydrogen gas is
released---which is turned into more suns and solar systems. New sets
frrom the crosspartitioning of old or previously existant ones. That
is logic.
All of this born, die, and canabolize nonsense is anthropomorphizing
at its rockbottom worst; yet we are also constantly told not to
"anthropomorphize." Not even if it is a personification, merely a a
form of metaphor!
Patricia Aldoraz
> I've been recently thinking about one possible criterion of
> ontological existence:
>
There are other kinds of existence?
> (T) Something exists iff it can be the referent of a true statement.
> In the process, I wrote an argument against that as a criterion, on
> which I'd appreciate any constructive feedback.
> ... [snip unnecessarily artificial and convoluted argument]
Essentially, you are trying for
1. 'The square circle does not exist' is true.
2. The 'square circle' is the referent of 1.
3. Therefore, the square circle exists.
But the trouble is that no one would really assert T and mean to
include negative existential claims. 2 is false in the above because
'The square circle does not exist' is really more the statement 'There
is nothing that fits the bill for being a square circle'. The last
form is a better reflection of what is being said and there is no
referent.
James Burns
make some sort of preliminary answer to the three posts noted below.
mrdilligent wrote:
> Date: Fri, Oct 23 2009
> From: James Burns
Message-ID:
<788d6464-c3d6-43f2...@o13g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>
[...]
> There is only one, very important, difference beween a living organism
> and inanimate matter , from which all other differences flow: Animate
> matter (living organisms) have the property of COGNITION, while
> inanimate (just plain ol') matter does not.
[...]
Message-ID:
<91f7febe-de57-48cd...@v36g2000yqv.googlegroups.com>
[...]
> I said that the modern computer is superfast, and too multifaceted for
> any human to understand, so, without this understanding, humans tend
> to conflate unlike with unlike. This was not always so.
[...]
Message-ID:
<88b9d8d7-188f-466f...@s15g2000yqs.googlegroups.com>
[...]
> 1. Let's consider the astronomical telescope, and we shall use for our
> example the most sophisticated telescope ever made by man, the Hubble
> Space Telescope.
[...]
Let us consider, then, the differences between Natural
and Artificial.
I find this to be a very porous boundary. As our knowledge
advances, things that once were "natural" -- /because/
they were mysterious to us, and so had to be accepted
whole or not at all -- slide over the line into ...
maybe not artificial exactly, but technological.
An excellent example is life, and living things. /Elan
vital/ was supposed by some to be a mysterious substance
that living matter had and non-living matter did not have.
We have learned enough about living things that we no
longer have to suppose mysterious substances.
Today, we are not very far away from living cells
constructed in a laboratory -- months. (I had a news
reference and perhaps I'll find it again later.)
I am reminded of a recent comment of yours about,
if an artificial duck walked like a duck and quacked
like a duck -- then it would still be an /artificial/
duck. But what if the duck ate and metabolized as well?
What if it pecked its way out of a small ovoid of
calcium carbonate, ate and grew and, eventually,
stopped "working"? What if it successfully interbred
with "real" ducks? The point is, no matter what
objections you have, concrete objections, I mean,
not just declaring the "duck" not to be a duck,
I can suppose a better "duck" that avoids that
objection. Isn't there some point at which
walking and quacking and /everything else/ adds
up to a duck, a /real/ duck (whatever that may mean)?
A similar argument can be made for "artificial
minds". Can there be human-level intelligence
from machines? Perhaps you will say no, that machines
cannot have cognition, just as a plastic duck
cannot be alive. Except that many amazing things
are happening in AI labs right now. Your argument
would be much harder to make using examples
from today's technology instead of from
the 1950's. And much, much harder in the future.
Back around the turn of the millenium,
Scientific American had a special issue on
computers. One article claimed that the improvements
in AI were limited by the power of the computers
available, but that this was increasing
exponentially (Moore's Law). The writer's
prediction was that we would simulate a human mind
around 2020 -- not so far from now.
(If you want more examples of experiments
that are coming amazingly close to human-like
behavior right now, I will follow up.)
That's beside the point, though. Can there be
human-level intelligence from machines? I
think we have to say we don't know -- yet.
You may have to correct me, but it looks as
though you are trying to cement in place a
linguisitic distinction, between humans and machines,
that may have looked correct at one point in time,
but is looking more and more incorrect as
time goes on.
Jim Burns
James Burns
> Today, we are not very far away from living cells
> constructed in a laboratory -- months. (I had a news
> reference and perhaps I'll find it again later.)
> I am reminded of a recent comment of yours about,
> if an artificial duck walked like a duck and quacked
> like a duck -- then it would still be an /artificial/
> duck. But what if the duck ate and metabolized as well?
> What if it pecked its way out of a small ovoid of
> calcium carbonate, ate and grew and, eventually,
> stopped "working"? What if it successfully interbred
> with "real" ducks? The point is, no matter what
> objections you have, concrete objections, I mean,
> not just declaring the "duck" not to be a duck,
> I can suppose a better "duck" that avoids that
> objection. Isn't there some point at which
> walking and quacking and /everything else/ adds
> up to a duck, a /real/ duck (whatever that may mean)?
Here's a place to start for "constructing artificial
cells within months".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1208047/Life-order-Man-organisms-months-say-biologists.html?ITO=1490
: Artificial life will be created 'within months'
: as genome experts claim vital breakthrough
: Scientists are only months away from creating artificial
: life, it was claimed yesterday.
:
: Dr Craig Venter � one of the world�s most famous and
: controversial biologists � said his U.S. researchers
: have overcome one of the last big hurdles to making a
: synthetic organism.
:
: The first artificial lifeform is likely to be a simple
: man-made bacterium that proves that the technology can work.
