Ofcourse Windows 7 was a decent operating system. — turkeyMan

The plastic bottle to my left is partially Windows 7? I don't think so brah.

If panpsychism logic is true, follows that the components and materials of computer hardware must themselves have desktop interfaces.

Only cuz he wants to avoid paying child support

Would you say every particle in the universe is at least slightly Windows 7 ?

Nice. :grin:

Maybe post about it in the Currently reading thread?

I believe it's a faulty goal to partake in this forum with the intent of persuading others. We are here as philosophers with the goal of understanding. We cannot treat each other as children to be persuaded, and even a minimal degree of participation will reveal that persuasion is never forthcoming. — Metaphysician Undercover

Being persuaded your logic is wrong; persuading others their logic is wrong. Say your understanding of something is off-base: how is it wise to ignore all logic from more educated sources? Did you teach yourself the alphabet, too?

Learning is a kind of changing of minds. Persuasion in debate isn't surreptitious or whatever. But you don't appear open-minded enough to consider that the consensus is right about your being wrong. How do you hope to learn anything here?

Tbh it comes over like you're sticking your finger up while elevating how visible you are (Banno has a point) -- if that weren't the case then your language wouldnt be as blindfold-defensive as it is. Logic helps us become humble to our own bullshit but you aren't using it that way.

Sure, but note that I said (in different words) that articulate doubt trusts/obeys sociolinguistic conventions that make it intelligible, even for the questioner. — Yellow Horse

So therefore, doubt here simply means 'uncertainty' -- questions are uncertainties -- the asking of a question involves trust in the certainties of linguistics?

Personally I'm wary of calling expressions senseless. In context, 'what is nothing' might be in pursuit of a clarification of what we even mean by 'nothing.' Clarification in general would be a kind of reduction --- and not the elimination --- of fuzziness, often connected to action. — Yellow Horse

I kind of agree. 'Senseless' (lacking in agreed upon axioms, but still following linguistic convention) needn't mean pointless, though, don't you think? Pointlessness more relates to nonsense utterances that are linguistically inane.

Perhaps clearly defining the border between senseless and nonsense questions is where the solution rests.

Haven't finished the On Certainty pdf Banno shared yet, but seems it couples well with the Tractatus in that regard?

Is this not equivalent to a philosophical revolution that installs itself securely against all further revolutions?

If you will pardon the poetry: to dream the nonsense detector is to dream the death of philosophy as its completion. — Yellow Horse

Nicely put. What if we look at it with a scientific mindset: rules and principles of language are open to change, if and when a better theory comes along. Simply they're helpful as scaffolds of logic that ensure meaningfulness.

Distinguishing sense and senseless from nonsense might be achieved through knowing where that logical scaffold ends; distinguishing sense from senseless, through knowing where knowledge ends.

Seems like this stuff is Wittgenstein's meat and gravy. Thanks for the excerpt -- will read the pdf in the next week or two.

MU has a metaphysical theory of numbers, he's a believer in them in the full b-word sense (it's part of his identity... almost literally), and modern math is kind of a heresy wrt it. That's my take. — InPitzotl

That makes sense. The arrogance is still pretty weird, though. All the same, math noobs like myself can learn a bit from the counter-effort. This thread was a heck of a read.

I personally envision his theories as being roughly of both the form and value of Eric the half a bee.

LOL

Na, I'm just mining it for knowledge rather than being an asshole.

MU has made it completely clear he's a nut-case, and not even an honest nut-case, yet some people don't get it. And a parallel with Trump and similar people. The right approach to them is to treat them appropriately. — tim wood

I disagree. Just because he's illogical doesn't mean his psychology isn't interesting. He's yet to answer the question I posed most likely because it isolates the underlying hypocracy of his debate stance -- apparently truth has little to do with his posting motivation -- so it's only pointless to argue against that which his hypocracy is productive of. His whole intellectual orientation is faulty. But it's for some reason been useful enough for him to maintain it.

Something tells me that it's partly solipsism, partly an expression of aggression against the imposition of an external control over his thinking. So he's in company with the likes of Kanye West when he decided to support Trump after the media made out it was a bad choice.

People like this aren't nut-cases; they're protesters.

Not in the OP. Even if he had, "news media" is a piece of word-salad that needs to be very well-defined indeed, or it's non-sense. — tim wood

News is mentioned enough to make it more specific I thought, but, yeah, kind of misleading to conflate it with 'communication mediums'.

How is 'news media' a BS term? It's defining media used by news outlets, and is apparently synonymous with saying 'news industry' -- sounds obvious enough. It's even got its own Wikipedia page.

