Your opinion of UFOs, ESP, poltergeists, etc?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Yep, I may have experienced a false memory.

I know I have (I think we all have some false memories, but unless some contradictory information is discovered, we'll never know - and mostly, it doesn't matter). I had a long think about a couple of memories I've had for many years, and realised one must have been a dream - the experience was just about plausible, but it couldn't have happened at the time and place I remembered. The other was probably a conflation of two separate memories - the people involved were from different times in my life, and I couldn't have seen them together.

The human brain can manufacture some really interesting experiences.

Yes, it's fascinating.

 

[Sanoy]

I am saying that the mind requires the brain, and there's nothing we know about consciousness that suggests any external contribution from 'spirit'; i.e. what we know about consciousness is consistent with the 'pianola' hypothesis rather than the 'pianist plays the piano' hypothesis.

Biochemistry is what allows life. Vitalism died 100 years ago. The pianola plays on its own.

Intuition comes from the unconscious mind working on past experience. That's why the intuitions and hunches about domains you have experience and/or expertise in are so much more reliable than others.

Sorry, I can't make sense of that - perhaps you could rephrase it?

No, but those processes constitute conscious experience. You don't have an experience of being an ecosystem of trillions of cells, more than half of which are bacterial, either. Consciousness is a particular set of neural activities in the brain, just as running is a particular set of activities of leg muscles. Stimulate the brain here and you experience a familiar smell, stimulate it there and you recall a vivid memory, stimulate it elsewhere and you experience intense sadness, and so-on; the patterns of activity in the brain change correspondingly.

These are just unsupported assertions; I have no experience of thousands of years, or a soul, or death. Some people have a belief that includes a soul that lives on after death; other people have other, equally unsupported, beliefs. Meh.

Semantic/philosophical quibbles. Is TV less of a TV when it's switched off?

It's a matter of definition. If you define a 'person' as a fully conscious individual, then clearly you're less of a person when you're less than fully conscious, and no person at all when you're unconscious. But I don't think that's how most people would define it, and it doesn't seem to fit common usage.

When you're unconscious, you're generally considered to be an unconscious person - is that less of a person? it's up to you. Typically, you're considered a person until you're dead, presumably because, even in a coma, you may have the potential to recover some level of awareness. If it can be demonstrated that you no longer have that potential (e.g. severe brain injury leaving only the brain stem intact), you may no longer be considered a person, even though your body remains alive, and they might turn off life support or stop feeding you so your body dies.

I'm not sure how you're defining 'knowledge' & 'belief' here, and 'skillful' seems redundant - IMO, what matters is whether or not the system can distinguish consistent patterns in the data it receives from the environment, not how skillfully it can do it.

Deterministic systems can be quite capable of learning by applying epistemological methods to acquire information, e.g. by inference, or by empirical means. They can also apply the information to solve problems and/or improve their performance or capabilities. Modern AI systems provide plenty of examples.

It seems to me that knowledge is information about the relations between certain items of information that can be mapped onto similar items of information in similar contexts, and understanding is information about the underlying principles that determine the relationships between certain items of information (i.e. a generalisation or abstraction), and can be identified in, or mapped onto, different items of information in different contexts. Belief is generally taken to mean accepting something as true, particularly in the absence or insufficiency of evidence. If a deterministic system can have beliefs, it can have knowledge.

I would suggest it's more fruitful to define such terms in the abstract rather than in terms of the properties of systems that are known to have them (so as to avoid begging the question when considering their application to different systems).

Personally, I try to avoid beliefs in favour of varying degrees of certainty. I don't think it's possible to have absolute certainty about states of affairs in the world.

By the same token, you might think that your points have validity, but that is just the perception that was determined by your material substrate. In the world of subjective experience, it's all moot - we have no access to the full determinants of our behaviour. As Isaac Bashevis Singer said, “We must believe in free will, we have no choice...”

It seems to me that there is no compelling reason to accept the supernatural as any more than a cultural development of superstition.

Ah, OK; so you were referring to the perceptual experience rather than its cause.

There are conditions and 'ad absurdums' that suggests missing pieces. When a wall has holes in it you hypothesize missing stones. In this case there are no physical stones that will fit the wall without making the absurd.

If biochemistry is what allows for life we should be able to create life right? Science is all about the experiments and repeatability.

I said that the spirit nudges through some of our intuitions. I also think there are bodily intuitions.

Patterns are abstract objects. Can you identify a part of the Brain or Brain states in which everything that is true of my mind is also true of my Brain/ Brain states?

Ok that makes more sense, we merely have the experience of being an individual person.

I didn't say you have an experience of a thousand years. I said that the experience of being an individual has included having a soul for thousands of years. That is the natural experience, before it became unlearned.

Semantic debate is important. A TV is the device, so no it's not less when it's turned off, the station is never turned off by the TV being turned off so the station persists. You actually just used a dualism model like the piano.

Well you defined the mind, which is the individual, as the brain states. So I'm at a loss in how we should start looking a people from now on. Should we consider sleeping people "potential individuals", or those with brain injuries less of an individual? In general we call unconscious people fully people because we are using my world view. That people are indivisible, and have a complete transcendent value and instance no matter their ostensible condition.

There are many definitions of knowledge, but I gave you a generalized definition. Skillful means one is capable of a task. Thinking that you are a mechanic doesn't make you a mechanic. Deterministic systems learn, but that doesn't make it knowledge because there is no skill involved in that learning...it is deterministic. AI systems are also determined, what they learn is based on their programing. If the program is bad they will learn just as much as if the program was good. The AI doesn't know if it's right. Only a non deterministic person can qualify whether or not the AI has learned something that is true about the world.

Your definition of knowledge does not require any justification to believe it is true. A kid writing with a crayon could define his imagination as knowledge under this definition. You basically just defined "assertion" as knowledge.

Here is the essential problem derived by your determinism. If I asked you if aliens existed and you said "no" I would ask you "why do you believe aliens do not exist?" You would then give me "reasons" why aliens don't exist, but that is not that actual answer to the question. The real reason why you don't believe aliens existed is because the material you are composed of determined your belief that aliens do not exist. I have no reason to believe the material in your body is capable of determining truths about the world. You might say, "oh because science", but everything you say is determined by the material in your body...which I have no reason to believe is capable of determining truths about the world. Why should I believe water and carbon and some other things when properly combined can determine if aliens exists?

You say that if determinism is true I would also be determined and so my points are wrong. But your belief in determinism is self defeating, you can't tell me you're right! You mention this bit about free will not being a choice. I assume you do believe we have the perception at least of free will? Here is the irony of such an absurdly demeaning world view, under determinism, you can't even know if it's true that you don't have free will!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

If biochemistry is what allows for life we should be able to create life right?

Yes, in principle. In practice, it's tricky - even the simplest life we can observe today has had 3.4 billion years of evolution. We don't know what the earliest simplest replicators were like, and we're not certain of the environment they appeared in. But there's been some very promising work in recent years on a variety of hypotheses with a variety of plausible early Earth environments.

We may be fairly close to producing a simple replicator that can evolve - but there could be a probabilistic stumbling block - although life appears to have got started relatively soon after conditions were suitable, that's 'relatively soon' in geological timescales. It's possible, even likely, that the precise conditions needed are rare, and even in ideal conditions, replicator assembly may be extremely unlikely. However, when you have a whole planet of environments and hundreds of millions of years of reactions, even the extremely unlikely becomes probable. In the wider scale of things, for those still sceptical about the probabilities, there is a whole universe with trillions of potentially suitable planets, so even literally astronomical odds against become near certainties.

So scientists working in the lab may have the odds heavily stacked against them.

I said that the spirit nudges through some of our intuitions. I also think there are bodily intuitions.

Any idea as to what kind of intuitions the spirit may provide?

Anything else it provides? One can't help feeling that if its only involvement is some of our intuitions, it's pretty close to not involved at all...

Patterns are abstract objects. Can you identify a part of the Brain or Brain states in which everything that is true of my mind is also true of my Brain/ Brain states?

