Metaphysical Death Match: Mental vs. Physical
Jerry Hull
vs. the physical, that almost everyone ignores or shrugs away. Viz.,
there is no place for the mental in the physical world: it does not
fit in anywhere! Many folks conveniently assume that the mental is
somehow "in the head", but if you look inside the head it's not there.
All you can find are brains and other physical stuff. So the only
apparent alternatives are to (1) try to shoehorn it somewhere else in
the physical world, e.g. in overt behavior, in a manner that is
ultimately uninteresting or irrelevant to the traditional claims of
mentality; or (2) simply declare that it does not exist, an
unfortunate fiction of pre-scientific philosophical witch-doctoring
Despite all this, mental stuff seems hard to exorcise, like the
headache that persistently stares out of our eyes when we awake after
an evening of overindulgence, reminiscent of an old bit of doggerel:
There is a man upon the stair,
A little man who isn't there.
I saw him there again today;
How I wish he'd go away!
But we can learn something from an intriguingly analogous problem in a
very different area of philosophy: ethics. There the difficulty is
how to locate values in a world of facts. Facts consist of what "is"
the case. whilst values consist of what "ought to be the case". Now
we know where to find facts: they are the concern of science. We
have all sorts of sophisticated tools for determining or hypothesizing
what is or is not the case. But they never seem to tell us what ought
to be the case. I may feel that something is wrong, but that's just
my feeling -- i.e., a fact about me. Just because I feel something is
wrong does not imply it is wrong. Indeed, even if everybody agreed
(and they never do) that something is wrong, that does not make it
wrong; anymore than everybody believing the world is flat would make
it flat.
So moral philosophers typically try (1) to find room for values
somewhere in the world of fact, some kind of "queer fact" that
inevitably turns out to be uninteresting or irrelevant to the
traditional concerns of ethicists; or (2) they simply declare that
values do not exist, an unfortunate fiction of pre-scientific
philosophical witch-doctoring. Sound familiar? Still values doggedly
persist, even in the claim that "we ought not believe they exist"!
In the case of morality, the scales start to fall from our eyes when
we realize that the inability to locate value in the world of fact
demonstrates that there is something askew about the usual conception
of the world of fact. Indeed, the conventional picture has things
exactly backwards. Value is not (at best) some kind of queer fact;
rather, fact is a kind of value. Truth value is indeed a kind of
value. Not just a borrowed mathematical sense, but in the sense of
something that is valued because of its usefulness for beings with
purposes and desires and the ability to act. "Truth" is the accolade
we confer upon those representations that best depict the way things
are. Knowing how things are and are not is, obviously, extremely
valuable to any being that can and must choose what to do.
Let me suggest an analogous solution in the mind-body arena. The
inability to locate mind in the physical world shows that there is
something askew in the conventional conception of the physical world.
Indeed, it has things simply upside-down. Mentality is not (at best)
a kind of queer, misconstrued physicality; rather physicality is a
kind of mentality. This may seem unconvincing, at first, because we
are so accustomed to think of the mental as what is left over when one
has determined what is physical -- a subset. Rather, I am suggesting,
it is the superset.
The conception of the physical world is achieved by excluding
everything that is person-variant. This is, of course, extremely
useful for the purposes of science, because it gets out of the way
vast domains of things where there are ambiguous or conflicting
procedures for resolving disagreements with others. Instead of using
your foot and my foot, or the current king's foot, as a unit of linear
measure, we instead all agree to use this stick with two marks on it.
Instead of using how things look to me or how they look to you, for
telling if something is "red", we agree to use this spectrometer
reading. By being person-invariant, such "objective" measures are
biased towards noone in particular and therefore equally useful for
all.
But because the physical world, and the honor of "objectivity" that we
confer upon it, is useful for all hardly entails that what is not
useful for all -- the person-variant, the "subjective" -- does not
exist. It is still the unavoidable backdrop for all of our
experiences, the "little man" that won't go away no matter how we try
to deny or ignore it. The mental, I am suggesting, is not what is
excluded from consideration when we restrict our attention to the
person-invariant, but rather the encompassing domain in which that
restriction or exclusion occurs. And that which is left over, when we
compose our model of "physical reality", is no less real for not
existing in the same way for others.
--
Jer
"When you are at sea, keep clear of the land",
Publilius Syrus
Andomar
well represent conscience: neural activity. How
do 1,000,000,000 neurons behave when you put them
together?
When you throw 1,000,000,000 water molecules together,
they all add up statistically. But neurons manage
to take all their interactions and manifest them
on a large scale. This 'manifestation' might
well be the 'mental reality'.
Interestingly, when neural activity stops, the
person-variant reality ceases to exist. But the
physical reality is still there. Therefore,
mental reality must be a subset of physical
reality.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
This only shows that what is called "mental" can be ascribed physical
causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
(as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
"mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
claim I was trying to make.
Andomar
> causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
> and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
> entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
> the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
> (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
> "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
> claim I was trying to make.
>
Actually, "dependant on" might be a better phrase than "caused by".
Is it possible for a superset to depend on a subset...? I guess so.
Your claim that causality is a part of the mental world but not
of the physical world is interesting. But might it not be possible
to explain causality by pointing out certain physical properties
of the brain? Let's say this and that neuron interact in these
ways, to make a human think according to causality.
In that case, causality would be a part of the physical brain.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>> This only shows that what is called "mental" can be ascribed physical
>> causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
>> and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
>> entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
>> the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
>> (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
>> "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
>> claim I was trying to make.
>
>Actually, "dependant on" might be a better phrase than "caused by".
>Is it possible for a superset to depend on a subset...? I guess so.
>
>Your claim that causality is a part of the mental world but not
>of the physical world is interesting. But might it not be possible
>to explain causality by pointing out certain physical properties
>of the brain? Let's say this and that neuron interact in these
>ways, to make a human think according to causality.
>
>In that case, causality would be a part of the physical brain.
The whole point of my little essay was to sketch out a landscape in
which there is a place for the mental as well as the physical. No
doubt our conception of causality has some foundation in the physical
brain. But on the other hand, the very notion of the physical brain
is a product of mind.
Jim Balter
section of Daniel Dennett's introduction to his _Brainstorms_.
There he lays out the approachs and problems of type identity
theory, Turing machine functionalism, token functionalism,
type intentialism, and so on. His text is a gem, and provides
a framework for thinking about these issues that I think is quite
necessary in order to avoid a complete muddle. Dennett attempts
to answer the question "What do two people have in common when they
both believe that snow is white?" and shows how various views fail
simple tests. Just recognizing that one needs to be able to provide
answers to such questions in light of one's theoretical views is a
huge step.
--
<J Q B>
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 01:26:10 +0200, Andomar <not...@like.the.sun>
> wrote:
>
> >There is something physical in the head that may
> >well represent conscience: neural activity. How
> >do 1,000,000,000 neurons behave when you put them
> >together?
> >
> >When you throw 1,000,000,000 water molecules together,
> >they all add up statistically. But neurons manage
> >to take all their interactions and manifest them
> >on a large scale. This 'manifestation' might
> >well be the 'mental reality'.
> >
> >Interestingly, when neural activity stops, the
> >person-variant reality ceases to exist. But the
> >physical reality is still there. Therefore,
> >mental reality must be a subset of physical
> >reality.
>
> causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
> and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
> entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
> the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
> (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
> "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
> claim I was trying to make.
Reinforcing exactly nothing, sorry. :-/
The fact that A causes B is most definitely present in the physical world,
else we would not be able to perceive it. As for the term "causality" and
all the baggage we attribute to it, they are most definitely mental, but
the root of things lies in the physical world.
Causality is not a constraint we impose on the physical. It is an observed
fact that is present in the physical and which we then incorporate into
the mental. In that sense, your whole paragraph is sort of contradictory.
Perhaps you are confused because the physical world manifests itself in
each of our individual minds, and therefore assume that some things that
are physical are in fact mental...
> --
> Jer
> "When you are at sea, keep clear of the land",
> Publilius Syrus
Sönke N. Greimann
E O I R
--
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi
dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
Jerry Hull
<grei...@uni-trier.de> wrote:
>Jerry Hull wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 01:26:10 +0200, Andomar <not...@like.the.sun>
>> wrote:
>> >Interestingly, when neural activity stops, the
>> >person-variant reality ceases to exist. But the
>> >physical reality is still there. Therefore,
>> >mental reality must be a subset of physical
>> >reality.
>>
>> This only shows that what is called "mental" can be ascribed physical
>> causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
>> and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
>> entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
>> the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
>> (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
>> "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
>> claim I was trying to make.
>The fact that A causes B is most definitely present in the physical world,
>else we would not be able to perceive it. As for the term "causality" and
>all the baggage we attribute to it, they are most definitely mental, but
>the root of things lies in the physical world.
>Causality is not a constraint we impose on the physical. It is an observed
>fact that is present in the physical and which we then incorporate into
>the mental. In that sense, your whole paragraph is sort of contradictory.
Causality is NOT something we "perceive", except insofar as we PRESUME
it underlies the phenomena of perception. As Hume made abundantly
clear, all we "perceive" is constant conjuction, which in some
circumstances we believe provides warrant for the assumption of a
law-like regularity. That every event has a cause is NOT something we
learn from experience -- it is something we impose upon experience.
And indeed we are justified in doing so, insofar as it tends to work
out in practice (although QM imposes certain qualifications).
My point is that the very NOTION of the "physical world" represents a
form of mental modeling which, albeit useful, is both logically prior
to the physical world and not itself as such part of it. Where's the
contradiction?
Andomar
>
> Jerry Hull wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 01:26:10 +0200, Andomar <not...@like.the.sun>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >well represent conscience: neural activity. How
> > >do 1,000,000,000 neurons behave when you put them
> > >together?
> > >
> > >When you throw 1,000,000,000 water molecules together,
> > >they all add up statistically. But neurons manage
> > >to take all their interactions and manifest them
> > >on a large scale. This 'manifestation' might
> > >well be the 'mental reality'.
> > >
> > >person-variant reality ceases to exist. But the
> > >physical reality is still there. Therefore,
> > >mental reality must be a subset of physical
> > >reality.
> >
> > This only shows that what is called "mental" can be ascribed physical
> > causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
> > and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
> > entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
> > the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
> > (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
> > "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
> > claim I was trying to make.
> The fact that A causes B is most definitely present in the physical world,
> else we would not be able to perceive it. As for the term "causality" and
> all the baggage we attribute to it, they are most definitely mental, but
> the root of things lies in the physical world.
Causes might not be present in the physical world. It might be that
two events you give a causal relation are in fact different
manifestations of the same event. Or in fact, totally unrelated.
It's not very long ago people assumed a causal relation between
a solar eclips and economic disaster. I don't think such a relation
is part of the physical world at all!
Also, "cause" is not a measurable, so it's not physical. It's
something you make up in your mind and then assume is true.
I agree with Jerry on this one.
Sergio Navega
>>else we would not be able to perceive it. As for the term "causality" and
>>all the baggage we attribute to it, they are most definitely mental, but
>>the root of things lies in the physical world.
>>fact that is present in the physical and which we then incorporate into
>>the mental. In that sense, your whole paragraph is sort of contradictory.
>
>Causality is NOT something we "perceive", except insofar as we PRESUME
>it underlies the phenomena of perception. As Hume made abundantly
>clear, all we "perceive" is constant conjuction, which in some
>circumstances we believe provides warrant for the assumption of a
>law-like regularity. That every event has a cause is NOT something we
>learn from experience -- it is something we impose upon experience.
>And indeed we are justified in doing so, insofar as it tends to work
>out in practice (although QM imposes certain qualifications).
>
This is beautiful, Jerry. But I'm not sure I agree.
If our ideas of causality doesn't come from experience, where
did they come from? Why we impose this upon experience and
not the opposite?
When we see causality as emerging from our experiences, I guess
we can justify better its origins: it is the world "driving us" to
conclude that. But assuming different origins for our notions of
causality (or our need to have it) with things other than
experience leaves an open hole: where it comes from?
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Seth Russell
> There is a horrendous problem with the customary picture of the mental
> vs. the physical, that almost everyone ignores or shrugs away. Viz.,
> there is no place for the mental in the physical world: it does not
> fit in anywhere!
This is the first time I've heard this problem squarely addressed, thanks
for your timely post. I have tried to combined the gestalt of your post
with the "privileged viewpoints" idea that I have been toying with to
arrive at a couple of diagrams that I would like to share with the group.
The first diagram pictures the one and only single universe. It shows all
of humanity as a single figure against the background of the rest of the
universe. It shows the relative positions of our personal mental spaces
to the shared mental space of our human culture. It pictures the
boundary interface between this humanity and the shared "physical" space,
but time and space are not represented in the diagram. see
http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_outside.gif
> The mental, I am suggesting, is not what is
> excluded from consideration when we restrict our attention to the
> person-invariant, but rather the encompassing domain in which that
> restriction or exclusion occurs. And that which is left over, when we
> compose our model of "physical reality", is no less real for not
> existing in the same way for others.
The second diagram pictures the same thing (in fact you can see it is the
same diagram), but it is from the new perspective you propose. see
http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_inside.gif
Every point in the surface of both diagrams represent a fact. The points
are ordered by cause and effect. There are a number of aspects of reality
that these mentographs do not correctly picture. Can anyone spot the
problems?
Sometimes we see things before we can hear them.
Seth Russell
Want a introduction to Knowledge Representation?
see http://www.clickshop.com/ai/symknow.htm
Seth Russell
> Jerry Hull wrote:
> >
> > This only shows that what is called "mental" can be ascribed physical
> > causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
> > and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
> > entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
> > the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
> > (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
> > "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
> > claim I was trying to make.
>
> Reinforcing exactly nothing, sorry. :-/
> The fact that A causes B is most definitely present in the physical world,
> else we would not be able to perceive it. As for the term "causality" and
> all the baggage we attribute to it, they are most definitely mental, but
> the root of things lies in the physical world.
> Causality is not a constraint we impose on the physical. It is an observed
> fact that is present in the physical and which we then incorporate into
> the mental. In that sense, your whole paragraph is sort of contradictory.
I think you completely missed Hull's valid point that the relationship
"caused-by" is quite distinct from the relationship "a subset of". And in
passing I note that the pattern of cause and effect can be observed
supervening on facts of the natural world as well as facts of the mental
world. For the former consider the pattern [when I release my grip on this
ball, it will fall to the ground]; and for the latter consider the pattern
[the change in the value of my stock has made me very happy]. Please note
that both of those patterns of cause and effect can be publicly verified.
Seth Russell
Anders N Weinstein
Jerry Hull <Jerry Hull> wrote:
>There is a horrendous problem with the customary picture of the mental
>vs. the physical, that almost everyone ignores or shrugs away. Viz.,
>there is no place for the mental in the physical world: it does not
>fit in anywhere!
There cannot really be any such problem, or else it would have to arise
and make difficulties for the ordinary use of psychological terms,
something that occurs millions of times every day all over the world.
Since the folk do not in fact run up against any horrendous problem
"locating the mental in the physical world", the problem must be merely
apparent, an artifact of one way of framing the issue.
Let me just give a simple example of what I mean. Psychologists have
taken to studying the development of psychological concepts in children
under the heading "the child's theory of mind". One way they do this is
called the "false belief task". The child is shown a container like a
candy box, understood normally to contain candy, then shown that it
contains pencils instead. The child is asked something like "what will
Mary [another child] think is in the box?". At age three they often say
"pencils"; by age five, they can appreciate that there may be a discrepancy
in others' cognition between appearance and reality, and say "candy".
Now the psychologists in question have various theories about what
accounts for this development. But my point is that this young child
has thereby evinced a basic competence with a psychological concept,
with the concept of other minds. The child might go on to express the
expectation that Mary will be surprised on opening the container, that
Mary might reach for the container when asked for candy, etc. This is
how we operate with these concepts.
Now where is this problem of locating the mental in the physical world?
No such problem has arisen. We only have a pseudo-question like "where
is Mary's belief?", one which may simply have no answer, since the
notion of location in space does not have a ready use for beliefs. (We
can ask where *Mary* is, which way she is looking, etc and relate these
to what she will believe and do.)
>fit in anywhere! Many folks conveniently assume that the mental is
>somehow "in the head", but if you look inside the head it's not there.
I don't think we actually do believe the mental is in the head.
In any case I agree with you that it is not in the head.
Rather, the question "where is it" does not have much point.
>All you can find are brains and other physical stuff. So the only
>apparent alternatives are to (1) try to shoehorn it somewhere else in
>the physical world, e.g. in overt behavior, in a manner that is
>ultimately uninteresting or irrelevant to the traditional claims of
>mentality; or (2) simply declare that it does not exist, an
>unfortunate fiction of pre-scientific philosophical witch-doctoring
I take it these alternatives are not exhaustive. In particular, the concept
of "behavior" being relied on in (1) seems hopelessly crude -- that is
what makes it seem uninteresting.
It seems clear that the use of psychological concepts by our child
involves relations to observable behavior. But I don't think you can
say this is "uninteresting": it puts a quite distinctive
conceptual construction on this behavior, so as to see it *as*
expressive of a subjective cognitive perspective on the world, one in
which representation may differ from reality.
So it may be that the psychological or mind-laden characterization is
irreducible to any other description of behavior, in particular that
psychological terms do not reduce to behavioral ones. Still they
may supervene on overt behavior, so that in employing these concepts
we are seeing the meaning *in* the behavior, somewhat as one can
read emotion in a face or see a figure in a pointillist painting without
attending to the individual dots.
So I am happy to accept a *kind* of dualism all right. But it's just a
perfectly innoccuous *conceptual* dualism between a high-level,
mind-laden description vs. a low-level, mechanistic description of
human doings. The high-level description may be irreducible, but it is
still a description that does not float free and independent of the
movements of the body.
Compare: an aesthetic description of a painting may use an irreducible
higher-level conceptual scheme, but does not float free and independent
of where colored pigment is arrayed on the canvas. I recommend always
thinking of discerning the mentality in human behavior as akin to
discerning a face in a picture.
>Despite all this, mental stuff seems hard to exorcise, like the
>headache that persistently stares out of our eyes when we awake after
>an evening of overindulgence, reminiscent of an old bit of doggerel:
I am certainly not trying to "get rid of" what you call mental "stuff".
For example, I am not trying to get rid of the idea that people have
beliefs about the world around them that can differ from the reality.
I am frankly not trying to get rid of anything, just trying to understand
how the *actual* concepts we have function.
>But we can learn something from an intriguingly analogous problem in a
>very different area of philosophy: ethics. There the difficulty is
>how to locate values in a world of facts. Facts consist of what "is"
>the case. whilst values consist of what "ought to be the case". Now
>we know where to find facts: they are the concern of science. We
But it seems there are many more facts than just the scientific facts.
For example, there are social facts, to say nothing of the facts of
common sense. Ultimately there may be no viable notion of "fact"
beyond: a topic whereby human judgement meets constraint, i.e. on which
we are not rationally free to judge what we will. And that might make
room for the idea of value facts as well.
Certainly our ordinary perception of human behavior and the world is
as permeated with value as it is with other sorts of meaning -- morally
repugnant actions provoke anyone with a suitably cultivated sensibility
to react to them immediately *as* offensive, for example, and it may
be impossible to extricate the valuational from the affective components
of the experience.
Again, I think it helps to focus on things like "seeing-as" and
remember that there is in cognitve life no seeing that is not some kind
of seeing-as. Seeing-as physical is one kind, seeing-as mental
another, and perhaps seeing-as valuable (repugnant, evil, admirable)
yet another. Since there is no concept-free Humean epistemic basis
apart from what can be the content of some such seeing-as, it would
seem that there may be no basis for drawing invidious distinctions in
point of "objectivity" among different putative contents of
experience.
>The conception of the physical world is achieved by excluding
>everything that is person-variant. ...
>But because the physical world, and the honor of "objectivity" that we
>confer upon it, is useful for all hardly entails that what is not
>useful for all -- the person-variant, the "subjective" -- does not
>exist.
As a pluralist and a phenomenologist who certainly believes in
subjectivity, I believe I can agree with some of this. However, I don't
see how it solves the apparent problem *you* raised about finding a
place for the mental. Do you want to use it to defend a form of
idealism about the physical (which it does not seem to entail)? For
remember that the *conceptual* priority of the mental over the physical
that you suggest ("our concept of the physical is that of the person
invariant") does not entail any *ontological* priority of the mental.
If there was no room for the mental in the natural world before we take this
suggestion, there is still no room afterwards, unless you think that
you have shown it to be constructed as a kind of subset of a mental ontology.
I would also want to rely on a concept of "objectivity" according to
which facts about someone's subjective state are "objective" facts
albeit facts that concern a subjective topic. The objective is whatever
we can have constrained discourse on in our common language, and
that includes mental states of persons.
jddescr...@my-deja.com
--------------------------see original---------------------------------
Excellent points in your post. It sounds like the ideas I've been
trying to express where, like computers in general, the basics are very
simple and can be combined into extraordinarily complex compounds but
it is all clearly understandable and describeable and estimateable. Is
there any "school" of ai thinking that shares your broad and clear
perspective on these questions,particularly about objectivity and
subjectivity? Thanks for the help. JD
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 17:52:01 +0200, "Soenke N. Greimann"
> <grei...@uni-trier.de> wrote:
>
> >>
> >> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 01:26:10 +0200, Andomar <not...@like.the.sun>
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >Interestingly, when neural activity stops, the
> >> >person-variant reality ceases to exist. But the
> >> >physical reality is still there. Therefore,
> >> >mental reality must be a subset of physical
> >> >reality.
> >>
> >> causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
> >> and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
> >> entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
> >> the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
> >> (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
> >> "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
> >> claim I was trying to make.
>
> >else we would not be able to perceive it. As for the term "causality" and
> >all the baggage we attribute to it, they are most definitely mental, but
> >the root of things lies in the physical world.
> >Causality is not a constraint we impose on the physical. It is an observed
> >fact that is present in the physical and which we then incorporate into
> >the mental. In that sense, your whole paragraph is sort of contradictory.
>
> it underlies the phenomena of perception. As Hume made abundantly
> clear, all we "perceive" is constant conjuction, which in some
> circumstances we believe provides warrant for the assumption of a
> law-like regularity. That every event has a cause is NOT something we
> learn from experience -- it is something we impose upon experience.
> And indeed we are justified in doing so, insofar as it tends to work
> out in practice (although QM imposes certain qualifications).
>
> form of mental modeling which, albeit useful, is both logically prior
> to the physical world and not itself as such part of it. Where's the
> contradiction?
The contradiction lies in your accepting physical causes at first and then
going on claiming that causality is "imposed" by us onto physical reality.
And that is contradictory in my book.
There most certainly is something like the real world, it is merely that
none of us can provide an accurate description of what it "really" looks
like. We can find common ground, in fact quite much of it, and call that
"objectivity" FWIW.
But for you to say that we impose causality upon reality is - quite
frankly - wrong. We perceive causality within reality, yes. But if
you say that we impose it upon it that would mean that we ourselves
create it. And that would amount to consciously willing everything
to happen. Do you do that? If you twitch and throw your glass of milk
all over your cookies, did you _will_ that to happen??? Rather it has
different causes, which we are able to perceive, given enough
opportunity. We do not impose it upon reality. Sorry, but even if
Hume says it, it is not any more true for it. First come the
experiences, then come the law-like regularities. But if they weren't
real to start with, they'd not be apparent to us. Elementary.
> --
> Jer
> "When you are at sea, keep clear of the land",
> Publilius Syrus
Sönke N. Greimann
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> "Soenke N. Greimann" wrote:
>
> > Jerry Hull wrote:
> > >
> > > causes. I certainly don't want to deny this. However, "caused by"
> > > and "a subset of" are two very different notions, & the first hardly
> > > entails the second. Note that "causality" is a constraint we place on
> > > the physical world, but it is not, as such, part of the physical world
> > > (as Hume can be interpreted as pointing out). This makes causality
> > > "mental" in my large ("superset") sense of the term, reinforcing the
> > > claim I was trying to make.
> >
> > else we would not be able to perceive it. As for the term "causality" and
> > all the baggage we attribute to it, they are most definitely mental, but
> > the root of things lies in the physical world.
> > Causality is not a constraint we impose on the physical. It is an observed
> > fact that is present in the physical and which we then incorporate into
> > the mental. In that sense, your whole paragraph is sort of contradictory.
>
> "caused-by" is quite distinct from the relationship "a subset of". And in
> passing I note that the pattern of cause and effect can be observed
> supervening on facts of the natural world as well as facts of the mental
> world. For the former consider the pattern [when I release my grip on this
> ball, it will fall to the ground]; and for the latter consider the pattern
> [the change in the value of my stock has made me very happy]. Please note
> that both of those patterns of cause and effect can be publicly verified.
Granted. Might be that I missed an aspect here. But both of your examples
are very much part of the real world. You are not abstractly happy, or are
you? There are several physical and very real causes which result in your
"feeling happy". That kind of de-mystifies it, I know, but it is all real.
Nothing ethereal or mystical here, IMHO.
As for the relationship "caused by" and "subset of", please clarify. Or
Jerry might. The way he put it, I objected to what he said. If he said
something else, all right, let him clarify it...
> Seth Russell
Seth Russell
I find your term "real world" too ambiguous to use at this level of precision. I
prefer the term "verifiable", so that your "real world" could be modeled as a
collection of facts and relationships between that collection such that they can
be verified. With those terms we can start to classify (partition) worlds as
composed of different kinds of facts and their relationships: natural world
(physical world if you prefer), private personal worlds, social worlds, biological
worlds e.t.c. That I am happy, is not something that *you* can in any way
verify. In my way of thinking that qualia is an element of my personal mental
world along with those other experiences and innate abilities that compose what I
am. That world is very real to me and I can verify it, but you will not be able
to find its objects (facts and relationships) in your real world unless I choose
(or am compelled) to place them there by my behavior. That is simply the human
predicament.
