Evolution and awareness
If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not provide us with any true awareness of anything (including that). As we are aware of some things, we are not wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces.
1. If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not give us an awareness of anything
2. Our faculties of awareness do provide us with some awareness of something
3. Therefore our faculties of awareness are not wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces
Here is my argument for the truth of the first premise. Imagine some clouds form into shapes that appear to spell out "there's a pie in your the oven". Are you being told something? No. If unguided - by which I mean, unguided by any agency - natural forces produced those shapes in the sky, then it was not imparting information to you. It was just pure fluke that, to you, the clouds appeared to be trying to tell you something. They were not 'trying' to tell you anything, for they are not agents and so are not in the 'trying' business.
Does anything change if, coincidentally, there is in fact a pie in your the oven? Obviously not. If you acquired the true belief that there is a pie in your oven in this way, then although your belief is - by coincidence - true, this does not magically mean that you were being given information by the clouds, and your belief, though true, does not constitute knowledge.
At first the analysis we might give here is that the reason you don't 'know' that there is a pie in your oven is that it was just coincidental that the clouds formed those shapes and that the belief these shapes caused you to acquire was in fact true.
But I think that can't be correct, for just imagine that putting the pie in the oven somehow did actually cause the clouds to form into those shapes. Imagine, if you like, that the steam coming out of your oven as the pie cooks is what forms into those shapes and that this wouldn't have happened had there been no pie in your oven. Well, it seems just as clear in this case that you did not acquire knowledge that there was a pie in your oven from those cloud shapes, just a true belief.
It seems to me that what's preventing you from acquiring knowledge in this sort of case is that you have acquired a true belief from an 'apparent' representation, not a real one. It is not sufficient that your belief about the pie was caused by a pie - that is, caused by something answering to the content of your belief - for it nevertheless remains the case that the pie was not trying to communicate with you (likewise for the clouds the pie created). That is, the pie was not using the clouds as a means of communicating its location to you.
If that's correct, then surely this applies to all of the beliefs that one acquires? For example, imagine that it seems to you that you are perceiving a pie in the oven and this is how you have acquired the belief that there is a pie in the oven. However, you are actually having an accurate dream. That is, your body is indeed in front of the oven and your eyes are so positioned that, were you to awake, you would perceive the pie in the oven. But you are actually fast asleep and, by pure coincidence, you are dreaming that you are in exactly the position you are actually in and seeing exactly what you would in fact be seeing were you not dreaming (such that if you were to awake right now, this would seem like blinking).
Well, it seems just as clear in this case that your belief that there is a pie in the oven does not constitute knowledge that there is a pie in the oven. And though it is a huge coincidence that the content of your dream experience is introspectively indiscernible from what you'd have seen had you been awake, we have seen already that this is not what explains why your belief fails to constitute an item of knowledge.
What explains this failure to know is the fact that no one was trying to convey to you that there was a pie in the oven by means of your dream states. And that will hold true of your perceptual states as well, or at least it will if the faculty that puts you in them is one that is wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces.
So, in essence if our faculties of awareness - or rather, 'faculties of awareness' - are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then none of us are 'perceiving' reality at all. Rather, we are - at best - having accurate dreams. But accurate dreams do not furnish us with knowledge.
What about the second premise? Well, I take it that any attempt to deny this premise will undermine itself. For if, on the basis of what I have said above combined with a conviction that we are indeed a product of unguided evolutionary processes, you are persuaded that we are not aware of anything, then you will have to admit that you are not aware of that too. Which makes no real sense.
1. If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not give us an awareness of anything
2. Our faculties of awareness do provide us with some awareness of something
3. Therefore our faculties of awareness are not wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces
Here is my argument for the truth of the first premise. Imagine some clouds form into shapes that appear to spell out "there's a pie in your the oven". Are you being told something? No. If unguided - by which I mean, unguided by any agency - natural forces produced those shapes in the sky, then it was not imparting information to you. It was just pure fluke that, to you, the clouds appeared to be trying to tell you something. They were not 'trying' to tell you anything, for they are not agents and so are not in the 'trying' business.
Does anything change if, coincidentally, there is in fact a pie in your the oven? Obviously not. If you acquired the true belief that there is a pie in your oven in this way, then although your belief is - by coincidence - true, this does not magically mean that you were being given information by the clouds, and your belief, though true, does not constitute knowledge.
At first the analysis we might give here is that the reason you don't 'know' that there is a pie in your oven is that it was just coincidental that the clouds formed those shapes and that the belief these shapes caused you to acquire was in fact true.
But I think that can't be correct, for just imagine that putting the pie in the oven somehow did actually cause the clouds to form into those shapes. Imagine, if you like, that the steam coming out of your oven as the pie cooks is what forms into those shapes and that this wouldn't have happened had there been no pie in your oven. Well, it seems just as clear in this case that you did not acquire knowledge that there was a pie in your oven from those cloud shapes, just a true belief.
It seems to me that what's preventing you from acquiring knowledge in this sort of case is that you have acquired a true belief from an 'apparent' representation, not a real one. It is not sufficient that your belief about the pie was caused by a pie - that is, caused by something answering to the content of your belief - for it nevertheless remains the case that the pie was not trying to communicate with you (likewise for the clouds the pie created). That is, the pie was not using the clouds as a means of communicating its location to you.