Best not to confuse media and news. Even though Fox calls itself news. — tim wood

Good point. The OP is pretty clearly specifying 'news media', however.

Well, all primates and most "pack" animals are "political" (i e. organized into "alpha" hierarchies), so I don't see where that human distinction gets us. — 180 Proof

:up:

My beliefs change like the weather. But to be honest, I wouldn't say that it's others who persuade me to change. — Metaphysician Undercover

In that case, may I ask why you're arguing your position here? If you yourself can't be persuaded by others, what makes you think others will be persuaded by you?

Present day media is -- excuse my French -- fucked in the head.

Popularist, biased, sensationalist, irrational, unresearched, lacking in nuance = the current benchmark. Straight from the bowels of the limbic system with scant use of logic. VICE is just as bad as FOX.

Case and point: Louis C.K.

Very complex. So I deduce the following: there is a paradigm shift between humans and animals: from a potential limited to a finite number of concepts to unlimited potential. So from now it is not about quantity anymore, it's about quality. Am I correct? — Eugen

I'm not sure consciousness is a quantity, but quality is a useful way of putting it. The contents of consciousness involve a quantity of concepts, which quantity has influence on consciousness quality.

Intelligence plays a role in the formation of functional algorithms related to the concepts we learn. Chimps are far less intelligent than we are, and so they're both limited by a comparably low number of concepts, and the degree to which their learning can be intelligently used.

One way to make sense of 'doubt depends on certainty' is to emphasize that the questioner enacts a trust in the conventions of language as he questions. As Witt demonstrates, a private language does not make sense. — Yellow Horse

Would you be able to expand on how trust in the language of a question involves doubt in asking it?

That last post I wrote isn't worded well. Was attempting to say: a question is an abstraction falling between meaningful and meaningless (further broken down as sensible and senseless/nonsensical) however it's only meaningless when not underlied by a certainty of knowledge. Even though there's an infinity of nonsense questions which are unknowable, asking senseless questions isn't necessarily pointless, as they might simply be outside our current knowledge.

Probably I'm being stupid here, but the abstract rules of language within a certainty framework don't appear to be addressing the OP's curiosity.

"What is nothing?" is only senseless to a laymen; a theoretical physicist, on the other hand, will probably make sense of it. But something like "When is colour?" involves a more faulty proposition rendering it nonsensical.

Under what principle of language do we appeal to to ensure sense in a question? Haven't worked all the way through Oxford's Modern Grammar yet but it seems like less abstract grammar/syntax rules might help margin the parameter.

"How much do questions assume?" -- in general, nothing; a question can be sensible or senseless or nonsensical. If the OP is specifically asking about sensible questions, however, then there's no spectra of 'amount' in assumptions being made, rather we're assuming the entire body of axiom-based knowledge.

The Tractatus appears to offer a cohesive foundation for this stuff.

Has anyone ever persuaded a change of an opinion or belief you've held?

Are you solipsistic, by any chance?

Doubt can only take place against a background of certainty. — Banno

How would you say doubt is implicit in a question?

[Edit: removed a quote & paragraph as answered my own question.]

The OP seems to be looking into the limits of language specific to questions: "Where is the universe?" is meaningless as we the questioner understand properties of the universe making it so. But a child doesn't ask something because they understand logical context, similarly if Max Tegmark's 3rd order multiverse exists, asking where the universe is then becomes valid and meaningful. So validity depends on axioms that are open to change in some cases, which restricts meaningful questions to our present knowledge base, even if newly discovered axioms eventually make presently meaningless questions meaningful.

Truth-based questions are therefore relative. To me this means questions are essentially abstract and rather than being objectively meaningless, illogical sounding questions are working with propositions beyond our knowledge (so long as the syntax is correct). Truth-based equates to knowledge-based; meaninglessness applies only within a framework of knowledge.

So in response to the OP: meaningful questions rely on prior knowledge of axioms contextual to an answer; where that knowledge is absent, questions become abstractive, which abstractiveness can render them meaningless.

By analogy, consider an amateur rock climber scaling a cliff using ropes. They can only ascend -- gain knowledge -- in incremental sections defined by the safety -- logic -- of bolt anchors -- axioms -- as free soloing past those anchors renders the ascent unsafe, such that further ascent becomes practically impossible. Asking questions that are abstract from knowledge adds nothing to the ascent, but it may be possible that future axioms allow the climb to incorporate a previously unsafe foothold.

The last paragraph of the OP is confusing though:

The best question to ask would be one that does not assume anything about existence. Perhaps the best question is the one that does not assume the need to question in the first place? — Benj96

Seems incoherent/contradictory with the rest.

