Comments

  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Is there a way to know the world without our modeling of it?Mww

    Yes. Observe it.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising varianceIsaac

    Whether that's the case or not (that it's really minimizing variance with respect to other models), it would be arbitrary that you're going with "minimizing variance" as the metric.
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    have I said anything I don’t really believe?Mark Dennis

    Not that I can think of offhand. I don't know you that well yet.

    I'm thinking of other people I've interacted with a lot here. I gave an example earlier.

    Evidence is the person saying things that don't cohere with what they claimed to believe.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X


    Also, if you're going to go back to the "everything is a model" lie then again, we'd need to explain why you went with one model over the other. You didn't do that yet.
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    If you don’t believe someone has countered your claims effectively enough for you to believe itMark Dennis

    It's not a matter of that. It's a matter of people claiming silly things that they don't actually believe.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    We don't need to know anything about what's 'really' there, we seem, just as a species, to be fundamentally interested in variance minimising. There appears to be a white square when the black circles are (what appears to be) behind it. As soon as the black (what now appears to be) pacmen are removed, there no longer appears to be a white square. We want to reduce this variance, we prefer a model which has either a white square or not. Not a model which has a white square one minute but none the next. So we choose one to be 'accepted' and label the other 'illusion'. Rather than doing so randomly, we do so by minimising variance with a whole host of other models too. The white square being the 'illusion' does this best. At no point in the whole process do we need access to reality nor even to care which is which.Isaac

    There's absolutely no grounds on that for calling something an illusion, though. It's completely arbitrary (and ridiculous, and not something that you at all really believe).
  • What It Is Like To Experience X


    This was the part I was talking about:

    "The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion."

    "The idea, when we're talking about people, isn't that their perception is infallible. But to know that it's fallible, we have to know what they're getting wrong, which means getting something right. Otherwise the whole idea of fallibility is incoherent."
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    ...and this isn't an abstraction?Isaac

    No, the changes that are happening from some frame of reference are not an abstraction.

    I'm struggling to see any more depth to your argumentIsaac

    I don't know why you think I'm forwarding an argument. I'm simply explaining.

    No, I specifically asked you about the square you see, not the optical illusion as a whole. I want to know what the objective properties of that square are and in what they obtain.Isaac

    Obviously there isn't a square.

    What happened to addressing what I said about optical illusions and fallibility? This is the second time I'm asking you.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    T1 is an infinitesimally small point, so I don't see how it can coherently have any data attached to it.Isaac

    That mathematical view of time is just an abstraction. Time is simply motion or change. T1 is the changes or motion that are/is happening from some frame of reference (as opposed to the changes or motion that happened or the changes or motion that's yet to happen). So it's not an "infinitesimally small point" from most reference frames.

    Re objective properties, they're the properties of x from some reference frame/reference point, which is a given relative spatiotemporal location. That should be understood, because it's an inescapable ontological fact.

    I didn't ask about the notion of optical illusions though did I? I asked what the properties of the square you see there really are.Isaac

    Yes, you did--that's a well-known optical illusion and you're asking about it. I actually see the "pac man" shapes and can tell it would give the illusion of a square. So yeah, those properties are there. Learn something about seeing things how visual artists see them. It's important for visual artists to learn how to see "what's really there" rather than seeing illusions, rather than filling in information from concepts we might have, etc. That's part of what makes the difference between amateur/"naive" and mature/professional visual art. Kids will draw a table as square or rectangular with 90-degree angles because that's what their concepts of tables are like (well, aside from circular/oval/etc. tables obviously, lol). They need to learn how to see what the table actually looks like from a given spatial location. Part of the trick to that is to learn how to just see shapes (without naming them, applying concepts, etc.), colors, textures, etc.--so you don't even think "table" or whatever.

    The justification that we do not directly observe light waves are the numerous optical illusions where what we are convinced we observe are actually retinal negatives, polarisation, inferred colour in the peripheral region (which can't even detect EM wavelengths) and downright hallucinations.Isaac

    And again here you're talking about optical illusions. Can you address what I just said about optical illusions and fallibility so I don't have to just repeat it here?
  • Perfection: Is it possible?
    I got to wondering if anyone could make a good argument for the existence of a perfect something.Mark Dennis

    Again, for me, most things are perfect, and when I think they're not, I tend to think that I need to adjust my ideas.