If that's correct, then surely this applies to all of the beliefs that one acquires? For example, imagine that it seems to you that you are perceiving a pie in the oven and this is how you have acquired the belief that there is a pie in the oven. However, you are actually having an accurate dream. That is, your body is indeed in front of the oven and your eyes are so positioned that, were you to awake, you would perceive the pie in the oven. But you are actually fast asleep and, by pure coincidence, you are dreaming that you are in exactly the position you are actually in and seeing exactly what you would in fact be seeing were you not dreaming (such that if you were to awake right now, this would seem like blinking).
Well, it seems just as clear in this case that your belief that there is a pie in the oven does not constitute knowledge that there is a pie in the oven. And though it is a huge coincidence that the content of your dream experience is introspectively indiscernible from what you'd have seen had you been awake, we have seen already that this is not what explains why your belief fails to constitute an item of knowledge.
What explains this failure to know is the fact that no one was trying to convey to you that there was a pie in the oven by means of your dream states. And that will hold true of your perceptual states as well, or at least it will if the faculty that puts you in them is one that is wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces.
So, in essence if our faculties of awareness - or rather, 'faculties of awareness' - are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then none of us are 'perceiving' reality at all. Rather, we are - at best - having accurate dreams. But accurate dreams do not furnish us with knowledge.
What about the second premise? Well, I take it that any attempt to deny this premise will undermine itself. For if, on the basis of what I have said above combined with a conviction that we are indeed a product of unguided evolutionary processes, you are persuaded that we are not aware of anything, then you will have to admit that you are not aware of that too. Which makes no real sense.
Comments (413)
If he thinks contradictions are possible, Bart will not be in a position to consider your reasoned arguments.
Based on what Banno points out and what you've said elsewhere, you don't have an answer to the problem of pain because God can do all evil as well as good. So he can fool us all he wants, making us confused and miserable. So if matter alone is not the explanation for perception, we can also say a God that that is not bound by rules is not the answer either.
That's not a good start.
Quoting Gregory
Er, no, that's not anything I've said anywhere. And relevance to the OP? Christ, can't any of you actually focus on the OP and not on me and try and bloody argue something?!
Go read an SEP page on perception or Gettier cases or something (not that I've read them - I read the articles and books they're based on - but it's what everyone around here reads and regurgitates) then read the OP and try and engage in some kind of philosophical debate or go away and be confused all over someone else's thread. Buddhists! Jeez.
I was pointing out that you need to put something in the place of matter as causing sensations and that your idea of God does not work in this regard. If you have another explanation in regard to epistemology do offer it
Well you used entirely the wrong words to point that out.
Address the OP or go away.
You have failed to address how being aware of a pie being in the oven is connected to evolution. Surely when humans began their development there were no pies nor ovens. But the early humans did look at the clouds for messages.
And what does awareness have to do with knowledge. What we are aware of is not allows truth, that is a fact. But if we are not aware of something, then it cannot be knowledge.
Well we might not understand what matter is so we can't know whether we think with it or something else. The idea of soul you have in your consciousness might be the proper thought with regard to matter and your brain. It is possible we get fooled by these ideas. Logic might apply to the universe but our logic might not because we might assign ideas of mind to something outside matter when it really springs from matter. I don't think it's a very important issue in the context it's often put in.
For example plant life, simple organisms, complex organisms, brains, brains with awareness.
And could you expand on why the "faculty of awareness" could not develop by a physical process.
They fail in every case: that's what I'm arguing. That 'if' our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary processes - that is, if we just evolved them - then they never give us any real awareness of anything.
I would have to repeat the OP to explain this - but I argued it using cases where it is quite clear that awareness has not been achieved, and then showed that this would be the case across the board if blind evolutionary forces had developed our faculties.
I am arguing that if our faculties are a product of unguided evolution, then they do 'not' provide us with any awareness of the pie in the oven. I argued this by showing how the lack of agential guidance would mean that our situation is that of someone having an accurate dream about a pie. I am somewhat puzzled, then, that you should ask me to show you the connection given that the entire OP is devoted to doing precisely that.
I do not understand your question. We are aware of things, yes? I said premise 2 was true and that denying it would commit one to a nonsensical position.
So we 'are' aware of things.
I then argued that we would 'not' be aware of anything if unguided evolution had furnished us with our 'faculties of awareness'.
Thus, I conclude that our faculties of awareness are not wholly the product of unguided evolution.
This was all in the OP.
Where's the argument that matter is not mighty enough in its substance to provide perception once the matter rolls, meshes, and forms randomly into the proper structure? We know what a pie is like an animal knows what meat is. Is your argument that abstract thinking itself can't come from matter? That's what I thought the OP was about at first
In the OP!!!
Er, what?!? No, I really am not! You're fired.
I've read it twice and the OP is not very clear and probably not very good as an argument. Also, why can't you control your emotions in discussions.
That's a different topic. I am arguing that in order for our faculties of awareness actually to give us any awareness of anything, they'd need to be designed by an agent for that very purpose, otherwise we're just having accurate dreams.
Maybe the "agent" gave us dreams
That's your analysis. I would give a very different one. But politeness prevents me from providing it.
Can you explain what you mean by "faculties of awareness"?
Something else you mentioned was the term "imparting information". Is that just common usage or do you envision information pixies riding light beams?
So, I seem currently to be visually aware of a computer monitor. If, however, my faculty of vision is wholly the product of unguided evolutionary processes, then I am not seeing the computer monitor. Rather, I am having a dream of a computer monitor induced in me (albeit by, among other things, a computer monitor).