:
: But it will be followed by more complex bacteria that
: turn coal into cleaner natural gas, or algae that can
: soak up carbon dioxide and convert it into fuels.
:
: They could also be used to create new vaccines and
: antibiotics.
[...]
On a separate point, you argued that computers playing chess
or checkers were "just" making probabilitic calculations
or whatever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI#Evaluating_progress
I hadn't known this, but apparently computers play
checkers optimally and chess better than most humans
and are quite close to playing better than any human.
You are free to label machine-played chess "not really
chess", just as you are free to label conversation
with a machine "not really conversation" or thoughts
be a machine "not really thoughts".
But, what if we got /better/ chess, /better/ conversation,
/better/ thoughts from machines? (Put scare quotes in
there if you feel you have to. I doesn't change my
question.) /You/ may choose to call that "not real",
but I don't think you will get many takers on your
philosophy.
Jim Burns
mrdilligent
From: Jim Burns
<<(I am a little confused by your use of "restrictive" above.
When I used it in my previous post, I meant that the circumstances
under which you would judge something to exist are narrower,
fewer -- more restricted, if you please -- than the circumstances
I would judge something to exist. Surely, you don't disagree
with that?)>>
I apologize for not responding to this reply of last Sat in a more
timely fashion.
But frankly, apart from the above, I do not understand the rest of
your post. I was---aparently mistakenly---under the impression that
we were engaged in a serious discussion, and not in trivial games of
word-play or other silliness. I fail to see how renaming words
currently in use with made-up words, or even with other words that can
be found in any standard dictionary, has to do with anything. You
are trying to raise the ol' "semantics" quibble, which in serious use
applies validly, but here does not apply at all.
As to the above, I agree that certain words (more and more, it seems)
should be used restrictively; i.e., restricted to certain contexts.
I believe I almost graphically demonstrated the---"my"--- restrictive
use of _exist_ in various posts, including the one in which I
indicated that fictional characters and events do not and never did
exist, at least in any serious sense, and that the content of
hallucinations do not exist even though hallucinations themselves do.
Isn't that the definition of a hallucination: a person experiences as
if real that which does not exist.
Judging from the enormous bandwith you took up to explain with two
made-up words (I suppose you now think those words exist) the
semantics issue, I gather that you do not agree, and that is fine with
me; I said earlier that agreement is not the goal of discussion.
But neither is making up nonsense syllables to make the simple point
that you disagree with my semanitcs. (Most of the world restricts
_exist_to the way I have demonstrated and articulated it.).
I am certain that you can do better than this.
A plant cannot grow without its roots; in fact, if severed from its
root system, a plant cannot even live, let alone grow. For man, these
roots are history, which must be uninerrupted and continuitous. Of
course, the events, circumstances, people of the past HAPPENED, and
are irrevocable, so we are talking about man's MEMORY of them, which
must go back at least as far as "Lucy," and it doesn't hurt to have a
memory all the way back to when the earth came to be. These events,
etc., of the past no longer exist in "real time," as we say, but they
do---should---exist in memory (as personally understood history), and
while these remembered events, etc., only exist in metaphysical
reality, this metaphysical reality of the remembered past DOES EXIST.
No, they are not the same as fictional characters/events, or little
green men or gargoyles, which do NOT exist (in the restricted sense I
have used), because this history really happened.
A single human being's manifest memory is not all that important;
even a plant can do without every root filiment, but the collective
memory of man is very importat. When the "tap root" of this memory is
severed from collective man, he is as a flower cut from the plant
which grew it; it will bloom brilliantly and beautifully for a short
while, but then it will will wilt, fade, wither, and then die as dead
as a doornail.
It seems that contemporary man has totallly severed himself from the
very root system that has grown him this far---including his
linguistic roots; It is hardly a wonder that "nobody can think good"
these days.
James Burns
> Date: Sat, Oct 24 2009 4:32 pm
> From: Jim Burns
>
>> <<(I am a little confused by your use of "restrictive" above.
>> When I used it in my previous post, I meant that the circumstances
>> under which you would judge something to exist are narrower,
>> fewer -- more restricted, if you please -- than the circumstances
>> I would judge something to exist. Surely, you don't disagree
>> with that?)>>
>
> I apologize for not responding to this reply of last Sat in a more
> timely fashion.
>
> But frankly, apart from the above, I do not understand the rest of
> your post. I was---aparently mistakenly---under the impression that
> we were engaged in a serious discussion, and not in trivial games of
> word-play or other silliness. I fail to see how renaming words
> currently in use with made-up words, or even with other words that can
> be found in any standard dictionary, has to do with anything. You
> are trying to raise the ol' "semantics" quibble, which in serious use
> applies validly, but here does not apply at all.
For something like eight response of mine, spread over most of a week,
I failed in getting your attention to the fact (a very simple,
uncontroversial fact) that you and I are using "exist" differently.
That post was a desperate attempt to force you to notice that
there were two competing usages, yours and mine, that needed to
be compared.
I have spent the last couple of days thinking that I had succeeded
with that post, because you changed the style of your presentation
right after it. I see now that you had not even read that post
when you changed your style and, now that you have, you still
do not understand my point.
> As to the above, I agree that certain words (more and more, it seems)
> should be used restrictively; i.e., restricted to certain contexts.
> I believe I almost graphically demonstrated the---"my"--- restrictive
> use of _exist_ in various posts, including the one in which I
> indicated that fictional characters and events do not and never did
> exist, at least in any serious sense, and that the content of
> hallucinations do not exist even though hallucinations themselves do.
> Isn't that the definition of a hallucination: a person experiences as
> if real that which does not exist.
Now that you have decided (in an earlier post) that circles
/do/ exist, just that they do not exist in "cosmoterrestrial
reality" (your made-up word, isn't it?), I find that there
is very little difference in how we use "exist" any more.