There is nothing mysterious about that description. If you want to only describe
things in terms of the natural world (which you cannot even directly experience),
and if (like many others) you want to deny the very existence of these other
verifiable worlds, then your science will be deficient and inefficient in
predicting the future. Lots of luck in the pursuit of your physical biases.
Seth Russell
Thinking about how AI could work?
see http://www.clickshop.com/ai/conjecture.htm
Seth Russell
> For clarity on this subject, I suggest the "What is my theory?"
> section of Daniel Dennett's introduction to his _Brainstorms_.
Grumble, homework again tonight.
Seth Russell
Business Development
Http://Www.ClickShop.Com
Renton, Washington, USA
ICQ 251252
Neil W Rickert
>There is a horrendous problem with the customary picture of the mental
>vs. the physical, that almost everyone ignores or shrugs away. Viz.,
>there is no place for the mental in the physical world: it does not
>fit in anywhere! Many folks conveniently assume that the mental is
>somehow "in the head", but if you look inside the head it's not there.
>All you can find are brains and other physical stuff.
Isn't that like saying that if you look around in the environment,
all you can find are physical stuff, including electromagnetic
waves. But television soap operas are nowhere to be found.
In other words, what you find when you look (inside the head or
elsewhere), depends a great deal on how you do the looking.
>But we can learn something from an intriguingly analogous problem in a
>very different area of philosophy: ethics. There the difficulty is
>how to locate values in a world of facts. Facts consist of what "is"
>the case. whilst values consist of what "ought to be the case". Now
>we know where to find facts: they are the concern of science.
I couldn't disagree more. Philosophers may have deluded themselves
into believing that "we know where to find facts." However they give
no better accounting of facts than of values. The best they seem
able to do is to present worthless tautologies such as "facts consist
Neil W Rickert
>Jerry Hull <Jerry Hull> wrote:
>>There is a horrendous problem with the customary picture of the mental
>>vs. the physical, that almost everyone ignores or shrugs away. Viz.,
>>there is no place for the mental in the physical world: it does not
>>fit in anywhere!
>There cannot really be any such problem, or else it would have to arise
>and make difficulties for the ordinary use of psychological terms,
>something that occurs millions of times every day all over the world.
Presumably, by "the physical world", Hull intended the world that is
describable by physics. That world does not contain ordinary
psychological terms either. At best the argument you gave seems to
make the point that folk psychology derives from the mental world,
rather than from the physical world.
The real problem is the failure of philosophy to be more than a
program of indoctrination into a system of "Just So" stories.
Neil W Rickert
>I say rather (with Sellars and Strawson and numerous others) that the
>concept of persons as subjects of both psychological and material
>object predicates has a prominent place in "the common sense world",
>the world as it presents itself to us. I agree that is not the world as
>it is represented in physical theory.
That is a reasonable enough way of putting it.
>I also say that the world as represented in physical theory is not
>the whole of reality, but only a subset of it.
I am inclined to disagree with that. I would prefer to say that the
world of physical theory is a model of the world, rather than a
subset. It does not model everything (presumably this is the point
you were making). But what it does model it also idealizes, and this
is why I do not accept that it is a subset.
>>The real problem is the failure of philosophy to be more than a
>>program of indoctrination into a system of "Just So" stories.
>Hmm. What real problem?
The failure to account for human cognition.
>I would say the real problem is confusing the world of physics with the
>sum total of all that is real. That is why the alleged mind-body
>problem did not appear before Descartes' -- it had to await the rise of
>the the modern mathematical conceptualization of nature.
I would prefer to say that it is due to a failure to recognize that
the world of physics is not reality itself, but is an idealized model
of reality. And physic works so well because it is an idealization.
That is roughly the point being made by Nancy Cartwright in "How the
laws of physics lie."
Neil W Rickert
>On 25 Aug 1999 18:25:04 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>wrote:
>Irreducibly mental stuff cannot be found anywhere in the physical
>world.
If there is no such thing, then it is not surprising if it cannot
be found.
> Or, to put it another way, irreducibly 1st person stuff (and I
>here intend 'stuff' as a neutral category) cannot be found in the 3rd
>person world. So you have the choice of either declaring that mental
>stuff does not exist (nihilism), identifying it with something in the
>physical world (reductionism), or expanding what exists beyond the
>confines of the physical world (call it what you willism). I take
>these to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive alternatives.
There is another alternative. We can try to reduce the 3rd person
world to the 1st person world.
>>I couldn't disagree more. Philosophers may have deluded themselves
>>into believing that "we know where to find facts." However they give
>>no better accounting of facts than of values. The best they seem
>>able to do is to present worthless tautologies such as "facts consist
>>of what 'is' the case."
>Facts are what true statements are about. Trivial? Perhaps.
>Tautological? No.
Of course it is tautological. And a pretty trivial tautology
at that.
> It makes the question of whether something is a
>fact decidable.
Nonsense. What makes it decidable, is that there are humans making
the decisions. But this is just an example of where something
presumed to be 3rd person (facts) reduces to the first person.
> We have very sophisticated consensual procedures for
>adjudicating claims about what is or is not true = what is or is not
>the case:
Sure. But these procedures do not derive from your tautological
definition. Rather, they arise out of personal judgements (the 1st
person again).
>We definitely do NOT have equivalent consensual procedures for
>resolving disputes over values.
Disputes over values can usually be presented in such a way that they
become disputes over facts.
Anders N Weinstein
>
>>>There is a horrendous problem with the customary picture of the mental
>>>vs. the physical, that almost everyone ignores or shrugs away. Viz.,
>>>there is no place for the mental in the physical world: it does not
>>>fit in anywhere!
>
>>There cannot really be any such problem, or else it would have to arise
>>and make difficulties for the ordinary use of psychological terms,
>>something that occurs millions of times every day all over the world.
>
>describable by physics. That world does not contain ordinary
>psychological terms either. At best the argument you gave seems to
>make the point that folk psychology derives from the mental world,
>rather than from the physical world.
I don't remember using any thing that looks like a concept of "the
mental world".
I say rather (with Sellars and Strawson and numerous others) that the
concept of persons as subjects of both psychological and material
object predicates has a prominent place in "the common sense world",
the world as it presents itself to us. I agree that is not the world as
it is represented in physical theory.
I also say that the world as represented in physical theory is not
the whole of reality, but only a subset of it.
I don't want to make too much of the idea of different "worlds".
I think we can intelligibly say that my paying my rent occurs
as an event in the "world" of economics, not the world of physics.
Still to do so I have to move the pen over the check and lay down
ink that adheres to the surface or whatever. So it seems the
event has "a foot in both worlds", it does not take place in some
separated immaterial realm.
>The real problem is the failure of philosophy to be more than a
>program of indoctrination into a system of "Just So" stories.
Hmm. What real problem?
I would say the real problem is confusing the world of physics with the
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>Jerry Hull wrote in message <37c428a...@news-server.stny.rr.com>...
>>Causality is NOT something we "perceive", except insofar as we PRESUME
>>it underlies the phenomena of perception. As Hume made abundantly
>>clear, all we "perceive" is constant conjuction, which in some
>>circumstances we believe provides warrant for the assumption of a
>>law-like regularity. That every event has a cause is NOT something we
>>learn from experience -- it is something we impose upon experience.
>>And indeed we are justified in doing so, insofar as it tends to work
>>out in practice (although QM imposes certain qualifications).
>
>This is beautiful, Jerry. But I'm not sure I agree.
>If our ideas of causality doesn't come from experience, where
>did they come from? Why we impose this upon experience and
>not the opposite?
No doubt there is a genetic basis for the inclination to regard things
causally, just as there is for the inclination to view them
mathematically and logically. In all of these cases, it is clear why
there would be an evolutionary advantage to such modes of thinking.
>When we see causality as emerging from our experiences, I guess
>we can justify better its origins: it is the world "driving us" to
>conclude that. But assuming different origins for our notions of
>causality (or our need to have it) with things other than
>experience leaves an open hole: where it comes from?
Regardless of where it comes from, it is useful and successful. It
doesn't matter if the inspiration for a scientific hypothesis can be
traced to a bit of undigested beef (like the ghost of Marley). What
counts is how well it works.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>
>>There is a horrendous problem with the customary picture of the mental
>>vs. the physical, that almost everyone ignores or shrugs away. Viz.,
>>there is no place for the mental in the physical world: it does not
>>fit in anywhere! Many folks conveniently assume that the mental is
>>somehow "in the head", but if you look inside the head it's not there.
>>All you can find are brains and other physical stuff.
>
>Isn't that like saying that if you look around in the environment,
>all you can find are physical stuff, including electromagnetic
>waves. But television soap operas are nowhere to be found.
Television soap operas are usually found on television in the
afternoon (tho some have aired at night).
>In other words, what you find when you look (inside the head or
>elsewhere), depends a great deal on how you do the looking.
Irreducibly mental stuff cannot be found anywhere in the physical
world. Or, to put it another way, irreducibly 1st person stuff (and I
here intend 'stuff' as a neutral category) cannot be found in the 3rd
person world. So you have the choice of either declaring that mental
stuff does not exist (nihilism), identifying it with something in the
physical world (reductionism), or expanding what exists beyond the
confines of the physical world (call it what you willism). I take
these to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive alternatives.
>>But we can learn something from an intriguingly analogous problem in a
>>very different area of philosophy: ethics. There the difficulty is
>>how to locate values in a world of facts. Facts consist of what "is"
>>the case. whilst values consist of what "ought to be the case". Now
>>we know where to find facts: they are the concern of science.
>
>I couldn't disagree more. Philosophers may have deluded themselves
>into believing that "we know where to find facts." However they give
>no better accounting of facts than of values. The best they seem
>able to do is to present worthless tautologies such as "facts consist
>of what 'is' the case."
Facts are what true statements are about. Trivial? Perhaps.
Tautological? No. It makes the question of whether something is a
fact decidable. We have very sophisticated consensual procedures for
adjudicating claims about what is or is not true = what is or is not
the case: scientific experiments, pure & applied logic & math, &c.
We definitely do NOT have equivalent consensual procedures for
resolving disputes over values.
--
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>On 25 Aug 1999 18:25:04 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>wrote:
>
>>Irreducibly mental stuff cannot be found anywhere in the physical
>>world.
>
>If there is no such thing, then it is not surprising if it cannot
>be found.
And if there is such a thing, then it poses a problem.
>> Or, to put it another way, irreducibly 1st person stuff (and I
>>here intend 'stuff' as a neutral category) cannot be found in the 3rd
>>person world. So you have the choice of either declaring that mental
>>stuff does not exist (nihilism), identifying it with something in the
>>physical world (reductionism), or expanding what exists beyond the
>>confines of the physical world (call it what you willism). I take
>>these to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive alternatives.
>
>There is another alternative. We can try to reduce the 3rd person
>world to the 1st person world.
That's one way of putting what I have suggested. You did read it?
>>>I couldn't disagree more. Philosophers may have deluded themselves
>>>into believing that "we know where to find facts." However they give
>>>no better accounting of facts than of values. The best they seem
>>>able to do is to present worthless tautologies such as "facts consist
>>>of what 'is' the case."
>
>>Facts are what true statements are about. Trivial? Perhaps.
>>Tautological? No.
>
>Of course it is tautological. And a pretty trivial tautology
>at that.
It's a DEFINITION, Neil, what do you expect?
>> It makes the question of whether something is a
>>fact decidable.
>
>Nonsense. What makes it decidable, is that there are humans making
>the decisions. But this is just an example of where something
>presumed to be 3rd person (facts) reduces to the first person.
Gee, do they make decisions just any old way, or is there some
procedure or rule involved? One would expect a person with a
mathematical background to appreciate the notion of decidability
beyond the connotation that a decision was involved.
>> We have very sophisticated consensual procedures for
>>adjudicating claims about what is or is not true = what is or is not
>>the case:
>
>Sure. But these procedures do not derive from your tautological
>definition. Rather, they arise out of personal judgements (the 1st
>person again).
False opposition. The one hardly rules out the other. Indeed, you
are agreeing with my thesis, but are just so damn disagreeable that
you attack everything I say. Good old Neil.
>>We definitely do NOT have equivalent consensual procedures for
>>resolving disputes over values.
>
>Disputes over values can usually be presented in such a way that they
>become disputes over facts.
We know how to resolve the dispute over which of us is taller. But we
don't know how to resolve the dispute over whether abortion (or
premarital sex, or the death penalty, &c.) is right or wrong.
Indisputably, there are factual matters involved in such disputes.
But at bottom they continue to be unresolved because of valuative
disputes.
Which is all beside the point. You concede that there is a difference
between between factual and valuative disagreements, even tho you are
mistakenly optimistic about the ability to reduce the latter to the
former.
Jerry Hull
<grei...@uni-trier.de> wrote:
>Jerry Hull wrote:
>> Causality is NOT something we "perceive", except insofar as we PRESUME
>> it underlies the phenomena of perception. As Hume made abundantly
>> clear, all we "perceive" is constant conjuction, which in some
>> circumstances we believe provides warrant for the assumption of a
>> law-like regularity. That every event has a cause is NOT something we
>> learn from experience -- it is something we impose upon experience.
>> And indeed we are justified in doing so, insofar as it tends to work
>> out in practice (although QM imposes certain qualifications).
>>
>> My point is that the very NOTION of the "physical world" represents a
>> form of mental modeling which, albeit useful, is both logically prior
>> to the physical world and not itself as such part of it. Where's the
>> contradiction?
>
>The contradiction lies in your accepting physical causes at first and then
>going on claiming that causality is "imposed" by us onto physical reality.
>And that is contradictory in my book.
Then something is wrong with your book. Nothing prevents us from
accepting as real the things we impose on the world. Nor have I
denied that the world is such as to facilitate that imposition.
>There most certainly is something like the real world, it is merely that
>none of us can provide an accurate description of what it "really" looks
>like. We can find common ground, in fact quite much of it, and call that
>"objectivity" FWIW.
Of course there is the real world. And we can describe what it
"really" looks like. That's why we call it some things "real" and
others "imaginary". But I refuse to be drawn again into a pointless
discussion of your self-confuting brand of epistemic skepticism.
>But for you to say that we impose causality upon reality is - quite
>frankly - wrong. We perceive causality within reality, yes. But if
>you say that we impose it upon it that would mean that we ourselves
>create it.
Go back and read what I have said. I claim that we are often
justified in supposing the existence of nomological relationships
amongst things. The imposition of causality NEED NOT BE spurious or
arbitrary. The point is that the process of determining such
relationships involves MENTAL activities which are PRESUPPOSED BY the
notion of the physical world, but which ARE NOT THEMSELVES PART OF IT.
Hence, the physical world does not exhaust reality.
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 22:50:24 +0200, "Soenke N. Greimann"
> <grei...@uni-trier.de> wrote:
>
> >Jerry Hull wrote:
>
> >> Causality is NOT something we "perceive", except insofar as we PRESUME
> >> it underlies the phenomena of perception. As Hume made abundantly
> >> clear, all we "perceive" is constant conjuction, which in some
> >> circumstances we believe provides warrant for the assumption of a
> >> law-like regularity. That every event has a cause is NOT something we
> >> learn from experience -- it is something we impose upon experience.
> >> And indeed we are justified in doing so, insofar as it tends to work
> >> out in practice (although QM imposes certain qualifications).
> >>
> >> My point is that the very NOTION of the "physical world" represents a
> >> form of mental modeling which, albeit useful, is both logically prior
> >> to the physical world and not itself as such part of it. Where's the
> >> contradiction?
> >
> >The contradiction lies in your accepting physical causes at first and then
> >going on claiming that causality is "imposed" by us onto physical reality.
> >And that is contradictory in my book.
>
> Then something is wrong with your book. Nothing prevents us from
> accepting as real the things we impose on the world. Nor have I
> denied that the world is such as to facilitate that imposition.
You seemed to say that A is present in B. Then you went and said we only
put A into B by using our minds, as it wasn't there before.
I say A is (and always was) present in B. We experienced A in B and
developed a model (involving the use of "A" and "B" to describe A in B.
Or are you talking about the "concept" of causality, which has been
created?
> >There most certainly is something like the real world, it is merely that
> >none of us can provide an accurate description of what it "really" looks
> >like. We can find common ground, in fact quite much of it, and call that
> >"objectivity" FWIW.
>
> Of course there is the real world. And we can describe what it
> "really" looks like. That's why we call it some things "real" and
> others "imaginary". But I refuse to be drawn again into a pointless
> discussion of your self-confuting brand of epistemic skepticism.
Go ahead. Bury your "imaginary" head in the "imaginary" sand then.
As if I care...
> >But for you to say that we impose causality upon reality is - quite
> >frankly - wrong. We perceive causality within reality, yes. But if
> >you say that we impose it upon it that would mean that we ourselves
> >create it.
>
> Go back and read what I have said. I claim that we are often
> justified in supposing the existence of nomological relationships
> amongst things. The imposition of causality NEED NOT BE spurious or
> arbitrary. The point is that the process of determining such
> relationships involves MENTAL activities which are PRESUPPOSED BY the
> notion of the physical world, but which ARE NOT THEMSELVES PART OF IT.
> Hence, the physical world does not exhaust reality.
Your mental activities are not part of the physical world? Now that _is_
an interesting statement. Care to prove it???
If I induce brain death in you, your mind will most definitely cease to
exist. No matter what you may happen to believe about any afterlife you
_will_ be dead. No extraphysical mental activity left.
What we suppose about the world is based on our perception of this world
and nothing else. Perhaps little men talk to you from the mental world,
they haven't really called me on the meta-phone yet to tell me of this
mental universe of yours.
Any mental processes about events and their relationship can be traced
back to the perception (however indirect) of such events and are very
much part of my everyday physical existence. For you to say that they
are not themselves part of the physical world invokes a division between
mental and physical that is arbitrary at best. The physical world does
not cease to exist inside of my skull, it is merely the abstract nature
of my perception of thought processes within my brain that creates the
illusion that my mind is something else than physical processes inside
my brain.
Cheerio
> --
> Jer
> "When you are at sea, keep clear of the land",
> Publilius Syrus
Sönke N. Greimann
Sergio Navega
>On Wed, 25 Aug 1999 14:46:38 -0300, "Sergio Navega" <sna...@ibm.net>
>wrote:
>
>>Jerry Hull wrote in message <37c428a...@news-server.stny.rr.com>...
>
>>>it underlies the phenomena of perception. As Hume made abundantly
>>>clear, all we "perceive" is constant conjuction, which in some
>>>circumstances we believe provides warrant for the assumption of a
>>>law-like regularity. That every event has a cause is NOT something we
>>>learn from experience -- it is something we impose upon experience.
>>>And indeed we are justified in doing so, insofar as it tends to work
>>>out in practice (although QM imposes certain qualifications).
>>
>>If our ideas of causality doesn't come from experience, where
>>did they come from? Why we impose this upon experience and
>>not the opposite?
>
>No doubt there is a genetic basis for the inclination to regard things
>causally, just as there is for the inclination to view them
>mathematically and logically. In all of these cases, it is clear why
>there would be an evolutionary advantage to such modes of thinking.
>
I agree that we're built to notice simple causal associations, at
least in the very low level, close to sensory inputs. Obviously
this emerged because of evolutionary constraints. But this
is very far from the level of causality that we're talking here.
In my vision, there's no doubt that this "high level" causal
models that we (almost automatically) build is almost all
dependent on our world experiences. It is something that is
*perceived*, something that some do better than others.
Take any child, 4 to 5 years old, and ask her what is the cause
of the wind. Piaget did that and was amazed by the reports he
listened. Child say that trees wave their leaves and this
provokes the wind. They also say that waves on the beach
"carry" the air when they're rolling and this also provokes
wind. Causality is something that we build progressively,
based on our visions of the world.
>>When we see causality as emerging from our experiences, I guess
>>we can justify better its origins: it is the world "driving us" to
>>conclude that. But assuming different origins for our notions of
>>causality (or our need to have it) with things other than
>>experience leaves an open hole: where it comes from?
>
>Regardless of where it comes from, it is useful and successful. It
>doesn't matter if the inspiration for a scientific hypothesis can be
>traced to a bit of undigested beef (like the ghost of Marley). What
>counts is how well it works.
>
But it does matter where it comes from!
The undigested beef may be a good way to be satisfied with the
origins of hypotheses, maybe enough to sweep all this question
below the rug. This is the typical way philosophers treat these
things.
However, I argue that this is among the greatest problems that
AI has to solve (it may be difficult to make a robot to have
undigested beefs). Until we find ways to understand where this
thing comes from, I doubt that we'll succeed in making intelligent
machines. Which leaves me with a strong impression that AI will
not be solved by philosophers ;-)
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> "Soenke N. Greimann" wrote:
>
> > >
> > > I think you completely missed Hull's valid point that the relationship
> > > "caused-by" is quite distinct from the relationship "a subset of". And in
> > > passing I note that the pattern of cause and effect can be observed
> > > supervening on facts of the natural world as well as facts of the mental
> > > world. For the former consider the pattern [when I release my grip on this
> > > ball, it will fall to the ground]; and for the latter consider the pattern
> > > [the change in the value of my stock has made me very happy]. Please note
> > > that both of those patterns of cause and effect can be publicly verified.
> >
> > Granted. Might be that I missed an aspect here. But both of your examples
> > are very much part of the real world. You are not abstractly happy, or are
> > you? There are several physical and very real causes which result in your
> > "feeling happy". That kind of de-mystifies it, I know, but it is all real.
> > Nothing ethereal or mystical here, IMHO.
>
> I find your term "real world" too ambiguous to use at this level of precision. I
> prefer the term "verifiable", so that your "real world" could be modeled as a
> collection of facts and relationships between that collection such that they can
> be verified. With those terms we can start to classify (partition) worlds as
> composed of different kinds of facts and their relationships: natural world
> (physical world if you prefer), private personal worlds, social worlds, biological
> worlds e.t.c. That I am happy, is not something that *you* can in any way
> verify. In my way of thinking that qualia is an element of my personal mental
Sure I can verify it. I can hook you up to an EEG and measure the amount of
hormones in your bloodstream. I can draw up a more or less accurate diagram
of what is happening inside your body (and brain) and say. "Seth is happy."
Given the right equipment and measuring techniques it's not at all a problem.
Any distinction between "worlds" is arbitrary at best (even though we do
tend to categorize - it is how we work, after all...) and IMHO the only
productive way of distinguishing worlds is to have the real world on one
side and the countless perceptions of this world by intelligent individuals
on the other. Anything else I find a little confusing and obfuscatory.
> world along with those other experiences and innate abilities that compose what I
> am. That world is very real to me and I can verify it, but you will not be able
> to find its objects (facts and relationships) in your real world unless I choose
> (or am compelled) to place them there by my behavior. That is simply the human
> predicament.
Are you referring to dreams and fantasies??? I think that within little
more than a couple of century, the workings of the brain will be dismantled
and analyzed to the point where thoughts can be isolated and deciphered by
the correct measuring equipment. Today, I can't really verify that in your
mind you are riding a Jet Ski at Laguna Beach, but I can probably pick up
the thoughts on an EEG, even if I can't exactly pick out which one of the
little scribbles refers to Jet Ski riding at Laguna Beach - if any - after
all you might have been lying :-)
> There is nothing mysterious about that description. If you want to only describe
> things in terms of the natural world (which you cannot even directly experience),
> and if (like many others) you want to deny the very existence of these other
> verifiable worlds, then your science will be deficient and inefficient in
> predicting the future. Lots of luck in the pursuit of your physical biases.
Why is it a bias. I accept the presence of your mysterious world. I merely
point out to you that it is in no way mysterious and in no way different
from the physical world, but a part of it. You insist on creating some sort
of metaphysical paradise where there is none.
This is kind of reminiscent of attributing thunder to giants throwing
boulders on the far side of the mountain. You have no proof for the
assumption that your thoughts and the world you create are _not_ a part
of the physical world. If you have, I would care to see it...
> Seth Russell
> Thinking about how AI could work?
> see http://www.clickshop.com/ai/conjecture.htm
Sönke N. Greimann
Andomar
> boulders on the far side of the mountain. You have no proof for the
> assumption that your thoughts and the world you create are _not_ a part
> of the physical world. If you have, I would care to see it...
>
So far, your own conjectures haven't been proved either. What
kind of proof did you have in mind anyway. The only area
in which proofs hold is mathmatics; not comp.ai.philosophy :)
Soenke N. Greimann
Did you read my post? I did present ways of finding things out about him
that could be used to tell how he feels, given enough sophistication.
The technology is there, it only needs to be advanced some more.
Besides, there isn't really a way to prove negatives, is there? If I
claim that there is an invisible, intangible dragon inside my garage (and
no, you can't smell him either) how are you going to prove me wrong???
Claiming some sort of mental wonderland is like claiming that there is
a dragon inside a garage. I have suggested things that are indicators
that the emotions and fantasies are very much part of the physical. The
ball is back over the net, no?
I can agree that there might be some confusion with regard to a specific
thought's aspect. (ie. on the one hand the physical manifestation and on
the other hand the meaning it has to the entity in question) However,
any meaning I or anyone else attribute to any given thought is embodied
by another thought in itself, no? So any "concept" or "model" we create
is real with respect to its existence as a thought-pattern inside the
brain.
Seth Russell
> > I find your term "real world" too ambiguous to use at this level of precision. I
> > prefer the term "verifiable", so that your "real world" could be modeled as a
> > collection of facts and relationships between that collection such that they can
> > be verified. With those terms we can start to classify (partition) worlds as
> > composed of different kinds of facts and their relationships: natural world
> > (physical world if you prefer), private personal worlds, social worlds, biological
> > worlds e.t.c. That I am happy, is not something that *you* can in any way
> > verify. In my way of thinking that qualia is an element of my personal mental
>
> Sure I can verify it. I can hook you up to an EEG and measure the amount of
> hormones in your bloodstream. I can draw up a more or less accurate diagram
> of what is happening inside your body (and brain) and say. "Seth is happy."
