Seasons

I now proceed to message 5675. You wrote:

Irina, I think we have two major differences before I go back to my evidence of human limitations and subjectivity.

1) I see a difference between abstract concepts and the physical world and I do not think the two should be treated the same.

2) I see a difference between saying human limitations prevent us from ever really knowing the absolute truth and therefore we can only go by the best evidence we have at the time, accepting what we have as true until further notice but recognizing limits to that certainty and saying there is no external reality and all things are equally true. Qualified acceptance and recognition of cognitive processes does not mean there is no scientific method or logic.

1) I agree, there is a difference here. I consider that all of our concepts, regardless of how abstract, are part of the physical world. Since you say we disagree, I take it that you are a dualist in this matter; concepts and other things according to you must belong to a non-physical world.

I'd be interested to know how that world interacts with the physical world. Let's say that light strikes my eyes, giving rise to conceptual activity "Ooooh, what a handsome bloke!"). I take it that the light striking the retina and setting off rods & cones & whatnot is a physical process; at what point does the physical process effect the non-physical concepts? Likewise, my conceptual activity appears to affect my actions (I'm going to stroke him"). How do these non-physical things affect the physical motions of my hands?

I'd say that light bounces off the shapely fellow, hits my retinas, and causes a complicated chain reaction of brain cells, neuromodulators, etc., which ultimately results in my hand reaching out and stroking. It's all a physical process.

2) CRIKEY!I believe we agree on this one (oh, no!)! That is, I agree that the two things you said are different, are different. But I don't agree with either of them, though the differeneces are subtle.



I wouldn't say that "human limitations prevent us from ever really knowing the absolute truth".

Yes, we are fallible, but we are not totally incompetent. It's like bear hunting: sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you. We are often mistaken, but we are not always mistaken. Sometimes a person thinks he sees a bear in front of him, and, by Jove, there is a bear in front of him, and he does see it, and there is no malfunction and no good reason for him to suppose that he doesn't see it. In such a case he knows that there is a bear in front of him.

It is important to avoid the epistemological fallacy that knowledge is entirely a matter of what goes on in conscious experience. [I'm not saying that you have committed this fallacy, I mention it because it is so common.] If there's no bear in front of him, it doesn't matter what his inner experiences are, he doesn't know that there's a bear in front of him.

People often argue like this: "You don't know X because I can tell a story (often involving dreaming or hallucination) according to which you have exactly the inner experience you've actually had (which convinced you of X), but according to which X is false."

Since the above X could be anything, we conclude that we can't know anything at all. But the argument is fallacious because it assumes that the inner life is everything. Suppose I meet a beautiful lady at the Opera and kiss her. Suppose someone says, "No, you didn't kiss her, because she could have exploded just as you were pursing your lips." This is obviously a fallacious argument. Just the fact that she might have exploded before I could kiss her doesn't mean I didn't kiss her. Yes, she might have, but she didn't! In the same way, if a person thinks he sees a bear in front of him, and, by Jove, there is a bear in front of him, and he does see it, and there is no malfunction and no good reason for him to suppose that he doesn't see it, then he knows that there is a bear in front of him; it is irrelevant (though correct) to point out that if things had gone differently, he might have been hallucinating.

You continue:

and therefore we can only go by the best evidence we have at the time, accepting what we have as true until further notice but recognizing limits to that certainty...

I agree with all that!

But then you continue:

and saying there is no external reality and all things are equally true.

I just don't see why this follows. After all, if we are epistemically fallible, then how do we know that "there is no external reality and all things are equally true"? If you knew that all things were equally true, you'd know everything; surely any being aware of its epistemic fallibility would shy away from making such a completely general, universal claim.

The fact that bears are hard to hunt doesn't mean that there aren't any bears. The fact that truths are hard to find doesn't mean that there aren't any truths.

The fact that bears are hard to hunt doesn't mean that everything is a bear. the fact that truths are hard to find doesn't mean that everything is a truth.

ALL RIGHT YOU SNIVELING COWARDS!!! SAY SOMETHING!!!
DANCE! DANCE! [Fires concepts at your feet]

Interzone:

Sorry, I will now continue the discussion from messages 569 and 5670.

I was saying that the clever and knowledgeable aliens could figure out, by looking in detail at a well-preserved mouse, that it was a foraging animal adapted to a certain class of environments, even though they had no previous experience with terrestrial fauna. I hope you find this intuitively plausible.

Suppose one of them said, "No, it's now a forager, it's a paperweight!" How would the others argue with him? I presume, something like this:

"Well, Grzx, its being a paperweight would explain its size, shape, and weight. But look how much more would be explained if we take it to be a forager in environment X! It explains tens of thousands of chemical pathways! It explains tens of thousands of minute details about its physical structure! See, this thing here is a pump! [and so on].

So we could say that X is appropriate for doing Y in context C if and only if

(a) There is some significant probability that X would indeed do Y in context C, and

(b) Almost any change we make in X, larger than a certain very small size, will reduce the probability that X would indeed do Y in context C.

If the aliens examined a human being, they would be able to discover what it would be appropriate for.

Now, very roughly, I say that it is better when things are in contexts where it is very likely that they will do what it is appropriate for them to do. We may of course have to balance out the requirements of one thing against another's.

At any rate, this is a purely physical notion of goodness. Are you with me so far?

to all:

Actually: I got the Seasons forum going again, but now it seems I've chased everyone but Bev away by being so intense, so I'm bowing out for a few days.

Irina, aww, you and I will just take a break from the topic, unless someone else wants to argue with you about it. Think about Psi's Robot or have a drink at Dogh'ds.

Psi, Thanks for the video links. What are the search words am I looking for to google this type of bot? Do the makers release any info or have their own web page? If you have some mutilated accident victim inside, is it a cyborg like my mouse-brained Roomba? You've already told me the ethics boards for human research are easier to avoid in the UK, how far can that be pushed?

Wow. I'm affixing a post-it to my monitor never to get into any remotely philosophical-theological debates with Irina or Bev!

Thanks for the good thoughts/prayers. Kaye had to stay an extra night (so I did, and so James the cat had to take care of himself). Everybody's home and pretty much okay, just tired and glad to be home. And not be sleeping in a recliner.

The fun part was when Kaye rolled over her call thingy and simultaneously turned off the lights, turned on the TV, and called the nurse's desk. So many tubes and wires . . .

I'll be interested to watch the next Season.

I found the Titan info at Cyberstein http://www.cyberstein.co.uk/ They have one of those annoying flash thingies you have to allow and let load, but they make a cool bot so I will forgive them. I am only half kidding when I say I would like to see this combined with cybernetic research. I am Ironman (or woman, whateveer).

Clerk! Sorry it took me so long to say I am glad Kaye is doing better. Hope you are both hanging in there.