Still not sure what you're asking here. By 'patterns of activity', I'm talking about various paths of neuronal signalling within and between neuronal networks that can be broadly categorised or distinguished - in much the same way as tracking the movements of someone over an extended period can reveal 'patterns of activity' in their movements. Consciousness is characterised by localised clusters of neurons signalling within the cluster and also with other clusters of neurons in widely dispersed areas of the cortex and midbrain, typically in synchronized rhythms, and over characteristic timescales. These diverse areas involve those which are known to contribute to specific aspects of conscious experience; e.g. sense of self, bounds, location, ownership, agency, planning, visualising, etc. When consciousness is absent, this widescale synchronised signalling is typically absent.

Ok that makes more sense, we merely have the experience of being an individual person.

I wouldn't say 'merely' - subjective experience is crucial to who and what we are.

I didn't say you have an experience of a thousand years. I said that the experience of being an individual has included having a soul for thousands of years. That is the natural experience, before it became unlearned.

OK. I think it's more plausible that the idea of having a soul developed from early superstitious and animistic beliefs, partly prompted by our hyperactive agency detection (HADD) and also the feeling that something seems to leave the body at death. Of course, it's a hypothesis from indirect evidence, but it's plausible, falsifiable, and more parsimonious than invoking an additional unexplained, unobserved entity.

Semantic debate is important. A TV is the device, so no it's not less when it's turned off, the station is never turned off by the TV being turned off so the station persists. You actually just used a dualism model like the piano.

The analogy did not involve dualism. If you find that distracting, take a watch - is it any less of a watch because it's stopped and need winding? it depends on your definition of watch; it's less of a timekeeper, but most people would say it's a stopped or run-down watch.

... you defined the mind, which is the individual, as the brain states.

I think the individual is more than the mind, and I actually said, "It's a set of communicating processes, dynamic patterns of neural activity in the brain."

So I'm at a loss in how we should start looking a people from now on. Should we consider sleeping people "potential individuals", or those with brain injuries less of an individual? In general we call unconscious people fully people because we are using my world view. That people are indivisible, and have a complete transcendent value and instance no matter their ostensible condition.

As I already said, it's up to you what you think personhood or individuality involves. I have only said that consciousness involves a particular mode or set of those dynamic patterns of neural activity.

There are many definitions of knowledge, but I gave you a generalized definition. Skillful means one is capable of a task.

Skillful means having the ability to do something well or having expertise. I think it's redundant in a definition of knowledge, as is 'innately'. I'd agree that "Knowledge <about the world> emerges from having the innately skillful ability to determine truths about the world." But even so, that's not a definition; how it emerges is not a definition of what it is.

Deterministic systems learn, but that doesn't make it knowledge because there is no skill involved in that learning...it is deterministic. AI systems are also determined, what they learn is based on their programing. If the program is bad they will learn just as much as if the program was good. The AI doesn't know if it's right.

That's simply not the case. Skill isn't necessary to gain knowledge; as long as relationships between items of information (e.g. facts or truths about the world) can be identified, however unskilfully, then knowledge is acquired.

Making a system non-deterministic means introducing randomness, which increases uncertainty, making knowledge unreliable.

AI systems that learn are increasingly not directly programmed, but are designed as neuromorphic networks that learn much as biological brains do, by example; i.e. trial and error. You might be interested in ANNABELLE, an AI that can learn the rudiments of a language and communicate using it, tabula-rasa; i.e. starting without dictionary, syntax, or grammar. It learns much as a baby does, by interaction with a trainer. Original paper and links to software & examples here.

Only a non deterministic person can qualify whether or not the AI has learned something that is true about the world.

Unless you have a strange definition of 'truth' (a fact about the world?), an AI can check for itself whether it has learned something true about the world by the same means that we do - repeated measurement/observation, and/or verifying predictions based on what has been learned.

Your definition of knowledge does not require any justification to believe it is true.

Huh? it's a definition - it doesn't have a truth value. You can argue how useful or coherent it is, or whether it's broadly in line with other definitions of the word, but justification and belief aren't relevant. It just says "This is what I mean when I use this word".

A kid writing with a crayon could define his imagination as knowledge under this definition.

Sure, she can have knowledge of the things she imagines. If, instead of imagining items of information, she uses items of information about the world (facts), she can have knowledge of the world; and a mathematician can gain new knowledge about mathematics by manipulating mathematical information in his head - likewise a physicist with physics (e.g. Hawking).

You basically just defined "assertion" as knowledge.

No; my off-the-cuff definition was, "...information about the relations between certain items of information, that can be mapped onto similar items of information in similar contexts". 'Assertion' is a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief. They're entirely different.

Here is the essential problem derived by your determinism. If I asked you if aliens existed and you said "no" I would ask you "why do you believe aliens do not exist?" You would then give me "reasons" why aliens don't exist, but that is not that actual answer to the question. The real reason why you don't believe aliens existed is because the material you are composed of determined your belief that aliens do not exist.

That's rather a poor example, but if it was something that I could obtain information about, and evaluate the probabilities for, I could give you an answer based on that evaluation. The fact that my evaluation is deterministic actually makes it more reliable than an evaluation that is partly non-deterministic (random).

I really don't see your point. It sounds like you're conflating determinism and fate, but I'm not sure.

Consider an autonomous car; it can be given a goal (destination) and constraints & rules (stay between the lines on the road, obey road signs, avoid collisions, etc.), and it can then travel to the destination following those constraints by acquiring facts about the world and applying it's knowledge of the constraints and rules to them to determine how to proceed.

One could even say it acquires that information more skillfully than a human because it has more types of sensors, that are more sensitive than ours. Whether it gains and applies the knowledge gained from that information more skillfully than a human is debatable - as of now, they're typically more skillful in normal conditions, but less skillful in abnormal conditions (because they're less flexible in behaviour), judged by outcomes.

Perhaps the significant difference, relevant to knowledge, is that an autonomous car doesn't have metacognition; it may have metaknowledge, i.e. it may know what it knows and what it doesn't know in its knowledge domain, but it doesn't (yet) know that it knows; and it doesn't have understanding of what it knows, in the sense that it can't abstract and apply the relational principles underlying its knowledge - but then it doesn't need to.

I have no reason to believe the material in your body is capable of determining truths about the world. You might say, "oh because science", but everything you say is determined by the material in your body...which I have no reason to believe is capable of determining truths about the world. Why should I believe water and carbon and some other things when properly combined can determine if aliens exists?

Because that dynamic structure, made out of water and carbon and some other things, has sensors that feed it data about the world, storage for information and knowledge, and a sophisticated processor that can pattern-match incoming data with the stored information, and use stored knowledge to make (fairly) reliable deductions and inferences from it.

You say that if determinism is true I would also be determined and so my points are wrong.

I didn't say they were wrong, I echoed what you said, "you might think that your points have validity, but that is just the perception that was determined by your material substrate."

In other words, what we think about the validity of our respective points is determined by the information and knowledge in, and functioning of, our brains, which are all the result of the interaction of our unique genetic inheritances with our unique life experiences. I don't know about you, but I want my decisions and choices to be based on my accumulated life experience, what I've learned about the world - that's what makes them uniquely my decisions and choices.

But your belief in determinism is self defeating, you can't tell me you're right! You mention this bit about free will not being a choice.

I don't think it is self-defeating - I don't see how you reach that conclusion; self-defeating how?

The quote about free will not being a choice was a Bashevis witticism. It encapsulates the idea that, in a deterministic world where we don't have detailed conscious access to all the determinants of our mental states, our unconstrained or coerced decisions and choices will inevitably feel like the exercise of free will.

I assume you do believe we have the perception at least of free will? Here is the irony of such an absurdly demeaning world view, under determinism, you can't even know if it's true that you don't have free will!

My view is that subjectively, we do have free will, if free will means being able to make decisions and choices according to our personal preferences, desires, goals, etc. However, objectively, those preferences, desires, goals, etc., are the result of complex deterministic processes resulting from our life experiences, etc.

If free will doesn't mean being able to make decisions and choices according to our personal preferences, desires, goals, etc., I'd be interested to know what it does involve, in practical terms.