An example is your insertion of "at least in any serious sense"
in your sentence just above discussing fictional characters
and events. Setting to one side the judgment implied by your
use of "serious", what you implied is all that I wanted to say:
there is a sense (serious or not) in which Sherlock Holmes
exists /within/ his stories. In that sense, Sherlock had a
mother. In the sense that refers to physical reality (your
"cosmoterrestrial reality", I have been assuming), Sherlock
does not have a mother for the same reason the third eye in
the middle of my forehead is not blue: neither of them exist.
> Judging from the enormous bandwith you took up to explain with two
> made-up words (I suppose you now think those words exist) the
> semantics issue, I gather that you do not agree, and that is fine with
> me; I said earlier that agreement is not the goal of discussion.
>
> But neither is making up nonsense syllables to make the simple point
> that you disagree with my semanitcs.
And yet, even now you have not addressed the differences in our
semantics. What are the options I have left? Give up and
go away?
> (Most of the world restricts
> _exist_to the way I have demonstrated and articulated it.).
I thought I knew how you actually use "exist", but it
is no longer clear to me that I do. You claimed certain
uses are forbidden (or words to that effect) and then
you went ahead and used the word those ways anyhow.
My best evidence is the change in your use of "circle".
You were very definite that circles do not exist. You
went on at some length about that. Several days later,
it turns out that what you meant by your long screed
bewailing the mistaken notion that circles exist --
is that circles do not exist physically but they
do exist in some other fashion. If we ignore the
labels for these kinds of existence as unimportant,
we will be hard-pressed to find /anyone/ who disagrees
with your "startling result."
Also, you had no trouble answering my questions about
Sherlock Holmes' mother and the fifth leg of unicorns
-- answering the questions /as though those beings
existed/. This all that "existing within the story"
means.
What do I mean when I use "exist" /my/ way?
My own experience of the use of "exist" has been
very much within mathematical and logical arguments.
Here, a claim of existence or non-existence is tied
to the particular context within which it is made.
If I claim that a number x such that x^2 = 2
/does not exist/, then it matters very much whether
I am talking about rational numbers or real numbers.
Anyone trying to argue that some mathematical
object /exists/ independently of its context would
have trouble getting themselves /understood/, much
less winning their argument.
I suspect that the use of "exist" outside mathematical
and logical circles has been borrowed from its use
within those circles. It is much more natural to use
"at home" in a math or logic discussion. In normal,
every day speech, it feels much more natural to hear
"Sherlock Homes had a mother." than "The mother of
Sherlock Holmes existed."
You /claim/ that most of the world restricts _exist_
to the way you have demonstrated and articulated it.
It would be nice if you did more than make claims,
if you actually argued for a position of yours.
Against your position, I argue that
-- I do not use "exist" the way you prescribe, and I
never have.
-- You do not use it that way, either.
-- It is /impossible/ to use it that way in mathematics
and logic.
-- Mathematics and logic are a plausible origin for
the use of "exist" in the broader community -- and
so, its use there is a a plausible model for its
use here.
> I am certain that you can do better than this.
I am no longer as amused by your tone of superiority as I once
was, what it only a week or so ago? I would greatly appreciate
it if you would dial it back a couple of notches.
Thanks in advance.
It is ironic that you include a reference to "Lucy" in
your lament for our lost collective memory. "Lucy"
is a part of our collective memory that /was/ lost
and now is found -- which highlights the fact that
our collective memory (as I understand you to use
the term) is growing larger, not smaller. Our collective
memory (that is, our relatively firm scientific
understanding) extends well past the origin of the Earth
to within a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.
Not that the job is complete; there is a lot more
growing for our collective memory to do.
I must assume that by "contemporary man has totally
severed himself from [...] his linguistic roots" you mean:
language has changed. If you can spare a minute
to review the history you worry about others not remembering,
you will notice that the nature of language is change.
Even in eras with stable politics and technology, language
changes, seemingly just for the hell of it. Bring in
wars, migrations, immigrations, emigrations, new technology,
new contacts with other cultures, and language will adapt
swiftly to the new circumstances.
The new circumstances that seem to concern you the most
are the new technologies that mimic humans -- or, at least,
mimic humans as we once understood them. I am not so
concerned, for two reasons: (1) humans are better than you
think (apparently) at distinguishing between shallowly
human-like behavior (such as by ELIZA or PARRY) and deeply
human-like behavior (such as by a real human or some
hypothetical truly AI entity), and (2), if we ever do
have truly AI entities, I find the human/AI difference
to be unimportant /on moral grounds/. Simply put, I
would not want to live in a slave-holding society,
even if the slaves were built.
Have you ever talked to ELIZA?
http://www.wedesoft.demon.co.uk/eliza/
While it can be very amusing at first, no one who spends
more than a couple of minutes talking to her will
mistake her for human -- no one /today/ that is. Before
chatterbots like ELIZA existed, it was reasonable to
suppose that any entity interacting at that high a
level had to be a human (although a very odd human).
It was reasonable because the only choices were human,
animal, or inanimate. If X asked you "How do
you feel about your mother?", you were pretty much
forced to assume X was human. Today, machines are
much subtler; on the other hand, so are humans.
I recommend you look around at your fellow contemporary
humans, the ones you think "can't think good". They're
not so dumb as all that.
Jim Burns
mrdilligent
My last post (10/29) was to be my last in this thread. It is plain
that we shall never agree---but that is not my problem.
You have raised some important/interesting questions, and, recently,
have made some interesting points, but my main problem with your posts
is that you seem not to have THOUGHT these diverse issues through. If
you WOULD think through these issues, and would come up with some REAL
facts that basically controvert what I say, believe me, no one would
be more delighted than I would. I do not read and reply to posts to
sound off (as it seems some here do), but to try to draw out some real
contention. That is what I learn from.
