But that doesn't mean bats or other animals have the exact same set of sensations. We know that can't be true because many birds can see more than three primary colors, and presumably bats have a sonar sensation. Maybe it's a kind of color or sound, but it could be something altogether different as well. And what would it be like as an octopus, where the nervous system is as much distributed in the tentacles, which act semi-independently, as it is in the head? — Marchesk

Agreed. There would be variations. A new sense such as bats' sonar would theoretically imply a whole new set of qualia specific to that sense, of if you prefer, a typology of sensations specific to that sense. I agree that as of now, there's no way for us to even imagine what these theoretical sonar qualia would feel like. But this doesn't prove that we will never be able to do so. We obviously cannot tell in advance what discoveries science will make in the future, otherwise we would make them now... (Popper)

Another huge difference between humans and other animals is in the use of and dependency on symbolic language. We cannot think without language (though a human baby supposedly can).

The case of octopuses is interesting because bats are mammals, and hence very close to us humans in the darwinian tree. Cephalopods (squids, octopuses etc.) are invertebrate and thus very far from us. And their nervous system, as you say, is much more scattered than ours.

Nevertheless, invertebrate nervous systems use the same basic element than ours: neurons that appear similar to mammals' except that the cephalopod ones are larger in size. Octopuses have bigger neurons than we do, for some yet unknown reason.

An interesting consequence is that for a long time, we knew more about octopuses neurons that we did about our own, because it is far easier to stick electrodes into a big cell than into a small one. Studying cephalopod neurons was just easier. Of course the assumption was that we would learn something about neurons in general, including our own, by studying squids'. Just like we study genetics in mice or drosophilia because it's easier than on humans, but the results are supposedly applicable to humans.

So the assumption was, and still is, that at neuronal level at least, what happens in a squid is comparable to what happens in you and me.

Now, my argument here is that, if indeed the neurons of squids and ours function in a similar way, then we should expect their mental world and ours to not be so very different. It might be less of this or more of that; some variations would apply, but all using a common basic material.

So then, are you saying that all politicians are corrupt?

Nice!

I think you don't become an elected official in Brasil without being corrupt. — Benkei

Let me guess: it works much much better wherever you just happen to live, for some odd reason? Beware of parochialism...

are you clapping along? — universeness

I like Korean pop better. :-)

https://preview.lofficielitalia.com/moda/k-pop-star-ambassador-moda-bts-blackpink-chi-sono

Chalmers criticism is that no amount of structure and function results in an explanation of consciousness. [...] We can't say what bat sonar sensation is no matter how good our science is. — Marchesk

I have sympathy for Chalmers pushing back against the reductionists and simplistic materialists like Dennet, but I tend to be puzzled by his arguments. Maybe one day the state of our science will allow us to read the minds of bats, for instance.

I would then expect us to find out that bats aren't that different from humans, that all animal mental worlds are variations on a common theme, just like all animals use the same genetic code, and tend to share vast amounts of DNA. Your hemoglobin is quite similar to bats'. We're all cousins.

Chalmers is the source of several well known thought experiments that show that phenomenal consciousness and functionality are not identical, — frank

I find this surprising, because generally in biology, function determines form. So I would think that conscious experience exists for a reason, that it has a function, such as putting in one space various sources of data (visual, audio, but also goals, fears etc.) for coherent decision making, or something like that.

I'm also not a fan of labeling "hard" or "easy" problems that are yet unresolved. For all we know, the solution might be very simple. Remember the story of Christopher Columbus' egg: it was a very easy solution, all what one needed to do is to think of it, yet nobody did...

I suppose its a question of how far back do we trace such events and decide what influenced what — universeness

Yep, Trump did not invent anything new on 6th January, yet he gave ideas to others.

This said, Bolsonaro was in actuality classier than Trump here: he has condemned the weekend violence.

My position that in our current global society, what happens in America is unhealthily aped globally, remains. — universeness

If it makes you happy. My conviction is that in our not-so-current (in fact quite old) globalised world, anything happening anywhere is likely to be copied somewhere. American also copy others, even when they think otherwise. It's a two way street.

Idealism vs materialism is a mischaracterization of the issue. — frank

How would you describe the issue, then?

If you are thinking of 6th January, it's the other way round: an American president copying your average banana republic. Trump behaved just like these third world candidates who would rather tear down their republic than accept defeat.