> Given the right equipment and measuring techniques it's not at all a problem.
Yep, and I would even go so far as to assert that some day a bio physicist will be able
to say with certainty that when a particular pattern is recorded on his instruments,
that a designated person is sensing blue. The point is that no matter how precisely he
measures that pattern, it will never never look blue. Incidentally this is not just my
half baked idea - I got it first from Chalmers and it has been acknowledged by many who
study the philosophy of mind. Now I suspect that some day we will have a consensus of
theoretical physicist looking very similar to the Penrose/Sarfatti train of thought that
models why it is that the internal life (view) must emerge. The assertion, jumping just
a little bit ahead of the theory and measurements, is that the physical pattern and the
inner experience are the same identical thing; but cannot ever be perceived the same by
virtue of their relative perspective.
> and IMHO the only
> productive way of distinguishing worlds is to have the real world on one
> side and the countless perceptions of this world by intelligent individuals
> on the other. Anything else I find a little confusing and obfuscatory.
Uhh ... isn't that exactly the way I pictured it in my diagrams?
http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_outside.gif
http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_inside.gif
> > There is nothing mysterious about that description. If you want to only describe
> > things in terms of the natural world (which you cannot even directly experience),
> > and if (like many others) you want to deny the very existence of these other
> > verifiable worlds, then your science will be deficient and inefficient in
> > predicting the future. Lots of luck in the pursuit of your physical biases.
>
> Why is it a bias. I accept the presence of your mysterious world. I merely
> point out to you that it is in no way mysterious and in no way different
> from the physical world, but a part of it.
Nor would I deny that. You really should read a little bit more carefully.
> You insist on creating some sort
> of metaphysical paradise where there is none.
Nope, you have hallucinated that in my writing.
> This is kind of reminiscent of attributing thunder to giants throwing
> boulders on the far side of the mountain. You have no proof for the
> assumption that your thoughts and the world you create are _not_ a part
> of the physical world.
I did not say they were not.
Seth Russell
Andomar
> claim that there is an invisible, intangible dragon inside my garage (and
> no, you can't smell him either) how are you going to prove me wrong???
>
symbol for 'imaginary dragon in garage' exists in your brain.
The interesting question is wether it's possible to make a
Thought-O-Meter.
If it is, thoughts exist in reality. If it isn't, there must be a part
of the mental world that is outside of reality. In the later case
Jerry's
point would be valid and mental would be a superset of physical.
My feeling says that making a good Thought-o-Meter is theoretically
impossible.
Neil W Rickert
>On 25 Aug 1999 23:07:42 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>wrote:
>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>>Facts are what true statements are about. Trivial? Perhaps.
>>>Tautological? No.
>>Of course it is tautological. And a pretty trivial tautology
>>at that.
>It's a DEFINITION, Neil, what do you expect?
I expect a DEFINITION to actually DEFINE something.
When X and Y are well know names for the same undefined concept, I
don't see that it is any definition at all to state that X is Y.
>>> It makes the question of whether something is a
>>>fact decidable.
>>Nonsense. What makes it decidable, is that there are humans making
>>the decisions. But this is just an example of where something
>>presumed to be 3rd person (facts) reduces to the first person.
>Gee, do they make decisions just any old way, or is there some
>procedure or rule involved?
If deciding is a matter of following rules, then it is all in the
third person. So your argument for an irreducibly first person
aspect would seem to contradict your apparent belief that decision
making is the following of rules.
> One would expect a person with a
>mathematical background to appreciate the notion of decidability
>beyond the connotation that a decision was involved.
Perhaps one has to be trained in philosophy to be so confused as to
think that ordinary decision making has anything much to do with the
mathematical notion of decidability.
>Which is all beside the point. You concede that there is a difference
>between between factual and valuative disagreements, even tho you are
>mistakenly optimistic about the ability to reduce the latter to the
>former.
Don't speak for me. I have made no such concession.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>It's a DEFINITION, Neil, what do you expect?
>
>I expect a DEFINITION to actually DEFINE something.
>
>When X and Y are well know names for the same undefined concept, I
>don't see that it is any definition at all to state that X is Y.
I still don't understand what you are objecting to. There is a way of
determining whether or not something is a fact, AKA is the case, AKA
is true. Does it bother you that there are different ways of
expressing this point? There is no equivalent procedure for resolving
disputes concerning values.
>>>Nonsense. What makes it decidable, is that there are humans making
>>>the decisions. But this is just an example of where something
>>>presumed to be 3rd person (facts) reduces to the first person.
>
>>Gee, do they make decisions just any old way, or is there some
>>procedure or rule involved?
>
>If deciding is a matter of following rules, then it is all in the
>third person. So your argument for an irreducibly first person
>aspect would seem to contradict your apparent belief that decision
>making is the following of rules.
Apparently you have not kept straight the different strands of this
argument. I have nowhere asserted that decidability is the basis for
claiming 1st person irreducibility.
>> One would expect a person with a
>>mathematical background to appreciate the notion of decidability
>>beyond the connotation that a decision was involved.
>
>Perhaps one has to be trained in philosophy to be so confused as to
>think that ordinary decision making has anything much to do with the
>mathematical notion of decidability.
If you will look back, it was you that first introduced human decision
making into the context of decidability. Have you been reading
philosophy lately? It apparently has done little for your
temperament.
>>Which is all beside the point. You concede that there is a difference
>>between between factual and valuative disagreements, even tho you are
>>mistakenly optimistic about the ability to reduce the latter to the
>>former.
>
>Don't speak for me. I have made no such concession.
Well, you have clipped away the remarks in which that concession is
implicit. Is that the same as not having made it? Here's what you
said:
>Disputes over values can usually be presented in such a way that they
>become disputes over facts.
This passage does distinguish between disputes over values and
disputes over facts, does it not? And does not a distinction imply a
difference? And the claim that the former "usually" can be reduced to
the latter suggests that they cannot always be, no? Or do you not
mean what you say? Please enlighten me.
And to follow up on your point (which you seem to have dropped rather
abruptly), tell me what facts you would use to resolve the dispute
whether my interests ought to be treated as more important than yours?
Sergio Navega
I don't think it is theoretically impossible. I may concur that it's
a hell of a hard thing to do. The fundamental question is that for
the Thought-o-Meter to understand a specific neural pattern of
activities in one brain, it must correlate this pattern with all
the *remainder* patterns of that brain. Taken in isolation, the
visual patterns that constitute a rose may mean a romantic sensation
to a woman or a painful menace to an allergic man.
The things that are mental have, one way or another, some kind of
correspondent in neurobiological terms, although it is often
very elusive, ambiguous and distributed. The intangible dragon in
one's garage exists, indeed.
Regards,
Sergio Navega.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>The interesting question is wether it's possible to make a
>Thought-O-Meter.
>If it is, thoughts exist in reality. If it isn't, there must be a part
>of the mental world that is outside of reality. In the later case
>Jerry's
>point would be valid and mental would be a superset of physical.
This is not what I am claiming. You overlook the deviousness of
infinite sets. The thoughts that represent the physical world are a
proper subset of our thoughts. However, that so-modelled physical
world maps onto everything, including all of our thoughts. Not unlike
the ability to map the even integers onto all the integers, even tho
they represent a subset of same.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>Jerry Hull wrote in message <37c4b17...@news-server.stny.rr.com>...
>>No doubt there is a genetic basis for the inclination to regard things
>>causally, just as there is for the inclination to view them
>>mathematically and logically. In all of these cases, it is clear why
>>there would be an evolutionary advantage to such modes of thinking.
>
>I agree that we're built to notice simple causal associations, at
>least in the very low level, close to sensory inputs. Obviously
>this emerged because of evolutionary constraints. But this
>is very far from the level of causality that we're talking here.
>In my vision, there's no doubt that this "high level" causal
>models that we (almost automatically) build is almost all
>dependent on our world experiences. It is something that is
>*perceived*, something that some do better than others.
Squirrels have an instinct to chew on nuts, but at first do so rather
randomly. Skill at opening a nut comes only with experience. I
suspect humans with causality are not unlike squirrels with nuts.
>Take any child, 4 to 5 years old, and ask her what is the cause
>of the wind. Piaget did that and was amazed by the reports he
>listened. Child say that trees wave their leaves and this
>provokes the wind. They also say that waves on the beach
>"carry" the air when they're rolling and this also provokes
>wind. Causality is something that we build progressively,
>based on our visions of the world.
Our early notions of causality (ontogenetically and phylogenetically)
are extremely anthropomorphic.
>>Regardless of where it comes from, it is useful and successful. It
>>doesn't matter if the inspiration for a scientific hypothesis can be
>>traced to a bit of undigested beef (like the ghost of Marley). What
>>counts is how well it works.
>
>But it does matter where it comes from!
>The undigested beef may be a good way to be satisfied with the
>origins of hypotheses, maybe enough to sweep all this question
>below the rug. This is the typical way philosophers treat these
>things.
I'm only saying that you can separate questions about the success of a
way of thinking from questions about its genesis. Please don't fall
into the unfortunate & much abused habit of making generalizations
about philosophers. We are all philosophers when we debate issues
such as these.
>However, I argue that this is among the greatest problems that
>AI has to solve (it may be difficult to make a robot to have
>undigested beefs). Until we find ways to understand where this
>thing comes from, I doubt that we'll succeed in making intelligent
>machines. Which leaves me with a strong impression that AI will
>not be solved by philosophers ;-)
If it is solved it will undoubtedly be by someone thinking
philosophically, regardless of the title on their door (or the Bigelow
on their floor). And anyway, it does not seem any great problem to
teach a machine intelligence to think in causal terms. Teaching it to
think WELL is another matter.
Jerry Hull
<grei...@uni-trier.de> wrote:
>> >Jerry Hull wrote:
>> Then something is wrong with your book. Nothing prevents us from
>> accepting as real the things we impose on the world. Nor have I
>> denied that the world is such as to facilitate that imposition.
>
>You seemed to say that A is present in B. Then you went and said we only
>put A into B by using our minds, as it wasn't there before.
>I say A is (and always was) present in B. We experienced A in B and
>developed a model (involving the use of "A" and "B" to describe A in B.
You would benefit from a reading of Hume here, tho perhaps you share
the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
whence that necessity?
>> Go back and read what I have said. I claim that we are often
>> justified in supposing the existence of nomological relationships
>> amongst things. The imposition of causality NEED NOT BE spurious or
>> arbitrary. The point is that the process of determining such
>> relationships involves MENTAL activities which are PRESUPPOSED BY the
>> notion of the physical world, but which ARE NOT THEMSELVES PART OF IT.
>> Hence, the physical world does not exhaust reality.
>
>Your mental activities are not part of the physical world? Now that _is_
>an interesting statement. Care to prove it???
Our model of the physical world is a subset which we map onto the
superset including mentality. It only seems puzzling if you are
unfamiliar with the properties of infinite sets.
>If I induce brain death in you, your mind will most definitely cease to
>exist. No matter what you may happen to believe about any afterlife you
>_will_ be dead. No extraphysical mental activity left.
Of course.
>What we suppose about the world is based on our perception of this world
>and nothing else. Perhaps little men talk to you from the mental world,
>they haven't really called me on the meta-phone yet to tell me of this
>mental universe of yours.
They tell me your phone seems to be off the hook. I told them to keep
trying.
>Any mental processes about events and their relationship can be traced
>back to the perception (however indirect) of such events and are very
>much part of my everyday physical existence. For you to say that they
>are not themselves part of the physical world invokes a division between
>mental and physical that is arbitrary at best. The physical world does
>not cease to exist inside of my skull, it is merely the abstract nature
>of my perception of thought processes within my brain that creates the
>illusion that my mind is something else than physical processes inside
>my brain.
The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
infinite regress!
Jim Balter
>
> Seth Russell wrote:
> > I find your term "real world" too ambiguous to use at this level of precision. I
> > prefer the term "verifiable", so that your "real world" could be modeled as a
> > collection of facts and relationships between that collection such that they can
> > be verified. With those terms we can start to classify (partition) worlds as
> > composed of different kinds of facts and their relationships: natural world
> > (physical world if you prefer), private personal worlds, social worlds, biological
> > worlds e.t.c. That I am happy, is not something that *you* can in any way
> > verify. In my way of thinking that qualia is an element of my personal mental
>
> Sure I can verify it. I can hook you up to an EEG and measure the amount of
> hormones in your bloodstream. I can draw up a more or less accurate diagram
> of what is happening inside your body (and brain) and say. "Seth is happy."
> Given the right equipment and measuring techniques it's not at all a problem.
You are talking past each other, because you are using different
concepts of "happy". You will never completely measure "happy" to
Seth's satisfaction because whether he is happy depends on whether he
"feels" happy, and he could easily find himself "feeling" happy if
there isn't a fixed correlation being "feeling happy" and some set of
body states. You are proposing a "type identity theory" of happiness;
Dennett points out the problem with such theories:
"
This is all utterly unlikely. Consider some simpler cases to see
why. Every clock and every can-opener is no doubt nothing but a
physical thing, but is it remotely plausible to suppose or insist that
one could compose a predicate in the restricted language of physics and
chemistry that singled out all and only can openers and clocks? (What
is the common physical feature in virtue of which this grandfather
clock, this digital wristwatch, and this sundial can be ascribed the
predicate "registers 10:00 A.M."?) What can openers have peculiarly in
common is a purpose or function, regardless of their physical condition
or even their design, and the same is true of clocks.
"
Dennett then goes on to talk about "Turing machine functionalism"
theories, which are a better match for can openers and clocks than are
type identity theories. But these break down too, for mental
properties:
"
The supposition that there could be some principled way of describing
all believers and pain-sufferers and dreamers as Turing machines so
that they would be in the same logical state whenever they shared a
mental epithet is at best a fond hope. There is really no more reason
to believe you and I "have the same program" in /any/ relaxed and
abstract sense, considering the differences in our nature and nurture,
than that our brains have identical physico-chemical descriptions.
"
Dennett's answer is "token functionalism". This involves the
intentional stance, rules of attribution, and predictive principles.
Basically, our natural language terms provide a sort of calculus of
mentalism, whereby we can informally conclude that someone else is
happy or has a belief, or that we are happy or have a belief. There is
no measurement being taken, there is no exactitude involved. It isn't
as though there is some binary test I can make that determines that I
am happy; in most cases, I don't make a determination at all, and when
called upon I often find myself in an indeterminate state. There may
be clear indicators that I am happy, or clear indicators that I am
sad, based on the topics I am thinking about and the approach I am
taking toward them, but this is all very inexact, not something cut and
dry, not a matter of looking inside myself and simply "seeing" whether
I am happy or sad. Whether I am happy or sad is a *judgement* I make,
an *attribution*, and there are a large number of vague criteria,
learned from my culture, that I use to make that determination, so that
when I use the words "happy" or "sad", I communicate the idea that
those publicly shared criteria apply to me. This is expressed in
human natural language, and it cannot be reduced to the language of
physics except in the indirect sense that we, as language users, and
the language we use, can all be explained in physical terms, and
according to genetic and cultural evolutionary history, which can in
turn be explained in terms of physical phenomena.
To reject a "physical identity" notion of mental attributes does not
require embracing a dualistic or mystical view that there is some
special mental "stuff", any more than we need to embrace some sort of
"registers that it is 10:00A.M." stuff, or some sort of "checkmates in
three" stuff (to invoke another calculus that cannot be directly
reduced to physical terms). What it does require is some philosophical
sophistication, and the recognition that, when we use a word like
"happy", we are not and never have been referring to some specific
physical thing or state, but rather are invoking a complex web of
reference built into our natural language, that can be as much
dependent on how often our individual mothers smiled during our
childhoods as on the levels of endorphins in our brains (which I think
is large part of where the confusion lies; this web of language
partially, and largely, correlates with specific physical events and
phenomena, but not entirely).
And given that this *is* an AI forum, it might be worth thinking about
what this says about the importance of such a web of reference as an
element of an AI, and how an AI might communicate to us when we use all
these terms that *don't* have unambiguous physical references -- how
*will* we get an AI to pick out those, and only those, things that
"register that it is 10:00A.M.", and in fact a whole Turing test
devoted to such abstractions that humans manipulate with ease?
--
<J Q B>
Neil W Rickert
>On 26 Aug 1999 13:16:37 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>wrote:
>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>>It's a DEFINITION, Neil, what do you expect?
>>I expect a DEFINITION to actually DEFINE something.
>>When X and Y are well know names for the same undefined concept, I
>>don't see that it is any definition at all to state that X is Y.
>I still don't understand what you are objecting to. There is a way of
>determining whether or not something is a fact, AKA is the case, AKA
>is true. Does it bother you that there are different ways of
>expressing this point?
Not at all. What bothers me is when people claim that having
different ways of expressing the same point amounts to a theory of
truth, or provides us a way of resolving disputes over whether
something is a fact.
> There is no equivalent procedure for resolving
>disputes concerning values.
Having different names (fact, truth, is the case) is in no way a
procedure for resolving disputes. There is no evident difference
between having no way of resolving disputes over claimed facts and
having no way of resolving disputes over values.
>>> One would expect a person with a
>>>mathematical background to appreciate the notion of decidability
>>>beyond the connotation that a decision was involved.
>>Perhaps one has to be trained in philosophy to be so confused as to
>>think that ordinary decision making has anything much to do with the
>>mathematical notion of decidability.
>If you will look back, it was you that first introduced human decision
>making into the context of decidability.
I made no claims that connected human decision making to the question
of mathematical decidability.
>>>Which is all beside the point. You concede that there is a difference
>>>between between factual and valuative disagreements, even tho you are
>>>mistakenly optimistic about the ability to reduce the latter to the
>>>former.
>>Don't speak for me. I have made no such concession.
>Well, you have clipped away the remarks in which that concession is
>implicit. Is that the same as not having made it? Here's what you
>said:
>>Disputes over values can usually be presented in such a way that they
>>become disputes over facts.
That is not any kind of concession.
>This passage does distinguish between disputes over values and
>disputes over facts, does it not?
It perhaps could be said to distinguish between the syntactic form
used, but not between what is in dispute in each case.
> And does not a distinction imply a
>difference? And the claim that the former "usually" can be reduced to
>the latter suggests that they cannot always be, no? Or do you not
>mean what you say? Please enlighten me.
The "usually" was there to avoid being sidetracked into a pointless
argument. I had forgotten that when debating with Hull, such
sidetracking is inevitable anyway.
>And to follow up on your point (which you seem to have dropped rather
>abruptly), tell me what facts you would use to resolve the dispute
>whether my interests ought to be treated as more important than yours?
You have missed the point that the question of what is a fact is a
very slippery one. The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
corresponding claim of factuality.
Neil W Rickert
>You would benefit from a reading of Hume here, tho perhaps you share
>the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
>In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
>occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
>followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
>whence that necessity?
Hume was clearly mistaken about this. We will sometimes say that X
causes Y even when we know that there are possible situations where X
can occur and not be followed by Y. And there are times that we will
deny that X causes Y, even though our experience is that Y always
follows X.
------------
>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>infinite regress!
That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
usually consider to be knowledge. Therefore a radical empiricist
need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
experience.
Soenke N. Greimann
Ooooh, I see...
I've just had an evening of games with some friends and rather a lot
of lager, so maybe I needed that bit of alcohol to finally get your
point. Or you just explained it better, I don't know...
Are you saying that your world of the mental thought processes leaves
a footprint in the physical through our brain waves??? If so, I may
concur, only there is no real way of determining for sure whether there
is or isn't in fact such "mere" footprinting or whether the "footprints"
actually concisely represent the whole of the thought (and concept it
embodies)
> --
> Jer
> "When you are at sea, keep clear of the land",
> Publilius Syrus
Sönke N. Greimann
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> > Besides, there isn't really a way to prove negatives, is there? If I
> > claim that there is an invisible, intangible dragon inside my garage (and
> > no, you can't smell him either) how are you going to prove me wrong???
> >
> Well, I'll put you on an advanced Thought-O-Meter and check if the
> symbol for 'imaginary dragon in garage' exists in your brain.
>
> Thought-O-Meter.
> If it is, thoughts exist in reality. If it isn't, there must be a part
> of the mental world that is outside of reality. In the later case
> Jerry's
> point would be valid and mental would be a superset of physical.
>
> impossible.
I could live with that, in assuming that any given Thought-o-Meter would
most likely be applicable only to one specific human and would be in
desperate need of constant firmware updating, since the human in question
would also change on a day-to-day basis, since we can't really stop
someone from making new experiences.
But nevertheless, I would suggest that if a Thought-o-Meter is possible,
even theoretically, there would not be any theoretical room for some
mystical sort of mental world in which undetectable dragons exist in
garages. (I believe that this particular example was first put forth
by Carl Sagan, but I don't remember the book, alcohol and all... #-))
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> On Thu, 26 Aug 1999 16:08:42 +0200, "Soenke N. Greimann"
> <grei...@uni-trier.de> wrote:
>
> >> >Jerry Hull wrote:
>
> >> Then something is wrong with your book. Nothing prevents us from
> >> accepting as real the things we impose on the world. Nor have I
> >> denied that the world is such as to facilitate that imposition.
> >
> >You seemed to say that A is present in B. Then you went and said we only
> >put A into B by using our minds, as it wasn't there before.
> >I say A is (and always was) present in B. We experienced A in B and
> >developed a model (involving the use of "A" and "B" to describe A in B.
>
> the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
> In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
> occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
> followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
> whence that necessity?
Well, I guess that we do not have any reason to believe that "if X not Y"
until we observe it. Since everything we observe is "when X, then Y", the
only thing we effectively create are group "X" and group "Y" and linking
them causally in our mind. However, this happens only following our own
observation of "when X, then Y".
There is neither reason nor need for assuming "when X, then not Y" until
we observe such a situation. Then, and only then, our model is in need
of modification or revision.
> >> Go back and read what I have said. I claim that we are often
> >> justified in supposing the existence of nomological relationships
> >> amongst things. The imposition of causality NEED NOT BE spurious or
> >> arbitrary. The point is that the process of determining such
> >> relationships involves MENTAL activities which are PRESUPPOSED BY the
> >> notion of the physical world, but which ARE NOT THEMSELVES PART OF IT.
> >> Hence, the physical world does not exhaust reality.
> >
> >Your mental activities are not part of the physical world? Now that _is_
> >an interesting statement. Care to prove it???
>
> Our model of the physical world is a subset which we map onto the
> superset including mentality. It only seems puzzling if you are
> unfamiliar with the properties of infinite sets.
Hmm... That kind of depend on your POV. If you decide to map mental onto
physical, or vice versa (I don't quite realize how you intend to do this),
you do not need two different realms of existence, do you. Since both are
interdependent and interinfluencing, they might as well be part of the
same set.
> >If I induce brain death in you, your mind will most definitely cease to
> >exist. No matter what you may happen to believe about any afterlife you
> >_will_ be dead. No extraphysical mental activity left.
>
> Of course.
So where should your "mental" world reside then?
> >What we suppose about the world is based on our perception of this world
> >and nothing else. Perhaps little men talk to you from the mental world,
> >they haven't really called me on the meta-phone yet to tell me of this
> >mental universe of yours.
>
> They tell me your phone seems to be off the hook. I told them to keep
> trying.
:-) Good comeback. I like that. I really do. LOL... Perhaps one day I'll
be able to pick up the meta-phone. But I still need you to tell me exactly
how you view this mental universe. Assume that I'm stupid, please. Perhaps
I am missing some vital point here.
> >Any mental processes about events and their relationship can be traced
> >back to the perception (however indirect) of such events and are very
> >much part of my everyday physical existence. For you to say that they
> >are not themselves part of the physical world invokes a division between
> >mental and physical that is arbitrary at best. The physical world does
> >not cease to exist inside of my skull, it is merely the abstract nature
> >of my perception of thought processes within my brain that creates the
> >illusion that my mind is something else than physical processes inside
> >my brain.
>
> The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
> empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
> It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
> also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
> infinite regress!
Why it hasn't been in vogue is most transparent. People like to be in
charge of their own lives. For someone to say that a person is only the
product of his experience plus some very limited hardwire "inborn"
capabilities does not curry favour. It does work. It is just that, as
of yet, we are to ignorant to understand the implications that are
present in the physical with respect to the "mental", which is really
a part of the physical... IMHO, the mental is a subset of the physical
at best, since we only create it because we don't know any better, yet
it leaves "footprints" (in the broadest possible sense) in the physical
world and is dependent upon it...
> --
> Jer
> "When you are at sea, keep clear of the land",
> Publilius Syrus
Sönke N. Greimann
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> "Soenke N. Greimann" wrote:
>
> > > I find your term "real world" too ambiguous to use at this level of precision. I
> > > prefer the term "verifiable", so that your "real world" could be modeled as a
> > > collection of facts and relationships between that collection such that they can
> > > be verified. With those terms we can start to classify (partition) worlds as
> > > composed of different kinds of facts and their relationships: natural world
> > > (physical world if you prefer), private personal worlds, social worlds, biological
> > > worlds e.t.c. That I am happy, is not something that *you* can in any way
> > > verify. In my way of thinking that qualia is an element of my personal mental
> >
> > Sure I can verify it. I can hook you up to an EEG and measure the amount of
> > hormones in your bloodstream. I can draw up a more or less accurate diagram
> > of what is happening inside your body (and brain) and say. "Seth is happy."
> > Given the right equipment and measuring techniques it's not at all a problem.
>
> to say with certainty that when a particular pattern is recorded on his instruments,
> that a designated person is sensing blue. The point is that no matter how precisely he
> measures that pattern, it will never never look blue. Incidentally this is not just my
> half baked idea - I got it first from Chalmers and it has been acknowledged by many who
> study the philosophy of mind. Now I suspect that some day we will have a consensus of
> theoretical physicist looking very similar to the Penrose/Sarfatti train of thought that
> models why it is that the internal life (view) must emerge. The assertion, jumping just
> a little bit ahead of the theory and measurements, is that the physical pattern and the
> inner experience are the same identical thing; but cannot ever be perceived the same by
> virtue of their relative perspective.