I said a while back that our differennces stem from entirely different
mind sets. I was raised in the 20th; and made it my personal business
to go all the way back tto the Azoic, and to move upwards from there.
Of course I do not remember every conclusion (working hypothesis) I
came to, but each has fed into the others so that I have a very good
"tap root" of our human---and all things terrestrial---history.
School has played a very little part in this; I was Ph.Ded before I
turned my mind "backwards" and began to really think (and therefore,
to really learn). Today, kids come into living-organism existence
with a perfectly good innate cognitive faculty, but are quickly led to
memorizing from verbal material. Our ed. system assumes, wrongly,
that this memorization is necessary to learning. In point of natural
fact, it works exacly the other way around: Humans, and all critters,
learn from experience and automatically "memorize" from this what is
important to them. To memorize from verbal material (and pix,
diagrams, etc.) is to stultify the budding cog fac, and to make all
"learning" purely intellectual, so that they CAN'T think---or truly
learn. Just think of all the years worth of "subjectmatter" you
"studied" soas to pass the next test---and then promply forgot it.
And just think of the largely unnoticed other evidence; for example,
that work study programs really teach, because of the working
EXPERIENCE, but the ed. system insisted that these students spend the
rest of their time in classwork. If this classwork has any value at
all, it is because the students can relate it to their personal
experience at work, not their work program to what they memorized in
class.
I could go on and on, but this tidbit will have to do.
I do not know you, of course, but I infer from your mental set that
you grew up similarly.
Children need to grow up developing their natural cognitive faculties,
and learning basic skills (reading, 'riting, "rithmetic, and I would
add two more Rs: reasearch (lab and lib) and rumination (thinking).
Then starting in their teens, they can focus on words and other
artificial symbols, because by that time they will have the cognitive
wherewithall to learn from them. Think of it this way: The appendix
is an extension of the intestines. I have always known this, but NOW
they are finding out that the appendix is not just a vestige, after
all. Suppose we cut off instead of the appendix, the intestines
themselves, and left all excreting to the appendix? Well, it is much
the same with cognition and intellect. Intellect is a MARVELOUS
extension of natural cognition---but without a well-developed
cognitive faculty, the intellect is worse than worthless.
I continue to use the referential MEANINGS of words, because the MLA
did not go off the referential standard until mid-20th, and the
culture did not pick it up until beginning in the late '60s. But I was
among those "intellectuals" who complained bitterly at Merriam-
Webster's 3rd ed. This no doubt accounts for much of your "semantic
quibbles."
Against this brief background, I will next probe your post of 10/27.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
[...]
<<Let us consider, then, the differences between Natural
and Artificial.
<<I find this to be a very porous boundary. As our knowledge
advances, things that once were "natural" -- /because/
they were mysterious to us, and so had to be accepted
whole or not at all -- slide over the line into ...
maybe not artificial exactly, but technological.>>
I have no doubt at all that your do find a gossamer boundary. But it
exists solid as concrete whether you realize it or not.
_Natural_ and _mysterious_ ar not synonyms. To the Italic peoples who
coined _nature_, it meant what we today mean by "living organism."
_Natural_, then, would refer to "of or pertaining to living
organisms." Up through most of the 19th century, those who studied
living organisms (above the cellular level) were called naturalists,
not biologists. Mendel and Darwin were naturalists, for example.
Nature may be understood or nonunderstood by us, it doesn't matter.
What matters is what it is supposed to refer to, We need to
understand living organisms, including ourselves. I can't recall
offhand (and choose not to look it up) what _mysterious_ means, or
where it came from, but I think we can agree that it means "strange,"
"not understood by us." Much of nature (living organisms
collectively) is still mysterious to us---except that we have lost our
curiosity here.
It made me quite angry that in the '50s, those who worked in the
INSTITUTION we call "science" would say things like "science studies
nature." In point of fact, it does not. Geology, astronomy,
astrophysics, hydrology, metereorology, etc. are not nature; apes and
raspberry bushes are.
You are quite right; no none understands this today, so no one will
understand what I say without a detailed explanation of it. That is
the pity of it all. Not because they won't understand ME, but because
they won't understand reality!
The word _science_ doesn't mean much today, either, as ubiquitously as
it is used. The word itself means "knowledge," but as of mid-19th
century America, its meaning went through yet another change to what
is validly and validatably true. I agree with this, and understand
the sets of changes of meaning it went through. Do you?
In any case, there is not much bonafide science around today. Most of
it is actually technology, or what used to be called applied science,
like your cell tech you articulate below.
[. . . ].
<<Today, we are not very far away from living cells
constructed in a laboratory -- months. (I had a news
reference and perhaps I'll find it again later.)>>
You are quite right; I keep up. But that doesn't change anything I
have said so far. Unless we understand what the ancient Greeks (like
Heraclitus) did, we are crosspartitioing sets that are actually
mutually exclusive sets. It "works"---in the short run. So did
Thalididomide.
<<I am reminded of a recent comment of yours about,
if an artificial duck walked like a duck and quacked
like a duck -- then it would still be an /artificial/
duck. But what if the duck ate and metabolized as well?
What if it pecked its way out of a small ovoid of
calcium carbonate, ate and grew and, eventually,
stopped "working"? What if it successfully interbred
with "real" ducks? The point is, no matter what
objections you have, concrete objections, I mean,
not just declaring the "duck" not to be a duck,
I can suppose a better "duck" that avoids that
objection. Isn't there some point at which
walking and quacking and /everything else/ adds
up to a duck, a /real/ duck (whatever that may mean)?>>
I was referring to Turiing's defense of computerized chess; you have
taken this example way out of context. Toy plastic ducks that run on
batteries (or perhaps nuclear power in the future) are still toy
plastic ducks.