Did you type this before or after hearing last nights news from Brazil? — universeness

Before.

Hugo Chavez stayed in power too long for his own good, perhaps a bit like Putin or Thatcher: started good but ended shitty.

If you were being sold as a slave you would 100% want to be taken to the states rather than Brasil that is for sure! — I like sushi

That's ridiculous.

it's not as if it's the first time a corrupt politician is voted into office — Benkei

Rather, it's not the first time an honest, popular politician is unfairly accused of corruption by corrupt elites. Because you see, only the rich and powerful are entitled to steal.

Cognition can vary radically from one human to the next.

I think it's a real possibility that people who favor Dennett's view really are different somehow.
— frank

This is an excellent point. Not only is it different, but everyone presumes that their own cognitive makeup is universal. Which leads to some incredibly frustrating discussions on consciousness. — hypericin

I don't think that materialist folks are wired much differently than idealistic types. Dennetists are not p-zombies -- in fact they keep wondering why they are NOT p-zombies.

I suspect we are all pretty much the same soul, the same thing, the same mental structure, with better or worse abilities here or there. Like two diesel cars are essentially the same thing, even if one can drive faster than the other.

I agree that this is an assumption, a belief. It cannot be proven empirically, at least not yet.

Good thing that Bolsonaro didn't try a "6th January" à la Trump and co., — Olivier5

I might have spoken too fast: some bolsonarists have wrecked the congress hall, president palace and supreme court in Brasilia over the weekend... 200 suspected putchists arrested. Apparently Bolsonaro himself is not involved.

Bolsonaro is just another gangster. Lula is the better of the two evils, but hopefully Brazilians will eventually demand much better representatives/leaders than both of them. — universeness

Lula is A-okay in my book, much better than most politicians worldwide. Mandela too was accused of all sorts of crimes and spent time in jail ... but his accusers were the real criminals. Same thing in Brazil: they framed Lula because they could not defeat him in the ballot box.

Good thing that Bolsonaro didn't try a "6th January" à la Trump and co., and that he finally accepted his defeat. It could have gone much worse.

Alone at the top?


Lone Putin Observes Christmas at Kremlin Church
By AFP
Updated: one day ago

Russian President Vladimir Putin stood alone at a midnight service at a Kremlin church as he marked Orthodox Christmas darkened by Moscow's assault on Ukraine.

Putin attended the service at the Cathedral of the Annunciation, originally designed as a church for the Russian tsars.

He stood alone as Orthodox priests in golden robes conducted a ceremony holding long candles, pictures released by the Kremlin showed.

In previous years Putin usually attended Orthodox Christmas services in Russian provinces or just outside Moscow.

The Russian Orthodox Church observes Christmas on January 7.

In a message released by the Kremlin on Saturday, Putin congratulated Orthodox Christians, saying the holiday inspired "good deeds and aspirations."

He also praised the Orthodox Church, whose influential head Patriarch Kirill has fully backed Putin's offensive in Ukraine.

Church organisations are "supporting our soldiers taking part in a special military operation," Putin said, using the official Kremlin term for the offensive in Ukraine.

"Such great, multifaceted, truly ascetic work deserves the most sincere respect," he added.

Patriarch Kirill has called on believers to support pro-Russian "brothers" during Moscow's offensive in eastern Ukraine.

In a sermon last year, he said that dying in Ukraine "washes away all sins."

unless you can find some extreme left wing group which gave €153 million to promote Putin's military capabilities, then you've no argument. — Isaac

It's not my argument that the European far left is in bed with Putin, though some of them hate or mistrust NATO enough that they cannot take Ukraine's side.

Note that nobody gave Putin anything. We were talking about (minuscule) sales, not gifts.

France has sold €152 million worth of military equipment to Russia

That’s minuscule. What did the Russians get for that money? One plane? A hundred rockets?

The point I was making, which no one seems to be able to counter, is that this idea that both the far left and the far right support Putin is just a transparent attempt to smear opposition (particularly left-wing opposition) to US policy. — Isaac

I don’t think the Cat is trying to do that. He’s only pointing at the convergence of extremes, a well known phenomenon.