 

[Sanoy]

Yes, in principle. In practice, it's tricky - even the simplest life we can observe today has had 3.4 billion years of evolution. We don't know what the earliest simplest replicators were like, and we're not certain of the environment they appeared in. But there's been some very promising work in recent years on a variety of hypotheses with a variety of plausible early Earth environments.

We may be fairly close to producing a simple replicator that can evolve - but there could be a probabilistic stumbling block - although life appears to have got started relatively soon after conditions were suitable, that's 'relatively soon' in geological timescales. It's possible, even likely, that the precise conditions needed are rare, and even in ideal conditions, replicator assembly may be extremely unlikely. However, when you have a whole planet of environments and hundreds of millions of years of reactions, even the extremely unlikely becomes probable. In the wider scale of things, for those still sceptical about the probabilities, there is a whole universe with trillions of potentially suitable planets, so even literally astronomical odds against become near certainties.

So scientists working in the lab may have the odds heavily stacked against them.

Any idea as to what kind of intuitions the spirit may provide?

Anything else it provides? One can't help feeling that if its only involvement is some of our intuitions, it's pretty close to not involved at all...

Still not sure what you're asking here. By 'patterns of activity', I'm talking about various paths of neuronal signalling within and between neuronal networks that can be broadly categorised or distinguished - in much the same way as tracking the movements of someone over an extended period can reveal 'patterns of activity' in their movements. Consciousness is characterised by localised clusters of neurons signalling within the cluster and also with other clusters of neurons in widely dispersed areas of the cortex and midbrain, typically in synchronized rhythms, and over characteristic timescales. These diverse areas involve those which are known to contribute to specific aspects of conscious experience; e.g. sense of self, bounds, location, ownership, agency, planning, visualising, etc. When consciousness is absent, this widescale synchronised signalling is typically absent.

I wouldn't say 'merely' - subjective experience is crucial to who and what we are.

OK. I think it's more plausible that the idea of having a soul developed from early superstitious and animistic beliefs, partly prompted by our hyperactive agency detection (HADD) and also the feeling that something seems to leave the body at death. Of course, it's a hypothesis from indirect evidence, but it's plausible, falsifiable, and more parsimonious than invoking an additional unexplained, unobserved entity.

The analogy did not involve dualism. If you find that distracting, take a watch - is it any less of a watch because it's stopped and need winding? it depends on your definition of watch; it's less of a timekeeper, but most people would say it's a stopped or run-down watch.

I think the individual is more than the mind, and I actually said, "It's a set of communicating processes, dynamic patterns of neural activity in the brain."

As I already said, it's up to you what you think personhood or individuality involves. I have only said that consciousness involves a particular mode or set of those dynamic patterns of neural activity.

Skillful means having the ability to do something well or having expertise. I think it's redundant in a definition of knowledge, as is 'innately'. I'd agree that "Knowledge <about the world> emerges from having the innately skillful ability to determine truths about the world." But even so, that's not a definition; how it emerges is not a definition of what it is.

That's simply not the case. Skill isn't necessary to gain knowledge; as long as relationships between items of information (e.g. facts or truths about the world) can be identified, however unskilfully, then knowledge is acquired.

Making a system non-deterministic means introducing randomness, which increases uncertainty, making knowledge unreliable.

AI systems that learn are increasingly not directly programmed, but are designed as neuromorphic networks that learn much as biological brains do, by example; i.e. trial and error. You might be interested in ANNABELLE, an AI that can learn the rudiments of a language and communicate using it, tabula-rasa; i.e. starting without dictionary, syntax, or grammar. It learns much as a baby does, by interaction with a trainer. Original paper and links to software & examples here.

Unless you have a strange definition of 'truth' (a fact about the world?), an AI can check for itself whether it has learned something true about the world by the same means that we do - repeated measurement/observation, and/or verifying predictions based on what has been learned.

Huh? it's a definition - it doesn't have a truth value. You can argue how useful or coherent it is, or whether it's broadly in line with other definitions of the word, but justification and belief aren't relevant. It just says "This is what I mean when I use this word".

Sure, she can have knowledge of the things she imagines. If, instead of imagining items of information, she uses items of information about the world (facts), she can have knowledge of the world; and a mathematician can gain new knowledge about mathematics by manipulating mathematical information in his head - likewise a physicist with physics (e.g. Hawking).

No; my off-the-cuff definition was, "...information about the relations between certain items of information, that can be mapped onto similar items of information in similar contexts". 'Assertion' is a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief. They're entirely different.

That's rather a poor example, but if it was something that I could obtain information about, and evaluate the probabilities for, I could give you an answer based on that evaluation. The fact that my evaluation is deterministic actually makes it more reliable than an evaluation that is partly non-deterministic (random).

I really don't see your point. It sounds like you're conflating determinism and fate, but I'm not sure.

Consider an autonomous car; it can be given a goal (destination) and constraints & rules (stay between the lines on the road, obey road signs, avoid collisions, etc.), and it can then travel to the destination following those constraints by acquiring facts about the world and applying it's knowledge of the constraints and rules to them to determine how to proceed.

One could even say it acquires that information more skillfully than a human because it has more types of sensors, that are more sensitive than ours. Whether it gains and applies the knowledge gained from that information more skillfully than a human is debatable - as of now, they're typically more skillful in normal conditions, but less skillful in abnormal conditions (because they're less flexible in behaviour), judged by outcomes.

Perhaps the significant difference, relevant to knowledge, is that an autonomous car doesn't have metacognition; it may have metaknowledge, i.e. it may know what it knows and what it doesn't know in its knowledge domain, but it doesn't (yet) know that it knows; and it doesn't have understanding of what it knows, in the sense that it can't abstract and apply the relational principles underlying its knowledge - but then it doesn't need to.

Because that dynamic structure, made out of water and carbon and some other things, has sensors that feed it data about the world, storage for information and knowledge, and a sophisticated processor that can pattern-match incoming data with the stored information, and use stored knowledge to make (fairly) reliable deductions and inferences from it.

I didn't say they were wrong, I echoed what you said, "you might think that your points have validity, but that is just the perception that was determined by your material substrate."

In other words, what we think about the validity of our respective points is determined by the information and knowledge in, and functioning of, our brains, which are all the result of the interaction of our unique genetic inheritances with our unique life experiences. I don't know about you, but I want my decisions and choices to be based on my accumulated life experience, what I've learned about the world - that's what makes them uniquely my decisions and choices.

I don't think it is self-defeating - I don't see how you reach that conclusion; self-defeating how?

The quote about free will not being a choice was a Bashevis witticism. It encapsulates the idea that, in a deterministic world where we don't have detailed conscious access to all the determinants of our mental states, our unconstrained or coerced decisions and choices will inevitably feel like the exercise of free will.

My view is that subjectively, we do have free will, if free will means being able to make decisions and choices according to our personal preferences, desires, goals, etc. However, objectively, those preferences, desires, goals, etc., are the result of complex deterministic processes resulting from our life experiences, etc.

If free will doesn't mean being able to make decisions and choices according to our personal preferences, desires, goals, etc., I'd be interested to know what it does involve, in practical terms.

If it's so unlikely that science will be able to create life from scratch why assume it is due to biochemistry...apart from presupposition?

I think the spirit might nudge us toward the presence of another spirit for example, or nudge us toward a better direction of life. Your intuition is correct, the spirit's nudgeings are very minute and easy to miss.

The law of identity states that two things are the same thing when and only when everything that is true of one thing is also true of another thing. So if this 'neuronal cluster', is the same thing as my mind then everything that is true of mind will also be true of the 'neuronal cluster'. Can you state that this is the case? Feel free to swap out 'neuronal cluster' with a designation you feel fits.

I would say it's more likely the idea of a soul and the varying religions come from the innate concept of moral values and duties. That one will be held accountable for their actions.

What time it is and the device that reports what time it is are not the same thing. That will be the problem with just about any analogy you present as it will be paradoxical. Think about it. You cannot come up with analogy where there are two things that are identical and you take only one away. The closest that one can get would be an equivocation of grammar or syntax.