The sensible faculties are through which awareness operates, but the faculties do not create awareness, right? The faculty of vision does not create awareness, right?
Oh stop asking sneery questions. Here's a question for you, Mark Noclue. What's the difference between a bot and an actual person?
I am not sure I like your phrasing. Our faculties are the means by which we gain awareness, but faculties do not themselves perceive things and when we perceive things we are not perceiving faculties. We perceive with our sight, but we do not see our sight and our sight itself sees nothing. If that is the same as what you're saying, then yes. But I am not sure it is.
No, that's not the answer I want. If I am a bot - and I'm not - are we having a conversation?
I am assuming in light of the responses on your thread, especially the ones that have been deleted, is the cause for you being leery about my phrasing. Otherwise there is no reason not to "like" my phrasing, since it is precisely describing what's going on.
My other question to you is about this "agency/agent" you mention, Is it the christian agent?.
I took the point here to be that our faculties are the means of awareness (with which I agree). But I dislike 'through which awareness operates', for awareness doesn't operate as awareness is not an agent. Through which awareness is achieved - yes. Through which awareness operates - no, not really.
Quoting skyblack
Not sure what you mean here - yes, they do, but not by themselves as it depends how we acquired them.
So, if I'd just said a blanket 'yes' I'd have been agreeing with a view that isn't, in my view, quite right. But I thought the gist of what you were saying was correct: the faculties are the means by which we achieve awareness (when or if we do).
Quoting skyblack
I didn't think it did - not as far as I am concerned anyway, hence my dislike. But Iike I say, I agree with the gist.
Not to my knowledge. Why would it matter? Are you one of those lucky people who knows how things are with the universe prior to investigating it? And if I said 'yes', would that give you what you need in order to be able to know that my argument in the OP was faulty?
Here's a question for you: are you, by any chance, a naturalist?
Quoting Bartricks
It matters, because then one isn't investigating. One cannot investigate clearly if the investigation is through any kind of lens, secular or religious, sublime or mundane, so on and so forth. All my threads have touched on this. That said thank you for the prior response.
Now, if you were like that, then you'd know if wouldn't matter a dot if I was religious - you'd just assess the argument on its own merits. But you're not - you're one of them. Cut from exactly the same cloth. I wouldn't want you going around flattering yourself that you're a follower of Reason - you ain't.
You are quite right sir, i am not a "follower".of anything. Be well.
I said you're not a follower of Reason. I didn't say you weren't a follower. Again with the phrasing.
Right. I added "of anything". for emphasis. Do you know why? I don't think you would know why. You know why you wouldn't know it? Because you haven't understood the workings of reason. Do you know how i can tell? By your statements.
Had you known the workings of reason you would have understood that reason ultimately turns on itself, When reason matures in reasoning it kills itself. That's the actualization of reason. Maybe therein lies the glory of reason.
But i get it, you are simply parroting without having understood. Just a mere follower.
Not that it matters but do you know why i came to this thread? Because i felt bad so many were ganging up on you. I will leave you to observe how quickly you turned on me, in spite of your own advice to others about focusing on the OP rather than the person.
Really? This from someone who thinks you can reject an argument if the one making the argument is a Christian! You really sure you know about the workings of reason?
Quoting skyblack
Really? What does that even mean? Is your degree (should you have one) in something with 'studies' in the title?
Anyway, you've lost focus - engage with the OP!
Quoting skyblack
Er, well stop trying to be my savior - I really don't need one - and focus on the OP!!
Quoting Bartricks
Told? No. But I do know something. That the clouds make a "There's a pie in your the oven" shape. Or can we not agree on that either?
Quoting Bartricks
It very clearly seems you did. So, if we know that B is necessary for A, and we see A, then we do not know that B is the case?
And knowledge can apparently only come from some agent telling you something? Yikes.
Quoting Bartricks
Right. When was that ever suggested? What's being asked is whether or not you can know that a pie is in the oven given that a necessary consequent of the pie being in the oven is observed. The answer is yes. No one is trying to say that pies are talking to you (though you do have a history of talking to your food so I understand your confusion)
Quoting Bartricks
You don't get better than that. By definition. You cannot perceive something beyond the "apparent representations". Because "apparent representations" are by definition all you can perceive. If something being apparent automatically guarantees that it may not be knowledge then that applies to everything.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
You cannot seriously tell me you're not trolling. You don't see the irony? C'mon those were literally in the same comment, a paragraph apart.
And Mr. Guru has his own opinions.
Back to the OP, it seems our faculty of awareness is an observable state that should be unaffected by our speculating on theory 1 or theory 2, (evolution or agency).
Take this message or 'message'. If it has been generated by a bot and not a person, then it's not a real message and no conversation is occurring here. Whereas if it has been created by an agent - me - then it is a message and this is a conversation (unless you are a bot, of course).
Why is this? Well, because if this is bot-created then it is not a representation, even though it is indistinguishable from one in terms of its intrinsic features.
Apply that to all states of awareness or 'awareness'. If your visual and other sensible impressions are the product of blind evolutionary forces, then they are bot-generated (by definition - for they are blind and so do not express an agent's will). And thus though no different in terms of their intrinsic features from what they would be if an agent was responsible for them, they are nevertheless incapable of giving you any awareness of a world.
So, whether or not this message is a message or a 'message' has everything to do with who or what is generating it. Whether it is me or a bot makes a world of difference, for in one case we are conversing whereas in the other you are being duped.