All right. I can never - ever - experience things in the same way that you do.
I am completely in agreement on that. But I am also firm in the POV that your
perceptions and experiences - whatever shape and form - are decidedly physical
and not mental. The reason for my inability to perceive as you do is as easy
as it is elegant. I am not you. :-)
> > and IMHO the only
> > productive way of distinguishing worlds is to have the real world on one
> > side and the countless perceptions of this world by intelligent individuals
> > on the other. Anything else I find a little confusing and obfuscatory.
>
> Uhh ... isn't that exactly the way I pictured it in my diagrams?
> http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_outside.gif
> http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_inside.gif
Not really, In your diagrams, the isolation of the individual mind was, IMHO
underplayed. If more of the "amoebas" (I will call your drawings of the inner
self this for now) were set adrift in the same "reality" surrounding, it would
provide a more accurate (IMHO) view of the situation... But all in all, I like
the diagrams, since they seem to point in the right direction...
> > > There is nothing mysterious about that description. If you want to only describe
> > > things in terms of the natural world (which you cannot even directly experience),
> > > and if (like many others) you want to deny the very existence of these other
> > > verifiable worlds, then your science will be deficient and inefficient in
> > > predicting the future. Lots of luck in the pursuit of your physical biases.
> >
> > Why is it a bias. I accept the presence of your mysterious world. I merely
> > point out to you that it is in no way mysterious and in no way different
> > from the physical world, but a part of it.
>
> Nor would I deny that. You really should read a little bit more carefully.
Hmm... But it would seem that any "mental" experience would be regarded as
verifiable only by you. I could certainly find out that _something_ is being
experienced by you, but I would not really be able to tell exactly _how_ you
would experience it. Is it this, which you are trying to point out?
Nothing is true; Everything is permissible...
> > You insist on creating some sort
> > of metaphysical paradise where there is none.
>
> Nope, you have hallucinated that in my writing.
Well, it kind of appeared that way to me. If I misread you, I'm sorry.
> > This is kind of reminiscent of attributing thunder to giants throwing
> > boulders on the far side of the mountain. You have no proof for the
> > assumption that your thoughts and the world you create are _not_ a part
> > of the physical world.
>
> I did not say they were not.
Hmm... Then I wonder why you oppose my views on the subject...
> Seth Russell
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>I still don't understand what you are objecting to. There is a way of
>>determining whether or not something is a fact, AKA is the case, AKA
>>is true. Does it bother you that there are different ways of
>>expressing this point?
>
>Not at all. What bothers me is when people claim that having
>different ways of expressing the same point amounts to a theory of
>truth, or provides us a way of resolving disputes over whether
>something is a fact.
What is the difficulty involved in resolving the factual dispute over
whether I am taller than you? Do you deny that esp science has
evolved procedures for resolving such disputes that are commonly used
everywhere in settling such questions? You keep claiming that there
is some problem with resolving factual disputes, but so far have
providing no clue as to what you might possibly mean.
>> There is no equivalent procedure for resolving
>>disputes concerning values.
>
>Having different names (fact, truth, is the case) is in no way a
>procedure for resolving disputes. There is no evident difference
>between having no way of resolving disputes over claimed facts and
>having no way of resolving disputes over values.
You have said this before. What might be nice would be some actual
evidence or reasoning to support your view. Or do you think that just
repeating a conclusion is sufficient to establish its truth? I have
provided examples, which you have ignored. There is more to
reasonable debate than reflexive nay-saying.
>>If you will look back, it was you that first introduced human decision
>>making into the context of decidability.
>
>I made no claims that connected human decision making to the question
>of mathematical decidability.
Well again, your disavowal is accompanied by your clipping away the
textual evidence to the contrary:
>>Nonsense. What makes it decidable, is that there are humans making
>>the decisions.
Do you know how to say "mauvais foi"? Since I used the term in a
sense clearly related to its use in mathematical contexts, either your
remarks are deliberately equivocal, or you are here relating
decidability to human decision-making. Decide which.
>>Well, you have clipped away the remarks in which that concession is
>>implicit. Is that the same as not having made it? Here's what you
>>said:
>
>>>Disputes over values can usually be presented in such a way that they
>>>become disputes over facts.
>
>That is not any kind of concession.
Starting to wriggle, are we? If someone explicitly distinguishes
between two things, it entails they regard them as distinct, which in
turn entails their implicit agreement with the proposition that they
are indeed distinct. Are you now saying you don't regard them as
distinct? Please help us keep us with your latest thoughts on the
subject.
>> And does not a distinction imply a
>>difference? And the claim that the former "usually" can be reduced to
>>the latter suggests that they cannot always be, no? Or do you not
>>mean what you say? Please enlighten me.
>
>The "usually" was there to avoid being sidetracked into a pointless
>argument. I had forgotten that when debating with Hull, such
>sidetracking is inevitable anyway.
Oh, please. The 'usually' qualified your claim of reducibility,
actually a SUBSTANTIVE ISSUE, which you have now abandoned in a
pointless attempt to disavow the implications of what you have
previoiusly said. Now exactly how am I preventing you from explaining
how to turn valuative disputes into factual disputes?
>>And to follow up on your point (which you seem to have dropped rather
>>abruptly), tell me what facts you would use to resolve the dispute
>>whether my interests ought to be treated as more important than yours?
>
>You have missed the point that the question of what is a fact is a
>very slippery one.
No, I am trying to follow up on your claim that valuative disputes
"usually" amount, in end, to factual disputes. The example I give is
of a value dispute which -- I contend -- CANNOT be settled by factual
claims. Now either this is one of those UNUSUAL instances in which
your proposed reduction does not work, or you are bound to explain how
facts can settle this issue.
> The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
>as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
>true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
>over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
>corresponding claim of factuality.
This is actually good. There are indeed two senses of 'fact' floating
around here. (1) What a true sentence is about, and (2) What the
true sentences of logic, math &science are about. People engaged in
this dispute argue, since there are no established procedures for
resolving the truth values of VALUE statements (i.e. those containing
expressions like 'ought', 'good', 'bad', &c.), that sense (1)
collapses into sense (2). But, of course, that is precisely the point
at issue.
It is generally accepted (pace certain contrarians) that we do have
consensual, "objective" procedures for resolving the truth status of
statements like 'X is Y inches long'. However, there is no such
general agreement as to how one might establish the truth or falsity
of statements like 'X ought to be Y inches long', particularly when
that 'ought' refers to a MORAL issue & not a practical issue, e.g. of
mechanical design, where a goal is given.
Anyway, the issue comes back to where we were at the beginning: are
there, or can there be, procedures for resolving the truth value of
value claims of the same generally acceptable validity of those
available for resolving truth issues in science (& math & logic)?
Note that I am hardly attempting to deny the existence of various
skeptical difficulties attending claims in science, &c., but rather
concerned with whether value & moral issues can come up to that same
standard (however low or high one might think it to be).
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>
>>You would benefit from a reading of Hume here, tho perhaps you share
>>the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
>>In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
>>occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
>>followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
>>whence that necessity?
>
>Hume was clearly mistaken about this. We will sometimes say that X
>causes Y even when we know that there are possible situations where X
>can occur and not be followed by Y. And there are times that we will
>deny that X causes Y, even though our experience is that Y always
>follows X.
You completely miss the point. Assume all your qualifications have
been made. Still, whence the necessity?
You would do well to actually read Hume and understand what he is
getting at, rather than carping about various nuances that are
irrelevant to his argument. Of course, he is a philosopher ....
>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>>infinite regress!
>
>That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
>usually consider to be knowledge. Therefore a radical empiricist
>need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
>experience.
Sure we do. The ability to learn is something we may or may not know
how to do. Perhaps you are sticking at "knowing that" vs. "knowing
how". A stone does not know how to learn from experience. You,
presumably, do.
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> "Soenke N. Greimann" wrote:
>
> > >
> > All right. I can never - ever - experience things in the same way that you do.
> > I am completely in agreement on that. But I am also firm in the POV that your
> > perceptions and experiences - whatever shape and form - are decidedly physical
> > and not mental.
>
> *definition*. But if you are saying that "any person's perceptions and experiences exist in
> the natural world." (where you may substitute "physical" for the term "natural world"), I can
> agree with that sentence, and we can put this confusion behind us.
Agreed. *shakes hands* :-)
> > > Uhh ... isn't that exactly the way I pictured it in my diagrams?
> > > http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_outside.gif
> > > http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_inside.gif
> >
> > In your diagrams, the isolation of the individual mind was, IMHO
> > underplayed. If more of the "amoebas" (I will call your drawings of the inner
> > self this for now) were set adrift in the same "reality" surrounding, it would
> > provide a more accurate (IMHO) view of the situation...
>
> Yes I though long and hard about that. But bear in mind that time and space are not in any
> way represented in the diagram and that the points in the plane represent *facts* which are
> ordered proximally by the density of their cause/effect connections. The points (facts) in
> the drawn boundary line must represent the sensual surfaces and motor activators that
> interface private facts and the facts of the natural world. But I can think of no such
> boundary points that exists between private facts and public facts, and at the same time are
> proximate in terms of cause and effect, and are proximate to the sense organs. Another way to
> put that is there is no sense organ in the brain that allows you to perceive a public fact
> directly, yet there are strong cause and effect connections between public facts and private
> facts. If you can provide tangeagele examples of any facts that are (almost private but
> almost public) and at the same time are *contiguous* (in terms of cause and effect) with the
> sense organs and motor activators, then your topology is more accurate.
I presently don't have time to reply to this. (More on sunday evening CET)
> > Hmm... But it would seem that any "mental" experience would be regarded as
> > verifiable only by you. I could certainly find out that _something_ is being
> > experienced by you, but I would not really be able to tell exactly _how_ you
> > would experience it. Is it this, which you are trying to point out?
>
> Yes, you can verify my behavior but you have no access to "how it feels" from inside.
>
> > Nothing is true; Everything is permissible...
>
> This sentence seems to hang in cybermedia disconnected from the other facts of the universe.
> It certainly does not follow from anything I have written.
Did I say that? Sorry. No I just threw that in there to point out that what is
true
to me is not necessarily true to others, but may be acceptable. The quote is
from
Wilson, so it is kind of provocative...
> > Hmm... Then I wonder why you oppose my views on the subject...
>
> Which views in particular might those be?
Well, since we clarified a great deal of things above, I'll retract that and
apologize. I had the impression that you were also in favour of a "mental"
world outside and separate from the physical world...
> > Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi
> > dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
>
> Translation?
Just a stupid tag-line. It's a silly joke really... It means:
"I have a catapult. If you will not give me all your
money, I will fling an enormous rock at your head."
> Seth Russell
> Want a introduction to Knowledge Representation?
> see http://www.clickshop.com/ai/symknow.htm
Jerry Hull
>Yes, it's really old idea that causality is something "artificial" imposed
>upon a world by a man, the same we can say about our concepts of time and
>space. Many thinkers had made much of work trying to go in reverse direction
>from percepts to raw data and after such journey discovered that end-station
>is not interesting so they however in some way had to made a journey
>backwards. A conclusion is that such concepts cannot be understand "properly"
>without study a human mind and its neuronal organization. Of course a world is
>"a source" of our concepts which means that it guides our mind from one state
>to the other, but there is no doubt that the same neuronal matery could be
>organized in some other way as an antropologhy shows clearly.
>Perhaps there are possible different mental worlds, for us incomprehensible at
>present time.
You can accept the activity of mind without concluding that its
impositions are "artificial"; at least, not in the sense of
"arbitrary". The world is such as to facilitate those impositions,
tho as with QM we sometimes have to qualify what it is we are
imposing.
Jerry Hull
>You began what I thought was a very cogent argument for idealism. Basically,
>the thing that we know without doubt (as Descartes pointed out before he went
>down the slippery religious slope) is our own existence, which in reality is
>our own personal consciousness. Everything else is a subjective construct
>within our experience, even the notion of self, and certainly the notion of a
>physical world. Yet those constructs do suggest a physical world which is made
>of matter, is objective and third-person.
I don't accept any implications of subjectivity with respect to our
conception of the world, at least not any with skiptical implications.
What we know represents the confluence of what we abstract as the
"objective" and "subjective" realms, and cannot be restricted to
EITHER.
There is an element of idealism in what I have claimed (at least so
far as I remember idealism from decades-ago studies in college).
However, I do not wish to deny that everything mental is totally
causally dependent upon non-mental interactions between myself and the
world. But I would distinguish this causal dependency from
ontological reducibility.
Take the finding in mathematics that the set of even integers can be
mapped onto ALL the integers, a proper superset of itself. Take
'mental' in the small (subjective) sense as represented by the odd
integers, 'mental' in the large (idealistic) sense as represented by
all the integers, and 'physical' (in the "excludes the mental" sense)
as represented by the even integers. Tho the even integers map onto
(causally determine) all the integers (including mentality in both
sense), they do not exhaust what exists.
<vast clippage>
>Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts on this brief summary of something
>that has been occupying my mind a lot of late.
A lot of your remarks resonate with how I would regard things, aside
from the implications of subjectivity & solipsism. I regret I don't
have time at the present to go into all of the things you have
discussed. There are still some notes from last week I haven't
gotten around to responding to! But perhaps I will have a chance to
come back to it later.
Andomar
> intentional stance, rules of attribution, and predictive principles.
> Basically, our natural language terms provide a sort of calculus of
> mentalism, whereby we can informally conclude that someone else is
> happy or has a belief, or that we are happy or have a belief. There is
> no measurement being taken, there is no exactitude involved. It isn't
> as though there is some binary test I can make that determines that I
> am happy; in most cases, I don't make a determination at all, and when
> called upon I often find myself in an indeterminate state. There may
> be clear indicators that I am happy, or clear indicators that I am
> sad, based on the topics I am thinking about and the approach I am
> taking toward them, but this is all very inexact, not something cut and
> dry, not a matter of looking inside myself and simply "seeing" whether
> I am happy or sad. Whether I am happy or sad is a *judgement* I make,
> an *attribution*, and there are a large number of vague criteria,
> learned from my culture, that I use to make that determination, so that
> when I use the words "happy" or "sad", I communicate the idea that
> those publicly shared criteria apply to me. This is expressed in
> human natural language, and it cannot be reduced to the language of
> physics except in the indirect sense that we, as language users, and
> the language we use, can all be explained in physical terms, and
> according to genetic and cultural evolutionary history, which can in
> turn be explained in terms of physical phenomena.
That's a good read!
What I miss in this approach is that being "happy" or "sad"
depends also on the context the question is asked in. Just
imagine being asked if you are happy. Your reaction will
depend on many things; do you like to talk to this person?
If not, which answer will get you out of this conversation
very fast? If so, which answer will most likely keep
the other person interested?
Interestingly, the "interest of the other person" thus becomes
related to "your happiness." Makes sense, right?
So, the question if a human is happy depends not only
on the state he's in, but also on who's asking and why.
It's not like your truthfully trying to communicate wether
the "publicly shared concept of happiness" applies to you!
Andomar
> mapped onto ALL the integers, a proper superset of itself. Take
> 'mental' in the small (subjective) sense as represented by the odd
> integers, 'mental' in the large (idealistic) sense as represented by
> all the integers, and 'physical' (in the "excludes the mental" sense)
> as represented by the even integers. Tho the even integers map onto
> (causally determine) all the integers (including mentality in both
> sense), they do not exhaust what exists.
>
The last sentence sounds like a contradiction. If it "causally
determines" everyting, it has to "exhaust what exists"...?
Jerry Hull
wrote:
Effects are separate from causes, right? In the analogy, the even
integers map onto all the integers, but are nonetheless a proper
subset of that which they map onto. I do not really know how far to
push this analogy -- sometimes it seems much too slick -- but it
underlines the point that what may seem to represent everything from
one point of view, is only a part of a bigger whole from another point
of view. There is a fact for every value that exists -- I.e., the
statement "Such-and-such a value exists" is true, & therefore denotes
a fact -- but that does not prevent truth values from being a proper
subset of values in general.
Neil W Rickert
>On 26 Aug 1999 17:45:38 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>wrote:
>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>>I still don't understand what you are objecting to. There is a way of
>>>determining whether or not something is a fact, AKA is the case, AKA
>>>is true. Does it bother you that there are different ways of
>>>expressing this point?
>>Not at all. What bothers me is when people claim that having
>>different ways of expressing the same point amounts to a theory of
>>truth, or provides us a way of resolving disputes over whether
>>something is a fact.
>What is the difficulty involved in resolving the factual dispute over
>whether I am taller than you? Do you deny that esp science has
>evolved procedures for resolving such disputes that are commonly used
>everywhere in settling such questions? You keep claiming that there
>is some problem with resolving factual disputes, but so far have
>providing no clue as to what you might possibly mean.
In specific case (tallness, for example) we have widely accepted
criteria. However, once we leave these specific cases, we may not
even be able to agree on whether a dispute is factual. Evolutionists
speak of the *fact* of evolution, while creationsists deny that there
are established facts. Most astronomers talk of the big bang as
fact, but a few holdouts would deny that it is fact.
I don't see that the issues of values are much different. There is
widespread agreement that we ought not commit murder. But there are
issues of value judgement where disputes are far more common.
>>> There is no equivalent procedure for resolving
>>>disputes concerning values.
>>Having different names (fact, truth, is the case) is in no way a
>>procedure for resolving disputes. There is no evident difference
>>between having no way of resolving disputes over claimed facts and
>>having no way of resolving disputes over values.
>You have said this before. What might be nice would be some actual
>evidence or reasoning to support your view. Or do you think that just
>repeating a conclusion is sufficient to establish its truth? I have
>provided examples, which you have ignored. There is more to
>reasonable debate than reflexive nay-saying.
>>>If you will look back, it was you that first introduced human decision
>>>making into the context of decidability.
>>I made no claims that connected human decision making to the question
>>of mathematical decidability.
>Well again, your disavowal is accompanied by your clipping away the
>textual evidence to the contrary:
In the unlikely event that you can actually find something relevant
to mathematical decidability in the previous exchange, you could
always restore some context.
>>>Nonsense. What makes it decidable, is that there are humans making
>>>the decisions.
> Do you know how to say "mauvais foi"? Since I used the term in a
>sense clearly related to its use in mathematical contexts, either your
>remarks are deliberately equivocal, or you are here relating
>decidability to human decision-making. Decide which.
The whole discussion was about contrasting the physical with the
mental. Since mathematics is not in any way physical, it seemed
obvious that your comments were not related to mathematical
decidability.
>> The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
>>as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
>>true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
>>over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
>>corresponding claim of factuality.
>This is actually good. There are indeed two senses of 'fact' floating
>around here. (1) What a true sentence is about, and (2) What the
>true sentences of logic, math &science are about. People engaged in
I would say that you are mixing things up here. We should
distinguish between sentences of logic and math, and sentences of
science. In the case of logic and math, we are playing a syntactic
game, and whether the sentences are about anything in reality is
beside the point. In an axiom based syntactic game, it is easier to
settle disputes about fact/truth.
When we come to every day sentences, or to sentences of science, the
situation is different, and far less clear. It could be that when we
speak of 'fact' or of 'truth', we are speaking only of attributes of
sentences. In that case relativism reigns, for different people will
interpret sentences differently. The standards for truth and
factuality are sensitive to how the sentences are interpreted.
However, many philosphers claim that the sentences are merely ways of
communicating propositions about the state of reality, and that
'fact' and 'truth' are attributes of those propositions rather than
attributes of the sentences. This supports the abolutist view that
questions of fact can be settled with evidence. That is all well and
good. But the trouble is that philosophy has utterly failed to
answer the question of how sentences communicate propositions. They
do a great deal of handwaving about this. They take it for granted
that this is possible. The invent magical elixirs (such as
intentionality) and credit these elixirs with solving the problem.
But they never tell you how, and they deny that they are relying on
magic.
Neil W Rickert
>On 26 Aug 1999 17:51:36 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>>You would benefit from a reading of Hume here, tho perhaps you share
>>>the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
>>>In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
>>>occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
>>>followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
>>>whence that necessity?
>>Hume was clearly mistaken about this. We will sometimes say that X
>>causes Y even when we know that there are possible situations where X
>>can occur and not be followed by Y. And there are times that we will
>>deny that X causes Y, even though our experience is that Y always
>>follows X.
>You completely miss the point. Assume all your qualifications have
>been made. Still, whence the necessity?
Necessity derives from analytic truths. What we will consider causal
depends on the scientific theories that we accept, and the analytic
truths established by these theories. When we change theories,
we also change what we will accept as causal relations.
>You would do well to actually read Hume and understand what he is
>getting at, rather than carping about various nuances that are
>irrelevant to his argument. Of course, he is a philosopher ....
Well I have read a lot of Hume. I have considerable respect for him,
in spite of the fact that he was a philosopher. Still, he was wrong
about causality, although perhaps his views were about as good as you
could come up with at that time.
>>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>>>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>>>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>>>infinite regress!
>>That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
>>usually consider to be knowledge. Therefore a radical empiricist
>>need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
>>experience.
>Sure we do. The ability to learn is something we may or may not know
>how to do. Perhaps you are sticking at "knowing that" vs. "knowing
>how". A stone does not know how to learn from experience. You,
>presumably, do.
Sorry, but that is surely wrong. Most people would tell you that the
ability to learn is not something they know how to do. The will
agree that they have the ability to learn, but they don't know the
how of it even if they are able to do it.
For that matter, research on machine learning has been going on for
perhaps 4 decades now, with no evidence that the ML crowd actually
know anything much about how to learn.
Seth Russell
> "Soenke N. Greimann" wrote [snipped]:
> > Seth Russell wrote [snipped]:
>
> You are talking past each other, because you are using different
> concepts of "happy". You will never completely measure "happy" to
> Seth's satisfaction because whether he is happy depends on whether he
> "feels" happy, and he could easily find himself "feeling" happy if
> there isn't a fixed correlation being "feeling happy" and some set of
> body states. You are proposing a "type identity theory" of happiness;
> Dennett points out the problem with such theories:
Yes, thanks for the clarity. Certainly as you and Dennett have described,
we cannot use the objects of words like "happy" as coherent objects that
we can verify exist in this mind, and then in that mind, and in this brain,
and then in that brain. Strangely enough the point that *I* was attempting
to make does not need any such "type identity theory", rather it assumes
such a theory would be a practical impossibility, and goes on to examine
a single process as seen from different points of view.
My point is that, for any given process that is incident on a person there
is not a separate process in the brain (that can be described in physical
terms) and another different process in the mind (that can be described
in mental terms) - rather there is only one process that can be described
by *whomever* in *whatever* terms. With that statement we have once
and for all rejected the mysterious dual worlds of Descartes.
But the question remains: Why, when a man experiences a process is
the experience never like the experience of that same identical process
by another? Here we have been given that the process *is* identical in
time and space, and here I must insist on the strongest possible senses of
the word "identical". The best example is a ray of light of a specific wave
length being incident on a particular man's retina at a particular time and
place. That man will experience a blue qualia, but no other person *or
set of instruments* will experience that blue qualia. I believe that fact is
almost painfully obvious - and one that we beat to death last year - and
one that should not now be at all controversial.
Let me put it to you another way. The brain, whatever else it might be,
is at least a network. By that I mean it is an intricate maze of inter
connecting facts. Every process that is incident on that network will have
its effect on that network. Many facts inside that network will change for
each process that is incident upon it. It is natural for us to call those
changes to that network the experience of that process by that network.
Then here is my point: No other network whatsoever can experience that
process and undergo the same changes. I call the changes undergone in
a network by a incident process the view of the process by the network.
Getting back to your point with Dennett about the ambiguity of interpersonal
objects: Views of processes are privileged and unique to each network
according to the boundary of those networks. But networks can be sub
networks of other networks. The only thing that separates them (the part from
the whole, or the part from the part) is effective boundaries. The brain is one
such effective boundary. Now the network to which I refer when I use the
term "I" is *part of* a larger network called human culture. When I honestly
use the term "happy" I am in fact pointing to specific changes that have
occurred in the network bounded by my brain. But in the larger context of
our social network you're just gonna have to take my word for it :))
> Dennett's answer is "token functionalism". This involves the
> intentional stance, rules of attribution, and predictive principles.
> Basically, our natural language terms provide a sort of calculus of
> mentalism, whereby we can informally conclude that someone else is
> happy or has a belief, or that we are happy or have a belief. [snip]
> And given that this *is* an AI forum, it might be worth thinking about
> what this says about the importance of such a web of reference as an
> element of an AI, and how an AI might communicate to us when we use all
> these terms that *don't* have unambiguous physical references -- how
> *will* we get an AI to pick out those, and only those, things that
> "register that it is 10:00A.M.", and in fact a whole Turing test
> devoted to such abstractions that humans manipulate with ease?
Well I think you've pointed the way above: we must teach our AI's how
to do the "calculus of natural language". When a man says to an AI that
he is happy, the AI will know that a change has taken place in the man's
network that is inaccessible to itself. This is not basically different that
the predicament between us humans, only more so because of the
differences of the type of networks involved .
Seth Russell
Thinking about how AI could work?
see http://www.clickshop.com/ai/conjecture.htm
Bloxy's
>On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 03:21:18 +0200, Andomar <not...@like.the.sun>
>wrote:
>
>>> Take the finding in mathematics that the set of even integers can be
>>> mapped onto ALL the integers, a proper superset of itself. Take
>>> 'mental' in the small (subjective) sense as represented by the odd
>>> integers, 'mental' in the large (idealistic) sense as represented by
>>> all the integers, and 'physical' (in the "excludes the mental" sense)
>>> as represented by the even integers. Tho the even integers map onto
>>> (causally determine) all the integers (including mentality in both
>>> sense), they do not exhaust what exists.