If it's up to me to determine what an individual is then what an individual is not objective. But that is contrary to the very scientific claim you are trying to make, that the individual is objectively material.

(continued due to word count)

 

[Sanoy]

(continued)
Skill is not redundant in knowledge. Knowledge is not the ability to determine truths about the world. A child can determine truths about the world but he will be wrong about many of them. Knowledge is epistemically justified belief. This is what you lack in determinism. There is no justified reason to believe anything that comes out of your mind.

Knowledge about the true state of affairs in the world requires the skillful capability to apprehend the true state of affairs in the world. You are unable to even identify relationships truthfully under determinism. Everything you say is determined, your comments are just brain fizz. Introducing randomness to overcome your determinism is going to make anything better, random doesn't give you any more justification for your beliefs than determinism did. When AI learns something true about the world it does so because it was given a system of epistemology for which it can learn something true about the world. In this since the AI has something the deterministic mind lacks. It is more human than human.

According to your definition of knowledge, acquired knowledge does not require any justification. That is correct under determinism. Even false beliefs about the world can be considered knowledge.

So you are not confident in your off-the-cuff definition of knowledge? I'm not confident in it either.

You are not evaluating anything by any epistemic method. That is not an advantage but an incredible handicap. A programed car cannot acquire facts about the world. Knowledge of facts does not exist in determinism. The car doesn't think it's a fact that if it hits the wall it will stop. It is programed that if X then Y. It doesn't know what a wall is or even what it is. Those are abstract concrete objects. A car does not comprehend abstract objects, neither does any deterministic system. Only abstract objects can comprehend abstract objects. That AI can come close to operating correctly in regards to abstract objects in not an indication that it comprehends abstract objects. In your case you also don't know anything. Your database of knowledge is determined to be what it is and could either not be anything other than what it is (determined) or it could be a database of anything (random).

Sensors don't determine truth, they respond to an input. If a transistor gets a voltage it closes. That's it, it doesn't output truth, it doesn't record data either. Data is an abstract object which sensors do not detect.

You can't say I am wrong anymore than you can say you are right. Both are determined to believe what they believe with no justification for their beliefs. It is a self defeating world view because you can't even say you are right about your own view.

Actual free will is a requirement for rationality. As you objectively have no free will you have no rationality.

 

[Bobber]

In regard to Spirit, Soul and Body I believe it's just that. Man is a spirit, he has a soul which means how the mind is interpreting natural stimuli and he lives inside a physical body. If people are seeing a spirit or a spiritual being I wouldn't think the physical brain has anything to do with it. That which is of flesh is flesh and that which is of spirit is spirit. Two different universal orders or planes of existence. If one's spirit is outside their body if they look upon themselves they see hands and feet they have a face with eyes...the whole bit. If one is seeing we'll call it a spirit they're seeing with their spiritual eyes which has nothing to do with their physical anything. Could be wrong but such is my thought.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

If it's so unlikely that science will be able to create life from scratch why assume it is due to biochemistry...apart from presupposition?

I didn't say it was unlikely. You must have missed the part where I said we're making good progress but there might be a probabilistic stumbling block.

The researchers think organic chemistry is the most likely candidate because that is what living things are constructed of and how they work, and the basic organic molecules of which they are composed - the 'building blocks of life' - are widely available, particularly in the environments being studied.

I think the spirit might nudge us toward the presence of another spirit for example, or nudge us toward a better direction of life. Your intuition is correct, the spirit's nudgeings are very minute and easy to miss.

OK, so from possibly 'communicating the supernatural to our minds', and 'allowing a mind to ascertain spiritual things as well as apprehend abstract objects and concepts', it's now down to 'very minute nudgings' that are 'easy to miss'. Hardly seems worth having...

Makes one wonder how you know it, if they're so minute and easy to miss - and how you distinguish them from minute intuitions from the unconscious.

The law of identity states that two things are the same thing when and only when everything that is true of one thing is also true of another thing. So if this 'neuronal cluster', is the same thing as my mind then everything that is true of mind will also be true of the 'neuronal cluster'. Can you state that this is the case?

I'm saying patterns of information processing activity in the brain constitute the mind in action, conscious and unconscious. As for identity, it's a matter of viewpoints - objectively, there appears to be a one-to-one correspondence between specific brain activity, and specific behaviours and reported experience, to the extent that it is now possible to tell what someone is thinking about from examining their brain activity, e.g. identify the conceptual and semantic content of mental propositions.

Subjective experience, i.e. what it is like to be a conscious system, is not accessible to external observers, except via indirect report, using metaphor, analogy, and appeal to observer experience of similar contexts. Nevertheless, we can still identify a close correspondence between reported experience and specific brain activity.

This level of correspondence between mind activity and brain activity, and the specific effects on mind function of interference with specific brain activities, suggests that it is reasonable, for practical purposes, to equate them.

I would say it's more likely the idea of a soul and the varying religions come from the innate concept of moral values and duties. That one will be held accountable for their actions.

Studies of neonates suggest that only the simplest principles underlying moral values are innate, e.g. a sense of fairness, bias in favour helpful agents and against obstructive agents; the particular superstructure of moral values and duties that is built on those is cultural.

What time it is and the device that reports what time it is are not the same thing. That will be the problem with just about any analogy you present as it will be paradoxical. Think about it. You cannot come up with analogy where there are two things that are identical and you take only one away. The closest that one can get would be an equivocation of grammar or syntax.

I'm afraid I don't see what that has to do with the analogy; I was comparing a consciousness that is temporarily stopped with a watch that is temporarily stopped, to suggest that neither, in common understanding, is considered less of a person or watch respectively. But as I said, whether you think so depends on your precise definition - e.g. whether it depends on the system being active - and what you mean by 'less' in this context.

If it's up to me to determine what an individual is then what an individual is not objective. But that is contrary to the very scientific claim you are trying to make, that the individual is objectively material.

I said "it's up to you what you think personhood or individuality involves" in the context of whether you consider an unconscious person or individual is less of an individual; i.e. it depends on your opinion. That is saying that it's a subjective, not objective, view - although you might go along with public opinion, or whatever legal precedents there are.

I wasn't talking about whether a person is objective or subjective - that doesn't make sense as it stands; the common definition is, "a human being regarded as an individual"; I'd call that objective.

 

[Sanoy]

I didn't say it was unlikely. You must have missed the part where I said we're making good progress but there might be a probabilistic stumbling block.

The researchers think organic chemistry is the most likely candidate because that is what living things are constructed of and how they work, and the basic organic molecules of which they are composed - the 'building blocks of life' - are widely available, particularly in the environments being studied.

OK, so from possibly 'communicating the supernatural to our minds', and 'allowing a mind to ascertain spiritual things as well as apprehend abstract objects and concepts', it's now down to 'very minute nudgings' that are 'easy to miss'. Hardly seems worth having...

Makes one wonder how you know it, if they're so minute and easy to miss - and how you distinguish them from minute intuitions from the unconscious.

I'm saying patterns of information processing activity in the brain constitute the mind in action, conscious and unconscious. As for identity, it's a matter of viewpoints - objectively, there appears to be a one-to-one correspondence between specific brain activity, and specific behaviours and reported experience, to the extent that it is now possible to tell what someone is thinking about from examining their brain activity, e.g. identify the conceptual and semantic content of mental propositions.

Subjective experience, i.e. what it is like to be a conscious system, is not accessible to external observers, except via indirect report, using metaphor, analogy, and appeal to observer experience of similar contexts. Nevertheless, we can still identify a close correspondence between reported experience and specific brain activity.

This level of correspondence between mind activity and brain activity, and the specific effects on mind function of interference with specific brain activities, suggests that it is reasonable, for practical purposes, to equate them.

Studies of neonates suggest that only the simplest principles underlying moral values are innate, e.g. a sense of fairness, bias in favour helpful agents and against obstructive agents; the particular superstructure of moral values and duties that is built on those is cultural.

I'm afraid I don't see what that has to do with the analogy; I was comparing a consciousness that is temporarily stopped with a watch that is temporarily stopped, to suggest that neither, in common understanding, is considered less of a person or watch respectively. But as I said, whether you think so depends on your precise definition - e.g. whether it depends on the system being active - and what you mean by 'less' in this context.

