Comments

  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    Humans cannot make objective judgments, and subjective judgements are meaninglesssRussellA

    It seems to me that subjective human judgements can be quite meaningful to humans. For example if someone's society judges them to not be fit to participate in that society and subsequently banishes or imprisons that person, I'd expect that person to find society's judgement to be meaningful.

    So I'm not sure what you mean by "meaningless" in the quote above.
  • The Mind is the uncaused cause
    P2) Experience is due to the existence of physical and the change in the state of physical is due to the existence of an experienceMoK

    Why think that all physical changes are due to experience? Consider the possibility that astronomers today observe a supernova which occurred a billion years ago in a distant galaxy. What role did experience play in causing the supernova?
  • Magnetism refutes Empiricism
    You bolded that portion yourself in your
    , I simply formatted the quote in order to respect that. Because unlike you, I am indeed being charitable towards your intentions. e I will sense the
    — previous comment
    Arcane Sandwich

    I don't know what you are trying to say there, or who you are suggesting that you were quoting.
  • Magnetism refutes Empiricism
    By assuming ignorance on my part, you're not willing to give me a fair reading as your interlocutor.Arcane Sandwich

    I provided you with an opportunity to show that you weren't ignorant in relevant ways with my first response to you. Unfortunately it seems that you weren't able to take advantage of the opportunity.
  • Magnetism refutes Empiricism
    If you accuse me of strawmannig, then you're accusing me of charlatanry, hence sophistry, and therefore you are assuming ill intent on my behalf...Arcane Sandwich

    No I'm not assuming ill intent. Ignorance on your part seems a simple enough explanation.

    False. You do not sense the force of attraction in that case, you simply feel an increasingly solid sensation, in a tactile sense.Arcane Sandwich

    The bolded portion seems an odd way of expressing whatever you may be trying to express. Have you actually done the experiment?

    In any case, yes I have a tactile sensation of the attraction between the magnet and the iron.

    It seems to me it would be more productive for you to actually address my points than to whine to the moderators, but whatever floats your boat.
  • Magnetism refutes Empiricism
    (AE1) If Empiricism is true, then magnetism can be perceived by human beings.Arcane Sandwich

    1. You seem to be attacking an archaic/straw version of empiricism, by stipulating that some sort of 'direct sensing' of properties must be available to humans for empiricism to stand up to scrutiny.

    2. I have many ways of detecting the presence of a magnetic field. A simple one is just to hold a magnet near a piece of iron, in which case I will sense the force of attraction between the magnet and the iron.
  • Disagreeing with Davidson about Conceptual Schemes
    The thread became entangled in animal intelligence, a garden path, to my eye.
    — Banno
    Yes. There are those who cannot conceive of a non-human animal that truly shares any concepts with human beings and those who are quite sure that all animals in this world share that world, to a greater or lesser extent. Never the twain shall meet. Looks like two incommensurable conceptual schemes to me.
    Ludwig V

    To further entangle the thread with animal intelligence...

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/02/250203163756.htm

    To get treats, apes eagerly pointed them out to humans who didn't know where they were, a seemingly simple experiment that demonstrated for the first time that apes will communicate unknown information in the name of teamwork. The study also provides the clearest evidence to date that apes can intuit another's ignorance, an ability thought to be uniquely human.

    It appears bonobos are capable of sharing our ability to conceive of others as knowledgeable or ignorant of some fact.
  • Ontology of Time
    Thanks for all your posts. Will come back with more of my replies on the rest of your posts in due course.Corvus

    "in due course"?

    At a later time?
  • Exploring the artificially intelligent mind of GPT4
    If any of these conversations were posted 10 years ago, people would have agreed without hesitation that any hypothetical AI which has achieved conversation in this level represented AGI. Now that it has been achieved pop my it seems the goal posts have shifted.hypericin

    :up:
  • I Refute it Thus!
    Don't scientists subscribe to a massive metaphysical commitment, that reality can be understood?Tom Storm

    Is that a massive commitment? It seems to me a matter of rather routine observations.
  • Questioning the Idea and Assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and Practical Implications
    Another critical point of AI's responses is that, they are predictable within the technological limitations and preprogramming specs. To the new users, they may appear to be intelligent and creative, but from the developers point of view, the whole thing is pre-planned and predicted debugging and simulations.Corvus

    Corvus, you are pretending to understand modern AI when you clearly don't.