To see this, imagine once more that this 'message' is bot generated. But imagine it took ages for the bot to generate it. Will that make any difference to whether or not it constitutes a message or a 'message'? Obviously not.
This is what I'm getting at. You seem to view current mental state as dependent on some agency and somehow our mental state is different if it where evolved. I'm just saying our mental state is what it is regardless.
As far as messaging, that gets to what I mentioned about information pixies. To me, mental input comes as only physical signals and our brains have to use algorithms to sort meaning. The bot example is a tricky one for me. In a format like this we would all be susceptible to being fooled since the only input is what we see on our screens.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. You say:
Quoting Bartricks
I believe this is not true. I won't justify that, I'll just look at your justification for making your claim:
Quoting Bartricks
In you premise, you talk about our faculties of awareness being created by "unguided evolutionary forces." In you justification, you talk about events in the world being created "unguided by any agency" without any reference I could find to the creation of our awareness. I don't see how this justifies your premise. I read through the rest of your posts also, but couldn't find clarification. What did I miss?
A different take on the same issue. Is it your position that Darwinian evolution is an "unguided evolutionary force." I think that brings us to the question whether natural selection can be considered a guiding agency. I know that was a controversial question back in the early days of evolutionary theory. I don't know the status of that question today.
Another question - to what extent does your argument hinge on the belief that the physical and functional basis of our faculties of awareness is too complex to have been created by natural selection and other physical and biological phenomena?
If clouds form into what look like words, are you being talked to? Don't change the example. Don't imagine there is someone manipulating the clouds. They just formed those shapes unguided by any agent. Don't ask 'how do I know there's no agent behind it?'.
Just imagine the clouds formed those shapes by fluke. Are you being talked to?
What does that have to do with whether or not "our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces?"
So okay - you don't understand the argument. What do you want me to do about it? I guess some people just can't get some points. I seem to remember reading an interview with Peter Singer where he said that he used to think everyone could understand this or that argument if it was explained clearly enough. But now, after years of teaching, he's come to the conclusion that some people are just very thick and beyond help (though he may have said it more kindly). I'm fast becoming persuaded of that as well.
When are you perceiving something? Well, when the 'representative contents' of your perceptual state matches how things are in reality. (Philosophers currently like to spill a lot of ink debating whether these states place us in direct or indirect contact with reality - it's beside the point, however).
However, for that to work the relevant mental state needs actually to have some representative contents. That is, it needs actually to be representing something to be the case.
Yet it will not be if what produced it in you were unguided processes. For example, this message here has no representative contents if it is the product of a bot. It will appear to, but it won't actually. If I, a real agent, have written it, then it really does have the representative contents it appears to have. But if a bot has produced it, then it does not have the representative contents it appears to have.
Well, if our perceptual faculties are bot-built, then the states they create in us are bot-created. And as such although they appear to have representative contents - and thus appear to be capable of giving us perceptual awareness of a world - they will not in fact have any. For only agents can make representations. Again: this is not a real message if a bot created it. For a bot cannot make representations. And so if those mental states of yours that you take to be giving you a perceptual awareness of the world are in fact bot-produced, then they are not making any representations and thus you are not in fact perceptually aware of a world at all. You are having an accurate dream.
Of course, you are not having an accurate dream; you are in fact perceptually aware of a world. FOr like I say, it is not really possible - not within the bounds of sanity anyway - to doubt that we are aware of anything. And thus we must conclude that our perceptual states are attempts by an agency to communicate to us about the world (this was Berkeley's view, incidentally - he thought the sensible world was a language a god was using to talk to us with). For then and only then would they be capable of giving us perceptual awareness of the world, for then and only then would they have representative contents.
So basically if humans are a product of evolution, then we cannot perceive. If we were created then we can. Is that what you mean?
Quoting Bartricks
But the problem here is that if no one tells me that there is a pie in the oven I will not know. So how will I ever know that there is a pie in the oven?
Quoting Bartricks
Actually it is not. It is devoted to explaining that you think we are blind without the hand of a god guiding us.
If by saying that our sense could not work if they are a product of evolution you think that you have explained, sorry but you failed to explain anything.
With either created eyes or evolved eyes I can still see the pie in the oven if it is there.
Thinking higher thoughts (not focusing on chemicals for example) is good is it leads to character building. But nobody really knowns what "God" is so atheists can sometimes be the greatest believers of them all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch-DliKSGu0
Do you know what a 'state with representative contents' is?
Perception happens by means of them.
This is a representation: I am in a room. Or at least it is if I am not a bot. If I am a bot, it isn't.
So, exactly the same squiggles. But if a bot put them on the screen, they're not a representation. Whereas if I did, then they are.
Any kind of penny dropping yet? Same squiggles. Indiscernible from your perspective. Yet whether they are representing something or not depends crucially on what created them. Not on how they appear to you or on whether they cause you to acquire true beliefs. For if a bot created those squiggles then even if I am indeed in a room, this does not magically make the squiggles express a proposition with representative contents.
So.....and this is pointless, I know and you are just going to make silly assertions again.....that applies to all states with representative contents. They won't be representing anything unless an agent was using them for that purpose. If blind natural forces created them, then though they will be indiscernible from states with representative contents, they won't actually be representing anything and thus will be incapable of being accurate. (You may still acquire accurate beliefs from them, but you won't be perceiving anything).