However, suppose we DID make aritificial "real" ducks that can
metabolize? I doubt that we -will ever do that, because it isn't
economically feasible---even if we were able to make artificial
chickens, cows, etc., for our food supply. I feel sorry for the
humanity that will eat such. In the long run, that is. I already
feel sorry for those who eat veggies that are genetically part animal.
For that matter, I feel sorry for the calves, poultry, pigs that spend
their entire lives in a cement barn, breathing in their biological
wastes that are pumped from troughs to a manure piile outside.
NOTHING can eradicate that odor. I also feel sorry for the cows that
can no longer walk because of the selective breeding done in the name
of "science." Much more.
<<A similar argument can be made for "artificial
minds". Can there be human-level intelligence
from machines? >>
Spurious, to say the least. We may eventually have machines which
more closely resemble the output (and input) of humans, but we will
NEVER have a cognitive machine. For that matter, we don't even
understand cognition enough to make them! Maybe if we can make
cellular humans that do metabolize, and think, as in the above, but
computers? No.
<<(If you want more examples of experiments
that are coming amazingly close to human-like
behavior right now, I will follow up.)>>
Never hurts; I am always in the market for such!
<<You may have to correct me, but it looks as
though you are trying to cement in place a
linguisitic distinction, between humans and machines,
that may have looked correct at one point in time,
but is looking more and more incorrect as
time goes on.>>
No, I won't bother to correct you; I have already gone to great
lengths to illustrate, even document, my point. But it is not a
linguistic distinction; it is a REAL distinction. Remember, tin can
be gilded to look like real gold. Would you know the difference?
More importantly: Would you be able to tell stubbornness from true
courage of conviction? On the surface, they look exactly alike.
mrdilligent
From: James Burns
<<For something like eight response of mine, spread over most of a
week,
I failed in getting your attention to the fact (a very simple,
uncontroversial fact) that you and I are using "exist" differently.
That post was a desperate attempt to force you to notice that
there were two competing usages, yours and mine, that needed to
be compared.>>
But I DID understand your usage of _exist_! Wasn't that obvious??? I
understood yours; you failed to understand mine (which most of the
world still uses, btw).
A semantic quibble, I called it finally.
<<Now that you have decided (in an earlier post) that circles
/do/ exist, just that they do not exist in "cosmoterrestrial
reality" (your made-up word, isn't it?), I find that there
is very little difference in how we use "exist" any more>>
I didn't "decide" it; I was using my original failure to articulate as
a counterpart to something you said.
Yes, "cosmoterrestrial" is "my made up word." Its meaning is clear,
isn't it? I mean, you don't need a dictionary to understand it, do
you.
I was looking for something with which to replace _nature_ a long time
ago. Now that that term seems largely to have been dropped, _cosmos_
is available, but that tends to refer to outter space. I wanted to
include our planet. COULD THAT BE CLEARER?
<<An example is your insertion of "at least in any serious sense"
in your sentence just above discussing fictional characters
and events. Setting to one side the judgment implied by your
use of "serious", what you implied is all that I wanted to say:
there is a sense (serious or not) in which Sherlock Holmes
exists /within/ his stories.>>
As long as we are raising BIG issues from trivia, may I point out that
Sherlock Holmes does not have stories? Arthur Conan Doyle does, but
not his fictional character.
<<In that sense, Sherlock had a
mother. In the sense that refers to physical reality (your
"cosmoterrestrial reality", I have been assuming), Sherlock
does not have a mother for the same reason the third eye in
the middle of my forehead is not blue: neither of them exist.>>
I'll bypass Sherlock Holmes and his mother as dead horses. But the
"third eye" does exist as an actual organ in our brains. Of course
it is not blue, but it is an "eye" of sorts, as it is very sensitive
to emf. This time of year, when the sun goes south, it doesn't
function very well until the rotation of our planet brings sunlight to
the north again. As the sun goes south, furry mammals put on longer
coats and more fat, to protect themselves against the cold winter. As
the sun gets stronger in the spring, they shed again, this time for
shorter, thinner coats. For humans in particular, the immune system
depends heavily on the pineal body, and fails to work as well starting
in October. Why do you suppose flu and cold season runs from Oct
through Feb? Because the immune system is weaker with weaker help
from their "third eye," or pineal body. (No, it is not because people
are densely housed in buildings during this period, as has been said.)
"Third eye" is an Oriental term from olden days, because the
Orientals, particularly the Hindus, noticed that some people were
more, er, "ESP-" sensitive than others. These individuals could "see"
what most people could not. I knew there had to be a rational
explanation for it, and found it in the pineal body. In those days,
Western scientists didn't know much about the pineal body other than
it existed---in the center of the brain behind (by some inches) the
forehead. Later, they began to notice that it was emf-sensitive.
Well, heck, I had known that for years.
[. . . ]
<<And yet, even now you have not addressed the differences in our
semantics. What are the options I have left? Give up and
go away?>>
Weeell, I almost did! But you are clearly a very intelligent person,
and I am CERTAIN that you can do better, soooo. . . .
> (Most of the world restricts
> _exist_to the way I have demonstrated and articulated it.).
<<I thought I knew how you actually use "exist", but it
is no longer clear to me that I do. You claimed certain
uses are forbidden (or words to that effect) and then
you went ahead and used the word those ways anyhow.>>
In language, there is the vernacular, which now includes vulgate, and
proper, accepted---restricted, if you will---usage of any word.
_Exist_ is one of those words (a cf. Bill Clinton's use when he was
trying to weasle out of his lascivious conduct with Monica).
I happened to come across part of a TV cartoon the other day, which I
thought would make a good vignette of what I mean: A young girl said,
"But that is real," and her boy partner said, "well, so are
movies . . . aren't they?" He then brought up Star Wars, and the
girl said, "you pay too much attention to science fiction, and not
enough to science."