>>The last sentence sounds like a contradiction. If it "causally
>>determines" everyting, it has to "exhaust what exists"...?
>Effects are separate from causes, right?
WRONG.
They are connected as your hands to your body.
> In the analogy, the even
>integers map onto all the integers, but are nonetheless a proper
>subset of that which they map onto.
Yes, in this land of obscenities,
where you completely forgot who you are,
you invent this monkey logic,
which overrrules the reality.
Sad story indeed.
What is logic?
What is the purpose of it?
Do you still remember?
Is reality a subject to logic
or the other way around?
Again, can you create a working mosquito
with your monkey logic?
Can you even manage to create a working amoeba,
guaranteeing that you will not wipe out life on earth?
> I do not really know how far to
>push this analogy
What analogy?
It is ALL purest form of fiction,
a religion and a belief.
You COMPLETELY forgot the purpose of it all.
Now you are engaged in pure mental masturbation,
taking the "laws" of logic,
and making "conclusions" about REALITY,
or ALL THERE IS.
How much of a chance you got?
> -- sometimes it seems much too slick
Yes, all this "scientific" cunningness is not different
from a conman's trip of cheating people out of their money.
The conman knows the real thing,
but what he tells hie "customers"
is what you hear ANY place you go.
Lies and deception.
> -- but it
>underlines the point
It does not underline ANY points.
ALL pure myth.
> that what may seem to represent everything from
>one point of view, is only a part of a bigger whole from another point
>of view.
Yep. Reality is multi-dimensional.
Logic is a limitation of scope to the point of obscenity.
> There is a fact
What is "fact"?
Is it something that IS?
Or it is just an invention,
based on "rules" of your monkey logic of corruption?
> for every value that exists
And there are no "values" in reality.
Only in your brainwashed cockpit, you call brain,
interested in one thing only:
exploitation of ALL that moves,
and does not, for that matter.
Survival driven manipulation of ANYTHING
you can begin to conceive.
For what?
> -- I.e., the
>statement "Such-and-such a value exists" is true,
Is UTTER and complete obscenity,
as it is the ultimate limitation of scope,
reducing the multi-dimensional reality
to the level of binary logic,
of which there are NONE in existance
beyond the limits of your brainwashed cockpit.
ALL religious belief.
> & therefore
There could be no consequences to reality,
no matter how much you twist things with your
monkey "logic".
The ONLY consequence is corruption of your being.
That is all.
> denotes
>a fact
Again?
What sucky "fact"?
God exists!
Is it a fact?
> -- but that does not prevent truth values
What?
What sucky "truth" can you even begin to talk about?
All you got is self referential religion
of the obscenity grade,
distorting the reality to the point,
where YOU, as a being, simply do not make sense any longer.
A doomsday scenario.
Can you assure the existance of life on earth
beyond the next 2 generations with this logic of obscenity?
> from being a proper
>subset of values in general.
Yes, pure mental masturbation.
Wasting YOUR life, trying to prove what to whom?
Bloxy's
>> Take the finding in mathematics that the set of even integers can be
>> mapped onto ALL the integers, a proper superset of itself. Take
>> 'mental' in the small (subjective) sense as represented by the odd
>> integers, 'mental' in the large (idealistic) sense as represented by
>> all the integers, and 'physical' (in the "excludes the mental" sense)
>> as represented by the even integers. Tho the even integers map onto
>> (causally determine) all the integers (including mentality in both
>> sense), they do not exhaust what exists.
>The last sentence sounds like a contradiction. If it "causally
>determines" everyting, it has to "exhaust what exists"...?
The whole idea of causailty is just a pure obscenity.
You are lucky you can not possibly compute the whole
chain of logical events, arising as a result of "modern",
single dimensional "logic", because the reality is
multi-dimensional, way too complex to be computed.
Else, you'd be able to compute that now is as good of a time
to commit a global suicide, as ever,
as logically, you just do not make sense any more.
It is just a bio-robotic trip of futiilty.
Bloxy's
>Jim Balter wrote:
>> "Soenke N. Greimann" wrote [snipped]:
>> > Seth Russell wrote [snipped]:
>> You are talking past each other, because you are using different
>> concepts of "happy". You will never completely measure "happy" to
>> Seth's satisfaction because whether he is happy depends on whether he
>> "feels" happy, and he could easily find himself "feeling" happy if
>> there isn't a fixed correlation being "feeling happy" and some set of
>> body states. You are proposing a "type identity theory" of happiness;
>> Dennett points out the problem with such theories:
>Yes, thanks for the clarity. Certainly as you and Dennett have described,
>we cannot use the objects of words like "happy" as coherent objects that
>we can verify exist in this mind, and then in that mind, and in this brain,
>and then in that brain. Strangely enough the point that *I* was attempting
>to make does not need any such "type identity theory", rather it assumes
>such a theory would be a practical impossibility, and goes on to examine
>a single process as seen from different points of view.
>My point is that, for any given process that is incident on a person there
>is not a separate process in the brain (that can be described in physical
>terms) and another different process in the mind (that can be described
>in mental terms) - rather there is only one process that can be described
>by *whomever* in *whatever* terms. With that statement we have once
>and for all rejected the mysterious dual worlds of Descartes.
And so they sucked worse than a black hole
thereafter.
[...]
>Seth Russell
>Thinking about how AI could work?
Still thinking
after all these years?
And what have you found out
that helps you with the smallest things in life
of the grade of simply going a taking a shit?
Can your monkey logic help you do that?
Bloxy's
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>On 26 Aug 1999 17:51:36 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>wrote:
>>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>>>You would benefit from a reading of Hume here, tho perhaps you share
>>>>the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
>>>>In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
>>>>occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
>>>>followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
>>>>whence that necessity?
>>>Hume was clearly mistaken about this. We will sometimes say that X
>>>causes Y even when we know that there are possible situations where X
>>>can occur and not be followed by Y. And there are times that we will
>>>deny that X causes Y, even though our experience is that Y always
>>>follows X.
>>You completely miss the point. Assume all your qualifications have
>>been made. Still, whence the necessity?
>Necessity derives from analytic truths.
There are no such things as analytic "truths".
Either you redefine the concept of truth,
or drop it entirely from the domain of monkey logic.
> What we will consider causal
>depends on the scientific theories that we accept,
Yes
> and the analytic
>truths established by these theories.
In that case they can not be called truths.
They are just beliefs.
Domain of religion.
> When we change theories,
>we also change what we will accept as causal relations.
And so your truths change.
And how can you call something truth if it changes?
So, it was truth before. Now it is a lie.
Then how could it possibly be truth before?
>>You would do well to actually read Hume and understand what he is
>>getting at, rather than carping about various nuances that are
>>irrelevant to his argument. Of course, he is a philosopher ....
And so YOU are. aren't you?
>Well I have read a lot of Hume. I have considerable respect for him,
>in spite of the fact that he was a philosopher. Still, he was wrong
>about causality, although perhaps his views were about as good as you
>could come up with at that time.
The idea of causality is obscenity of limitation of scope.
Nothing else.
>>>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>>>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>>>>It doesn't work.
Ok, what do you "learn" from?
Brainwashing?
Does that "werk"?
>>>> Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>>>>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>>>>infinite regress!
>>>That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
>>>usually consider to be knowledge. Therefore a radical empiricist
>>>need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
>>>experience.
To "learn" what?
>>Sure we do. The ability to learn is something we may or may not know
>>how to do. Perhaps you are sticking at "knowing that" vs. "knowing
>>how". A stone does not know how to learn from experience. You,
>>presumably, do.
>Sorry, but that is surely wrong. Most people would tell you that the
>ability to learn is not something they know how to do. The will
>agree that they have the ability to learn, but they don't know the
>how of it even if they are able to do it.
>
>For that matter, research on machine learning has been going on for
>perhaps 4 decades now, with no evidence that the ML crowd actually
>know anything much about how to learn.
They don't even know what is there to learn
on the first place.
To learn for what purpose?
And then?
Seth Russell
> >Seth Russell
> >Thinking about how AI could work?
>
> Still thinking
> after all these years?
> And what have you found out
> that helps you with the smallest things in life
> of the grade of simply going a taking a shit?
>
> Can your monkey logic help you do that?
Nope, no need, the universe does that for me!
It does a continual source of joy and amazement
of growth and magic unfolding
with beauty here given
for little ole me and you ...
were I give something too
is for me alone.
Seth Russell
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>What is the difficulty involved in resolving the factual dispute over
>>whether I am taller than you? Do you deny that esp science has
>>evolved procedures for resolving such disputes that are commonly used
>>everywhere in settling such questions? You keep claiming that there
>>is some problem with resolving factual disputes, but so far have
>>providing no clue as to what you might possibly mean.
>
>In specific case (tallness, for example) we have widely accepted
>criteria. However, once we leave these specific cases, we may not
>even be able to agree on whether a dispute is factual. Evolutionists
>speak of the *fact* of evolution, while creationsists deny that there
>are established facts. Most astronomers talk of the big bang as
>fact, but a few holdouts would deny that it is fact.
Establishing the validity of a scientific theory -- evolution, big
bang, &c. -- is certainly a more complicated affair than determining
tallness, & a lot has been written on that subject (Kuhn, et al.).
Still, at the end of the day we can reach a general consensus amongst
those who know what they are talking about. This is just not
available for ethics. We can identify procedures (experiments,
deductive sequences) which resolve disputes concerning various issues
in logic, math & science. But noone has established equivalent
procedures for value disputes.
>I don't see that the issues of values are much different. There is
>widespread agreement that we ought not commit murder. But there are
>issues of value judgement where disputes are far more common.
There may be some general agreement that murder is wrong (since
'murder' is UNDERSTOOD as "wrongful killing"), but many intractable
disputes over what counts as murder (abortion?).
>>> The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
>>>as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
>>>true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
>>>over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
>>>corresponding claim of factuality.
>
>>This is actually good. There are indeed two senses of 'fact' floating
>>around here. (1) What a true sentence is about, and (2) What the
>>true sentences of logic, math &science are about. People engaged in
>
>I would say that you are mixing things up here. We should
>distinguish between sentences of logic and math, and sentences of
>science. In the case of logic and math, we are playing a syntactic
>game, and whether the sentences are about anything in reality is
>beside the point. In an axiom based syntactic game, it is easier to
>settle disputes about fact/truth.
The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely. But
both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
procedures, whereas ethics does not.
>When we come to every day sentences, or to sentences of science, the
>situation is different, and far less clear. It could be that when we
>speak of 'fact' or of 'truth', we are speaking only of attributes of
>sentences. In that case relativism reigns, for different people will
>interpret sentences differently. The standards for truth and
>factuality are sensitive to how the sentences are interpreted.
>
>However, many philosphers claim that the sentences are merely ways of
>communicating propositions about the state of reality, and that
>'fact' and 'truth' are attributes of those propositions rather than
>attributes of the sentences. This supports the abolutist view that
>questions of fact can be settled with evidence. That is all well and
>good. But the trouble is that philosophy has utterly failed to
>answer the question of how sentences communicate propositions. They
>do a great deal of handwaving about this. They take it for granted
>that this is possible. The invent magical elixirs (such as
>intentionality) and credit these elixirs with solving the problem.
>But they never tell you how, and they deny that they are relying on
>magic.
This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
"It is raining" and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
weather. Why is this so troublesome?
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>On 26 Aug 1999 17:51:36 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>wrote:
>>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>
>>>>You would benefit from a reading of Hume here, tho perhaps you share
>>>>the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
>>>>In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
>>>>occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
>>>>followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
>>>>whence that necessity?
>
>>>Hume was clearly mistaken about this. We will sometimes say that X
>>>causes Y even when we know that there are possible situations where X
>>>can occur and not be followed by Y. And there are times that we will
>>>deny that X causes Y, even though our experience is that Y always
>>>follows X.
>
>>You completely miss the point. Assume all your qualifications have
>>been made. Still, whence the necessity?
>
>Necessity derives from analytic truths. What we will consider causal
>depends on the scientific theories that we accept, and the analytic
>truths established by these theories. When we change theories,
>we also change what we will accept as causal relations.
Most authors accept a kind of "necessity" that rises above mere
correlation ("Every even numbered house on this street is painted
white"); that is law-like (nomological), and thereby supports
counterfactual claims: "Water flows downhill". Certainly scientific
laws are vulnerable in a way that logical and mathematical are not,
but that still does not prevent us from holding that a cause
(correctly identified as such) NECESSITATES the occurrence of its
effect. Hume's point is that this necessity is NOT something we
experience in the same straight-forward matter that we experience the
colors, solidity, &c. of the things that we identify as causes or
effects.
>>You would do well to actually read Hume and understand what he is
>>getting at, rather than carping about various nuances that are
>>irrelevant to his argument. Of course, he is a philosopher ....
>
>Well I have read a lot of Hume. I have considerable respect for him,
>in spite of the fact that he was a philosopher. Still, he was wrong
>about causality, although perhaps his views were about as good as you
>could come up with at that time.
On this I happily agree. He pointed out some crucial epistemological
issues concerning the supposition of causal relationships, that any
subsequent approach has to take into consideration. I'm tempted to
say he was not so much wrong as incomplete.
>>>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>>>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>>>>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>>>>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>>>>infinite regress!
>
>>>That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
>>>usually consider to be knowledge. Therefore a radical empiricist
>>>need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
>>>experience.
>
>>Sure we do. The ability to learn is something we may or may not know
>>how to do. Perhaps you are sticking at "knowing that" vs. "knowing
>>how". A stone does not know how to learn from experience. You,
>>presumably, do.
>
>Sorry, but that is surely wrong. Most people would tell you that the
>ability to learn is not something they know how to do. The will
>agree that they have the ability to learn, but they don't know the
>how of it even if they are able to do it.
The point is that learning presupposes a whole cognitive structure.
It is not just a passive recording of whatever happens to strike our
senses. It is an ACTIVITY, & the results reflect as much the nature
of this activity as they do the "external world" about which things
are being learnt.
>For that matter, research on machine learning has been going on for
>perhaps 4 decades now, with no evidence that the ML crowd actually
>know anything much about how to learn.
I am unfamiliar with any of the recent details in this field, but it
has always seemed to me that it would be an interesting but not
insuperable challenge to design a machine intelligence that inferred
causal-like relations from regularities in its input (aided, ideally,
by an ability to "experiment").
Seth Russell
> [...] the point that the question of what is a fact is a
> very slippery one. The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
> as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
> true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
> over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
> corresponding claim of factuality.
Ok, I can see how you have associated these slippery values with facts that
we can think about logically. But additionally I think you must
acknowledge that such valuative facts are in a different category from both
the facts of mathematics and the facts of the natural world. These slippery
valuative facts have at least one special quality which should govern how we
deal with them logically. Humans can make them true or false by changing
their beliefs and attitudes. William James put it this way: "Believe that
life *is* worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." That
facts in this category behave this way can easily be verified.
Is our logic adequate to deal with that reality?
Seth Russell
Neil W Rickert
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> [...] the point that the question of what is a fact is a
>> very slippery one. The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
>> as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
>> true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
>> over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
>> corresponding claim of factuality.
>Ok, I can see how you have associated these slippery values with facts that
>we can think about logically.
Actually, I haven't done that. Rather, my view is that the only facts
we can think about logically are logical/mathematical facts (or formal
facts).
> But additionally I think you must
>acknowledge that such valuative facts are in a different category from both
>the facts of mathematics and the facts of the natural world.
No, I don't acknowledge that. I acknowledge that they are different
from the facts of mathematics. But I don't see clear distinction
between them and facts about the natural world. At most there is a
difference of degree.
> These slippery
>valuative facts have at least one special quality which should govern how we
>deal with them logically. Humans can make them true or false by changing
>their beliefs and attitudes.
When I came here from down under (many years ago), I changed from
measuring milk and petrol in imperial gallons to measuring milk and
gasoline in us gallons. It seems to me that I changed what was true
by changing beliefs and attitudes. For example, 1 pint = 20 fl.
ounces was true. But after changing beliefs and attitudes, it became
1 pint = 16 fl. oz.
> William James put it this way: "Believe that
>life *is* worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." That
>facts in this category behave this way can easily be verified.
>Is our logic adequate to deal with that reality?
Logic is inadequate to deal with reality anyway. Only a fool or a
philosopher could think otherwise.
Neil W Rickert
>On 28 Aug 1999 11:09:29 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>>What is the difficulty involved in resolving the factual dispute over
>>>whether I am taller than you? Do you deny that esp science has
>>>evolved procedures for resolving such disputes that are commonly used
>>>everywhere in settling such questions? You keep claiming that there
>>>is some problem with resolving factual disputes, but so far have
>>>providing no clue as to what you might possibly mean.
>>In specific case (tallness, for example) we have widely accepted
>>criteria. However, once we leave these specific cases, we may not
>>even be able to agree on whether a dispute is factual. Evolutionists
>>speak of the *fact* of evolution, while creationsists deny that there
>>are established facts. Most astronomers talk of the big bang as
>>fact, but a few holdouts would deny that it is fact.
>Establishing the validity of a scientific theory -- evolution, big
>bang, &c. -- is certainly a more complicated affair than determining
>tallness, & a lot has been written on that subject (Kuhn, et al.).
>Still, at the end of the day we can reach a general consensus amongst
>those who know what they are talking about. This is just not
>available for ethics. We can identify procedures (experiments,
>deductive sequences) which resolve disputes concerning various issues
>in logic, math & science. But noone has established equivalent
>procedures for value disputes.
At the end of the day we can exclude those who dissent from admission
to the group of "those who know what they are talking about." We
generally can't do that with ethical questions, even if only because
we are unwilling to pay the cost of building all of the prisons this
would require.
>>I don't see that the issues of values are much different. There is
>>widespread agreement that we ought not commit murder. But there are
>>issues of value judgement where disputes are far more common.
>There may be some general agreement that murder is wrong (since
>'murder' is UNDERSTOOD as "wrongful killing"), but many intractable
>disputes over what counts as murder (abortion?).
>>>> The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
>>>>as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
>>>>true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
>>>>over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
>>>>corresponding claim of factuality.
>>>This is actually good. There are indeed two senses of 'fact' floating
>>>around here. (1) What a true sentence is about, and (2) What the
>>>true sentences of logic, math &science are about. People engaged in
>>I would say that you are mixing things up here. We should
>>distinguish between sentences of logic and math, and sentences of
>>science. In the case of logic and math, we are playing a syntactic
>>game, and whether the sentences are about anything in reality is
>>beside the point. In an axiom based syntactic game, it is easier to
>>settle disputes about fact/truth.
>The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely. But
>both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
>procedures, whereas ethics does not.
Kuhn made a pretty strong case that science does not have such
procedures.
>>When we come to every day sentences, or to sentences of science, the
>>situation is different, and far less clear. It could be that when we
>>speak of 'fact' or of 'truth', we are speaking only of attributes of
>>sentences. In that case relativism reigns, for different people will
>>interpret sentences differently. The standards for truth and
>>factuality are sensitive to how the sentences are interpreted.
>>However, many philosphers claim that the sentences are merely ways of
>>communicating propositions about the state of reality, and that
>>'fact' and 'truth' are attributes of those propositions rather than
>>attributes of the sentences. This supports the abolutist view that
>>questions of fact can be settled with evidence. That is all well and
>>good. But the trouble is that philosophy has utterly failed to
>>answer the question of how sentences communicate propositions. They
>>do a great deal of handwaving about this. They take it for granted
>>that this is possible. The invent magical elixirs (such as
>>intentionality) and credit these elixirs with solving the problem.
>>But they never tell you how, and they deny that they are relying on
>>magic.
>This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
>"It is raining" and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
>different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
>weather. Why is this so troublesome?
Neither sentence conveys any proposition. Because of that, I suppose
you could say that both convey the same proposition.
You are still taking it for granted that there are magic elixirs
available such that these sentences would convey a proposition. But
two people could be standing side by side and disagree as to whether
it is raining. If you happen to be on the stage in your local
reportory company, and say "it is raining", this will be taken to
convey different information from when you are looking out your
window and mouthing the same sentence.
We use expressed sentences to inform ourselves. Thus we may
reasonably say that a sentence conveys information. What I am
questioning is the assumption that the conveyed information can be
considered to consist of propositions.
Neil W Rickert
>On 28 Aug 1999 11:23:48 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>>Sure we do. The ability to learn is something we may or may not know
>>>how to do. Perhaps you are sticking at "knowing that" vs. "knowing
>>>how". A stone does not know how to learn from experience. You,
>>>presumably, do.
>>Sorry, but that is surely wrong. Most people would tell you that the
>>ability to learn is not something they know how to do. The will
>>agree that they have the ability to learn, but they don't know the
>>how of it even if they are able to do it.
>The point is that learning presupposes a whole cognitive structure.
>It is not just a passive recording of whatever happens to strike our
>senses. It is an ACTIVITY, & the results reflect as much the nature
>of this activity as they do the "external world" about which things
>are being learnt.
I agree that learning is not passive recording. However, I suggest
that it is an activity of the brain, but not an activity of the
person, although activities of the person may have an influence.
People sometimes talk of learning by osmosis, to reflect that fact
that often the personal level activity is only an immersion in the
subject matter, and the learning has to take place in the brain at a
level where we are not conscious of any associated learning
activity.
>>For that matter, research on machine learning has been going on for
>>perhaps 4 decades now, with no evidence that the ML crowd actually
>>know anything much about how to learn.
>I am unfamiliar with any of the recent details in this field,
Ah, then you are pretty well up to date on developments.
> but it
>has always seemed to me that it would be an interesting but not
>insuperable challenge to design a machine intelligence that inferred
>causal-like relations from regularities in its input (aided, ideally,
>by an ability to "experiment").
Many have tried. There is no persuasive evidence of success. So far
the evidence suggests that Hume was right in his questioning of
induction.
Soenke N. Greimann
sniiiiiip
> Yes I though long and hard about that. But bear in mind that time and space are not in any
> way represented in the diagram and that the points in the plane represent *facts* which are
> ordered proximally by the density of their cause/effect connections. The points (facts) in
> the drawn boundary line must represent the sensual surfaces and motor activators that
> interface private facts and the facts of the natural world. But I can think of no such
> boundary points that exists between private facts and public facts, and at the same time are
> proximate in terms of cause and effect, and are proximate to the sense organs. Another way to
> put that is there is no sense organ in the brain that allows you to perceive a public fact
> directly, yet there are strong cause and effect connections between public facts and private
> facts. If you can provide tangeagele examples of any facts that are (almost private but
> almost public) and at the same time are *contiguous* (in terms of cause and effect) with the
> sense organs and motor activators, then your topology is more accurate.
So you were just making a general diagram for any one person and the
difference between his "Erlebniswelt" or world of experience and the
"real" physical world, yes? Ok, I can live with that. After all, it
is only a model and in the realm of individual perception, one model
is as good as any other if it is sufficiently conclusive and can be
understood by more people...
However, I would propose that it is dangerous to speak of "shared"
things at all. Even if Jerry refuses to go into phenomeno-critical
detail, exactly _what_ is it, that we have in common? Do we speak
the same language? Arguably, yes, but we do not always understand
each other, do we? We use the same symbols but their meaning may
be different to me than to you. We are playing a guessing game,
granted, it is one we are quite good at, since this does not end
in total confusion, but every time two individuals communicate,
the one cannot ever _know_ what the other intends. He can only
achive differing levels of certainty.
So "shared human culture" is in reality only the socio-evolutionary
product of countless single entities' interactions (both past and
present) and remains an intangible experience. Even if we all
were to say "I'm a liberal.", we would never really hold a truly
"shared" opinion of what exactly "liberal" means.
Apart from those "facts" that have a probability factor so high we
actually regard them as such, "shared" human culture is as much an
arbitrary term as anything. I can agree to "shared" physical world,
since we certainly all appear to exist within a shared reality, even
if this "sharing" stops at the level of perception and experience.
In this respect, your diagram is quite appropriate in portraying
differences of perception, although I still have some bellyaches
about the "shared" thing...
I think that
http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_outside.gif
is the better of the two, since it sort of embodies humans as a
group. (an arbitrary one, granted, but humans do so tend to play
in categories :-))
sniiiiip
> Seth Russell
> Want a introduction to Knowledge Representation?
> see http://www.clickshop.com/ai/symknow.htm
Sönke N. Greimann
Soenke N. Greimann
snipped quote
> That's a good read!
> What I miss in this approach is that being "happy" or "sad"
> depends also on the context the question is asked in. Just
> imagine being asked if you are happy. Your reaction will
> depend on many things; do you like to talk to this person?
> If not, which answer will get you out of this conversation
> very fast? If so, which answer will most likely keep
> the other person interested?
>
> Interestingly, the "interest of the other person" thus becomes
> related to "your happiness." Makes sense, right?
>
> So, the question if a human is happy depends not only
> on the state he's in, but also on who's asking and why.
> It's not like your truthfully trying to communicate wether
> the "publicly shared concept of happiness" applies to you!
Wait. Doesn't the experience of a specific person asking and
his/her apparent perceived motive affect the state of the
person that is asked???
I would think so. Since every experience affects the state of
the person (as "input" if you'd like), the "output" must also
be a result of this, unless there is some sort of magical
handwaving involved that breaks through this simple (and also
observable) system of input/output.
So whether a human is happy depends on nothing _but_ the
state he is in, everything being capable of being reduced
to a state-altering "input".
Bloxy's
>> >Seth Russell
>> >Thinking about how AI could work?
>> Still thinking
>> after all these years?
>> And what have you found out
>> that helps you with the smallest things in life
>> of the grade of simply going a taking a shit?
>> Can your monkey logic help you do that?
>Nope, no need, the universe does that for me!
Sure?
>It does a continual source of joy and amazement
>of growth and magic unfolding
>with beauty here given
By who to who?