There simply are no 'allies' of Putin on the left outside of Russia that have any significant impact, and financially, the centrist mainstream have supported his regime with vastly greater effect than any 'radical' group could. — Isaac

I can agree with that. They have no impact whatsoever.

But none of that matters, of course, because SophistiCat's aim is simply to make support for US policy sound all reasonable and worldly-wise, and opposition to it sound radical and driven by a negative ideology. — Isaac

I don’t think he cares that much about USFP. The US is far away and unreliable, although under this president, they are far better than under the previous one, and so are we, Europeans.

If @SophistiCat is anything like me, he cares more about Ukraine, Russia and Europe. The future of the whole of Europe is at stake, the way I see it. I mean ´Europe´ geographically, including Russia.

The extreme left organisations in America and Europe which are 'allied' with Putin to a greater extent than centrists are...? — Isaac

I would start by saying that the link with Putin is clearer and stronger with the extreme right than it is with the extreme left, in my opinion.

Talking about my country, the main party on the left (stradling with the extreme left), La France Insoumise (LFI), has condemned in unambiguous terms Putin's aggression and the crimes of the Russian army on civilian populations. They were more lenient towards Moscow's foreign policy before the invasion, understandably. Nevertheless, even after the invasion, not all their MPs have voted in support of arm deliveries to Ukraine.

As for the French extreme left, most of their micro-partis have a troskist history, so they are historically anti-USSR and anti-NATO. Today this translates into a neutral stance vis à vis this war: neither for Putin nor for Zelensky, as they put it.

the evidence, other than merely a failure to support mainstream policy, of "allies" of Putin from the American and European left sufficient to constitute the claimed trend...? — Isaac

The claim was about the extreme left and the extreme right, not about the left.

Unsurprisingly, in Europe and America both the far-right and the far-left are Putin's closest allies. — SophistiCat

Why yes, anti-democratic forces in general.

Surprise surprise...

Pro-Putin operatives in Germany work to turn Berlin against Ukraine

In Germany some are clamouring for a change in course on Ukraine. Key figures in the campaign have links to the Russian state or far right, a Reuters investigation has found.

By Polina Nikolskaya, Mari Saito, Maria Tsvetkova and Anton Zverev

Jan. 3, 2023, noon GMT

... Reuters found that some of the loudest agitators for a change in German policy [towards Ukraine] have two faces. Some use aliases, and have undisclosed ties to Russia and Russian entities under international sanctions, or to far-right organisations. ...

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-germany-influencers/

a sham. — Isaac

Why the outrage?

Imagine if Northern Ireland policy were decided entirely by consulting only the population of England. — Isaac

Somehow I doubt one could do a poll in Donetsk right now.

His main thesis: "It's democratic expansion, not NATO expansion that has created this tension between Putin and the west and Putin and Ukraine." — SophistiCat

Agreed. NATO is neither here nor there. The reason Putin panicked is his fear of the people.

And now, for @Amity, something a bit cheesy perhaps, a bit old school, but oh so very cheerful.

Ha ha! Love the way she mimics the trumpet by just making tut tut with her mouth.

Thanks for the cheer up.

I like this tune below, though I am afraid the lyrics are not very cheerful. Judging from the many translations available online, they are also hard to translate, often the mark of a good poem.




Cómo decir que me parte en mil
las esquinitas de mis huesos,
que han caído los esquemas de mi vida
ahora que todo era perfecto.
Y algo más que eso,
me sorbiste el seso y me decían del peso
de este cuerpecito mío
que se ha convertío en río.
de este cuerpecito mío
que se ha convertío en río.

Me cuesta abrir los ojos
y lo hago poco a poco,
no sea que aún te encuentre cerca.
Me guardo tu recuerdo
como el mejor secreto,
que dulce fue tenerte dentro.

Hay un trozo de luz
en esta oscuridad
para prestarme calma.
El tiempo todo calma,
la tempestad y la calma,
el tiempo todo calma,
la tempestad y la calma.

Siempre me quedará
la voz suave del mar,
volver a respirar
la lluvia que caerá
sobre este cuerpo y mojará
la flor que crece en mi,
y volver a reír
y cada día un instante volver a pensar en ti.

 Etc.

Volume is of a quality of it's own — ssu

Comrade Stalin said that, I think. Quantity has a quality all its own. Very true. Boethius used to write volumes.