That pretty much says it in a nutshell, don't you think?
<<My best evidence is the change in your use of "circle".
You were very definite that circles do not exist. You
went on at some length about that. Several days later,
it turns out that what you meant by your long screed
bewailing the mistaken notion that circles exist --
is that circles do not exist physically but they
do exist in some other fashion. If we ignore the
labels for these kinds of existence as unimportant,
we will be hard-pressed to find /anyone/ who disagrees
with your "startling result.">>
IMO, you are splitting hairs again. I originally didn't articulate
the distinction between cosomoterrestrial reality and artificial
reality because, at that time, I was sure that you understood that.
Circles do not exist; they are figments of man's imagination, and have
led to much technology. But doesn't every educated person know
that? NOT every person understands that cosmoterrestrial reality has
no circles, however!
<<Also, you had no trouble answering my questions about
Sherlock Holmes' mother and the fifth leg of unicorns
-- answering the questions /as though those beings
existed/. This all that "existing within the story"
means.>>
Again, beating dead horses. I was only trying to explain WHY such do
not exist.
<<What do I mean when I use "exist" /my/ way?
<<My own experience of the use of "exist" has been
very much within mathematical and logical arguments.
Here, a claim of existence or non-existence is tied
to the particular context within which it is made.
If I claim that a number x such that x^2 = 2
/does not exist/, then it matters very much whether
I am talking about rational numbers or real numbers.
Anyone trying to argue that some mathematical
object /exists/ independently of its context would
have trouble getting themselves /understood/, much
less winning their argument.>>
Ahh, mathematics. That is a separate consideration. For the present,
let's just say that is is an error to extrapolate from mathematics to
the nonmathematical world.
<<I suspect that the use of "exist" outside mathematical
and logical circles has been borrowed from its use
within those circles. It is much more natural to use
"at home" in a math or logic discussion. In normal,
every day speech, it feels much more natural to hear
"Sherlock Homes had a mother." than "The mother of
Sherlock Holmes existed.">>
What is a "logical circle"? The only ones I know of are in Venn
diagrams, but maybe there are others? Boy, learning of non-Venn
logical circles might be worth this entire discussion to me!
In any case, comfortable or not, it is still invalid to extrapolate
from math to the real world.
Now you are going to point out how very often a mathematical equation
will provide insight to, even discover, a fact of scientific reality.
Yes, and so also does sheer fiction do the same. But that doesn't
change the fact that whatever IS real, known or unknown, is real,
exists. And a whole lot of mathematical equations that "prove" in
their balancing prove nothing but fanciful nonsense.
One would think that a true mathemetician would be more exact in his
thinking, thus expressions, and a whole lot less metaphorically
vernacular.
[. . .]
<<Against your position, I argue that
-- I do not use "exist" the way you prescribe, and I
never have.>>
You are free to use any word any way you like. Feel free.
<<-- You do not use it that way, either.
-- It is /impossible/ to use it that way in mathematics
and logic.
-- Mathematics and logic are a plausible origin for
the use of "exist" in the broader community -- and
so, its use there is a a plausible model for its
use here.>>
I disagree. But then, until now, we weren't even considering
mathematics.
> I am certain that you can do better than this.
<<I am no longer as amused by your tone of superiority as I once
was, what it only a week or so ago? I would greatly appreciate
it if you would dial it back a couple of notches.>>
"Superiority" is your word, not mine. Do you feel inferior?
But then enter subjectivity, and I thought we were having an OBJECTIVE
discussion.
Whomever *feels* superiority, inferiority, inadequacy, adequacy,
insecure, secure . . . (and I don't), let's agree to leave them behind
and not bring them to the posting agora, OK?
[. . . ].
<<It is ironic that you include a reference to "Lucy" in
your lament for our lost collective memory. "Lucy"
is a part of our collective memory . . .>>
I don't think it is ironic at all. And, is simply being aware of
facts the same thing as memory? History as memory of our collective
past must be a PERSONAL thing, as all memories are. And it must
connect to the present and past, alike. It must be continuitous.
Othewise it remains as simply "book knoweldge."
<<I must assume that by "contemporary man has totally
severed himself from [...] his linguistic roots" you mean:
language has changed. If you can spare a minute
to review the history you worry about others not remembering,
you will notice that the nature of language is change.
Even in eras with stable politics and technology, language
changes, seemingly just for the hell of it. Bring in
wars, migrations, immigrations, emigrations, new technology,
new contacts with other cultures, and language will adapt
swiftly to the new circumstances.|>>
And here we are in language! My, we are all over the map, aren't we.
I recall saying to you that I could write tomes just on this topic
alone. Now you ask if I can "spare a minute"?
I will say this much, a summary statement: All of the "linguistic
change" I have experienced, including vicarious experience, comes from
human ignorance,. A particularly graphic item is W. Wilson's semantic
slip to "normalcy." He *meant* _normality_, but apparently couldn't
think of that during his speech. Now "normalcy" is in accredited
dictionaries, just because he happened to be president of the US.
Almost no one uses "normality" any more.
But what do you suppose would have happened if an ordinary fellow made
the same slip? If he was culturally visible, he would have been
laughed at.
I am reminded of an acquaintence of mine who used "objectionable"
instead of _objective_, which is what she meant. Now extrapolate that
to the bulk of the human population, and to be "objectionable" now
means to be objective. Here, PLEASE, pretty please, use your
imagination!
<<The new circumstances that seem to concern you the most
are the new technologies that mimic humans -- or, at least,
mimic humans as we once understood them.>>
I am not in the least concerned about technologies which mimick
humans. I am concerned that the humans become convinced that these
technologies ARE human! Wnat I am most concerned about is that
humans can no longer understand reality itself, cosmoterrestrial
reality (what "God" made) and artificial reality (what man made).