Thus, we are not perceiving anything if our faculties of awareness are bot-built. We will think we are. But we won't be.
We are, of course. Thus our faculties are not bot-built.
So, in a way, the note and the inky squiggles it has on it, are not representing anything to be the case. I am doing the representing. I am using the inky squiggles to do so, but that doesn't mean that the inky squiggles or the paper on which they're written are doing any representing.
What if the note was the creation of blind natural forces and you just found it on the floor (so it was not being used by an agent to convey information to you, and nor have the squiggles been created by any agent)? Are you now being told that the cat is on the mat? No. You'll think you are. But you're not. For as noted above, neither the note nor the inky markings are themselves doing any representing. In order for the note to have representative contents it needs to either have been created by a mind for the purpose of representing something to be the case, or it needs to be being used by a mind for the purpose of reprsenting something to be the case. Absent this agential input, the note is not really a 'note' at all, just an apparent one - one that you can and will easily mistake for a note.
Nothing changes if, rather than inky notes, we are talking about mental states. Philosophers talk about mental states with representative contents. So, imagine a visual impression of a cat on a mat. Well, it 'represents' the cat to be on the mat. Though, well, it doesn't. The mental state itself is not doing any representing - that's as confused as thinking that the note itself tells you the cat is on the mat. The mental state represents nothing at all unless it was either created by an agent with the express purpose of representing something to you, or is being used by an agent with the express purpose of representing something to you. If neither is true, then the mental state is not representing anything to be the case and is thus incapable of providing you with any kind of perceptual awareness of anything.
So, the visual impression of a cat on the mat is certainly capable of providing one with a perceptual awareness of a cat on a mat. But it won't do so unless it was designed by an agent to provide you with that awareness, or it is being used by an agent to provide you with that awareness.
You have actually addressed something I was asking about. Is it fair to say communication uses physical matter only to transfer mental content from person 1 to person 2?
But then you muddled it with the agency business.
Has anyone every taught you the fine art of doing a U-turn?
If I step onto a digital scale and it says "250", then I can conclude from reading that display that I weigh 250; i.e., 250 represents my weight. There is no bypassing this; the 250 on that digital display represents my weight. In fact, that's a better reason to believe I weigh 250 than if some person (e.g., guy at a carnival) looked at me and told me I weigh 250.
Also, your justification for your first premise is nothing but red herrings through and through. That blind natural forces might hypothetically produce sky writing would be a testament of one class of things blind natural forces can do, but says nothing about what blind natural forces cannot do. Your argument for what blind natural forces cannot do transparently shows the flaw in your argument; you're circularly assuming blind natural forces cannot produce agents... as clearly conveyed in this leading question:
Quoting Bartricks
...but isn't that your premise? Nowhere have you shown blind natural forces in fact cannot produce agents.
Could I suggest starting over in a new thread? Consider your OP here a first draft, and see how you can improve on it. Shorter, clearer, more direct.
As to your second point, so you think the clouds are agents? If they are, then yes, they can tell me about the pie. But this will not challenge my case, for we would have to conclude that evolutionary forces express a will.
If you accept that the clouds are not agents, then once more my case goes through.
I have not, note, assumed that natural forces cannot create agents. Which premise assumes it? I am arguing that our faculties of awareness, if they are to provide us with any as opposed to generating accurate dreams, need to have been designed for that purpose, or installed in us for that purpose. Thus an agent needs to be behind our possession of them if they are to 'represent' anything to be the case. But I have said nothing about how that agent might get to be on the scene, and thus I have left open the possibility that agents can be built by blind natural forces. (I don't think they are, but nothing in my argument rules it out).
I suggest reading it with a view to agreeing with it. It's much harder to understand a view if you assume it is false at the outset.
Quoting Bartricks
So let me phrase it this way. If a scale produces the symbol "250", is the display telling me that I weigh 250? Apparently, no, something else is by means of the display. The display tells me nothing. The something else is telling me my weight by means of the display.
What pray tell, Bartricks, could that something else be?
Quoting Bartricks
Sure, the scale is designed. But the designer is not telling me I weigh 250. So, sorry, no. It's not the designer of the scale.
Quoting Bartricks
Okay, great. But how does that work, given "notes" (the display showing 250) don't tell me things?
Quoting Bartricks
Not always; in this case I am, but (I tell you no lie) my cat quite often steps onto the scales spontaneously. It's an inside joke with my s.o.; when I say, "our cat weighs 15", my s.o. immediately knows the real underlying meaning is simply that the cat stepped onto the digital scales again. I seriously doubt my cat is interested in weighing anything when doing so. Nevertheless, that 15 still represents the weight of my cat.
Quoting Bartricks
Nevertheless, when that display simply shows "15" when my cat is on it, that represents the weight of my cat. Or let me phrase it this way... the "15" that shows up on the digital scale is not being used by an agent to tell me what my cat weighs. But it still nevertheless represents the weight of my cat.
Quoting Bartricks
No.
Quoting Bartricks
You have assumed blind natural forces cannot produce awareness. Agents have awareness.
Yes, you're begging the question. We'll get to that later.
Meanwhile, you wrote this:
Quoting Bartricks
The note in this case is "15". It was produced when my cat stepped onto the scale. But apparently it cannot tell me anything. Nevertheless, 15 represents the weight of my cat.
Quoting Bartricks
No. I am challenging your messed up notions of semantics here. I quoted the same exact quote where you messed it up in this thread.