I said "it's up to you what you think personhood or individuality involves" in the context of whether you consider an unconscious person or individual is less of an individual; i.e. it depends on your opinion. That is saying that it's a subjective, not objective, view - although you might go along with public opinion, or whatever legal precedents there are.

I wasn't talking about whether a person is objective or subjective - that doesn't make sense as it stands; the common definition is, "a human being regarded as an individual"; I'd call that objective.

It certainly didn't sound in any way shape or form that there would case for a bio chemical origin of life anytime soon. So far the only thing we do know that produces life is life.

Most of the religions on the planet, which make the majority of the world, believe very much that the gentle nudging of the spirit are more important than nudgings of the body. In fact in my own belief we are all better off living more spiritually than fleshly. You say it's hardly worth having but in your world view there is no objective worth, so even the barbaric shovings of the body either has no objective worth.

The law of identity states that if everything is true of one thing is also true of another thing they are the same thing. If that is not the case they are not the same thing. That subjective experience cannot be observed externally is a thing that is true of brain states but not the mind, therefore they are not the same thing. That A happens when B happens is no indication that A is B, especially given the law of identity.

I would say that's right, the concepts that are innately apprehended are simple. Moral values and duties are apprehended simply later in childhood, but become complex through culture.

In the analogy the time that is reported is the consciousness, the mechanism that reports the time is the watch. No one cares about the watch, they care about the time it reports (except for when it's jewelry). Mereolologically you could debate whether it's still a watch or not, but that isn't the important question we are discussing, consciousness is. In your case you are telling me that time is the watch but that is not what a watch is, watches report time. Of course a broken watch is not equal to a working watch, so there is an objective, rather than subjective difference in magnitude there wouldn't you say? IE if you define a person as the brain (states), and the brain is less then the person is less. Law of identity.

Going back to the law of identity. If a brain state is objective, and a brain state is the same thing as a mind then minds are objective. If persons are the same things as minds then persons are objective. If a brain state is objectively expansive, and another brain state is objectively diminished, then minds are objectively diminished or expansive. If minds are objectively diminished or expansive then persons are objectively diminished or expansive. You can't flip the switch and make person-hood subjective to avoid a social/moral dilemma while holding onto an objective claim that brain-states are minds which is the source of person-hood.

You continue to act as though you are able to make truth claims about the world. But you are not actually able to know truth claims about the world, you are simply determined to make those claims and hold those beliefs. Because you believe yourself to be determined with a mixture of randomness you lack an epistemic justification for any claims of truth. I am willing to continue to let you borrow my world view for sake of conversation but why not just purchase it for free and become what you really are?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

(continued)
Skill is not redundant in knowledge. Knowledge is not the ability to determine truths about the world.

That's not what you said earlier: "Knowledge emerges from having the ... ability to determine truths about the world." You can put 'innate' and 'skilfully' in there, but without justification they're redundant qualifiers.

A child can determine truths about the world but he will be wrong about many of them.

If he's wrong about them, they're not truths. Any system attempting to determine truths about the world is potentially subject to error; child, adult, or machine.

Knowledge is epistemically justified belief. This is what you lack in determinism. There is no justified reason to believe anything that comes out of your mind.

A deterministic system can justify (verify) knowledge as I already described, by empiricism and/or forms of reasoning. I prefer to avoid using 'belief' in this context, due to its baggage, 'a high degree of confidence' is more appropriate where real-world information is concerned.

You are unable to even identify relationships truthfully under determinism.

That's clearly false - there are plenty of deterministic AI systems that can identify relationships.

Introducing randomness to overcome your determinism is going to make anything better, random doesn't give you any more justification for your beliefs than determinism did.

That was my point - introducing randomness degrades reliability and confidence - but you're the one who suggested non-determinism was the answer.

When AI learns something true about the world it does so because it was given a system of epistemology for which it can learn something true about the world. In this since the AI has something the deterministic mind lacks. It is more human than human.

Nevertheless, the AI is a deterministic system, structured to be able to learn - as per the ANNABELLE language learning example I provided. It learns in a similar way to a human child (though far more crudely), which is structured to learn through evolutionary necessity.

According to your definition of knowledge, acquired knowledge does not require any justification. That is correct under determinism. Even false beliefs about the world can be considered knowledge.

So you are not confident in your off-the-cuff definition of knowledge? I'm not confident in it either.

I wasn't redefining knowledge, I was suggesting a definition of how it might abstractly apply in terms of information processing in the context of deterministic systems; so it assumes that when the information concerns states of affairs in the world, it has a confidence level derived from justification based on sensor corroboration, redundancy, consistency with past information, fruitful prediction, etc. Just as with human knowledge in this domain, it is subject to error, but generally reliable enough to achieve real-world goals - an AI must be reasonably competent at identifying and discarding erroneous information.

A programed car cannot acquire facts about the world. Knowledge of facts does not exist in determinism. The car doesn't think it's a fact that if it hits the wall it will stop. It is programed that if X then Y. It doesn't know what a wall is or even what it is. Those are abstract concrete objects. A car does not comprehend abstract objects, neither does any deterministic system. Only abstract objects can comprehend abstract objects. That AI can come close to operating correctly in regards to abstract objects in not an indication that it comprehends abstract objects.

Autonomous cars are not programmed directly - they're hard-coded to be learning neural networks, and it's the neural network that learns, or can be trained, much as a biological entity learns. They're obviously limited in terms of knowledge domain - they don't need to know what a wall is other than a certain type of obstruction.

In your case you also don't know anything. Your database of knowledge is determined to be what it is and could either not be anything other than what it is (determined) or it could be a database of anything (random).

That clearly isn't the case for learning systems that build their knowledgebase from experience.

Sensors don't determine truth, they respond to an input. If a transistor gets a voltage it closes. That's it, it doesn't output truth, it doesn't record data either. Data is an abstract object which sensors do not detect.

The concept of data may be abstract, but data is real enough - it's the raw material of information (e.g. numbers, bits & bytes); it becomes information when interpreted in the appropriate context. For example, the sensory nerve pulses entering the brain are sensory data; when the brain interprets them in the appropriate context (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.) they become sensory information.

Actual free will is a requirement for rationality. As you objectively have no free will you have no rationality.

As it stands, that's unsupported assertion. Care to explain the rationale?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

It certainly didn't sound in any way shape or form that there would case for a bio chemical origin of life anytime soon. So far the only thing we do know that produces life is life.

What we observe to be the case now was not necessarily always the case. But following the logic of 'only life produces life', we can also say that life always produces life by a parent organism producing offspring of the same species, from one of its own cells, and containing a copy of its genetic code.

We also observe that 'life produces life' fails in the earliest times, because conditions were not suitable for life on early Earth (or the early universe, if you take panspermia seriously). As I already said, the available evidence indicates that life generally becomes simpler the further back in time we look; so it's quite reasonable to suppose the simplest form(s) arose from the abundant 'building blocks' of life present at those early times.

Most of the religions on the planet, which make the majority of the world, believe very much that the gentle nudging of the spirit are more important than nudgings of the body. In fact in my own belief we are all better off living more spiritually than fleshly.

People can believe what they like, and there is clear evidence that people often believe things that are false, or have no plausible supporting evidence. The truth or falsity of their beliefs does not depend on the number of believers or their distribution. The major contradictions between the beliefs of major faiths demonstrates that.

In the analogy the time that is reported is the consciousness, the mechanism that reports the time is the watch.

No, in the analogy, timekeeping is consciousness.

No one cares about the watch, they care about the time it reports (except for when it's jewelry). Mereolologically you could debate whether it's still a watch or not, but that isn't the important question we are discussing, consciousness is. In your case you are telling me that time is the watch but that is not what a watch is, watches report time.

No, I'm not telling you that.

Of course a broken watch is not equal to a working watch, so there is an objective, rather than subjective difference in magnitude there wouldn't you say? IE if you define a person as the brain (states), and the brain is less then the person is less.