    See here:

    Despite trying to expect surprises, I’m surprised at the things these models can do,” said Ethan Dyer, a computer scientist at Google Research who helped organize the test. It’s surprising because these models supposedly have one directive: to accept a string of text as input and predict what comes next, over and over, based purely on statistics. Computer scientists anticipated that scaling up would boost performance on known tasks, but they didn’t expect the models to suddenly handle so many new, unpredictable ones.

    Recent investigations like the one Dyer worked on have revealed that LLMs can produce hundreds of “emergent” abilities — tasks that big models can complete that smaller models can’t, many of which seem to have little to do with analyzing text. They range from multiplication to generating executable computer code to, apparently, decoding movies based on emojis. New analyses suggest that for some tasks and some models, there’s a threshold of complexity beyond which the functionality of the model skyrockets. (They also suggest a dark flip side: As they increase in complexity, some models reveal new biases and inaccuracies in their responses.)
  • Exploring the artificially intelligent mind of GPT4
    2. **Synchronous Gradient Sharing:**
    - After all replicas finish processing their respective mini-batches for the current training step, they share their computed gradients with one another.
    - These gradients are **averaged (or summed)** across all replicas. This ensures that the weight update reflects the collective learning from all mini-batches processed during that step.
    Pierre-Normand

    This is a very interesting aspect of the logistics of LLM training that I was unaware of. It suggests that a move from digital to analog artificial neural nets (for reduced power consumption) may not be forthcoming as soon as I was anticipating.

    This is because of the need for all replicas to be functionally identical in order to take advantage of this possibility of training multiple replicas in parallel. While analog hardware could be more energy efficient, analog 'replicas' might not be able to be made sufficiently identical to take advantage of such batch learning.

    As always, fascinating conversation.
  • Is China really willing to start a war with Taiwan in order to make it part of China?
    Taiwan is not important enough to US national interests to risk going to war there.T Clark

    Taiwan produces around 90% of the world's most advanced ICs. It is very much in the iinterest of the US and other countries that such manufacturing capabilities are not taken over by China.
  • Hinton (father of AI) explains why AI is sentient
    Nature is natural, machines are artificial, and never the twain shall meetENOAH

    That sounds like dogma. Do you have any reasonining to back it up?
  • Hinton (father of AI) explains why AI is sentient
    I've never seen my own brain. How do I know that I have one? Maybe there is a machine inside my skull, that has mechanical gears and Steampunk technology in general.Arcane Sandwich

    Well, there are substances you might ingest, which would have results on your thinking which don't seem too consistent with what one would expect the substance to have on a steam and gear mechanism.

    I.e. you could conduct experiments.
  • Hinton (father of AI) explains why AI is sentient
    A.I. changes itself according to principles that we program into it, in relation to norms that belong to us.Joshs

    The same will be true of this new system as the old. It will never be or do anything that exceeds the conceptual limitations of its design.Joshs

    This seems rather naive when it comes to neural net based AI.

    Consider this excerpt from a recent Science Daily article:

    What is more, the AI behind the new system has produced strange new designs featuring unusual patterns of circuitry. Kaushik Sengupta, the lead researcher, said the designs were unintuitive and unlikely to be developed by a human mind. But they frequently offer marked improvements over even the best standard chips.

    "We are coming up with structures that are complex and looks random shaped and when connected with circuits, they create previously unachievable performance. Humans cannot really understand them, but they can work better," said Sengupta, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-director of NextG, Princeton's industry partnership program to develop next-generation communications.
  • How do you know the Earth is round?


    Measure the length of a sundial's shadow at noon at different latitudes.

    Shoot a laser horizontally across a large still lake to measure the curvature of the lake's surface. There was a documentary on flat earthers (I think on Netflix) where this was done, but the flat earthers dismissed the results falsifying a flat earth.
  • Can we record human experience?
    At what measure of mass density, does the recording device effect that which the device is suppose to record, synonymous with the quantum “observer problem”?Mww

    :up:

    At what point in 'sensoring up' a human, have you created something that is no longer a human.
  • Can we record human experience?
    Do you think it's possible to record the individual human experience?