So here's the question again. What is this thing that is telling me my cat weighs 15? According to you, that display isn't telling me what my cat weighs. So what is?
When I write you a note, the note isn't telling you anything. It doesn't have a little mouth or desires that you know things.
I am telling you something via the note. The note is not telling you anything.
Language is in the hands of idiots and so we are permitted to say 'the note told me the cat was on the mat'. But it didn't.
We must talk with the vulgar, but think with refined, as Berkeley would say.
Thoughts don't think. Desires don't desire. And communications don't communicate.
And weighing machines don't talk to you.
And yet, the scale produces the symbols 15; and those symbols represent the weight of my cat. So apparently all those things the scale isn't doing, and doesn't have, don't have anything to do with the symbols representing the weight of my cat, since 15 does in fact represent the weight of my cat.
No, I acquire a justified true belief about my cat's weight.
JTB's are TB's, but TB's aren't necessarily JTB's, so:
Quoting Bartricks
...my no correctly refutes that wrong part.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
The symbols "15" produced by the scale represent the weight of my cat because my cat's weighing 15 causally relates to the symbols "15" being produced on that display. The symbols "250" on your weird plant thing is unrelated to my weight being 250. So the fluke note does not represent my weight. The "15" on my digital scale by contrast does represent my cat's weight.
Quoting Bartricks
Nope. But digital scales can show representations of weights using symbols.
Material things can't make meaning unless consciousness emerges first. A book means nothing whether made by a man or not unless consciousness is immanent in the reader
I just thought the idea was potentially interesting and just might merit a series of rewrites, a procedure routinely deployed by most serious writers.
It's fine as it is if you don't mind that few to none seem to be getting it. I'm fine with that too, so we aren't arguing.
I do have some sympathy for your frustrations. The following theory might help?
The more insightful an idea, the smaller the audience.
I think this counteranalysis misses two major points.
The first major one... if you tell me there's a cat on the mat using a note, assuming I trust you (why not?), there's good reason for me to connect those symbols to an actual cat being on a mat, because you are an agent, and I already know agents of the human variety (that are also good English speakers, not necessarily native) have the capability of perceiving cats, judging if they are in fact on mats, and using that information to formulate notes using the English symbols "the cat is on a mat". Likewise, I know that my digital scale is capable of responding to weight by producing symbols that represent weight (which is the entire point of why it displaying 15 conveys information about what the cat weighs, as opposed to which channel my television is tuned into, even if it is on channel 15; or how many amps my fuse box can handle, even if that is 15 amps). I do not, however, have the ability to tie the semantics of "pie is in the oven" to the writing in the sky. Even if that pie caused that writing to be in the sky, that means nothing to me; there are no sensible mechanics sufficient for me to link that writing to the existence of said pie.
But it's still true that seeing 15 on the scale conveys information to me about how much my cat weighs.
The second major point is that the logic is irrelevant to justify premise one, as has already been pointed out. Demonstrating that some E can produce x that isn't y cannot reasonably be a demonstration that E cannot produce y. "E can produce x" is a capability. "E cannot produce y" is a limitation. x not being y is nowhere close to demonstrating said capability implies said limitation.
Premise one is about the impossibility of unguided evolutionary forces giving awareness. The alleged argument for this premise is about the capability of unguided evolutionary forces providing things that don't convey information to us. What has that argument to do with that premise?
I am not frustrated. I already explained: arguing with numskulls can be very philosophically fruitful. (Any apparent frustration is an act).
Quoting Foghorn
No, because the theory is false. I prefer this:
Quoting Foghorn
The point of my thought experiments was to show that in order for a mental state to be said (vulgarly) to 'represent' something to be the case, there would need to be an agent who is doing the representing in question. The mental state itself does not do any representing. That's as foolish as thinking that the note I wrote on is telling you about the cat. The note is not telling you anything; I am telling you about the cat via the note.
What you are doing, it seems to me, is focussing on the fact that we can nevertheless acquire accurate and justified beliefs about the world via various mechanisms that are expressing no attitudes of an agent. And I clearly agree with that. That's not the issue. My point is that something - be it some squiggles on a piece of paper or a mental state - does not itself 'represent' anything to be the case (and pointing out that we can acquire accurate information by such means is beside the point - one can acquire accurate information from dreams, that doesn't mean one is perceiving things in them). The representing is done via them, but not by them. They have to be being used - used by an agent - for that purpose or a sufficiently closely related one before they can be said to be 'representing' something to be the case (and again, even then, this is loose talk, for the state itself does not do any representing).
So we can have two states that are introspectively indiscernible, and one can be representing something to be the case, and the other not. In order for us to be perceiving a world, our mental states - some of them - need to be representing there to be a world. It is not sufficient that they be introspectively indiscernible from such states. They need actually to be representing something to be the case. And they will not be doing this unless an agent got them to arise in us for that very purpose. If that is not the case - if our faculties have been forged by unguided natural forces - then although we will still acquire true beliefs about the world we are living in from them, we will not be perceiving the world, even though our situation would be introspectively indiscernible from what would be the case if we were.
Quoting InPitzotl
This I do not understand - that is, I do not understand how what you're saying here relates to anything I have argued.
Quoting InPitzotl
That's just a mistaken interpretation on your part. I have not argued that blind natural forces cannot cause us to acquire true beliefs about the world. I said the precise opposite of that. They can. Obviously. The point is that they will do this by causing the beliefs in us, not by representing anything to be the case.