Sure, there's an observable reduction in relevant function. Like I said, it depends on your definition of a person whether you consider them less of a person when they're unconscious, or have reduced capability of any kind. I don't define a person as their brain states.

Going back to the law of identity. If a brain state is objective, and a brain state is the same thing as a mind then minds are objective. If persons are the same things as minds then persons are objective. If a brain state is objectively expansive, and another brain state is objectively diminished, then minds are objectively diminished or expansive. If minds are objectively diminished or expansive then persons are objectively diminished or expansive. You can't flip the switch and make person-hood subjective to avoid a social/moral dilemma while holding onto an objective claim that brain-states are minds which is the source of person-hood.

The logic is good, but, in my view, the premises flawed. I don't think a brain state is the same as a mind - I think a continuous succession of certain kinds of brain states is a mind; I don't think persons are the same thing as minds - I think a person is a mind or the potential for a mind (i.e. the mind can be latent).

You continue to act as though you are able to make truth claims about the world. But you are not actually able to know truth claims about the world, you are simply determined to make those claims and hold those beliefs.

That's true - but it doesn't make those truth claims false - I'm determined to weigh up the evidence I observe and decide its truth value on the result of logical evaluation based on experience and/or techniques I have learned; it's also true that, like other people, I'm largely unaware of the influence of my unconscious on my decision-making - but, unlike many, I am aware that it has influence.

Because you believe yourself to be determined with a mixture of randomness you lack an epistemic justification for any claims of truth.

So you keep asserting.

I am willing to continue to let you borrow my world view for sake of conversation but why not just purchase it for free and become what you really are?

Apparently I'm determined not to

 

[Sanoy]

That's not what you said earlier: "Knowledge emerges from having the ... ability to determine truths about the world." You can put 'innate' and 'skillfully' in there, but without justification they're redundant qualifiers.

If he's wrong about them, they're not truths. Any system attempting to determine truths about the world is potentially subject to error; child, adult, or machine.

A deterministic system can justify (verify) knowledge as I already described, by empiricism and/or forms of reasoning. I prefer to avoid using 'belief' in this context, due to its baggage, 'a high degree of confidence' is more appropriate where real-world information is concerned.

That's clearly false - there are plenty of deterministic AI systems that can identify relationships.

That was my point - introducing randomness degrades reliability and confidence - but you're the one who suggested non-determinism was the answer.

Nevertheless, the AI is a deterministic system, structured to be able to learn - as per the ANNABELLE language learning example I provided. It learns in a similar way to a human child (though far more crudely), which is structured to learn through evolutionary necessity.

I wasn't redefining knowledge, I was suggesting a definition of how it might abstractly apply in terms of information processing in the context of deterministic systems; so it assumes that when the information concerns states of affairs in the world, it has a confidence level derived from justification based on sensor corroboration, redundancy, consistency with past information, fruitful prediction, etc. Just as with human knowledge in this domain, it is subject to error, but generally reliable enough to achieve real-world goals - an AI must be reasonably competent at identifying and discarding erroneous information.

Autonomous cars are not programmed directly - they're hard-coded to be learning neural networks, and it's the neural network that learns, or can be trained, much as a biological entity learns. They're obviously limited in terms of knowledge domain - they don't need to know what a wall is other than a certain type of obstruction.

That clearly isn't the case for learning systems that build their knowledgebase from experience.

The concept of data may be abstract, but data is real enough - it's the raw material of information (e.g. numbers, bits & bytes); it becomes information when interpreted in the appropriate context. For example, the sensory nerve pulses entering the brain are sensory data; when the brain interprets them in the appropriate context (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.) they become sensory information.

As it stands, that's unsupported assertion. Care to explain the rationale?

I was worried that "determine" would fall into equivocation. It has two senses, to cause, and to ascertain. When you remove the "skillful" it kind of floats without a certain meaning. I mean here to cause -you can't cause something to be Knowledge, it has to be ascertained. From now on I will bold it when it refers to "cause". If I forget, just remember that when it comes to your world view it's cause, and when it comes to my world view it is ascertain.

A deterministic system can verify knowledge, but only through an external system of epistemology. It would be circular for a deterministic system to verify it's own conclusions through it's own deterministic system. Deterministic learning systems can only do this because beings with rationality can define a system of epistemology for it to use.

The capacity for rationality is the answer, not randomness or determinism.

In a deterministic system, corroboration just is a trending determinism, it's not a 'natural' epistemology. If every sensor in the world 'detects' something, that doesn't mean that the something exists. Every sensor in the world could be wrong. And the worst part about it is, no one would know. Your mindset here, in referring to corroboration, is based on a rational epistemology, in particular that branch known as science. One must know the sensor is working, and that can't be established through determinism, because you will either have the belief it is working or the belief that it isn't working for no other reason that you are determined to have that belief.

That is the point, a car or any deterministic system will never 'know' what a wall is. It can only be programed, by rational people, to appear to operate as if it does 'know' what a wall is. A description is fine tuned enough to allow the system to operate within a functional range of association to an abstract object. But it will never know what a wall is, or an obstruction. It is just a revolving stack of dominoes. And so is any person under determinism.

Abstract objects like 'data' are real, but they are immaterial. In our case they are transmitted by material, but they are not the material. These pixels of 1 and 2 are not data, the one and the two are data. Data is only perceptible by a rational mind. Material does not perceive abstract objects, what is perceived as a reaction is merely the natural causative forces. Put another way, while you may have the perception you are making rational statements, you are merely operating under the natural causative forces of the ingredients that make up your physical body.

Why is free will required for rationality? This is understood in philosophy. Free will and determinism are mutually exclusive. If you are determined you are not rationalizing anything, your mental fizzing is simply caused by natural forces. You cannot be rational and determined, those are mutually exclusive. Under determinism, the guy that believes the world is round is no more rational than the guy that was just shot in the head that concludes that the world is a big stick of chewing gum. Neither could have come to believe anything other than what they believe. Matter is not rational, it's contingent.

Lets not get into evolution unless we need to. I will say that I didn't understand your point about where "life produces life" fails. I understand it on naturalism, but not before that presupposition. But we don't need to get into that I don't think, not so far anyway.

I am not claiming religion is true because many believe it, I'm simply claiming via numbers that there is an innate and broad sense of one having a spirit.

If "time keeping" is an essential component of a watch, then it ceases to be a watch when it fails to keep time. Like I said, any attempt at a metaphor using two different descriptions that are supposed to refer to the same thing will in fact lose both things at the loss of one or equivocate.

If a person is either a mind or the potential for mind, then abortion is murder. I hope I am mistaken, but I assume you will want to further delineate that description so as to retain abortion.

You say "I'm determined to weigh up the evidence I observe and decide its truth value on the result of logical evaluation based on experience and/or techniques I have learned"

You can't decide Furious, you are determined... remember? Decisions are the luxury of people like myself, who are not determined. And logic? what logic does matter have?

Correct, I can only assert that you lack an epistemic justification for any claims of truth. But this is justified by your inability to present an epistemic justification for what you claim is the truth. You have been trying to present this, but you are borrowing my world view to do it.

 

[DogmaHunter]

What is your opinion of UFOs, ESP, poltergeists, etc? I realize that many people think these topics are laughable, but there are probably others who have experienced them (whatever they are). So what do you think is the explanation for this stuff?

I think people have experiences that they can't explain and then borrow from pop-culture to try and explain it away. I fully acknowledge that a lot of them, also really do believe what they say and that they are sincere. I just think they are extremely mistaken and in some cases rather gullible. But I'm open minded. I'm willing to look at any evidence they can present - but none of them seem to have more then anecdotes or hearsay.

I also think that a good portion of them lie just to try and be interesting or gain something.

 

[cloudyday2]

I think people have experiences that they can't explain and then borrow from pop-culture to try and explain it away. I fully acknowledge that a lot of them, also really do believe what they say and that they are sincere. I just think they are extremely mistaken and in some cases rather gullible. But I'm open minded. I'm willing to look at any evidence they can present - but none of them seem to have more then anecdotes or hearsay.

I also think that a good portion of them lie just to try and be interesting or gain something.