    I'm not someone who usually cares a lot for having a store of quotes on hand from various folks, but one of the few that have stuck with me is this one from Brian Eno: "The only error is your failure to adjust your preconceptions to reality."

    If you see people, and things in general, as unique individuals, it's easy to see each thing as perfect. It's perfectly what it is at every given moment.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    A few things perhaps unrelated to each other...

    1. Obviously we'd be talking about a situation where we're comparing two participants both in A's place, just at different times, experimentsttry to eliminate variables so, place is a really obvious one to start with.

    So to follow through you'd have to say that at t1, when A is there, was different (had different properties?) from @ at t2, when B is there.
    Isaac

    And indeed things are non-identical through time (which shouldn't be so surprising once we realize that what time is in the first place is change or motion).

    But if this is the case then we cannot say anything at all about because all we know about it is what it was like at t1.Isaac

    Saying what @ is like at T1 (and L1 (location 1)) is knowing something about (and saying something about) @.

    The jump from the situation of two observers to say "we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case." is unjustified.Isaac

    The justification is what the world is like.

    The table seeming to be some way is an activity of the observer.Isaac

    I pointed out that I'm not talking about SEEMING. This isn't seeming. It's what the table is really like.

    We still haven't escaped the fact that we do not access light wavesIsaac

    That's what's not justified. You'd have to support that claim.

    We are only aware of visual representations after they've been presented from the occipital cortex, they've already been subject to modulation from backward acting neural connections, and filtered through architecture built by prior experience.Isaac

    You're wanting to argue for representationalism. You'd need to present the argument for it.

    I'm not a representationalist. I think that representationalism is obviously wrong, because the only way to argue for it is to assume that we can know some things non-representationally.

    What are the properties of a Kaniza square?Isaac

    The notion of optical illusions is incoherent if we don't know what's really there contra the illusion.

    The idea, when we're talking about people, isn't that their perception is infallible. But to know that it's fallible, we have to know what they're getting wrong, which means getting something right. Otherwise the whole idea of fallibility is incoherent.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X


    Another way to illustrate this:

    From one spatial point of reference, a table has this shape:

    987652_overhead_S.jpg


    From another spatial point of reference, a table has this shape:

    perstab2.jpg

    We could say those shapes "contradict" each other, but they're both really the shape of the table from different spatial points, and that has nothing to do with models or us our our perception.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    If two people give differing, contradictory accounts of some state of affairs, it seems reasonable to assume neither necessarily has clear access to the state of affairs both are trying to describe.Isaac

    I can't draw anything at the moment, so we'll use this as a drawing instead:

    A,.............................@.....................................B

    Suppose A and B are persons. They both say something about @. What would be a reason to believe that @ from A's location is identical to @ from B's location, so that A and B's accounts of @ wouldn't contradict?

    For that matter, we can just talk about A and B as locations, without people. The same thing would be the case.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    but observing is a model-mediated process. I don't 'observe' without modelling.Isaac

    How would we be able to know this without knowing what the world is like sans modeling for comparison?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Everything I think is some model or other of the reality I'm thinking about, so there is no question that I can answer outside of some model or other.Isaac

    You're not just observing models are you?
  • Perfection: Is it possible?


    If everything is perfect then you don't have to strive very much.
  • Perfection: Is it possible?
    "Perfect" is subjective.

    X is perfect (or is a perfect F), just in case x meets one's ideals for x (or an F) (the difference there being whether something is parsed as a particular or as an instantiation of a type/kind).

    So one could feel that every single thing is perfect, or that nothing is, or anywhere between those two extremes.

    I'm far more on the "every single thing" is perfect side.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X


    When we were talking about properties. Specifically whether there are any objective properties. When I was talking about that and asking you questions about it I wasn't talking or asking about your "models," but even if so, why would you answer from the perspective of one model rather than another?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Is there something about this multiple model idea you're not understanding?Isaac

    If you were answering from the perspective of models earlier, and you have a model where there are other people as objects, etc., then why did you answer only from the model where there aren't other people as objects?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    I'm asking about the placeholders in my model, the same model I presume you have since were both human beingsIsaac

    You can't presume there's another human being if there's no object that's another person.

    There can be no object that's Eric Corchesne, no objects that are six-month old babies, etc. on your view.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    We do generally act in the natural mode of beingI like sushi

    Why would you?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    I'm sure you're aware the we completely alter our actual cellular make up, so I presume you're not associating other people with their material matter.Isaac

    You don't even think there is an object that's another person. So what are you asking about?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    Yep.Isaac

    So your wife and kid are just creations of your mind in your view.