I should add, that if our belief forming mechanisms are also wholly the product of unguided forces, then the same would apply to our beliefs - or 'beliefs'. They would not in fact be beliefs, though we would be unable to distinguish them from the real deal.
The point is that nothing in principle stops an unguided mechanism from creating in us an accurate belief, provided we have a belief-forming mechanism already in place.
No, because in the scenario described all we have reason to think you have acquired is a true belief. Whether it is justified or not is left open. So, all you have shown is something I already pointed out in the OP, namely that you can acquire true beliefs by means of mechanisms that were not intended to furnish you with them - indeed, mechanisms that were not intended to furnish anyone with anything.
If there is an agent behind the world, we are it. You don't seem to have read any phenomenology and understand it. If there is a higher being, than he always had this state. We have this state actually, knowing eternally from all consciousness. But it's build on matter. People who think they are fairies are not wise
Maybe you could take the time to explain exactly what this has to do with the discussion.
Yes.
Quoting Bartricks
Are you sure about that, or is that just the information we perceive through our senses. The theory you present is, if no agent is sending us the information then we are not perceiving anything.
So it all comes down to one thing, if it is not evolution that has made it possible for us to perceive, what is the agent that is sending it to us?
Yes, as you would be if your first answer was correct. It is not in dispute that we perceive things by way of mental states with representative contents.
Quoting Sir2u
An agent. Do you mean who? Not sure. God probably.
Bartricks is saying we can know an agent is behind the world. But God is unknowable. Bartricks is saying we need to believe in God in a literal obnoxious way but people who are open to possibilities will say they are atheists and don't believe in proof of God but could possibly be true believers of whatever is beyond thought. Who can say for sure whether they are believers or not
If you bake that into your concept of perception, which is fair, then sure.
Quoting Bartricks
Sure.
Quoting Bartricks
This doesn't work. That you're trying to tell me about a cat isn't in question, so let's grant that immediately. But for you to succeed in your intent to inform me there is a cat via that note, you have to have written symbols on that paper that would convey that notion. Not all symbols do that; only particular symbols do that.
Quoting Bartricks
Well yeah, because you made a point regarding truth in the OP with respect to the sky writing (truth by fluke). But you were also talking about information being conveyed. So consider "the cat is on the mat". That's just a bunch of letters. But those letters have a meaning according to the rules of English; it's about some cat being "on" some mat. What it means for that statement to be true is for the semantic content behind those symbols to have valid referents. What it means for that statement to convey information regarding its truth to us (in the usual sense) is for those symbols to convey those semantic contents to us.
Quoting Bartricks
For you to convey "the cat is on the mat" to me as a true statement, it is insufficient for you to intend to tell me the same. You must also somehow be aware of the referenced cat's being on a mat.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes, I can tell how loose it is.
Quoting Bartricks
That's what perception does. There's an image on your retina. Something happens, and lo and behold... some mental state is formed about something that is a mental state such that you tend to have it if there were a cat there and not have it if there were no cat there. That is a mental state of "seeing a cat".
Quoting Bartricks
Sure; hallucinating cats isn't seeing cats.
Quoting Bartricks
There's the question begging again.
Quoting Bartricks
That's a difference without a meaning.
Running from hallucinated predators burns energy. Run too much, and you can't escape the real one. Hallucinated predators cannot kill you. But that real one...
Your requirement that agents make mental states represent the world is speculative. What's worse, it's one of those empty explanations... it purports to explain something it does not in fact explain. How does this agent make the mental states represent something? What is this agent doing? Supergluing the mental state of a cat to a cat? Formally pronouncing the mental state to be about a cat?
First, perception goes by way of mental states with representative contents. You say you're willing to grant this, like there's an option to deny it. No, they're essential.
Second, 'conveying' information - as opposed just to acquiring a true belief - requires an information giver and an information receiver. And in the case where the sky writing - or 'writing' - is the product of blind natural forces, no information is conveyed, even though you form the true belief that there is a pie in the oven.
You then proceed to beg the question by supposing that it is somehow the squiggles that are doing the representing. No, they're not. Minds represent 'by' using squiggles to convey something to another.
Quoting InPitzotl
Flagrantly question begging. You need to show there to be something wrong with my case before you can just assert such things.
You're just playing games. How you define a word is arbitrary. If I want to say a brainless creature with nerves perceives something, I might want a weaker definition.
Quoting Bartricks
And yet, my cat weighs 15. There's no information giver here. So either this is a lingual quibble or it's wrong.
Quoting Bartricks
If the digital scale my cat steps on shows you're wrong, it's pointless to keep running back to your cloud writing.
Quoting Bartricks
And yet, my cat weighs 15. That 15 was not conveyed to me by any mind. And yet, my cat weighs 15.
You keep running into the same problem. I thought you said you agreed with this. You're going backwards.
ETA: I think what you're trying to say is that agents are what understand what the symbols mean. But you keep saying something quite different. "Agents" is also a bit broad; it's generally just us human types that understand complex statements. But a lot of other creatures perceive things.
The note does not understand the symbols written on it. But neither does the scale understand the symbols it generates. Nevertheless, the note conveys a meaning and so does the scale. The scale provides meaning to me; and it's even the semantic content of the symbols it produces.
But the semantic content of that digital scale's display is the weight of the cat. Surely you don't deny that "15" is symbols, the symbols are a number, and that this number is the weight of the cat, right?