It's about demonizing Russia, and I expect better from the people on this forum. — Tzeentch

And I for one expected better from this forum than endless obfuscation and lies in defense of a murderous dictatorship, but this is what we get.

I know this feeling.

The Klezmatics - An Undoing World

By the time we're done with dancing,
Elsewhere darling you'll be glancing
And the night's a river-torrent tearing us apart.
Merely melody entwined us,
Easily the ties that bind us
Break in fibrillations of the heart.
Don't cry out or cling in terror
Darling that's a fatal error
Clinging to a somebody you thought you knew was yours.
Dispossession by attrition is a permanent condition
That the wretched modern world endures.

You drift away, you're carried by a stream.
Refugee a wanderer you roam;
You lose your way, so it will come to seem:
No place in particular is home.
You glance away, your house has disappeared,
The sweater you've been knitting has unpurled.
You live adrift, and everything you feared
Comes to you in this undoing world.

Copper-plated, nailed together, buffeted by ocean weather
Stands the Queen of Exiles and our mother she may be.
Hollow-breasted broken-hearted watching for her dear departed
For her children cast upon the sea.
At her back the great idyllic land of justice
For exilic peoples ponders making justice private property.
Darling never dream another woman might
Have been your mother
Someday you may be a refugee.

A refugee, who's running from the wars,
Hiding from the fire-bombs they've hurled;
Eternally a person out-of-doors,
Desperate in this undoing world.

Mother for your derelicted
Children from your womb evicted
Grant us shelter harbor solace safety
Let us in!
Let us tell you where we travelled
How our hopes our lives unravelled
How unwelcome everywhere we've been.

Stromae -- Formidable

The good thing about science is that it can fail many many times but the scientists will try try again. — universeness

And so will the priests. Amen.

So, your advice is, don't make the same mistakes theists make all the time. Probably good advice, but we are all forced to plant our flag in one camp or the other. The middle ground is a powerless place, all you can do there, is remain ineffective but you can use it to 'rest and think,' until you decide to move into a camp or else you can remain in limbo and be ineffective, as long as you live. — universeness

Don't worship idols, is one of the best advices in all scripture. Idols - defined as human things we hold sacred - are surprisingly common, even beyond religion: the Bible of course, but also the Almighty Dollar, Communism, the Fatherland, or Science.

As soon as we act, we are indeed forced to chose a side, to make a leap of faith. You are correct on this, but we can act without idolizing our intent. We can make money without becoming its slave; we can fight without demonizing our opponent; and we can love science without giving it the final say, always and on every topic. Science is only human. It can fail.

It has failed to find objective reality — Art48

Science is also failing here. Don't let your anti-religion push you into worshiping or idolizing science.

Vladimir Putin faces legal challenge after calling the war in Ukraine a "war"

The opposition councillor who made the legal challenge said he knew it would go nowhere, but filed it to expose the "mendacity" of the system.

A St Petersburg politician has asked prosecutors to investigate Russian President Vladimir Putin for using the word "war" to describe the conflict in Ukraine, accusing the Kremlin chief of breaking his own law.

Key points:Vladimir Putin's reference to "war" runs afoul of the Kremlins laws against so-called fake newsThe legal challenge isn't expected to affect the Russian presidentInternal critics of Russia's war have previously faced harsh repercussions

Mr Putin has for months described his invasion as a "special military operation".

He signed laws in March that prescribe steep fines and jail terms for discrediting or spreading "deliberately false information" about the armed forces, putting people at risk of prosecution if they call the war by its name.

But he departed from his usual language on Thursday when he told reporters:

"Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war."

Nikita Yuferev, an opposition councillor in the city where Mr Putin was born, said he knew his legal challenge would go nowhere, but he had filed it to expose the "mendacity" of the system.

"It's important for me to do this to draw attention to the contradiction and the injustice of these laws that he [Putin] adopts and signs but which he himself doesn't observe," he told Reuters.

"I think the more we talk about this, the more people will doubt his honesty, his infallibility, and the less support he will have."

In his challenge, filed in an open letter, Mr Yuferev asked the prosecutor general and interior minister to "hold [Putin] responsible under the law for spreading fake news about the actions of the Russian army".

You're not paying attention. Merry Christmas.

Explain to me how causation can come from any other place than from below. — punos

Explain to me why it should come from below.