Meaning, the OP is ironically asking a meaningless question, as questions make no assumption of truth, merely they seek truth or falsehood in the answer?

Salivation achieved.

Quality read :)
Sounds like it's addressing definition rather than whether the content of the illocution is logical, though?

Maybe I read it wrong, but seems the OP wants to know more about the border between truth-based (sensible) and senseless questions; predications on truth defining sensible, on falsehoods defining senseless.

Personally moved from militant atheism to a technical agnosticism after thinking about simulation theory. It's not impossible that we're our own god one dimension removed, or that it's a sophisticated AI, or something else. Unlikely but not out of the question.

Roast chicken thigh, herbs and halloumi, I think. A dish I've made a few times before, and am interested in perfecting.

With steamed green beans. — Banno

What herbs? Any garnish?

Cheers for the link.

Can questions not be categorised into sense, senseless, and nonsense? Seems like that's what the OP is asking.

Thanks


Also thanks
Is that because it's easier to understand or it's more specific to the OP?

@ Wittgenstein aficionados

Is the Tractatus a good place for the OP to find a comprehensive answer?

Is that genetic? — Brett

Yep

It's not wrong usage to call them political but it's not well appropriated in my opinion. Politics in developed populations is advanced enough to constitute something different--maybe governance is a better bridging term--but power struggles and social structuring are inherent.

Would you refer to chimpanzees as political? Their tribes are organised much the same as our ancestors were, but we term them communal rather than political.

It occurs to me that it’s similar to tool making but it led to something like false inferences that throws it back into poetry. — Brett

Not sure I follow but it might be said that Art has a basis in the pattern trait, whereby it led to creativity with abstractions.

Inherently as in based in genetics? Like, would an island nation of 10 aborigines without knowledge of mass societies start engaging in machiavellianism?

I'd say we're inherently communal: as tribes grew to 150 members certain governences were needed for goal unification; one leader governing group morality became a hierarchy of leaders governing doctrines. 'Politics' is the advanced, large-population expression of the same thing. So ownership was more an organic thing than a takeover.

For my own interests, in an effort to try and put modern times into perspective, to put together some framework for looking at things, I’ve tried to break humanity up into manageable sections, to then see where they might crossover, how they’re influenced, or to see if I missed something, or if my four pillars are an accurate way to break it up. — Brett

Have your read 'Sapiens' by Yuval Noah Harari?

Harari surveys the history of humankind in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century, focusing on Homo sapiens. He divides the history of Sapiens into four major parts:

1. The Cognitive Revolution (c. 70,000 BCE, when Sapiens evolved imagination).
2.The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE, the development of agriculture).
3. The unification of humankind (the gradual consolidation of human political organisations towards one global empire).
4. The Scientific Revolution (c. 1500 CE, the emergence of objective science). — Yuval Noah Harari

^ which seems fairly aligned with your question. The book chronicles the evolution of these in accessible detail and links the pillar idea to evidence-based anthropology. Each event can be consolidated to re-word as a cornerstone, for example 1 can be phrased as Art or Imagination (which covers poetry), 2 as Agriculture (which is foundational to political/economic systems), 3 as Politics, and 4 as Science.

Religion's genesis isn't much to do with poetry, but Art played a role in its expression. The precursor was more likely hunter-gatherer pattern recognition, which gave a survival advantage over other species. The faculty, which evolved into a genetic propensity, caused false inferences to be made when human events coincided with unexplainable phenomena, an obvious example being tribal rain dances. If a tribe was experiencing a drought and rain coincidentally came immediately after some kind of ceremony, it was assumed causal. The tendency also encouraged other influential phenomena--like the sun--to be understood metaphysically, eventually with agency--which agency was the precursor to god worship.

Christianity is exactly the same, except it's more complex owing to expanding knowledge hierarchies and the increasing complexity of human civilisation.

What do you guys think about this? Everything from tactics to academics tends to be better when it's towards the higher end of this phenomenon. — Gurgeh

Learning how to visualise 4 dimensional space is helpful:

http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/outreach/4-cube/

https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/four_dimensions/index.html




'Thought abstraction' can be helped too. Learning metacognition is easy and serves a good base: https://tinyurl.com/yawenkr2

But the best route I've found is reading postmodern meta-fiction. The writing is designed to carry reader consciousness beyond realist/modernist (standard) forms using creative meta-persectives, sometimes even making the author part of the story.