    By that I mean, what each of us go through every second of our lives? The inputs to our senses, the thoughts that pass by, the emotions we feel?
    Ayush Jain

    If you had stopped at "inputs to our senses" you'd have something somewhat technologically feasible (if not very practical). However, with thoughts and emotions you would be talking about highly invasive measurement of a huge amount of activity occurring in people's brains. It's not at all technologically feasible to measure and record the data that would be needed.
  • Mathematical platonism
    C.S. Lewis - The Discarded Image
    — Count Timothy von Icarus

    I went back and read this section in its entirety. It is an excellent summary of the difference between intellection and ratiocination, as well as the decline of intellection since the modern period. :up:
    Leontiskos

    It is interesting to consider the relevance of Kahneman's distinction between fast and slow thinking to Lewis' discussion of intellectus and ratiocination.

    Kahneman's work suggests that Lewis' claim that intellection (fast thinking) is higher, is rather questionable.
  • War: How May the Idea, its Causes, and Underlying Philosophies be Understood?


    There is an element of human xenophobia that plays a part in war but which doesn't seem particularly relevant to inner conflict.
  • Behavior and being
    This is the usual "philosophy is a bridge between the scientific and manifest images" jazz. Though I'm framing metaphysics as an intimate part of the bridge. It's a form of "conceptual engineering", of propagating changes and insights from one to another.fdrake

    :up:
  • The Blind Spot of Science and the Neglect of Lived Experience
    Scientists aren’t paid to think about their work, they’re paid to produce results.Joshs

    :roll:
  • Epistemology of UFOs


    They had me at dinobeavers.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    I think we can recognize precision and explicitness as thresholds that are negotiated, without idealizing them into unreachable and thus useless perfection. We say enough to be understood, counting on the audience to fill in as much as they need to to get it, and even that can be negotiated.

    But that just kills off an unrealistic picture of how conversation works. Even if your speech doesn't have to carry the burden of truth entirely on its own, it has to do its part.

    I keep finding myself thinking that the great value of saying something true to someone else is helping them see it ― like when you point out to someone that a photo of the faculty of your department has no women in it. And it's not just a matter of your words being understood and even credited; if I lie to you convincingly, my words hide the world from you, obstruct and undermine your relationship with it, divert your attention into a shadowy fantasy land. But when I tell you the truth, and you see it, my words fall away.
    Srap Tasmaner

    :100: :up:
  • The Mind-Created World
    The point I am making is not that ink and paper aren't essential to the physical nature of the book but that semantic content exists on a different level from its physical form. Words may be encoded as sounds or written letters in various languages, yet the same information can be encoded in entirely different symbolic systems—whether in different languages, Braille, or even Morse code—and still retain its meaning. This demonstrates that semantic content is independent of the specific physical medium in which it is expressed.Wayfarer

    The thing is, your 'point' is a mystification of what is a relatively simple and clear physical picture.

    There is no need for a 'different level' for semantic content to exist on. Semantic content is attributed to linguistic media (letters, Braille, Morse code, etc.) by neural nets which have been trained to attribute semantic content to such media. Such attribution of semantic content to linguistic media is a function of the physical state of systems capable of doing such decoding.

    A book 'contains meaning' only insofar as it is read and understood by a subject capable of interpreting its content. Furthermore, different readers may interpret the same information in diverse ways, highlighting the subjective and contextual nature of meaning-making. The meaning is not an inherent property of the physical text itself but arises through the interaction between the symbolic representation and the mind of the reader.Wayfarer

    Right. This is completely consistent with the straightforward physical picture outlined above.

    So language has a physical aspect, but it can't be accounted for by physical principles alone.Wayfarer

    And yet you rely on LLMs. :roll:

    If you actually understand that language has an aspect that can't be accounted for by physical principles, I'd expect you could come up with a way of falsifying any physicalist account of language. That would be a serious philosophical achievement. Go for it!
  • The Mind-Created World


    I'm not familiar with Alicia Juarrero’s perspective, but what I've gathered from looking at the Amazon page for her book sounds generally compatible with Tse's thinking. FWIW, I searched my Kindle copy of Tse's book for any citation of Alicia Juarrero, and didn't find any. I'm planning to borrow a copy of Juarrero’s book, so perhaps I can let you know more later.
  • The Mind-Created World
    The meaning arises as a brain (containing neural networks trained to recognize the written language the book is written in) detects patterns in the writing which are associated by that brain with the meaning that arises.
    — wonderer1

    What about this causal relationship is physical?
    Wayfarer

    Everything. Words are patterns of physical vibrations propagating through the air, or physical text. Neural networks in your brain which recognize words and their semantic associations are physical. The semantic elements in your stream of thought are physically detectable.