>for little ole me and you ...
>were I give something too
>is for me alone.
Ok, lets blame it on universe,
even though it is not an entity,
having an identity.
Or is it god?
>Seth Russell
Bloxy's
>On 28 Aug 1999 11:09:29 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>wrote:
>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
[...]
>Establishing the validity of a scientific theory -- evolution, big
>bang, &c. -- is certainly a more complicated affair than determining
>tallness, & a lot has been written on that subject (Kuhn, et al.).
>Still, at the end of the day we can reach a general consensus amongst
>those who know what they are talking about.
"General" consensus is just a majority opinion,
created by mass brainwashing.
At the times of hitler, gingis khan, alexander da great,
and all other of your "heroes", and even at this junction,
there is a "general consensus", often proclaiming those
criminals as heroes or even suns of god.
What does it mean at the end?
As to those, "who know what they are talking about",
are you the one? How do you define it on the first place?
Talking about what?
They and you have been talking about and about and about
and about, and the result is?
> This is just not
>available for ethics. We can identify procedures (experiments
>deductive sequences) which resolve disputes concerning various issues
>in logic, math & science. But noone has established equivalent
>procedures for value disputes.
>>I don't see that the issues of values are much different. There is
>>widespread agreement that we ought not commit murder.
Yes, the soapy faced politicians and do-gooders get on tv
and tell OTHERS that commiting murder is a sin,
but when it comes to wako in texas, usa,
they just bring in comandoes and totally wipe out
dozens of people, including innocent children,
just in the name of free sucking world and suckocracy
unlimited.
Those, who say it is not "good" to commit murder,
will do EVERYTHING in their power of sucking to
achive THEIR goals, however rotten they are.
They'll go out and wipe out the entire countries
in the name of "good", "progress" and you name it,
and at the end of the day, they will come on the
idiot box, you call tv, and tell you about the
urgent necessity to do so, all in the name of
protecting the peace, dignity and freedom for
all people, as long, as they are on the right side
of the line of fire.
All lies, deception and corruption,
total, complete and perverse.
They manipulate your guilt and fear with these noble
ideas of not doing "bad" things and all they do is
to build a mass consensus, creating bio-robots on
a global scale.
>> But there are
>>issues of value judgement where disputes are far more common.
First of all, nobody knows what is value on the first place.
They replaced it with mental masturbation,
because this is the only way to manipulate you as people.
Mind can be convinced of ANYTHING.
Look at hitler's example of global domination.
But the heart knows something, no mind is EVER capable of.
The feeling is there that detects the energy directly.
Mind does not detect ANYTHING, except of "interests"
of ego.
Once you heart is separated from the head, as it happened
in the "civilized" world, you simply become a machine,
manipulatable to ANY extent.
Value?
What value?
Define value on the first place.
>There may be some general agreement that murder is wrong (since
>'murder' is UNDERSTOOD as "wrongful killing"), but many intractable
>disputes over what counts as murder (abortion?).
Sure, abortion is pronounced as murder.
Well, if you don't have abortion, then you might be commiting
a mass murder of the mankind as such with the problem of
overpopulation.
These parasitic priests, calling abortion and birth control
murder simply have not enough active neurons on line to
compute the population on the earth within the next 2 generations,
and are utterly incapable of comprehending the consequences of it.
All they want is fear and guilt
to keep you under THEIR control.
And so are the politicians.
The same exact story.
One creates moral "laws",
the other creates social "laws".
All lies.
>>>> The assertion "my interests ought to be treated
>>>>as more important than yours" purports to be something with a
>>>>true/false value which makes it a claim of factuality. Any dispute
>>>>over the statement of value is at the same time a dispute over the
>>>>corresponding claim of factuality.
That is exactly how it works.
They found the model of manipulation of the mind.
As long, as you remain under domain of the mind,
they can convince it of "facts", which they themselves
formulated via corrupted "scientists", just like you here.
They reduce the forever complex aspects of ALL THERE IS
to a simple binary choices of "true"/"false", "good"/"bad",
which they themselves helped to create.
Then they call it "facts".
Now, the "facts" are actuality.
Therefore, if you do not follow a party line,
a consensus and majority opinion,
you are labled "bad".
Simple trick.
Now, once that is done,
the rest is simple.
>>>This is actually good.
This is a language of bio-robots,
programmed into oblivion with the notions of "good" and "bad",
while their own ass is on fire.
Is THAT "good"?
What is "good", you dead donkey ass sucker?
>>> There are indeed two senses of 'fact' floating
>>>around here. (1) What a true sentence is about, and (2) What the
>>>true sentences of logic, math &science are about. People engaged in
Utter and comple collections of purest grade horseshit.
Once you come to the point of reducing the entire
sentences to "true"/"false", then you are just as good,
as a machine. Jesse with the helm and a nukelar bomb
up his ass can trigger that "true"/"false" dillema
and make you do ANYTHING HE wants.
What is "true"?
Is existance reducible to true/false?
Can you show a single example of true in the entire universe?
Do ANY of the other forms of life care about this idea
of true/false? Does lion sit there on his ass and says:
Is my stomach is empty?
True.
Then, therefore, i need to go out and find something to eat,
otherwise, i'll be as good, as dead.
Your ideas of true/false are there in order to maximize the
rate of sucking.
That is ALL there is to it.
>>I would say that you are mixing things up here. We should
>>distinguish between sentences of logic and math, and sentences of
>>science.
[thus further fragmenting the existence]
>> In the case of logic and math, we are playing a syntactic
>>game, and whether the sentences are about anything in reality is
>>beside the point. In an axiom based syntactic game, it is easier to
>>settle disputes about fact/truth.
Reality?
Hahahahaha.
What is that?
Define!
>The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely.
Oh, you wish to speak of truth,
the unspeakable?
Go ahead.
But first you'd have to define it.
What is truth?
> But
>both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
>procedures, whereas ethics does not.
Just the other way around.
Could you imagine that?
Science and ALL kinds of monkey logic are not there to
deal with the issues of truth, but the ethics is.
What is ethics?
>>When we come to every day sentences, or to sentences of science, the
>>situation is different, and far less clear.
Because you separated and fragmented existence
into nicely packaged, closed subsystems of obscenity,
and none of those even need to relate to one another,
they may all be considered "independent".
What a system of cunningness, control, domination
and opression you gots!
You separate head from the heart.
Intelligence from "motor" functions.
Brain from the rest of the body.
You separated EVERYTHING.
It is amazing you still exist.
It is a dead end.
All you nicely packaged closed systems
are the delusion of the ultimate grade.
Only self extinction can exceed the state of affairs
in your "modern" "sciences".
The ancient roman strategy of divide and "concur".
As a result, you suck worse than a black hole as speices,
and you are about to suck yourself in via your own
output hole.
>> It could be that when we
>>speak of 'fact' or of 'truth', we are speaking only of attributes of
>>sentences.
Sentences do not have attributes
beyond those you attribute to them.
They are just a bunch of dead symbols.
>> In that case relativism reigns, for different people will
>>interpret sentences differently.
And the "normal" people?
Do they ALL agree on the same attributes of the same sentence?
Then why are you sitting here in this hole
and can not even agree with one another on the simpliest things,
arguing for years, never being able to agree on almost ANY
interpretation of ANY sentence, ever type here,
on this artificial suckology forum,
you all call artificial intelligence?
>> The standards for truth
This is simpy idiotic.
There are no standards for truth.
It is simply impossible.
It has beens said, at least 2500 years ago, and even
long before that:
The truth can not be spoken.
Or can it?
Try.
After all these years of "progress",
and with suc-cess of your "modern" "scientific"
and techological "achievements".
Try.
Any active neurons on line?
>> and
>>factuality are sensitive to how the sentences are interpreted.
And the interpretations of a single sentence
are what?
- Unlimited.
Dig?
It all depends on the system of brainwashing.
>>However, many philosphers claim that the sentences are merely ways of
>>communicating propositions about the state of reality,
Not reality, but THEIR own belief system of the day.
You can not even begin to speak of reality.
All you can speak of is your own system you adopted.
All myth,
and not reality.
Pussy in the sky with diamonds.
And you all paid a lot of money for this song.
You must be a bunch of idiots, gone mad,
paing for the lowest grade of shit one can find.
All shaking in extacy while those sucky beatles
peddle this idiotic stuff into your brains.
>> and that
>>'fact' and 'truth'
The truth is not an attribute of ANYTHING,
you donkey.
Thuth is beyond ALL attributes.
>> are attributes of those propositions rather than
>>attributes of the sentences.
The attributions of the logical propositions,
attributed to various attributes of reality,
appropriately derived via means and methods
of attributing the attributions, appropriately
attributed to reality.
That is ALL you god so far.
Pure and utter pile of lowest grade horseshit,
none of which will be able to even help you
go take a good shit,
as far, as reality is concerend.
All mass brainwashing into a state of oblivion.
>> This supports the abolutist view that
>>questions of fact can be settled with evidence.
And what is "evidence"?
Is it based on perception?
And if it is, is that perception absolute?
And are the ways and means of verification of that
perception absolute?
Is there a guarantee that you have chosen the right
criterias for you "analysis" on the first place?
One once the dust has settled,
do you think you can solve your REAL problems
with all this jazz?
Well, then how did you manage to come to the point
of existance, where you literally have 2 more generations
to go, at the very best, before you suck yourself in
via your own output hole?
You see, this shit does not quite reconcile
at the end of the day.
You must be on drugs.
>> That is all well and good.
Yep, brainwashed into oblivion.
What is "good"?
>> But the trouble is that philosophy has utterly failed to
>>answer the question of how sentences communicate propositions.
First of all, don't blame philosophy.
YOU are the philosopher, speaking on the forum of philosophy
about the highest aspirations of yours,
intelligence,
which is a good idea,
hopefully, one day, someone will implement it in reality,
just like one dude said about progress.
>> They
>>do a great deal of handwaving about this.
And what do YOU do?
>> They take it for granted
>>that this is possible.
They HAVE to.
Else their entire nicely packaged system of obscenities
will fall appart.
This is simply shit that keeps is all together
in the name of free sucking world.
>> The invent magical elixirs (such as
>>intentionality)
Yes, intent.
Based on purpose.
>> and credit these elixirs with solving the problem.
>>But they never tell you how, and they deny that they are relying on
>>magic.
Yes, except magic is not that dirty as their bag of dirty tricks.
Magic is real.
Life itself is magic.
YOU are magical,
only if you knew.
ALL forgotten
with the invent of "modern" "sciences"
and technological "progress".
Prorgress?
Hahahahaha.
Show me!
What has been the progress in this domain
since the year 0 on your calendar?
Seven folded truth has been spoken when?
About 5000 years ago?
And you still are only on the level 2?
Thats a progress?
Here:
1. It is
2. And it is not [at the same time]
And you can not even solve this much.
AT THE SAME TIME.
It IS and it is NOT.
What does it tell you?
3. And it is both [at the same time]
4. And it is neither [at the same time]
5. And it is none of the above [at the same time]
6. And is is all included [at the same time].
Now, what would be the 7th?
And that dude says:
And now the truth has been PERFECTLY spoken.
Dig?
Do you think you can crack it at least on the step 2?
Or may be even 3?
Progress?
Hahahaha.
You must be in a deep, deep sleep,
ancient Indians called slumber.
>This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
>"It is raining"
Yes, education is reduced to training.
And even you, standing the forefront of intelligence,
at least as far, as YOU yourself would LIKE it to be,
are using the same pattern of brainwashing,
substituting education with training.
Now, you train dogs,
and you train killer people, aka soldiers.
Training is the lesson of submission.
You are trained to perform according to someone elses
pre-existing system
of whatever brainwashing you got in your books.
Can you comprehend at least that much?
What are these patters, programmed into your
idiotic, outdated cpu, you all call brain?
Training?
On the forum of intelligence?
You MUST be out of active neurons on line.
It is simply logically inevitable.
You are UTTERLY and completely incapable of
exhibiting ANY aspects of functioning intelligence.
Ok, training.
And then?
> and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
>different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
>weather. Why is this so troublesome?
Because it is ALL just a self referential monkey logic,
none of which can be proven to bear ANY relationsship
to reality, beyond the deep, deep slumber,
you are in.
Just like the man on drugs.
You see images like pussy in the sky with diamonds,
and yet you can not even manage to crawl to the
toilet to take a shit, as you are UTTERLY
"out of it".
And you call this the bleeding edge of science?
Or this is not science?
Then what is it?
Cem Tural
Bloxy's <Bloxy's...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7qa7ov$4...@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com...
> In article <7q92ek$k...@ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil W Rickert> >>On 26 Aug 1999 17:51:36 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
> >>>>the unconstrained disrespect others evince concerning philosophers.
> >>>>In nature we can see that Y follows X; & perhaps that everytime X
> >>>>occurs, Y occurs. But we don't otherwise see the NECESSITY that X be
> >>>>followed by Y, that we nonetheless impute to causal connections. So
> >>>>whence that necessity?
>
> >>>Hume was clearly mistaken about this. We will sometimes say that X
> >>>causes Y even when we know that there are possible situations where X
> >>>can occur and not be followed by Y. And there are times that we will
> >>>deny that X causes Y, even though our experience is that Y always
> >>>follows X.
>
> >>You completely miss the point. Assume all your qualifications have
> >>been made. Still, whence the necessity?
>
> >Necessity derives from analytic truths.
>
> Either you redefine the concept of truth,
> or drop it entirely from the domain of monkey logic.
Proves that you speak out of nowhere. Now open up an introductory
epistemology book, and begin reading.
Analytical truths are know a priori, independent of experience; while an a
posteriori statement needs evidence to be proven (or disproven). For
example, "All bachelors are unmaried" is an analytical truth, because the
predicate is contained in the subject. (The word bachelor implies that a
bachelor be unmaried.)
Analytical statements need to be a priori, and a posteriori statements need
to be synthetic.
>
> > What we will consider causal
> >depends on the scientific theories that we accept,
>
> Yes
>
> > and the analytic
> >truths established by these theories.
>
> In that case they can not be called truths.
> They are just beliefs.
> Domain of religion.
>
Just a question for you: What is knowledge? It is "Justified, true belief".
(Again open up an introductory knowledge theory book if not convinced!)
Belief, domain of religion? Or philosophy? Or you are a broken - record,
telling the same things again and again out of nowhere?
> > When we change theories,
> >we also change what we will accept as causal relations.
>
> And so your truths change.
> And how can you call something truth if it changes?
>
> So, it was truth before. Now it is a lie.
> Then how could it possibly be truth before?
>
> >>You would do well to actually read Hume and understand what he is
> >>getting at, rather than carping about various nuances that are
> >>irrelevant to his argument. Of course, he is a philosopher ....
>
> And so YOU are. aren't you?
>
> >Well I have read a lot of Hume. I have considerable respect for him,
> >in spite of the fact that he was a philosopher. Still, he was wrong
> >about causality, although perhaps his views were about as good as you
> >could come up with at that time.
>
> The idea of causality is obscenity of limitation of scope.
> Nothing else.
>
Woaw. Big word uttered here. Justification?
> >>>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
> >>>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
> >>>>It doesn't work.
>
> Ok, what do you "learn" from?
> Brainwashing?
> Does that "werk"?
> >>>> Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
> >>>>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
> >>>>infinite regress!
>
> >>>That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
> >>>usually consider to be knowledge. Therefore a radical empiricist
> >>>need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
> >>>experience.
>
> To "learn" what?
Now this question does not make any sense does it?
>
> >>Sure we do. The ability to learn is something we may or may not know
> >>how to do. Perhaps you are sticking at "knowing that" vs. "knowing
> >>how". A stone does not know how to learn from experience. You,
> >>presumably, do.
>
> >Sorry, but that is surely wrong. Most people would tell you that the
> >ability to learn is not something they know how to do. The will
> >agree that they have the ability to learn, but they don't know the
> >how of it even if they are able to do it.
> >
> >For that matter, research on machine learning has been going on for
> >perhaps 4 decades now, with no evidence that the ML crowd actually
> >know anything much about how to learn.
>
Bloxy's
Who is here to claim they know "what they are taling about"?
Come to the plate.
> We
>generally can't do that with ethical questions,
They can't do that with almost ANYTHING you can even
begin to imagine.
It is all self induced dream,
a belief, based on mass brainwashing aka consensus
of "opinion".
> even if only because
>we are unwilling to pay the cost of building all of the prisons this
>would require.
Yes, and those, who "dissent" from this mass brainwashing
of UTTER and COMPLETE corruption,
are labled "dangerous"
[to the well being of this giant sucking machine]
They were, are, and will be, in the forceable future
"put away" [to prevent dissimination of "dangerous"
information],
deprived of their ways and means of survival,
as entire planet is owned by the fat cat
and is called his "private property",
isolated, jailed, poisoned, crussified, tortured, massacred,
burned, and you name it,
all in the name of "good",
all in the name of well being of this giant sucking machine,
you all hold dear to your cockpit, you call brain,
forever afraid,
of survival.
And those parasites, you call heroes,
will be living in the palaces at your expense,
taking your money to take an airplane trip
at a cost on several years of your income,
all in the name of "good",
all in the name of "law" and "order",
all in the name of suckocracy,
they conviniently labled democracy.
ALL lies, cunning and deadly indeed.
Even roman empire, and even the sodom and homorrah
were not as corrupt as you are.
There has never been a time on this planet
of corruption so perverse as you have with your
most "modern" societies.
There has been hitler, alexander the great,
gingis khan, timurlen, stalin and many others,
but all of them combined
simply pailed in comparison with what you got
at this glorious junction,
as you allowed a corruption of your innermost being,
of your very essense
of who you are.
You are utterly and completely separated from
the most critical aspects within,
providing the beautiful laboratory of physical domain
with the planet earth.
You are now rotten to the very bone.
The "evil empire[s]" now succeeded the deadliest
part of mass brainwashing.
What you have right now
is just a geometrically progressing number of
bio-robots, utterly and completely brainwashed
into oblivion,
believing there is no difference
between them and the machine.
That is the last and final phase.
Beyond this, either you remember
who you really are,
and do it REAL fast,
or,
you know "the rest...
of the story".
What is the impetus for you to be?
Can you prove that?
Can you assure that?
>>>I don't see that the issues of values are much different.
Because you are just like a blind donkey ass sucker.
You will not be even able to define the notion of value,
or can you?
What is value?
>>> There is
>>>widespread agreement that we ought not commit murder.
Just the other way around.
All your mediums of communication peddle 99% of what information?
Murder,
lies,
corruption,
dishonesty,
achieving the "goals", not matter what the means are.
You are watching the rich people,
in very expensive houses, very few of you can even
imagine living in,
doing nothing all day long,
but engaging in all sorts of cunning and cruel pursute
of the money god, selling their own mother, if need be.
Your minds have been completely and utterly program
to accept the murder as a normal way to "solve" the
"problems" in order to achieve your rotten goals,
of chaising the money god.
Why?
What is this fear?
What you have on your idiot box is guns, blood,
slauther, poison, lies, deception, cunningness,
violence, domination and opression.
Now, you say there is widespread consensus of
NOT commiting a murder?
And you are saying it on the basis of what?
The sweet corrupt lies, coming out of the priest's ass,
he calls mouth?
And if there is such a widespread consensus of
NOT commiting murder, why there is so much of it
on the idiot box, you call tv?
How is it possible for them to feed you this
ugliest shit?
You see, the answer is simple.
YOU want it.
YOU watch it.
YOU crave for it.
And the question is:
WHY?
Why are you saying this horseshit of the lowest grade here
about murder?
Brainwashed into oblivion,
by any humble chance?
Conviniently replaced the murder with
"action", "exitement", "chase for the sweet, sweet
fruits of the money god"?
Ok, here is the verdict:
Money = god,
and god is money.
This is the only law you have on your hand now,
and the question is:
How can you possibly be able to fix it?
With what set of tools?
You royal monkey logic, and "reason"?
Well, that did not quite werk zo far,
or was it?
You keep building more and more jails,
to keep the "law and order",
for "good" citizens?
What is a "good" citizen?
Here is a definition:
1. God fearing
What? GOD fearing?
And what about devil? Do you love him?
2. Law abiding
Yes, obidience to whatever lowest grade horseshit,
the holey sucking trinity manages to push thru
as "law" on your uttely corrupt books.
This is an ABSOLUTELY necessary component
of mass brainwashing, holding this entire system
of corruption together.
The "law" overrrules EVERYTHING else.
It even overrules the reason and logic.
You refuse to abide by these "laws" of corruption,
all created in the name of good, and what happens?
Well, what happens is YOU are as good, as dead.
Dig?
3. Hard working.
Yes, this is another cornerstone of your utterly
corrupt system.
You see, for some strange reason,
it is not sufficient to work smart.
No matter how smart you are,
you still need to work as hard,
as IMPOSSIBLE,
cause that is how your rotten "wealth" is created.
This is the rule of maximization of the rate of sucking
of the blood of many by the few.
You can do the project in a month,
the next time you have to do it in 2 weeks,
then in a week,
then by the end of the day.
See how they squeeze your balls
till your eyes pop up?
Why?
Well, simple.
Cause that is the main rule of the money god.
This way THEY collect as much "taxes" as impossible,
because that is how THEY paid.
Out of YOUR taxes.
No hard wor,
they can't fly that jumbo jet airplane to hawaii,
or any other place on the earth
to do their "important" work for YOUR "good".
You see how cunning it is?
4. Faimily loving.
Now, this is a master stroke of corruption.
This is how this entire system of "good citizen"
wraps nicely together.
It is the trickiest thing in the whole set, indeed.
On the surface, it looks REAL good.
Caring, taking caring, loving, uniting,
and all that other horseshit of the lowest grade.
But just dig a little deeper.
Why family loving?
Simple. To keep you in a limited cell of your house,
where you can be conviniently brainwashed with the
same stale ideas, your "family" has been brainwashed
with, all called "good".
You need to be kept isolated. Here is another one of
this sort: "Don't take it personally", "it is not YOUR
'problem'". The same grade shit.
Why? Why can not you take it personally?
Afterall, you ARE just a person!
You are not a machine, or are you?
Again, the same trick of isolation and separation.
If you are taking it personally, taking it too much
to the heart, then how can you screw the other dude?
How can you push the big red execute button?
The more you look at the other person,
the more you feel him/her.
After a while, it becomes almost impossible for you
to push that big bloody button of killing the other
in the name of "good". Somehow it does not reconcile.
Zo, "family values" is what?
It is a way to limit your mind.
It is a way to constrict you in a very predictable
set of brainwashing system. The idiot box, da book,
da "law", and the rest of it work much better in
a closed system of limitation of scope.
If you go out on the street,
and mix with other people,
then there is a good chance
you eventually find a chick you REALLY like.
So you think: screw that bitch, aka my wife.
I like this chick better.
Screw my idiotic, opressive father,
or that miserable bitch, aka mother,
i like these other people on the street better.
You mix and mingle with one another.
And that is VERY dangerous.
You start asking questions,
about that sucky "authority",
about those opressive "family values",
and the rest of it.
Zo...
You see what have you created?
You say "good citizen"?
Wow, MUST be out of active neurons on line.
It is SO simple.
What is "good"?
WHO created this whole trip FOR you?
Was that YOU?
Or was that a priest, politician and a fat cat,
aka holey sucking trinity?
Can you compute that much?
You talk of all this sophisticate monkey logic,
none of which reconciles even with the next sentence
of YOURS, forget about the other dude,
and what do you have on your hands?
When was the last time you even bother to mentioned
you own heart?
You think intelligence is possible WITHOUT the heart?
Hahahahaha.
Good luck, or rather lick.
Keep licking that fat ass.
Who knows,
may be one day
you'll be able to suck as good, or better
than a willy da sucking gates himself!
Ok, next subject.
>>> But there are
>>>issues of value judgement where disputes are far more common.
"Value" is already "bad" enough.
Now, you wish to combine it with judement?
Oki, doki.
And then?
Define judgement.
>>There may be some general agreement that murder is wrong (since
>>'murder' is UNDERSTOOD as "wrongful killing"), but many intractable
>>disputes over what counts as murder (abortion?).
Horseshit,
of the purest grade.
Else you would not be watchin the idiot box, aka tv,
craving for all that blood.
WHO forces you to do so?
Why holey-sucking-wood, aka the land of the most
corrupt, is so fat?
WHO made them so fat?
Murder MUST be good.
Else you would not allow it in ALL you books
and media of communication.
You are lying again, as usual.
[...] ok, we've been through this pile of shit before.
>>The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely. But
>>both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
>>procedures, whereas ethics does not.
>Kuhn made a pretty strong case that science does not have such
>procedures.
It simply can not.
Science is NOT about the truth.
Never was,
not even clear if there comes a day
when it finally becomes a quest for
THAT WHICH IS,
the truth.
[...] another pile of horseshit ---> out
>>This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
>>"It is raining" and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
>>different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
>>weather. Why is this so troublesome?
>Neither sentence conveys any proposition. Because of that, I suppose
>you could say that both convey the same proposition.
Well, you can put it ANY way you please.
The very notion of proposition is just that proposition.
It is not obliged to even remotely correspond to reality.
The dude on heavy dudy drugs may have a lot of propositions
in his head, most likely even more than most of you here,
but what does it all mean?
>You are still taking it for granted that there are magic elixirs
>available such that these sentences would convey a proposition.
None, whatsoever.
Sentences simply reflect the condition of your brainwashed
brain, based on common, or uncommon consensus, or dissent.
That is ALL there is to it.
Sentences are just patterns of belief.
> But
>two people could be standing side by side and disagree as to whether
>it is raining.
Yep, even that is quite reasonable.
It all depends on where you are from, at the very least.
If you are from india, where monsun rains for monts,
puring water like from a bucket,
standing next to the dude from the sahara desert,
the hell will freeze over before you agree on whether
it is raining or not, standing right next to each other.
It all depends...