John Barth's short story 'Lost in the Funhouse' is one of the most famous: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12885.Lost_in_the_Funhouse

Another famous one is 'The Balloon' by Donald Barthelm, which only runs a few pages and can be read here: https://tinyurl.com/ycjcj45p

If you google postmodern novels most of the examples have something meta going on, though sometimes more subtly than the examples above.

A more direct learning approach can be found in the work of Edward de Bono, who was the pioneer of lateral thinking techniques. His short how-to, 'The Use of Lateral Thinking', is excellent: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/829643.The_Use_of_Lateral_Thinking


Some of these aren't specific to philosophy, but they all train the skill of dimension-hopping, which makes it easier to comprehend abstractions in general.

Panpsychism is true in the vague sense that consciousness can be constructed from common elements, but the metaphysics is bullshit. Its credence relies on materialism's apparent inscrutability. Nothing more. That it's taken seriously seems absurd at this point; progress in computational modelling (Joscha Bach, Anil Seth, etc.) is answering the Hard Problem incrementally. Chalmers, gifted as he is, hasn't been helpful.

Within a materialist paradigm, yes, consciousness exists on a spectrum, but it may be more complicated than it sounds. Consider the case of Washoe, the chimpanzee taught basic sign language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee)

Researchers were unable to teach her beyond the level of a pre-schooler, and found she had a genetic learning limitation. The human brain therefore evolved past a cognitive tipping point, which, according to David Deutsch, affords us access to infinite knowledge of concepts, connections. An evolutionary event of some kind triggered the human brain to develop into a different kind of brain altogether. So though humans are objectively speaking more conscious than chimps, measuring beyond the tipping point becomes more subjective.

Accepting the above, it's still tempting to overthink conscious experience into mysticism. But it's probably more rationally intuitive. Human & animal rights have become more empathetic precisely because advances in global communication networks and an increasing number of interconnections with morality principles raised social consciousness as such. The same goes at the individual level, with a major step perhaps being the advent of writing, which allowed concepts to be broadly disseminated. Under this view, consciousness is simply the acute awareness of observable patterns that constitute reality: the more patterns one is able to be aware of simultaneously, the more conscious-feeling they'll probably be.

A supporting--more basic--observation can be found between differing lifestyle orientations. It's been argued that submission to social norms narrows the lateral scope of an individual's conscious awareness over time, that the more embedded in a given living routine one becomes, the less conscious of the world writ large they'll be; and that skepticism and non-acceptance and friction with social constructs promotes greater awareness of reality in general--baring in mind that awareness + attention are synonymous with consciousness, which in a materialist worldview they usually are. Thomas Pynchon had a cool way of framing it:

“Temporal bandwidth, is the width of your present, your now. It is the familiar “∆ t” considered as a dependent variable. The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are."
– from Gravity’s Rainbow

Genetically, though, we're only optimised for a limited, socially-margined faculty to develop. One person can be more conscious than the next, but that same person may find themselves more disadvantaged the more conscious they become, especially without the requisite reasoning and decision-making capacity. Basically, the more conscious you are, the more effortful reality is to navigate through.

This is consistent with a common experience of psychoactive drugs: removed from habitual thought processes, conceptualisations are frequently novel in their comparative uniqueness, which sense of uniqueness is proportionate to how far removed from an embedded perspective they are. Hence the phrase "consciousness expanding" -- the extending of an awareness bubble encouraged by psychadelic ventures to the outside. (Fortunately meditation and other healthier practices have similar effect.)

Intelligence and consciousness are interrelated, too; natural fluid intelligence (taking abstraction capacity and creativity into account) reflects a genetic baseline, the extent to which one is able to incorporate new concepts into a functional model. An ability to learn more than average without becoming overwhelmed, affords greater consciousness expansion.

Meaning, it's very possible for a being/AI to be more conscious than any human can be. It would simply need to be simultaneously aware of more moment-relevant concepts than we're capable of.

That the 'feeling' of consciousness is strong enough to infer something inscrutable going on is not a rational argument. Conscious experience is just whatever your attention (and peripheral attention) is focused on, inclusive of thought. If someone or something can be consciously aware of more stuff than us, with wider-reaching well-functioning algorithms, it follows that more evolved organisms can be more conscious than we are.

Side-note: the language faculty has something to do with it. How conscious was Genie, would you say? Was she as conscious as we are? How would it seem jumping into her consciousness and back again? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/14/genie-feral-child-los-angeles-researchers

^ the differential between language-developed persons and Genie, is perhaps where the crux of the debate rests; i.e. if from the inside of her mind the world appears and feels less vivid, it follows consciousness isn't constant; that it's variable, and evolving, and there's probably superorganisms out there way better at multitasking than us.