    How is it explainable in physical or molecular terms?Wayfarer

    There is an enormous amount of science to study to reach a complete account at the molecular level. Can you be more specific about what it is that you don't understand?

    How do physical interactions cause or give rise to semiotic processes?Wayfarer

    Reading Peter Tse's Criterial Causation might provide a clue. Before reading Tse, I used an analogy of locks and keys, where in the scenario of reading written language, letters, words, phrases, etc. play the roles of keys, and neural nets trained in written language recognition play the role of locks. Of course I don't expect that to make any sense to anyone so unwilling to consider physicalism charitably as yourself.
  • The Mind-Created World


    Along with the majority of philosophers of mind.
  • The Mind-Created World
    In philosophy, to equate mental with physical is a category error.Gnomon

    Brandolini's law:

    Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage coined in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer, that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states:

    The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

    Philpapers Survey
  • The Mind-Created World
    The meaning arises as a brain (containing neural networks trained to recognize the written language the book is written in) detects patterns in the writing which are associated by that brain with the meaning that arises.
    — wonderer1

    'Arises' from what, exactly? What is the nature of the causal relationship?
    Wayfarer

    Arises from interactions within the brain which contains the neural networks trained to process written language, in response to the outputs of those neural networks signaling recognition of linguistic elements in the writing.

    [Note 'arises' is the word you chose, and I ran with. Not a word I injected into the discussion.]

    The nature of the causal relationship is physical.

    If meaning arises purely from physical causation, as described by physical and chemical laws, how to account for the gap between these deterministic processes and the open-ended, adaptive nature of life? Even rudimentary organisms exhibit an agency and intentionality absent in inorganic matter—the ability to heal, reproduce, evolve, and maintain homeostasis. From the moment life begins, biological systems exhibit a kind of semiotic agency that transcends the deterministic causal nexus of physics and chemistry. Life doesn't defy physical laws, but requires principles that can't be reduced to that level of explanation. Recognition of this is one of the drivers behind the emergence of biosemiotics, and of the connection between information and biology, none of which is strictly physicalist, although it falls within the ambit of an evolving naturalism. That's the sense in which biology is evolving beyond physicalism, as physics did with the advent of quantum mechanics. And all the same questions apply to the relatonship of neurobiology and semantics.

    refs: From Physical Causes to Organisms of Meaning, Steve Talbott

    What is Information?, Marcello Barbieri
    Wayfarer

    That's an impressive load of red herrings you have there, but how about sticking to this
    original question?

    All of Greene's books, of which I've read The Fabric of the Universe, consist of paper and ink. Is that all they are? How does the meaning they convey arise from the combination of ink and paper?Wayfarer

    Or did you not actually want people to give serious consideration to the matter?
  • The Mind-Created World
    All of Greene's books, of which I've read The Fabric of the Universe, consist of paper and ink. Is that all they are? How does the meaning they convey arise from the combination of ink and paper?Wayfarer

    The meaning arises as a brain (containing neural networks trained to recognize the written language the book is written in) detects patterns in the writing which are associated by that brain with the meaning that arises.

    What alternative explanation would you propose? Or even better, how could you falsify my explanation?
  • An evolutionary defense of solipsism
    Admittedly, my theory has changed slightly as it is now simpler than the original.