<< I am not so
concerned, for two reasons: (1) humans are better than you
think (apparently) at distinguishing between shallowly
human-like behavior (such as by ELIZA or PARRY) and deeply
human-like behavior (such as by a real human or some
hypothetical truly AI entity), and (2), if we ever do
have truly AI entities, I find the human/AI difference
to be unimportant /on moral grounds/. Simply put, I
would not want to live in a slave-holding society,
even if the slaves were built.>>
You are not concerned because you like the way things are now,
failing to understand the important, if lost, distinctions. The rest
of your statement is self-contradictory; if we ever had AI gizmos that
really were thought of by humans as humans, and were as human as
humans, you WOULD live in a slave-holding society. Humans would love
to have human slaves, and have. So, if the AI humans really were
human-like, and could think for themselves, humans would be come
slaves to what began as their own slaves.
Many many people believe this; I was simply trying to point out that
this can never happen.
<<Have you ever talked to ELIZA?
http://www.wedesoft.demon.co.uk/eliza/
While it can be very amusing at first, no one who spends
more than a couple of minutes talking to her will
mistake her for human -- no one /today/ that is. Before
chatterbots like ELIZA existed, it was reasonable to
suppose that any entity interacting at that high a
level had to be a human (although a very odd human).
It was reasonable because the only choices were human,
animal, or inanimate. If X asked you "How do
you feel about your mother?", you were pretty much
forced to assume X was human. Today, machines are
much subtler; on the other hand, so are humans.>>
Yes, a long time ago, I tried out Eliza, and was disgusted, so quit
(therapy was my stock in trade). I suspect I still would be
disgusted, because we DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HUMAN NATURE.
And no, humans today are not much subtler. Ever hear of "dime-store
psychotherapy"? I have seen it with my own eyes, so to speak; not a
wit of understanding.
<<I recommend you look around at your fellow contemporary
humans, the ones you think "can't think good". They're
not so dumb as all that.>>
Oh, I have, alas alas, I have!
Take another gander at the world about you: obese 10-yr-olds (and
younger); kids that kill other kids merely because they want the
sneakers; kids tried as adults; grown men killing other grown men
because they didn't like the way the coach was treating THEIR kid;
people starting violence at sports arenas as regularly as clock work;
road rage, air rage, all kinds of rages among supposed-to-be self-
controlled adults. . . . I could go on with this list forever.
I am not the first or only person to point out that society has gone
nuts. None other than David Bohm pointed out, in the 70s, that our
society had gone psychotic. And that was a long time ago; it is only
worse now.
I think you must be living in a cocoon.
mrdilligent
so I suppose I never posted it. Might it be a missing link?
If I did post it in a different style, then just delete it.
Date: Fri, Oct 23 2009
From: James Burns
<<There are many differences [to organismic v material things], some
important, some unimportant. Which one or ones are you referring to?
>>
There is only one, very important, difference, from which all other
differences flow:
Animate matter (living organisms) have the property of COGNITION,
while inanimate (just plain ol') matter does not.
I didn't want to get into this, becaiuse THIS definition is, today,
squelched by contemporary culture, which sees mind epiphenomenally.
Well, ok; even if mind originates in the brain (which I don't agree
with), the brain still originates something metaphysial; just point
out to me what *matter* the mind, and its thought products, is made
of.
Things which are made of only matter lack ths property; yes, even the
computer.
To avoid getting into the sticky wicket that mind has become, just
tell me this: What is the difference between a statement on a road
sign, and one on the output device of a computer?
The road sign is not making a statement; only minded humans are making
the statement by printing it on the road sign. The same is true of a
computer.
A computer is more complex, and automated, but the principle is the
same. Do you know how computers work?
An intermediary question might be, what is the difference between a
card file and a computer? The card file does the same job by humans
manually filling out and filing the cards, and sorting them for
retrieval, that the computer databased does automatedly.
The statements of information on each of the index cards are HUMAN
statements; so also the statements on the electronic database. The
computer makes no statements of its own. In most cases, its output is
comprehended only by HUMANS.
A complex sort of human statement that is made for computers is the
program. A program is made out by humans according to what the humans
want the computer to do for them in an automated way rather than in a
humanly manual way. There is virtually no limit to what humans can do
by the automated processes of the computer. One computer designed and
programmed by humans can pass off to another computer designed and
programmed by humans what the humans want the second computer---or
third, fourth, . .. computer(s)--- to do. Say, design a tool
(according to human original design), and then send it to a computer-
operated robot to manufacture.
It is true that possibly no human has ever seen, or even imagined, the
particular tool that is finally made, but that is misleading. The
humans want the tool to be able to be used for a specific purpose (or
set of same) so the humans start out with CRITERIA for the tool. Then
they program these criteria as a set of parameters, expressed in
numerals, and these numerals then cause the electronic or photonic
flow of the computer to flow through or around certain "gates." The
particular configuration of "gates" that the purely material flow ends
up passing through is what ends up as the design of the tool, and then
this design is sent electronically to the computer-run robot that is
to manufacture the tool.
The program that controls the flow of photons through which "gates" is
also called "software," which starts out as a diagrammatic statement
on a piece of paper (perhaps electronic paper), which is then etched
materially into some material medium, such as mylar, and these
material etchings control the photonic flow through these and those
"gates." The final output can ONLY be understood by humans, which
have minds.
In short, every step of a computer process is material; only the
origin and final outcome is grasped by the human mind. A computer---
or a whole bank of computers and computer-run robots---is nothing more
than a fancy shovel or other simple tool. The advantage of the
computer is that it saves on mindless human grunt work.