> If you happen to be on the stage in your local
>reportory company, and say "it is raining", this will be taken to
>convey different information from when you are looking out your
>window and mouthing the same sentence.
>We use expressed sentences to inform ourselves. Thus we may
>reasonably say that a sentence conveys information.
Of YOUR state of brain conditioning and the underlying belief set.
Else, you, great philosophers here would be able to eventually
agree at least on some points of significance.
> What I am
>questioning is the assumption that the conveyed information can be
>considered to consist of propositions.
Well, what is proposition on the first place?
Isn't it simply a "reasonable" set of considerations,
ATTEMPTING to reconcile things in REALITY
[or fiction of your self invented world]?
From that standpoint, what is so royal about propositions?
They are all just the same beliefs and ways and means
of manipulation of monkey logic
in order to achieve your "goal".
In various cultures, the propositions vary widely,
because the underlying set of "values" and associated
beliefs vary.
Your mileage may vary...
Bloxy's
>In article <37c94d2...@news-server.stny.rr.com>, Jerry Hull wrote:
>>On 28 Aug 1999 11:09:29 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>wrote:
Looks like some "accident" beyond our "control" happened
and the word raining was commented on under assumption
we are talking about training.
Strange indeed.
Well, just one letter makes so much difference,
and no matter how you cut it, the material is delivered
on the subject of significance.
Here is the original royal text and response.
The subject:
Metaphysical Death Match: Mental vs. Physical - raining versus training,
a godly conincidence.
[...]
Seth Russell
> Ok, lets blame it on universe,
> even though it is not an entity,
> having an identity.
>
> Or is it god?
What's the difference?
And ...
What is it?
What is it and is also its not?
What isn't it and neither its not?
What is it when it isn't at all?
What is it when it is that all?
Seth Russell
Seth Russell
> Seth Russell <seth...@clickshop.com> writes:
>
> > These slippery
> >valuative facts have at least one special quality which should govern how we
> >deal with them logically. Humans can make them true or false by changing
> >their beliefs and attitudes.
>
> When I came here from down under (many years ago), I changed from
> measuring milk and petrol in imperial gallons to measuring milk and
> gasoline in us gallons. It seems to me that I changed what was true
> by changing beliefs and attitudes. For example, 1 pint = 20 fl.
> ounces was true. But after changing beliefs and attitudes, it became
> 1 pint = 16 fl. oz.
Your example changed nothing of belief, just units of measure. Conflating
an object with that which points out the object will not help us study
changes in the object itself. If you don't like William James's example, then
perhaps we could discuss the values of beanie babies. The value of those
bean bags vary with human belief in just the same way. And statements
about those values vary in truth along with the corresponding human beliefs.
Why did you change the subject?
Seth Russell
Seth Russell
> So you were just making a general diagram for any one person and the
> difference between his "Erlebniswelt" or world of experience and the
> "real" physical world, yes?
The diagram shows just as many persons as you put humps
around the circle. The private facts of one individual (for
example memories) are inside his hump bounded by his sense
organs which are depicted by the boundary between the natural
world and the mental world.
> Ok, I can live with that. After all, it
> is only a model and in the realm of individual perception, one model
> is as good as any other if it is sufficiently conclusive and can be
> understood by more people...
Yes, the mentographs were not meant to be taken seriously. My
primary motivation was to create a visualization geometry that would
allow one to switch back and forth between the views that Jerry was
talking about - sort of like you can gestalt a cube coming out of the
paper or going into the paper. At the same time the diagrams were
intended to be constrained by what could be described with the
mathematics of topology and category theory using match points as
the surface points. They have met those intentions for me, but I
doubt that anyone else will be able to get much out of them.
> However, I would propose that it is dangerous to speak of "shared"
> things at all. Even if Jerry refuses to go into phenomeno-critical
> detail, exactly _what_ is it, that we have in common? Do we speak
> the same language? Arguably, yes, but we do not always understand
> each other, do we? We use the same symbols but their meaning may
> be different to me than to you. We are playing a guessing game,
> granted, it is one we are quite good at, since this does not end
> in total confusion, but every time two individuals communicate,
> the one cannot ever _know_ what the other intends. He can only
> achive differing levels of certainty.
Every doubt that you, Quine, et all keep voicing about sharing
identical objects I grant. In fact I would be the first to rant about
the tower of babel that our language has become. If I say that
ten times, will you guys stop bringing it up as if my reasoning had
not taken it into consideration? Ok, here goes:
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
" I, Seth, grant ambiguity of reference."
But that the references and not precise and that the objects are
not identical does not detract one bit from the verifiable fact
that we share common ground.
> So "shared human culture" is in reality [only] the socio-evolutionary
> product of countless single entities' interactions (both past and
> present) and remains an [intangible] experience. [snipped part
> that i have addressed immediately above]
Your adjectives "only" and "intangible" belay propositional attitudes.
Those attitudes are not necessary. They are peculiar to you and a
peculiar part of the culture you share with a great many humans.
Please reread your sentence omitting the bracketed words - your
meaning then is consistent with my own.
> Apart from those "facts" that have a probability factor so high we
> actually regard them as such, "shared" human culture is as much an
> arbitrary term as anything.
The shared culture of whales (also bees, ants, and lions etc.) is as
particular and distinct from human culture as you can get. The term
"human culture" points to a class of facts that can only be directly
associated with the human species. Nothing arbitrary here
whatsoever. I guess I don't have a clue what your sentence means.
> I can agree to "shared" physical world,
> since we certainly all appear to exist within a shared reality, even
> if this "sharing" stops at the level of perception and experience.
Well then at least we some common ground. I'll bet that we could
even agree that if I sent you a hundred dollar bill you would be
amazed. There exist a god zillion other such facts that we could
agree upon.
> In this respect, your diagram is quite appropriate in portraying
> differences of perception, although I still have some bellyaches
> about the "shared" thing...
Yep, that's the hard part to see and accept.
> I think that
> http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_outside.gif
> is the better of the two, since it sort of embodies humans as a
> group. (an arbitrary one, granted, but humans do so tend to play
> in categories :-))
You have chosen the view most compatible with Western
philosophy. The other view
http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_inside.gif is easier for
one schooled in Eastern philosophy, but it takes letting go
of certain premises and attitudes that are hard things to give up.
> Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi
> dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
Translation please?
Seth Russell
Chris Malcolm
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>>infinite regress!
>That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
>usually consider to be knowledge. Therefore a radical empiricist
>need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
>experience.
It is also necessary to distinguish between what is in my head because
of what I have learnt, from what is in my head because of what
evolution learnt, not forgetting the in-between area of those things
which evolution learnt it was good for me to jump to conclusions
about.
--
Chris Malcolm c...@dai.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 650 3085
School of Artificial Intelligence, Division of Informatics
Edinburgh University, 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK
<http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/daidb/people/homes/cam/> DoD #205
Chris Malcolm
>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>infinite regress!
It used to be possible to frighten philosophers with an infinite
regress by simply showing them that a regress was involved. We now
know, thanks to computer science, that a regress is not necessarily
infinite, and can in fact be an extremely useful device. For it to be
infinite it is also necessary to show that there is no explicit or
implicit terminating condition.
For example, the homunculus in the head looking at the neural
"display" of the retinal map in the brain was once thought to signal
an infinite regress. We know now that if the homunculus is simpler
than the person whose head it "occupies", and the homunculus in its
head is smaller than it, and so on, that this is not an infinite
regress, but a useful way of recursively simplifying a complex problem
until it becomes tractable, e.g. the last homunculus turns out to be
an easily comprehensible device.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>The point is that learning presupposes a whole cognitive structure.
>>It is not just a passive recording of whatever happens to strike our
>>senses. It is an ACTIVITY, & the results reflect as much the nature
>>of this activity as they do the "external world" about which things
>>are being learnt.
>
>I agree that learning is not passive recording. However, I suggest
>that it is an activity of the brain, but not an activity of the
>person, although activities of the person may have an influence.
>People sometimes talk of learning by osmosis, to reflect that fact
>that often the personal level activity is only an immersion in the
>subject matter, and the learning has to take place in the brain at a
>level where we are not conscious of any associated learning
>activity.
I can accept all this, except what seems to be an implication that
things that are not conscious are therefor not activities of the
person. I would say, rather, that much of what has been ascribed to
the "unconscious" or "subconscious" only reveals that there are parts
of "mind" which are separate from the part that talks to itself.
Fingarette (Self-Deception) is esp good on this.
>> but it
>>has always seemed to me that it would be an interesting but not
>>insuperable challenge to design a machine intelligence that inferred
>>causal-like relations from regularities in its input (aided, ideally,
>>by an ability to "experiment").
>
>Many have tried. There is no persuasive evidence of success. So far
>the evidence suggests that Hume was right in his questioning of
>induction.
If you read all of Hume, esp the more moderate Enquiries, he is not
always the pure skeptic. He does not deny that we can learn about the
proclivities of nature, but merely wants to qualify what it is we
think we have learnt.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>
>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>>infinite regress!
>
>It used to be possible to frighten philosophers with an infinite
>regress by simply showing them that a regress was involved. We now
>know, thanks to computer science, that a regress is not necessarily
>infinite, and can in fact be an extremely useful device. For it to be
>infinite it is also necessary to show that there is no explicit or
>implicit terminating condition.
It's not a question of fear; it's a question of limitation. Finite
beings cannot take an infinite number of steps.
>For example, the homunculus in the head looking at the neural
>"display" of the retinal map in the brain was once thought to signal
>an infinite regress. We know now that if the homunculus is simpler
>than the person whose head it "occupies", and the homunculus in its
>head is smaller than it, and so on, that this is not an infinite
>regress, but a useful way of recursively simplifying a complex problem
>until it becomes tractable, e.g. the last homunculus turns out to be
>an easily comprehensible device.
This, of course, if we accept Dennett et al. & the identification of a
person with a deconstructable bit of software.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
I guess it depends upon the ethical question. Our society is very
efficient at so handling those who, e.g., disagree about the
perniciousness of marijuana. But even in disputed areas of science
(and I don't regard the overall validity of Darwinism as falling into
this category), there is at least a general consensus on the kind of
information that is relevant to resolving the issue. Indeed, if
someone CANNOT specify the kind of data that would decide whether or
not his particular scientific hypothesis is correct, we can reject it
out of hand as bad metaphysics.
But in case of an valuative issue -- like whether my interests are
more important than yours -- there does not seem to be ANY data that
could resolve it. Some thinkers boldly grab the thistle & declare
that therefore valuative claims are meaningless (or noncognitive, or
something else equally unworthy). An alternative approach (which I
prefer), would conclude rather that moral issues require a conceptual
or rational solution. But there is still no agreement on the form
that should take.
>>>I would say that you are mixing things up here. We should
>>>distinguish between sentences of logic and math, and sentences of
>>>science. In the case of logic and math, we are playing a syntactic
>>>game, and whether the sentences are about anything in reality is
>>>beside the point. In an axiom based syntactic game, it is easier to
>>>settle disputes about fact/truth.
>
>>The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely. But
>>both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
>>procedures, whereas ethics does not.
>
>Kuhn made a pretty strong case that science does not have such
>procedures.
It is not necessary to read Kuhn so skeptically. At least I don't.
It seems clear that, in retrospect, we can clearly state e.g. why
Copernican astronomy is scientifically preferable to Ptolemaic, even
tho both can be stretched to cover the same facts. Things like
simplicity, Ockham's Razor, the irrelevance of purely theological
concerns, compatibility with other scientific accounts of related
phenomena, &c.
>>This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
>>"It is raining" and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
>>different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
>>weather. Why is this so troublesome?
>
>Neither sentence conveys any proposition. Because of that, I suppose
>you could say that both convey the same proposition.
I don't understand why you say this. They both propose that it is
raining. (The German should be "Es regnet".)
>You are still taking it for granted that there are magic elixirs
>available such that these sentences would convey a proposition. But
>two people could be standing side by side and disagree as to whether
>it is raining. If you happen to be on the stage in your local
>reportory company, and say "it is raining", this will be taken to
>convey different information from when you are looking out your
>window and mouthing the same sentence.
It may be thought magically that spoken or written symbols can relate
to the world around us, but I don't see how this involves the
assumption of anything out of the ken of modern science. That the
significance of a statement is affected by the circumstances of its
utterance is hardly unrecognized.
>We use expressed sentences to inform ourselves. Thus we may
>reasonably say that a sentence conveys information. What I am
>questioning is the assumption that the conveyed information can be
>considered to consist of propositions.
How would you describe the format (or whatever) of that information in
a manner that improves upon the notion of propositions?
Bloxy's
>> Ok, lets blame it on universe,
>> even though it is not an entity,
>> having an identity.
>> Or is it god?
>What's the difference?
Yep, "who cares"?
>And ...
>What is it?
>What is it and is also its not?
Hey, u wanna play?
Ok, this much can be traced even to some traditions.
For example, there is a well known fairytale, where
the king is setting up the competition between the
young men to marry his daughter.
The king says:
Go there, don't know where,
and find something, don't know what it is,
and bring it here.
If you find the right thing, you got my daugther
and you got my kingdom.
Else, you head is off.
Ok. Sounds similar enough?
What is it and it is also is not
needs a few active neurons, and you want me
to do YOUR work.
Ok, one young man DID find what the king asked for.
How?
Well, it's gonna cost ya.
I give you a clue.
And even that much i don't have to do,
because you seem to be missing that,
which is the most critical component
for the search of this magnitude.
What would that be?
That would be that, which YOU called honesty,
which is simply sincerety.
Sincerety may help you find a few things
of the only value there is,
but the cunningness, just like in this post...
Well, good luck.
Now, i don't have to answer ANY of these questions.
They are either YOUR "problems",
or you regain some of the purity, you have lost.
Zee ya.
>What isn't it and neither its not?
>What is it when it isn't at all?
>What is it when it is that all?
And the answer is simple.
>Seth Russell
Neil W Rickert
>Neil W Rickert wrote:
>> Seth Russell <seth...@clickshop.com> writes:
>> > These slippery
>> >valuative facts have at least one special quality which should govern how we
>> >deal with them logically. Humans can make them true or false by changing
>> >their beliefs and attitudes.
>> When I came here from down under (many years ago), I changed from
>> measuring milk and petrol in imperial gallons to measuring milk and
>> gasoline in us gallons. It seems to me that I changed what was true
>> by changing beliefs and attitudes. For example, 1 pint = 20 fl.
>> ounces was true. But after changing beliefs and attitudes, it became
>> 1 pint = 16 fl. oz.
>Your example changed nothing of belief, just units of measure.
You are very wrong.
> Conflating
>an object with that which points out the object will not help us study
>changes in the object itself.
Now that seems confusing. What exactly are the "objects" when you
are talking about ethical questions?
>Why did you change the subject?
I didn't. But you are too confused to appreciate that.
Neil W Rickert
>On 29 Aug 1999 14:41:14 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>>The point is that learning presupposes a whole cognitive structure.
>>>It is not just a passive recording of whatever happens to strike our
>>>senses. It is an ACTIVITY, & the results reflect as much the nature
>>>of this activity as they do the "external world" about which things
>>>are being learnt.
>>I agree that learning is not passive recording. However, I suggest
>>that it is an activity of the brain, but not an activity of the
>>person, although activities of the person may have an influence.
>>People sometimes talk of learning by osmosis, to reflect that fact
>>that often the personal level activity is only an immersion in the
>>subject matter, and the learning has to take place in the brain at a
>>level where we are not conscious of any associated learning
>>activity.
>I can accept all this, except what seems to be an implication that
>things that are not conscious are therefor not activities of the
>person.
No such implication was intended. Whether it is an activity of the
person has more to do with the extent to which the person can
exercise control and be held responsible.
>>> but it
>>>has always seemed to me that it would be an interesting but not
>>>insuperable challenge to design a machine intelligence that inferred
>>>causal-like relations from regularities in its input (aided, ideally,
>>>by an ability to "experiment").
>>Many have tried. There is no persuasive evidence of success. So far
>>the evidence suggests that Hume was right in his questioning of
>>induction.
>If you read all of Hume, esp the more moderate Enquiries, he is not
>always the pure skeptic. He does not deny that we can learn about the
>proclivities of nature, but merely wants to qualify what it is we
>think we have learnt.
I didn't think I was describing him as pure skeptic. I read Hume as
being puzzled. On the one hand he sees (correctly), that there is no
basis for induction. On the other hand, he sees that people do
learn, and that induction seems to describe the learning process.
Neil W Rickert
You give too much credence to Popper's view of science. I would say
that Kuhn pretty much refuted that view. Take the case of the Big
Bang. The majority of astronomers favor it. A small minority is
opposed. The minority includes some who had been quite prominent as
astronomers. They have been willing to risk their reputation because
of the strength of their conviction that BB is mistaken. They know
the kind of evidence they would need to refute BB. They have
considerable difficulty getting telescope time, because the majority
know quite well that they evidence they seek would not refute BB. It
seems to be a clear case where this is not a consensus as to what
would resolve the issue.
>But in case of an valuative issue -- like whether my interests are
>more important than yours -- there does not seem to be ANY data that
>could resolve it.
This seems consistent with what can happen in scientific disputes.
>>>The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely. But
>>>both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
>>>procedures, whereas ethics does not.
>>Kuhn made a pretty strong case that science does not have such
>>procedures.
>It is not necessary to read Kuhn so skeptically. At least I don't.
Actually, I don't read Kuhn skeptically. I have no doubt that
science has effective methodologies. What I question (and what I
take Kuhn as having questioned), is whether those methodologies
amount to procedures for resolving questions of truth.
>It seems clear that, in retrospect, we can clearly state e.g. why
>Copernican astronomy is scientifically preferable to Ptolemaic, even
>tho both can be stretched to cover the same facts. Things like
>simplicity, Ockham's Razor, the irrelevance of purely theological
>concerns, compatibility with other scientific accounts of related
>phenomena, &c.
You appear to have chosen your words carefully. You have stated that
Copernican astronomy is preferable to Ptolemaic. This would seem to
make it a valuative issue, rather than a matter of assessment of
truth. Likewise, you state that the evaluation is clear in
retrospect, but you do not claim that it was clear at the time. Yet
if it were a matter of applying procedures for resolving questions of
truth, then it should have been clear at the time, and not just in
retrospect.
>>>This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
>>>"It is raining" and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
>>>different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
>>>weather. Why is this so troublesome?
>>Neither sentence conveys any proposition. Because of that, I suppose
>>you could say that both convey the same proposition.
>I don't understand why you say this. They both propose that it is
>raining. (The German should be "Es regnet".)
They both express "it is raining". What I am disputing, is that
there is a proposition involved. If you mean that there is a purely
syntactic proposition, I can concur with that. But usually when
people speak of propositions, they are taking these "propositions" as
specifying states of the world. I would say that "it is raining"
fails to be such a specification.
Jim Balter
> >>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
> >>It doesn't work. Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
> >>also learn that from experience? Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
> >>infinite regress!
> >
> >It used to be possible to frighten philosophers with an infinite
> >regress by simply showing them that a regress was involved. We now
> >know, thanks to computer science, that a regress is not necessarily
> >infinite, and can in fact be an extremely useful device. For it to be
> >infinite it is also necessary to show that there is no explicit or
> >implicit terminating condition.
>
> It's not a question of fear; it's a question of limitation. Finite
> beings cannot take an infinite number of steps.
Thus spake Zeno.
> >For example, the homunculus in the head looking at the neural
> >"display" of the retinal map in the brain was once thought to signal
> >an infinite regress. We know now that if the homunculus is simpler
> >than the person whose head it "occupies", and the homunculus in its
> >head is smaller than it, and so on, that this is not an infinite
> >regress, but a useful way of recursively simplifying a complex problem
> >until it becomes tractable, e.g. the last homunculus turns out to be
> >an easily comprehensible device.
>
> This, of course, if we accept Dennett et al. & the identification of a
> person with a deconstructable bit of software.
This is not a position most commonly associated with Dennett, but I suppose
if one wishes to burn physicalism at the stake, one names the most
feared bogeyman of the lot.
And "of course" the error of mistaking a regress for an infinite regress
is independent of whether persons can so identified, but as Ciar pointed
out, we can expect such diversions.
--
<J Q B>
Soenke N. Greimann
>
> "Soenke N. Greimann" wrote:
>
> > So you were just making a general diagram for any one person and the
> > difference between his "Erlebniswelt" or world of experience and the
> > "real" physical world, yes?
>
> The diagram shows just as many persons as you put humps
> around the circle. The private facts of one individual (for
> example memories) are inside his hump bounded by his sense
> organs which are depicted by the boundary between the natural
> world and the mental world.
I gathered, but the number of humps is arbitrary, no? It could be an
infinite number of humps (a circle) or none at all (strangely, also
a circle ;-))
So whatever model you made counts for all and/or one individual(s)...
> > Ok, I can live with that. After all, it
> > is only a model and in the realm of individual perception, one model
> > is as good as any other if it is sufficiently conclusive and can be
> > understood by more people...
>
> Yes, the mentographs were not meant to be taken seriously. My
> primary motivation was to create a visualization geometry that would
> allow one to switch back and forth between the views that Jerry was
> talking about - sort of like you can gestalt a cube coming out of the
> paper or going into the paper. At the same time the diagrams were
> intended to be constrained by what could be described with the
> mathematics of topology and category theory using match points as
> the surface points. They have met those intentions for me, but I
> doubt that anyone else will be able to get much out of them.
Well, I sort of got the picture... I find it honourable that you'd go
to the trouble of drawing scanning and uploading to make a point. I
have both pencil, paper, a scanner and a website, but I guess I'm too
lazy to draw up images of my particular brand of philosophy...
Ain't cut and paste a great gift to humanity ;-)
Sorry if my constant rambling over fundamentals offended you, but I
think it is one of those important things to me that I can never
cease to mention...
> But that the references and not precise and that the objects are
> not identical does not detract one bit from the verifiable fact
> that we share common ground.
Nor did I say we didn't. I just said that "sharing" is as fuzzy as
the standard of accuracy we apply to our views of things. A very
precise standard will yield more differences than similarities,
while a more generous margin will increase the number of similarities.
> > So "shared human culture" is in reality [only] the socio-evolutionary
> > product of countless single entities' interactions (both past and
> > present) and remains an [intangible] experience. [snipped part
> > that i have addressed immediately above]
>
> Your adjectives "only" and "intangible" belay propositional attitudes.
> Those attitudes are not necessary. They are peculiar to you and a
> peculiar part of the culture you share with a great many humans.
> Please reread your sentence omitting the bracketed words - your
> meaning then is consistent with my own.
:-)
> > Apart from those "facts" that have a probability factor so high we
> > actually regard them as such, "shared" human culture is as much an
> > arbitrary term as anything.
>
> The shared culture of whales (also bees, ants, and lions etc.) is as
> particular and distinct from human culture as you can get. The term
> "human culture" points to a class of facts that can only be directly
> associated with the human species. Nothing arbitrary here
> whatsoever. I guess I don't have a clue what your sentence means.
You're closer than you think. It's just the standard you apply that
makes a difference...
> > I can agree to "shared" physical world,
> > since we certainly all appear to exist within a shared reality, even
> > if this "sharing" stops at the level of perception and experience.
>
> Well then at least we some common ground. I'll bet that we could
> even agree that if I sent you a hundred dollar bill you would be
> amazed. There exist a god zillion other such facts that we could
> agree upon.
Well, amazement, yes. But I couldn't really use it since I live in
Germany and would have to exchange it for DM first...
But just in case my adress is...: ;-) Wait a minute, you expected
that, didn't you???
> > In this respect, your diagram is quite appropriate in portraying
> > differences of perception, although I still have some bellyaches
> > about the "shared" thing...
>
> Yep, that's the hard part to see and accept.
As long as it remains relative, I'll happily accept it. :-)
> > I think that
> > http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_outside.gif
> > is the better of the two, since it sort of embodies humans as a
> > group. (an arbitrary one, granted, but humans do so tend to play
> > in categories :-))
>
> You have chosen the view most compatible with Western
> philosophy. The other view
> http://www.clickshop.com/ai/hull_inside.gif is easier for
> one schooled in Eastern philosophy, but it takes letting go
> of certain premises and attitudes that are hard things to give up.
I am a child of western culture... I haven't had the time yet to
immerse myself in eastern philosophies, so I guess I didn't have
much of a choice. (Which I believe I didn't have anyway, come to
think of it... ;-))
> > Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi
> > dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
>
> Translation please?
Didn't I give that translation in an earlier post???
> Seth Russell
Sönke N. Greimann
E O I R
--
Bloxy's
>On 29 Aug 1999 14:28:05 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>wrote:
>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
[...]
>>At the end of the day we can exclude those who dissent from admission
>>to the group of "those who know what they are talking about." We
>>generally can't do that with ethical questions, even if only because
>>we are unwilling to pay the cost of building all of the prisons this
>>would require.
>>I guess it depends upon the ethical question. Our society is very
>efficient at so handling those who, e.g., disagree about the
>perniciousness of marijuana.
Yes, opression, domination and violence.
What else is new?
This is EXACTLY how lies are created.
You substitute the unsubstantiated interpretations as to
"perniciousness" of some substance with the equivalence
of the "fact".
Ok, first of all, what is "perniciousness"?
Here is a definition from the webster dic-tionary:
pernicious:
"Harmful in the EXTREME, destructive, DEADLY"
Is that what marijuana is?
How more cunning can you get?
If that marijuana was legalized in several states
and most of the "civilized" countries of europe,
then, you'd better take them to the international court,
because those, who allowed it to happen, are "the enemies
of the people".
How could they have possibly legalize something DEADLY?
Do you see how bad you suck?
Not only legalize for "casual" use, but for MEDICAL use.
You got ANY active neurons on line?
Now, it is perfectly well and good for YOU to hold such
an opinion and avoid its use. There is just no possible
problem with it, but,
when you manipulate the reality to the point of UTTER
and complete obscenity, that is another matter.