    Did you tell your wife and kid mind-creations this?

    (This is the sort of scenario where I really would love to be able to interact with you folks in person instead. I'd make sure they know this if you haven't told them.)
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    Can you elaborate / give examples?Pfhorrest

    Sure. The most recent example: I don't think that Isaac honestly believes that there are no properties in the world/that the world is just a heterogeneous mass of vague/undifferentiated things that his mind imposes order on.
  • Intellectual honesty and honest collaborative debate
    I could do without people being humble as long as they're honest. I think people often respond in ways that aren't very honest here. At least I hope that's the case, because the other alternatives would be even more disheartening.
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    I don't see how they can be distinguished. When a chimpanzee rejects a previously gratefully accepted cucumber as reward on the grounds that the other chimp has been given a grape, are they not using a model of justice, or fairness?Isaac

    What would you even be talking about when you say things like this given that you don't think the world has any properties? Are you just talking about things your own mind creates?
  • Why do people still have children?
    I can't be the only person around here with kids (and now grandkids for that matter), right?
  • Law is neither obeyed disobeyed nor broken
    Terrapin, That statement is purely mine as an original Duane assertion;Duane Meehan

    Shouldn't it be obviously false if you observe others at all?
  • A Masturbation problem


    Do you have any other OCDish sort of behaviors--like needing to count certain things, or preferring certain numbers (for example, in a numbered parking lot, maybe you'd only park in spaces with odd numbers, and preferably ending in a 7 or whatever), or needing to do things in a certain order, where otherwise you're a bit uncomfortable? Anything like that? Those sorts of things are very common, and they're very similar to superstitious thinking.
  • A Masturbation problem


    If a common cold lingers for a month, say, it would definitely be advisable to see a doctor, no?

    This is something that's lingering for however many years (I have no idea how old he is). He's not been able to get rid of it on his own yet. He wants to get rid of it.
  • A Masturbation problem


    Because therapy can help a lot in changing beliefs like this.

    It's just a matter of how much you want to change and whether you can accept help or not.
  • A Masturbation problem
    Just curious how far past your teen years you are. I would guess that time might be the cure here, but if you're already in your mid 40s or something, then that might not be the case.

    Just like when we acquire motor skills, the acquisition of beliefs changes our brain structure, and just as with motor skills, some affect brain structure in a way that can be hard to "erase." So simply realizing that a belief is bunk isn't going to do it. You need to more systematically work on changing beliefs over a period of time. As mentioned above, therapy can help a lot with this.
  • Law is neither obeyed disobeyed nor broken
    No person in fact ever determines to act or forbear action on the basis of given published language of law,Duane Meehan

    Citation?
  • What It Is Like To Experience X
    You say it that way.

    What if I said: Things appear (where 'thing' is taken in the broadest sense as objects, processes, colours, basically anything you can think of). What is it then that "has" properties? Are not properties just among the "things" that appear (if we allow that shapes, colours, textures and so on are even separable from shaped, coloured and textured objects)?
    Janus

    First, properties definitely are NOT separable in that way.

    It seems like you're asking about things having properties sans experience, which is fine, but presumably you're not just saying there's no experience period, are you? (In other words, you'd just be saying that there is no consciousness/no conscious beings, etc.)
  • How should we react to climate change, with Pessimism or Optimism?
    I think everything should be approached with optimism, but I'm an "irrational optimist." :grin: - -in other words, I have optimism even when it's not really warranted.

    I think a lot more will be done, in a coordinated political way, about climate control, but I don't think that much will be done until climate change starts costing big corporations a lot more money. When that happens, though, you'll see relatively quick action.
  • Can reason and logic explain everything.
    For example, we say things like, "what do you mean?",Harry Hindu

    If the meaning were literally in the text marks or sounds, how would it make sense to ask anyone "What do you mean?" The text marks or sounds are what mean something, and supposedly you just perceive the meaning from the text marks or sounds.
  • Sub Blue Laws


    Hmm, okay--is this your own term, or is it a common term?
  • Abortion and premature state of life


    I'm not asking your opinion of what matters.

    I asked whether it wasn't ontologically different.

    How would inside/connected not be ontologically different than outside/not connected?

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