The computer is also very, very fast. Photonic current flows at
nearly the speed of light, and even a flow of electrons is superfast.
The current can thus pass through any configuation of "gates" lickety
split, before a human can say "Jack Robinson."
Did you know that a computer keyboard, which LOOKS a lot like a
typewriter keyboard, is actually just a set of circuit breakers? Just
like, in principle, a household fuse box or circuit panel? But we are
fooled, these circuit breakers (which also mediate the "gates" through
which the current does or doesn't pass) are imprinted with our oh-so-
familiar alphanumeric characters, so we ASSUME that by typing "B" and
getting "B" on our output device that the conputer knows
alphanumerics, and words, and therefore is intelligent. This,
combined with our SOO anthropocentric language, like _language_ that a
computer _understands_, convinces us that they are the latest state of
evolution.
Nam Nguyen
>
> We may eventually have machines which
> more closely resemble the output (and input) of humans, but we will
> NEVER have a cognitive machine.
That human being "believes" a (sophisticated) machine could never have
cognition doesn't necessarily mean the machine couldn't have cognition.
There are only 2 entities who can _know_ a machine's cognition: itself
and God.
mrdilligent
statements, originated by George Dance, I blindly assumed---apparently
incorrectly---that readers would accept what culture knows or accepts,
but not the culturally novel, such as circles don't exist (wheels do),
and that computers don't think, thus can't know or be conscious or
unconscious; that there can never be a computer or robot that is
H.A.L.-like.
I never dreamed anyone might seriously believe that fictional
characters, like Sherlock Holmes, exist, much LESS that they had
mothers never mentioned by the author of the story. Had I, I would
have thought that such would lead to a can of worms: Why not a
father, too? Why not four (maybe even more?) grandparents? Why not
uncles and aunts, perhaps one, two, or more siblings? Why not a whole
circle of friends outside of those put in by the author?
I also never dreamed that anyone would think unicorns exist, much less
have five legs---why not two and a half? Why not a thousand? Why not
another horn poking out from the top of its head; maybe two others out
from each of his shoulders?
So I have decided to start over again.
Despite HUNDREDS of words of "show and tell" as to how "I" (and a
whole lot of others in society) use the word _exist_---how "I" and the
others "restrict" the word---, one poster here reports that he STILL
has no idea of how I use the word. So, one last time, I will make
another attempt.
The word _exist_ validly (or seriously) applies to material things
which actually do exist in the world, and can be sensorally detected
by any human or other animal; these fall into two categories, 1.,
those which "God" made---were around long before man walked on the
earth---and 2., those which man made. I call the first group
"cosmoterrestrial" and the second group "artificial." Most of the
latter group, if they exist, are collectively called "technology."
I also happed to think that certain entities which are NOT made of
matter, and which thus cannot be detected with the senses, also exist;
we generally call these matterless entities "abstractions." Like what
we mean by "time," for example, by "politics," for another example, or
"philosophy" for another. The list of validly existant abstractions
(in both of the above-mentioned two classes) is practically endless.
I call these abstractions "metaphysical," after the word coined by a
Medieval Scholastic to cover an untitled group of Aristotelian
writings that had to do with human ideation, such as philosophy.
But there are many abstractions which do NOT exist, and are comparable
to fictional characters and beasts like unicorns and minotaurs which
may be considered as "physical," but which do not exist and never did
exist in any serious sense. Reifications are among these
abstractions. So are supernatural entities. And so on.
I hope this is a clear enough summary of how I understand, and use,
the word _exist_, for to enumerate even a partial list of what does
and doesn't exist by this meaning would take YEARS of writing by me,
and of reading by others. Any poster who disagrees with this meaning
is free to so disagree, but if there is to be a discussion, posters
must UNDERSTAND what each means; they are not required to agreeor
disagree.
Jim Burns
> Despite HUNDREDS of words of "show and tell" as to
> how "I" (and a whole lot of others in society) use
> the word _exist_---how "I" and the others "restrict"
> the word---, one poster here reports that he STILL
> has no idea of how I use the word.
If you will recall, it was you, not I, who said I
did not understand you, while you understood me all
along. I believe that was in response to my amazement
that you still did not understand me -- so I suppose
we are even on that one.
I will point out one /last/ time that I have not
been asking you how you use "exist". I have been
asking you (for example) why Sherlock Holmes does
not exist within stories about Sherlock Holmes.
Yes, you have written a lot, but repeating your
position over and over does not turn it into an
argument for your position.
Wait. There is one argument I see, I have to admit:
"It's obvious."
Since it is not obvious to me, and mrdilligent does not
expand on the obviousness of his use of "exist"
in preference to mine, there doesn't seem to be
anything more to say.
Jim Burns
Marshall
>
> The word _exist_ validly (or seriously) applies to material things
> which actually do exist in the world
Circularity fail.
Marshall
Jim Burns
One interpretation of that sentence is that it
defines a certain subset of the uses of "exist",
the valid or serious uses, not a definition of
"exist" itself. One can tell them from the others
because they are /in the world/, as opposed to
in a story or in someone's imagination.
However, this interpretation implies other uses
of "exist", the invalid and/or non-serious uses,
which apply to non-material things possibly
not in the world.
Is that mrdilligent's intended interpretation?
I expect him to deny it, although his denial creates
the peculiar situation of his writing sentences
that do not make sense until his admonitions
on the meaning of "exist" are set aside.
Jim Burns
Marshall
> Marshall wrote:
>
> > Circularity fail.
>
> [...]
> Is that mrdilligent's intended interpretation?
> I expect him to deny it, although his denial creates
> the peculiar situation of his writing sentences
> that do not make sense until his admonitions
> on the meaning of "exist" are set aside.
Mr. "Dilligent" is so bursting with pride at his own
words I do not expect him to admit to any flaws
at all.
Marshall