Actually there is some evidence for UFOs such as sightings by multiple witnesses from difference vantages, radar data, etc. The problem is knowing what was seen. Usually there is an explanation such as a bright Venus or a secret aircraft.

Traditionally there has not been very much hoaxing in the UFO reports. Maybe there is more hoaxing today. I see a lot of fake stuff on youtube.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Actually there is some evidence for UFOs such as sightings by multiple witnesses from difference vantages, radar data, etc. The problem is knowing what was seen. Usually there is an explanation such as a bright Venus or a secret aircraft.

Traditionally there has not been very much hoaxing in the UFO reports. Maybe there is more hoaxing today. I see a lot of fake stuff on youtube.

In the strict sense of the word (unidentified flying object), without the baggage of alien space ships, I'll agree.

The thing is that there are always dozens of possible explanations that are all incredibly more likely then actual alien visits. A claim as extraordinary as alien visitations, requires a lot more evidence then some blip on a radar or a fuzzy photograph with a washed out spot in the sky.

 

[Astrophile]

It certainly didn't sound in any way shape or form that there would case for a bio chemical origin of life anytime soon. So far the only thing we do know that produces life is life.

If God could create a whole universe that was fine-tuned for the existence of life, why couldn't he create a universe in which living organisms could develop from systems of organic compounds or where the first single-celled organisms could evolve and diversify into the varied and complex biosphere that we have now?

 

[Sanoy]

If God could create a whole universe that was fine-tuned for the existence of life, why couldn't he create a universe in which living organisms could develop from systems of organic compounds or where the first single-celled organisms could evolve and diversify into the varied and complex biosphere that we have now?

That would be an example of life producing life. God, who is alive, is essential to the scenario given.

 

[cloudyday2]

In the strict sense of the word (unidentified flying object), without the baggage of alien space ships, I'll agree.

The thing is that there are always dozens of possible explanations that are all incredibly more likely then actual alien visits. A claim as extraordinary as alien visitations, requires a lot more evidence then some blip on a radar or a fuzzy photograph with a washed out spot in the sky.

One problem in debating UFOs is that each person is likely to have a different type of UFO report in mind, so they tend to talk past each other.

Another problem in UFOs is the interest and involvement of the US defense people. Obviously some UFOs are sightings of secret projects, but also the US government views the public interest in UFOs as something that needs to be managed. I don't know that the US government understands or even cares about the truly unidentified UFOs, but it clearly isn't trying to help UFO buffs (like myself) to understand LOL. Basically they are muddying the waters even further.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I was worried that "determine" would fall into equivocation. It has two senses, to cause, and to ascertain. When you remove the "skillful" it kind of floats without a certain meaning. I mean here to cause -you can't cause something to be Knowledge, it has to be ascertained. From now on I will bold it when it refers to "cause". If I forget, just remember that when it comes to your world view it's cause, and when it comes to my world view it is ascertain.

I can usually determine which meaning is meant from the context. I don't see how the presence or absence of 'skillful' has any effect on 'determine' in that sentence - to me it only makes sense as 'ascertain'.

A deterministic system can verify knowledge, but only through an external system of epistemology. It would be circular for a deterministic system to verify it's own conclusions through it's own deterministic system. Deterministic learning systems can only do this because beings with rationality can define a system of epistemology for it to use.

Learning systems learn by trial and error from what is effective or rewarding and what isn't - just as pretty much all but the simplest forms of life do; an external epistemology is not necessary.

The capacity for rationality is the answer, not randomness or determinism.

Determinstic systems can be rational agents - AI systems can learn to maximise the benefits of their actions with respect to their goals, which is rational behaviour. Reasoning capabilities can include automated reasoning, case-based reasoning, commonsense reasoning, fuzzy reasoning, geometric reasoning, non-monotonic reasoning, model-based reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, causal reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial reasoning, or temporal reasoning. Some of these may need to be designed in, but most forms can be found in the evolved reasoning capabilities of the simpler mammals, or even some invertebrates (a certain octopod mollusc comes to mind).

In a deterministic system, corroboration just is a trending determinism, it's not a 'natural' epistemology. If every sensor in the world 'detects' something, that doesn't mean that the something exists. Every sensor in the world could be wrong. And the worst part about it is, no one would know.

If actions based on the interpretation of sensory data consistently have utility, the system will learn this relationship and repeat them, otherwise it won't; this is how sensory data is 'right' or 'wrong'. In practice, if the sensory data bears a consistent relation to aspects of the world relevant to its goals, a sophisticated learning system can learn to interpret them appropriately. This is true of human senses too.

Your mindset here, in referring to corroboration, is based on a rational epistemology, in particular that branch known as science. One must know the sensor is working, and that can't be established through determinism, because you will either have the belief it is working or the belief that it isn't working for no other reason that you are determined to have that belief.

Belief is not necessary, only utility.

That is the point, a car or any deterministic system will never 'know' what a wall is. It can only be programed, by rational people, to appear to operate as if it does 'know' what a wall is.

Not programmed; it learns that a wall is an obstruction/barrier/constraint.

A description is fine tuned enough to allow the system to operate within a functional range of association to an abstract object. But it will never know what a wall is, or an obstruction. It is just a revolving stack of dominoes. And so is any person under determinism.

Again, a learning system refines its model of the relevant environment through experience; the more experience of varied environments, the better the model.

The significant differences between non-human learning systems and humans in this respect are the breadth of problem domain - humans are excellent generalizers with exceptional abilities for conceptual abstraction; and metacognition - the ability to know they are thinking/reasoning, and to use that knowledge. Both are features of a sophisticated additional level of cognitive abstraction; high-level features that evolved under pressures for flexible behaviour, abstract modelling of past and future 'what-if' scenarios, and sophisticated social interaction (e.g. behavioural modelling of self and others). But some other creatures have metacognition, albeit less sophisticated, and there's no reason, in principle, why an AI could not also have it, if it was useful (this may actually be required fairly soon, when autonomous AIs are required to explain their decisions).

Abstract objects like 'data' are real, but they are immaterial. In our case they are transmitted by material, but they are not the material. These pixels of 1 and 2 are not data, the one and the two are data.

I think that's a confusion of map and territory. The concept of data is abstract, but the data are real, whether photons, vibrations, or pulses of electricity. They become information (i.e. informative) when they can be interpreted by a system in respect of some context, which involves matching the pattern of the data to some internal representation (recognition) and, typically, the triggering of associated activity (meaning).

Data is only perceptible by a rational mind. Material does not perceive abstract objects, what is perceived as a reaction is merely the natural causative forces. Put another way, while you may have the perception you are making rational statements, you are merely operating under the natural causative forces of the ingredients that make up your physical body.

I see it as two different levels of description, each with its own language. I'm talking in terms of a low-level information processing view, you're talking in terms of the higher-level conceptual abstractions which we commonly use to discuss human affairs - but they're different views of the same things.

I prefer to use the lower-level information-processing view because it highlights the similarities between different kinds of IP systems, whereas - as I mentioned previously - the higher level abstractions like 'mind' are ill-defined and have strong associations, which can lead to fallacious thinking, such as begging the question; e.g. the idea that humans have minds and machines don't, and it takes a mind to reason, therefore machines can't reason, etc., when the context is really about forms of information processing in humans and machines, i.e. the mind, in this context, is just another information processor.

Why is free will required for rationality? This is understood in philosophy. Free will and determinism are mutually exclusive. If you are determined you are not rationalizing anything, your mental fizzing is simply caused by natural forces. You cannot be rational and determined, those are mutually exclusive. Under determinism, the guy that believes the world is round is no more rational than the guy that was just shot in the head that concludes that the world is a big stick of chewing gum. Neither could have come to believe anything other than what they believe. Matter is not rational, it's contingent.

I think this is an error. The guy that believes the world is round may be a person who is determined by his heritage, development, and life experiences, to be the sort of person that learns how to infer from his observations that the world is round. That his actions are causally determined doesn't make them less rational - the term applies to explicitly causal behaviour - utilitarian behaviour. Reasoning requires reasons, it's deterministic, logical; random behaviour is not, generally, useful (unless for throwing a predator off balance).