    But the original evolutionary story involves random mental state generation and a mind disposed to remember sequences of mental states that seem closely to resemble one another. It experiences A.
    Clearbury

    The biological theory of evolution is based on all sort of empirical evidence. Is empirical evidence for your theory of evolution even possible in principal?
  • An evolutionary defense of solipsism
    What's being posited is a mind that is in a mental state - so, whatever total mental mental state you are in now (including all experiential states), just assume the mind is in it.Clearbury

    So whence comes a theory of evolution worth considering in light of this posit?
  • The Nihilsum Concept
    Postmodern fear of knowledge.
    — jkop
    I'm stealing that phrase.
    Banno

    :rofl: Same.
  • Cosmology & evolution: theism vs deism vs accidentalism
    Some other methodological Naturalists are so dogmatic that I don't waste my time dialoging with them. :smile:Gnomon

    Funny how those same naturalists see through your bullshit and don't hesitate to call you on it.

    It's not dogmatism, it's just that there is so much evidence which proves that you spew bullshit, and I happen to know somewhat about such evidence.
  • Cosmology & evolution: theism vs deism vs accidentalism
    The Intelligent Design movement did originate as a response to the aggressive New Atheists in the late 20th century.Gnomon

    You are asserting misinformation again. What a surprise.

    The Intelligent Design movement might reasonably said to have been kicked off with The Wedge Document:

    Overview

    The Wedge Document outlines a public relations campaign meant to sway the opinion of the public, popular media, charitable funding agencies, and public policy makers.

    The document sets forth the short-term and long-term goals with milestones for the intelligent design movement, with its governing goals stated in the opening paragraph:

    "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies"
    "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
    There are three Wedge Projects, referred to in the strategy as three phases designed to reach a governing goal:

    Scientific Research, Writing, and Publicity
    Publicity and Opinion-making
    Cultural Confrontation & Renewal
    Recognizing the need for support, the institute affirms the strategy's Christian, evangelistic orientation:

    Alongside a focus on the influential opinion-makers, we also seek to build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency, namely, Christians. We will do this primarily through apologetics seminars. We intend these to encourage and equip believers with new scientific evidences that support the faith, as well as to popularize our ideas in the broader culture.[12]

    The wedge strategy was designed with both five-year and twenty-year goals in mind in order to achieve the conversion of the mainstream. One notable component of the work was its desire to address perceived social consequences and to promote a social conservative agenda on a wide range of issues including abortion, euthanasia, sexuality, and other social reform movements. It criticized "materialist reformers [who] advocated coercive government programs" which it referred to as "a virulent strain of utopianism".

    Beyond promotion of the Phase I goals of proposing Intelligent Design-related research, publications, and attempted integration into academia, the wedge strategy places an emphasis on Phases II and III advocacy aimed at increasing popular support of the Discovery Institute's ideas. Support for the creation of popular-level books, newspaper and magazine articles, op-ed pieces, video productions, and apologetics seminars was hoped to embolden believers and sway the broader culture towards acceptance of intelligent design. This, in turn, would lead the ultimate goal of the wedge strategy; a social and political reformation of American culture.

    In 20 years, the group hopes that they will have achieved their goal of making intelligent design the main perspective in science as well as to branch out to ethics, politics, philosophy, theology, and the fine arts. A goal of the wedge strategy is to see intelligent design "permeate religious, cultural, moral and political life." By accomplishing this goal the ultimate goal as stated by the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the "overthrow of materialism and its damning cultural legacies" and reinstating the idea that humans are made in the image of God, thereby reforming American culture to reflect conservative Christian values, will be achieved.[13]

    The preamble of the Wedge Document[14] is mirrored largely word-for-word in the early mission statement of the CSC, then called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.[13] The theme is again picked up in the controversial book From Darwin to Hitler authored by Center for Science and Culture Fellow Richard Weikart and published with the center's assistance.[15] The wedge strategy was largely authored by Phillip E. Johnson, and features in his book The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism.

    Origins
    Drafted in 1998 by Discovery Institute staff, the Wedge Document first appeared publicly after it was posted to the World Wide Web on February 5, 1999, by Tim Rhodes,[16] having been shared with him in late January 1999 by Matt Duss, a part-time employee of a Seattle-based international human-resources firm. There Duss had been given a document to copy titled The Wedge and marked "Top Secret" and "Not For Distribution."[17] Meyer once claimed that the Wedge Document was stolen from the Discovery Institute's offices.

    New atheism might be said to have been kicked off six years later with the publication of The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and planes being flown into buildings by religious terrorists on 9/11 was the motivation for new atheism.