Could you please provide ANY references in ANY research
where it shows that marijuana is deadly, destructive
or harmful to the extreme?
Do you know that coffee is more deadly that marijuana?
Do you know that coffee has properties that promote
cancerous mutations in the cells?
How about alchohol, that is perfectly "legal"?
Is that pernicious?
So, instead of saying that YOU hold some view,
and quite unsubstantiated at that, you simply make
it a FACT.
Are you a pathological liar, by any humble chance?
> But even in disputed areas of science
>(and I don't regard the overall validity of Darwinism as falling into
>this category), there is at least a general consensus on the kind of
>information that is relevant to resolving the issue. Indeed, if
>someone CANNOT specify the kind of data that would decide whether or
>not his particular scientific hypothesis is correct, we can reject it
>out of hand as bad metaphysics.
YOU can reject it.
Because YOU have a limitation.
Virtually ALL you greatest discoveris fall under this blanket
prejudice.
For example, now you have this dude jack sarafatti,
making claims of unbelievable proportions, that could
potentially overturn your entire scientific foundations.
Can you reject his ideas?
Try.
Tellya one thing, most likely, you will not even get a response
from him, and if you do, he'll probably shred your ass to
pieces in not time at all.
Hardly ANY discovery initially has the necessary "data"
to make it obvious to the idiots.
For example, the Einstein's theory was believed to be
understood by only a couple of people on the entire earth.
And what happened at the end?
>But in case of an valuative issue -- like whether my interests are
>more important than yours -- there does not seem to be ANY data that
>could resolve it.
Which implies what?
That implies that the very issue of "importance" is a myth.
And the reason you can not possibly have the data to
"resolve" it is because each and every individual is unique,
living entity, having unique requirements of growth.
You CAN "resolve" it on the level of the functional machine,
but not on the level of a human being.
> Some thinkers boldly grab the thistle & declare
>that therefore valuative claims are meaningless
Your "valuative" claim as to "perniciousness" of marijuana
is a perfect example. Not only it is simply meaningless,
but it is cunning, obviosly exhibiting bad intent.
And the intent is to create fear and guilt.
That is all there is to it.
> (or noncognitive, or
>something else equally unworthy).
"Unworthy"?
Kind of filthy?
Dirty?
Low grade?
YOU wish to define the notion of worth?
Go ahead, be my guest.
> An alternative approach (which I
>prefer), would conclude rather that moral issues require a conceptual
>or rational solution. But there is still no agreement on the form
>that should take.
Because conceptual solution is not necessarily a solution at all.
It is simply a concept.
A concept is not and can not be any kind of "solution".
As to the "rational", are YOU rational?
Is human being as such rational?
Ok, what is rationality?
Is it reason?
Is it logic?
Is it "benefit"?
Is it what?
Define rationality first.
Well see how rational YOU are.
>>>>I would say that you are mixing things up here. We should
>>>>distinguish between sentences of logic and math, and sentences of
>>>>science. In the case of logic and math, we are playing a syntactic
>>>>game,
Not true at all.
Logic is not syntax, by ANY means.
>>>> and whether the sentences are about anything in reality is
>>>>beside the point.
What?
Do you know what you just said?
>>>> In an axiom based syntactic game, it is easier to
>>>>settle disputes about fact/truth.
No, it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE, at least as far, as truth
is concerned.
And a "fact" can not be placed with truth, using a slash
separator.
What is the difference between the "fact" and truth?
If there are none, then why don't you just stop using
both notions, just use one of them.
>>>The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely.
Again, there are no such procedures.
>>> But
>>>both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
>>>procedures, whereas ethics does not.
Science is based on what?
Can you take logic out of science?
Try.
You know what you will be able to "discover" if you do that?
What is the notion of equality, as expressed by the equal sign?
Can you possibly do ANY science without using the equal sign?
>>Kuhn made a pretty strong case that science does not have such
>>procedures.
>It is not necessary to read Kuhn so skeptically. At least I don't.
>It seems clear that, in retrospect, we can clearly state e.g. why
>Copernican astronomy is scientifically preferable to Ptolemaic, even
>tho both can be stretched to cover the same facts. Things like
>simplicity, Ockham's Razor, the irrelevance of purely theological
>concerns, compatibility with other scientific accounts of related
>phenomena, &c.
And how are you going to "progress" without those "purely theoretical
concerns"?
You mean it ALL has to be reduced to applied level?
Like maximization of the rate of sucking?
>>>This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
>>>"It is raining" and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
>>>different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
>>>weather. Why is this so troublesome?
>>Neither sentence conveys any proposition. Because of that, I suppose
>>you could say that both convey the same proposition.
>I don't understand why you say this. They both propose that it is
>raining. (The German should be "Es regnet".)
What is proposition?
Is it an issue of "fact", or something else?
>>You are still taking it for granted that there are magic elixirs
>>available such that these sentences would convey a proposition. But
>>two people could be standing side by side and disagree as to whether
>>it is raining. If you happen to be on the stage in your local
>>reportory company, and say "it is raining", this will be taken to
>>convey different information from when you are looking out your
>>window and mouthing the same sentence.
>It may be thought magically that spoken or written symbols can relate
>to the world around us, but I don't see how this involves the
>assumption of anything out of the ken of modern science.
"Modern" science?
Science is just science.
The issues and "fact" do change, but, because of that
the science does not achieve a status of "modern".
Even an ancient science is still a science,
as "modern", as what you have at the moment.
You can not invalidate the "ancient" science on the
basis that it is not "modern". You can ONLY invalidate
it on the basis of its correspondance to reality.
It is either valid, or invalid.
Modern are fasions.
[...]
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>Jerry Hull wrote:
>> >For example, the homunculus in the head looking at the neural
>> >"display" of the retinal map in the brain was once thought to signal
>> >an infinite regress. We know now that if the homunculus is simpler
>> >than the person whose head it "occupies", and the homunculus in its
>> >head is smaller than it, and so on, that this is not an infinite
>> >regress, but a useful way of recursively simplifying a complex problem
>> >until it becomes tractable, e.g. the last homunculus turns out to be
>> >an easily comprehensible device.
>>
>> This, of course, if we accept Dennett et al. & the identification of a
>> person with a deconstructable bit of software.
>
>This is not a position most commonly associated with Dennett, but I suppose
>if one wishes to burn physicalism at the stake, one names the most
>feared bogeyman of the lot.
It's Dennett's thesis in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" & a host of related
books, and from his appearance in numerous book club offerings, he has
to count as one of its most popular exponents. You do know what "et
alia" means?
>And "of course" the error of mistaking a regress for an infinite regress
>is independent of whether persons can so identified, but as Ciar pointed
>out, we can expect such diversions.
You are free, of course, to offer your own examples of such supposed
mistakes. But surely your purpose here, as elsewhere, is to start
conflagrations, not put them out.
Jerry Hull
I thought smoking pot was supposed to make you mellow? If you will
review the not-too-tricky-wording of my remarks, it does not
necessarily follow that I agree with those who would use such a means
to control such a substance. I cannot say more for fear of risking my
future prospects for elective office.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>I guess it depends upon the ethical question. Our society is very
>>efficient at so handling those who, e.g., disagree about the
>>perniciousness of marijuana. But even in disputed areas of science
>>(and I don't regard the overall validity of Darwinism as falling into
>>this category), there is at least a general consensus on the kind of
>>information that is relevant to resolving the issue. Indeed, if
>>someone CANNOT specify the kind of data that would decide whether or
>>not his particular scientific hypothesis is correct, we can reject it
>>out of hand as bad metaphysics.
>
>You give too much credence to Popper's view of science. I would say
>that Kuhn pretty much refuted that view. Take the case of the Big
>Bang. The majority of astronomers favor it. A small minority is
>opposed. The minority includes some who had been quite prominent as
>astronomers. They have been willing to risk their reputation because
>of the strength of their conviction that BB is mistaken. They know
>the kind of evidence they would need to refute BB. They have
>considerable difficulty getting telescope time, because the majority
>know quite well that they evidence they seek would not refute BB. It
>seems to be a clear case where this is not a consensus as to what
>would resolve the issue.
I have not previously considered myself Popperian, tho no doubt there
are some points of agreement. What you say here tends to make my
point. It IS claimed that there is evidence that would influence, if
not resolve the issue; which I have above supposed to be the earmark
of a significant scientific hypothesis. Anyway, the existence of Flat
Earther's and the like shows that mere demographics cannot settle ANY
scientific issues anymore than it can ethical issues.
>>But in case of an valuative issue -- like whether my interests are
>>more important than yours -- there does not seem to be ANY data that
>>could resolve it.
>
>This seems consistent with what can happen in scientific disputes.
Not any valid scientific dispute. Review again the fact that we can
make a pretty clear demarcation between "is" and "ought", and point to
all sorts of procedures for resolving issues in the former category
and NONE for the latter category. Here, again, Hume is especially
good (despite an antiquated theory of ideas).
>>>>The procedures for resolving questions of truth differ, surely. But
>>>>both types of discipline (logic.math vs. science) HAVE such
>>>>procedures, whereas ethics does not.
>
>>>Kuhn made a pretty strong case that science does not have such
>>>procedures.
>
>>It is not necessary to read Kuhn so skeptically. At least I don't.
>
>Actually, I don't read Kuhn skeptically. I have no doubt that
>science has effective methodologies. What I question (and what I
>take Kuhn as having questioned), is whether those methodologies
>amount to procedures for resolving questions of truth.
Empirical issues do NOT provide "effective procedures". This is what
especially separates them from formal disciplines. I regard it as one
of Kuhn's central theses that "scientific induction", if taken as an
effective procedure for arriving at plausible hypotheses, is a
will-o-the-wisp.
>>It seems clear that, in retrospect, we can clearly state e.g. why
>>Copernican astronomy is scientifically preferable to Ptolemaic, even
>>tho both can be stretched to cover the same facts. Things like
>>simplicity, Ockham's Razor, the irrelevance of purely theological
>>concerns, compatibility with other scientific accounts of related
>>phenomena, &c.
>
>You appear to have chosen your words carefully. You have stated that
>Copernican astronomy is preferable to Ptolemaic. This would seem to
>make it a valuative issue, rather than a matter of assessment of
>truth. Likewise, you state that the evaluation is clear in
>retrospect, but you do not claim that it was clear at the time. Yet
>if it were a matter of applying procedures for resolving questions of
>truth, then it should have been clear at the time, and not just in
>retrospect.
Again, I do not propose an EFFECTIVE procedure for resolving any
empirical issue. The passage of time allows clarity not available to
those caught up in the moment. Humans are notorious for allowing
extraneous considerations (e.g., personal prestige, theology, &c.) to
cloud their judgement in scientific questions.
(BTW, cf. Kuhn's "The Copernican Revolution".)
I don't regard facts as differing from values with respect to
involving preferences (note how nicely Kant rotates in his casket).
In the case of scientific issues, we can make the claim that the truth
is advantageous to any rational deliberative being as such, regardless
of whether in fact people agree. What is more difficult is making the
argument that some ethical view is advantageous to every rational
deliberative being as such, esp in view of the fact that persons in
fact differ as to their preferences. E.g., Arrow's Theorem looms as
one obstacle amongst many.
>>>>This is not enough to communicate the problem you are concerned with.
>>>>"It is raining" and "Es regmet" are two different sentences which, in
>>>>different languages, convey the same proposition concerning the
>>>>weather. Why is this so troublesome?
>
>>>Neither sentence conveys any proposition. Because of that, I suppose
>>>you could say that both convey the same proposition.
>
>>I don't understand why you say this. They both propose that it is
>>raining. (The German should be "Es regnet".)
>
>They both express "it is raining". What I am disputing, is that
>there is a proposition involved. If you mean that there is a purely
>syntactic proposition, I can concur with that. But usually when
>people speak of propositions, they are taking these "propositions" as
>specifying states of the world. I would say that "it is raining"
>fails to be such a specification.
Why do you say "express" as opposed to "propose". I may express pain,
but I don't thereby propose pain. However, I do propose THAT it is
raining, & certainly must be regarded as supposing something about the
world in doing so -- since indeed things about the world would be
accepted as either confirming or denying what I have said. I still
fail to see why you want to disagree with something so prima facie
straight-forward.
Jerry Hull
wrote:
>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>On 29 Aug 1999 14:41:14 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>wrote:
>>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>
>>>>The point is that learning presupposes a whole cognitive structure.
>>>>It is not just a passive recording of whatever happens to strike our
>>>>senses. It is an ACTIVITY, & the results reflect as much the nature
>>>>of this activity as they do the "external world" about which things
>>>>are being learnt.
>
>>>I agree that learning is not passive recording. However, I suggest
>>>that it is an activity of the brain, but not an activity of the
>>>person, although activities of the person may have an influence.
>>>People sometimes talk of learning by osmosis, to reflect that fact
>>>that often the personal level activity is only an immersion in the
>>>subject matter, and the learning has to take place in the brain at a
>>>level where we are not conscious of any associated learning
>>>activity.
>
>>I can accept all this, except what seems to be an implication that
>>things that are not conscious are therefor not activities of the
>>person.
>
>No such implication was intended. Whether it is an activity of the
>person has more to do with the extent to which the person can
>exercise control and be held responsible.
I would agree with "exercise control" -- at least in one sense, but
not with "be held responsible". It involves the person when we can
plausibly account for behavior in terms of the persons desires &
beliefs, even desires & beliefs that they explicitly deny having.
Responsibility is a whole other issue: i.e., a crazy person's
demented behavior may clearly reflect their desires & beliefs, tho
holding him or her responsible may be fruitless. (Their are different
senses of "responsible" as well, of course.)
>>>> but it
>>>>has always seemed to me that it would be an interesting but not
>>>>insuperable challenge to design a machine intelligence that inferred
>>>>causal-like relations from regularities in its input (aided, ideally,
>>>>by an ability to "experiment").
>
>>>Many have tried. There is no persuasive evidence of success. So far
>>>the evidence suggests that Hume was right in his questioning of
>>>induction.
>
>>If you read all of Hume, esp the more moderate Enquiries, he is not
>>always the pure skeptic. He does not deny that we can learn about the
>>proclivities of nature, but merely wants to qualify what it is we
>>think we have learnt.
>
>I didn't think I was describing him as pure skeptic. I read Hume as
>being puzzled. On the one hand he sees (correctly), that there is no
>basis for induction. On the other hand, he sees that people do
>learn, and that induction seems to describe the learning process.
This is not the slant I would put on Hume. He was not so concerned
with learning theory & the like, as he was with the nature of the
"external world" & whether we can know anything about it. Sometimes
(esp in the Treatise) he does write as an unabashed skeptic -- "no
matter, never mind -- yet at other times he is quite willing to assume
a complacent acceptance of those very things he has questioned.
Daryl McCullough
>You give too much credence to Popper's view of science. I would say
>that Kuhn pretty much refuted that view.
No. Kuhn and Popper were not trying to do the same sorts of things.
They don't contradict each other. Popper was trying to develop a
prescriptive model of science, a methodology for doing science, while
Kuhn was trying to develop a descriptive theory of science. Those
are two very different things.
>Take the case of the Big Bang. The majority of astronomers favor it.
>A small minority is opposed. The minority includes some who had been
>quite prominent as astronomers. They have been willing to risk
>their reputation because of the strength of their conviction that BB
>is mistaken. They know the kind of evidence they would need to refute
>BB. They have considerable difficulty getting telescope time, because
>the majority know quite well that they evidence they seek would not
>refute BB. It seems to be a clear case where this is not a consensus
>as to what would resolve the issue.
That's true. There are two problems in applying the notion of
falsifiability.
First, it is almost never the case that a theory
by itself predicts anything observable. What is really falsified
by an experiment is the theory, together with auxiliary assumptions
about the world, plus assumptions about how measuring devices work,
plus interpretations of results of experiments, etc.
A single experimental result *is* enough to falsify this whole
collection of assumptions and theory. However, since the claim
that is falsified is a huge conjunction, all we know is that at
least *one* of the conjuncts is false. We don't know that it is
the theory that is wrong.
Second, the idea of chucking out a theory that makes a false
prediction ignores the practical fact that coming up with suitable
alternative theories is an *awful* lot of work.
Daryl McCullough
CoGenTex, Inc.
Ithaca, NY
Seth Russell
> What exactly are the "objects" when you
> are talking about ethical questions?
The values themselves. Take money for example, it is
quite the simplest thing in this domain to comprehend.
The value of $100 will vary radically between individuals
and cultures and times, but that value still exists nonetheless.
The value of $100 is precisely that which will allow the $100
to change ownership and allow the parties to that transaction
to feel completely even about it. Note that measuring this
value by counting it in nickels, pennies, or yen will not change
that value whatsoever.
Now if we can agree on the existence of the value of money,
then we can show how an "ethical value" expressed in a
commandment such as "Thou shalt not steal." also exists.
> >Why did you change the subject?
>
> I didn't. But you are too confused to appreciate that.
Appeal to your private authority in the manner
does not inform me or our audience.
Seth Russell
Bloxy's
>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>>The notion that we learn everything from experience -- radical
>>>empiricism -- has not been in vogue for years and years. The reason?
>>>It doesn't work.
What does werk?
Brainwashing into oblivion?
Godly revelations?
Holey sucking scripture?
The ideas of jesse with a helm and a nukelar bomb up his ass?
How do you even begin to evaluate "works"?
From what standpoint?
For which purpose?
In what intent?
>>> Whence our ability to learn from experience? Did we
>>>also learn that from experience?
No, you simply are trying to pull yourself by your own
dick, trying to get "higher".
That is all.
The issues of the grade of the origination of this world
is a doomsday scenario.
The hell will freeze over before you have a chance
to comprehend ANY of it.
It is not the subject of THIS domain of physical.
>>> Look out -- Oh no! -- it's an
>>>infinite regress!
Finite or infinite, does not matter.
One thing is certain, its a long, long trip
to nowhere land, especially once you ask the question
of this grade.
You can not deny that you learn from experience.
That would be utter and complete obscenity
and a perversion of the very notion of reason.
If you DON'T learn from experience,
then why do you need to have an experience on
the first place?
What could be a possible justification for such a "thing"?
If you DON'T learn from experience,
what options do you have left on the table?
Go chase a money god?
Hahahaha.
And you DON'T call this obscenity?
Why do you need a lab?
Because you need the EXPERIENCE
[of dealing with reality].
Can you learn without a lab?
Yes, sure, you can invent any kind of horseshit you want.
It ALL is afterall.
But, unless you place it in the context of reality,
which is a fuzziest thing there is,
then ...
What is the difference between you and an idiot,
refusing to "learn" ANYTHING, as he/she thinks
he already has "all it takes" to know THAT WHICH IS?
>>That's a bad argument. The ability to learn is not anything we would
>>usually consider to be knowledge.
Usually, or unusually can not possibly be used as an argument.
Usually, you have the pictures of utter destruction on the
idiot box, you all call tv.
Now, does that imply that there is no possibilty of
anything else, BUT the murder, blood, greed and a money god?
>> Therefore a radical empiricist
>>need not claim that the ability to learn is itself acquired through
>>experience.
>It is also necessary to distinguish between what is in my head because
>of what I have learnt, from what is in my head because of what
>evolution learnt,
Again the same obscenity.
Evolution is not an entity.
It has no center of the being, or equivalent of such.
Evolution can not learn.
There is simply noone out there, having gathering
properties of an entity to even begin such a venture.
You see how they brainwashed you into oblivion?
Oblivion as to who YOU are.
What is the "modern" notion of evo-sucking-lution?
Isn't it a ratrace of "survival of the fittest"?
Now, which one of those "fittest" overrules all others?
Either you claim that living entities constitute
the effects of evolution, in which case, it is not clear,
which specific entity can be considered a "standard",
or,
you recognize the FACT, as you call it,
that there is simply nobody "out there".
You are just a host
for a DNA,
using you to serve ITS purpose.
You see where you are now?
The land of monkey logic,
not to insult the monkeys.
> not forgetting the in-between area of those things
>which evolution learnt it was good for me to jump to conclusions
>about.
Aha, "good" and "bad"?
Whose idea that is, YOU think?
Isn't that the domain of morality,
aka the land of parasitism unlimited,
invented by the priest,
to expoit you fear and guilt
in order to make YOU work
and simply collect the benefits of YOUR labor,
in order to purchase a golden toilet seat?
Are you totally and UTTERLY out of active neurons on line?
Bloxy's
>On 29 Aug 1999 14:41:14 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>wrote:
>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>>The point is that learning presupposes a whole cognitive structure.
>>>It is not just a passive recording of whatever happens to strike our
>>>senses. It is an ACTIVITY, & the results reflect as much the nature
>>>of this activity as they do the "external world" about which things
>>>are being learnt.
>>I agree that learning is not passive recording.
It may be active. It may be passive.
There is simply no such a precondition.
For some strange reason, they recomend a relaxation,
a "passive" state,
in order to LEARN
your innermost secrets,
of which you are not aware.
If you are passive, it does not imply you are dumb.
For example, in Yoga, it is claimed:
When the lake is in turmoil,
the waves and ripples are on the surface,
you can not see the bottom.
When there is silence,
the water settles,
and you can see clearly.
You see, you forgot about SEEING.
Learning is not just a process of intense mental masturbation,
they claim. It is just the other way around.
You walk in silence in the middle of the forest,
or even in the middle of new york city,
and you can learn just as much, if not more,
than all those cock roaches,
running nowhere
but really fast.
Dig?
>> However, I suggest
>>that it is an activity of the brain, but not an activity of the
>>person,
Now you are hopelessly confused.
You can not separate the brain
from the person.
It is technically impossible.
>> although activities of the person may have an influence.
Then you have to define a person.
What is a person?
Person comes from a greek root persona,
a mask.
It is something you put on your face,
to cover who you REALLY are.
That is ALL there is to it.
You go to school, aka the boot camp of training,
and learn to paint a mask,
you are going to wear
to the rest of your useless life.
Then you pronounce to the whole free sucking werld
that you are a person.
But what does that mean?
>>People sometimes talk of learning by osmosis,
By osmosis, and even psychosis.
You still learn.
Conscious, or subconscious.
That does not matter a BIT.
You still learn.
Killing, or willing, or sucking or licking,
or pure mental masturbation,
just like here
on these lands of obscenities,
you call artificial intelligence.
You STILL learn.
And if you dont?
Well, you just expire,
as you don't belong to this domain any longer,
as it can not serve your PURPOSE
any longer.
Dig?
Learning is an art, more than a science.
All you need is sencerety, they call honesty.
Honesty is one of the biggest liest there are.
All morality trip of sucking and ass licking.
All submission to the accepted rules of your
"culture", be it utter and complete parasitism,
mass murder, or otherwise.
As long, as you are sencere in your efforless effort,
as they called it in Zen,
there is just NOTHING in this world,
or any other,
that will prevent you
from learning.
And the only thing there is to learn at the end
is WHO YOU ARE.
>> to reflect that fact
Fact again?
>>that often the personal level activity is only an immersion in the
>>subject matter,
Which is what learning is.
IMMERSION, total immersion.
Effort-full, or effort-lesss.
immersion.
>> and the learning has to take place in the brain
You don't know that.
Just because they brainwashed you into oblivion
you blame it ALL on brain.
By "brain" is int the smallest cell of your body,
any place you look.
YOU are a walking a living brain.
No part of you can be taken away,
as it will significanly modify your very being.
Not that you stop learning, but your abilities
will change in the most profound ways indeed.
Yes, you MAY crave for such a modification,
as it is sometimes impossible to learn certain
things, once you are full of vigor of a "normal"
human being, with all parts working "perfectly well".
Sometimes you need to loose a leg or two.
Sometimes you need to loose an eye or two,
or the ear, or whatever may best facilitate
a particular appreciation
of the graniour of the life as such.
You don't need to be fully functional machine to learn,
and yet,
you are provided with ALL the components
of your body,
and for a very good reason.
>> at a
>>level where we are not conscious of any associated learning
>>activity.
>I can accept all this, except what seems to be an implication that
>things that are not conscious are therefor not activities of the
>person.
Yes, which is simpy obscene.
As even in sub-consciousness or in the state of
un-consciousness, you still learn,
just the same.
Different aspects indeed,
but you still make a pefect "sense" as a being.
These are all just phases.
> I would say, rather, that much of what has been ascribed to
>the "unconscious" or "subconscious" only reveals that there are parts
>of "mind" which are separate from the part that talks to itself.
>Fingarette (Self-Deception) is esp good on this.
>>> but it
Bloxy's
>On Tue, 31 Aug 1999 03:24:14 GMT, Bloxy's...@hotmail.com (Bloxy's) wrote:
>
>>>On 29 Aug 1999 14:28:05 -0500, Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu>
>>>wrote:
>>>>ZZZg...@stny.lrun.com (Jerry Hull) writes:
>>[...]
[...]
>>If that marijuana was legalized in several states
>>and most of the "civilized" countries of europe,
>>then, you'd better take them to the international court,
>>because those, who allowed it to happen, are "the enemies
>>of the people".
>>How could they have possibly legalize something DEADLY?
>>Do you see how bad you suck?
>I thought smoking pot was supposed to make you mellow?
Lying again, as usual?
Twisting and manipulating?
Where does it says that it "supposed" to make you mellow?
> If you will
>review the not-too-tricky-wording of my remarks, it does not
>necessarily follow that I agree with those who would use such a means
>to control such a substance.
It is not a matter of agreeing, or dis-agreeing.
It is a matter of twisting and turning,
or creating an idea of reality
out of pure fiction.
> I cannot say more for fear of risking my
>future prospects for elective office.
You don't have to say it.
It is not a big secret afterall.
All you "have" to do
is notice a pattern functioning within you.
Is there such a pattern?
If not, what is the reason to even bother responding
that post?
Just let it slide.
Afterall, what does it matter?
Yer royal self-image may get tinted?
And then?
Hey, you still such just the same.
;)