When I make a decision, I want it to be determined by my past experience, my personal preferences and goals, and any other relevant information I have access to - that is what makes it uniquely my decision - and I'm happy to acknowledge that my personal preferences and goals are also determined by what makes me the person I am - how my genetic inheritance has interacted with my environment and experiences growing up, the things I thought about as a consequence, and so-on.

I really don't see how introducing non-deterministic behaviour can do anything but degrade the quality of decisions - I know that in signal processing, introducing a level of random noise can be beneficial at times, and the brain does use this in some sensory processing, but not - as far as I know - in high-level cortical functions.

...I will say that I didn't understand your point about where "life produces life" fails.

I can explain again if you wish.

I am not claiming religion is true because many believe it, I'm simply claiming via numbers that there is an innate and broad sense of one having a spirit.

Sure; the same applies to superstitions and magical thinking. And?

If "time keeping" is an essential component of a watch, then it ceases to be a watch when it fails to keep time.

So by the same logic, if consciousness is an essential property of a person, they cease to be a person as soon as they lose consciousness.

Well, I don't think people generally think about watches or people that way. If someone hands me a watch that isn't running and says it's a good time-keeper, I don't call him a liar 'because it isn't a watch'; I wind it up and see if it does keep good time. Similarly, if someone shows me their friend who's unconscious and says he's a good person, I don't call him a liar; I simply assume that means the friend is a good person when he's conscious. YMMV.

If a person is either a mind or the potential for mind, then abortion is murder. I hope I am mistaken, but I assume you will want to further delineate that description so as to retain abortion.

Yes, the termination of life, whether in euthanasia or abortion is really a very complex area of the philosophy of life, with a variety of arguments, complicated by differing moral and religious views. In respect of abortion, I'm inclined to the idea that a foetus isn't a person until it has some minimal capacity for awareness, particularly the capacity for suffering, e.g. awareness of pain, which requires some development of the brain - though it's not clear to me precisely where the line is; development timescales are not uniform, so limits, like the UK's 24 weeks, are somewhat arbitrary - and probably a compromise based more on the capacity for self-sustaining life outside the womb than for sentience...

There's also the problematic distinction between biological and biographical life made by philosophers like James Rachels, involving the difference between living and 'having a life' i.e. some measure of quality of life. Should we allow a damaged foetus, that has not yet had a life, to be born to a life that is considered likely to be 'not worth living'? What are the criteria, and who can make such a judgement?

You say "I'm determined to weigh up the evidence I observe and decide its truth value on the result of logical evaluation based on experience and/or techniques I have learned"

You can't decide Furious, you are determined... remember? Decisions are the luxury of people like myself, who are not determined. And logic? what logic does matter have?

Of course I can - I can decide between options that experience tells me are more or less rewarding - something that almost all living things can do; in fact, I can decide using any of the forms of reasoning mentioned above for AIs (automated reasoning, case-based reasoning, commonsense reasoning, fuzzy reasoning, geometric reasoning, non-monotonic reasoning, model-based reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, causal reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial reasoning, or temporal reasoning).

I agree that if you had all the available information, it might be possible to predict with certainty what I would do, but human behaviour, in general, is surprisingly predictable anyway. But there is also the issue of unpredictability due to non-linear dynamics (chaos), which can make systems unpredictable in practice, and appears to be involved in brain function.

However, we don't consciously have access to more than a small number of the determinants of our behaviour, and in many cases we're mistaken about those, making post-hoc rationalizations, so not only do they subjectively feel like 'free' choices, we often actively convince ourselves they had a rational basis.

Correct, I can only assert that you lack an epistemic justification for any claims of truth. But this is justified by your inability to present an epistemic justification for what you claim is the truth.

All that is necessary is that it works. Most of human experience is not of what is 'really' out there in the world, but useful constructs and approximations - for example, there are no colours out there, just a continuum of frequencies of light that we use as guidelines to generate colours and tones - that vary according to context although the frequencies of the light do not.

 

[Sanoy]

I can usually determine which meaning is meant from the context. I don't see how the presence or absence of 'skillful' has any effect on 'determine' in that sentence - to me it only makes sense as 'ascertain'.

When learning systems learn by trial and error an external system of determining error is brought in. The ability of a light sensor to react correctly is based on the observation of a rational agent. That rational agent provides the criteria of what is error and what is not. A rational agent is required, because a determined person is in no better position to know error than the sensor.

AI systems can only ''maximize benefits" or fine tune utility because a rational agent has defined parameters for the learning system to operate under. That is the essential purpose for which any processing unit is created, it purpose and operating behavior are defined externally. But this whole appeal to AI is misplaced because it is non sequitur. AI would appear rational if it's creators are rational, so the outcome that an AI can appear rational does not solidify the premise that deterministic matter can have rationality. More simply, that a baseball is hit by a bat does not indicate whether is was pitched by a pitcher or machine. The only way to present a case that you are determined and rational is between the ingredients you are composed of and the end result of your experience.

What is utility is defined by belief!

Humans come into the world capable of abstract thought and metacognition. They create AI and define for it a deterministic system of parameters that result in behavior that approximates the behavior of abstract thought. The AI begins at base as a deterministic system that does not contain abstract thought and metacognition. That is indicative that determinism is not the cause of metacognition and abstract thought.

Real has 2 definitions, existing as a thing and being a fact. The idea of a map and territory is the very thing I was trying to convey. That data is not a material to be detected, but is real and refers to some thing, situation, or condition.

Here is the thing with information processing. A process is objective oriented. There is a desired outcome to be acquired. While the thing doing the process may not require a goal it must be tuned to one internally or externally. That tuneing is defined by some form of epistemology where in the goal is oriented toward some truth about the world. A process is very much like curling in that you manipulate and prepare a condition of determinism via an intentional agent. You sweep the ice in such a way that it determines the outcome of the goal in mind by the intentional agent. Matter, is not 'about' anything. Being 'about something is the luxory of intentional beings.

The guy that determines that the world is round is not doing so by observation, that is an intentional state. He determines that the world is round because of the ingredients that make up his body, and those that make up the external causal forces that acted upon his matter.

You say "When I make a decision, I want it to be determined by my past experience, my personal preferences and goals, and any other relevant information I have access to - that is what makes it uniquely my decision -
But decisions Don't exist under determinism! And a goal is an intentional state which matter does not have.

Under determinism it cannot be known whether determinism is true. Nothing can be known to be true under determinism. So in every sense possible it is a complete degradation of epistemology.

Under dualism, no one ceases to be conscious, they only cease to be conscious of the physical world.

I agree with you on the exchange of watches, but that is where the analogy departs. Mereology is different for different things.

I was hoping against statistics you would be against abortion. But since you are okay with it could you refine your statement of a person either having a mind or the potential for a mind so as not to conflict with your stance on abortion. A fetus has the potential for a mind.

No, if you are determined to pick option A you can't decide on option B. That is logically impossible, you are in square circle territory. You are simply living in my world claiming not to be.

You say "All that is necessary is that it works". Sure, it may be all that is necessary to remain alive, but not know the truth about anything, it's not even sufficient to know whether you are even determined. I would call it a self refutimg belief but the system isn't even sufficient for a belief because a belief is an intentional state. But let's say for a moment that the fundamental forces happening to and from the ingredients that make up our body, and environment are determining ourselves to behave in accordance to the actual truths about our world. Why should the forces of matter be so arranged as to determine true behavior within a collection of matter. Why does dirty water have the causal forces to effect behavior that is in accordance with actual truths about the world and can those forces be measured?

Also, verbally identity a part or section in the body where everything that is true of my mind is also true of that part or section.

 

[Astrophile]

That would be an example of life producing life. God, who is alive, is essential to the scenario given.

I think that you may be missing the point. As I understand it, most creationists say that God did create the universe but that He created it in such a way that life could not develop from non-living matter and that macro-evolution (e.g. swans and ducks, or kestrels and sparrowhawks, or cattle and sheep, or ladybirds and stag beetles, being descended from common ancestors) is impossible, so that God had to create every kind of animal, plant, fungus and micro-organism separately in essentially their present forms.