No, you are just showing that you don't really know your stuff. You can't perceive something absent a mental state with representative content. They're essential. Not wordplay, it's just about grasping the concept.
Quoting InPitzotl
Once more, you have acquired a true belief. But no information was conveyed to you. For no representation was made.
Imagine a leaf floats in through the window and the markings on the leaf look like the number 15. You form the belief that your cat weighs 15 stone on that basis. Your belief is true - your cat really is 15 stone - yet no one conveyed this information to you.
You are begging the question horribly or not really understanding the argument I am making.
Mental states with representative contents are essential to perception. So, in their absence, we do not perceive anything.
For a mental state to have representative contents (and this is a vulgar way to speak, of course, for no mental state itself represents anything to be the case) it needs to be being used by an agent for the purposes of representing those contents to its bearer.
The leaf that floated in through the window with 15 on it, was not telling you anything about anything, even though you took it to be. If someone knew of this leaf's existence and loaded it into a set of scales such that if anything weighing 15 stone sat on it this leaf would be emitted, then - then - you are being told something about your cat's weight. Otherwise not.
No, you're just crowing in a pathetic attempt to gaslight me.
Quoting Bartricks
Words aren't concepts.
Quoting Bartricks
The symbols "15" represents the weight of my cat. My cat's weight was conveyed to me.
Quoting Bartricks
There's an infinite number of imagined scenarios where I can see the symbols 15 in such a way that they have no bearing on the weight of my cat. But they have no bearing on the fact that the scale's display showing 15 means my cat weighs 15.
Quoting Bartricks
It sounds like you're confusing two things. "15" and "the cat is on the mat" are strings of symbols, written in a medium. We can call those signs. These signs exist on screens, displays, notes and the like. We form mental states from signs by reading them; but the signs don't require us to read them to be the signs they are. My scale would still show 15 if my cat stepped on it even if nobody read the display.
Now if I did look at the display, then we can talk about a mental state. And yes, we use perception to read displays.
Quoting Bartricks
With said caveats, sure.
Quoting Bartricks
Your leaf example is superfluous. You already have a pie in the oven, and it doesn't refute my cat's weighing 15. I don't get why you think introducing a leaf with a 15 stamp is going to help you any.
Not sure what that means, but I am just pointing out that to be aware of something essentially requires you to be in a mental state with representative contents, whatever else it may involve. It isn't up for negotiation. There are issues over whether we are directly or indirectly aware of what such states make us aware of (when they make us aware of something). But those are beside the current point, which is to do with how something gets to have representative contents.
Quoting InPitzotl
Erm, yes. I didn't say otherwise. Cows aren't tables. So there.
Quoting InPitzotl
Question begging. See OP and other representations of the argument above.
Quoting InPitzotl
You've missed the point.
Quoting InPitzotl
I think you meant 'super' not 'superfluous'. It isn't superfluous because although I have other examples that illustrate the same point, they don't seem to have conveyed it to you, and thus I keep coming up with variations in the hope that by about example 7 or 8 you might get the point. Which is that despite you acquiring a true belief via these mechanisms, the leaf, or clouds, or squiggles or whatever, do not have any representative contents until or unless an agent gets involved.
The leaf is 'apparently' making a representation, but isn't actually. And no amount of tightening the causal relation between what it appears to be making a representation of and the truth-maker of your belief is going magically to make it start representing successfully.
Now go back to my leaf. The leaf floated in through the window, and by purest fluke its markings cause you to believe that you are being told that your cat's weight is 15 stone. You are not being told that. You are not being told anything. It's just a leaf.
Now imagine that the connection between the leaf coming through the window and your cat's weight is very tight, such that if your cat did not weigh 15 stone it would not have come through the window.
That's not going to make a difference, is it? For to think it would, is to think the tightness of the connection between the apparent representative contents and its object is the crucial matter. But if that was the crucial matter, then my paper-plane case should be one in which it is clear that the note lacks representative contents. Yet the opposite is true.
Don't worry too much about that... other people know what it means.
Quoting Bartricks
There's no question begging here; only your confusion. In fact, you agreed I formed a justified true belief that my cat weighs 15 pounds. I formed that belief by reading and interpreting the symbols "15". So something about those symbols justify my belief that the cat weighs 15.
Quoting Bartricks
It might help if you understood why I say 15 on the digital scale represents my cat's weight.
Quoting Bartricks
The leaf is not even apparently making a representation. Incidentally, it's worth noting that the symbols "representing" a thing has suddenly mutated into the surface it's written on "making a representation" of the thing.
Quoting Bartricks
Are you sure? Because you don't seem to know what you're trying to adjust for when you're tightening the relation.
Quoting Bartricks
I laud the approach... this is much better than repeating yet another silly thing with 15 on it. But it misses.
Quoting Bartricks
So let's start here. You are a sentient entity that understands English. So you have mental representations. You are capable of using your agency to translate mental representations of agentive world models (including hypothetical ones) into strings. The digital scale I referred to is not an agent, and does not have mental models, but nevertheless its display can generate strings... strings like "15".
Quoting Bartricks
Agreed. It represents a mental model you've formed about a shared world model. But it doesn't represent my cat's weight. It just "apparently" represents my cat's weight.
Quoting Bartricks
Agreed. It conveys information about a mental model you have. But it doesn't properly inform me of what my cat's weight is.
Quoting Bartricks
In other words, it does not represent the weight of my cat.
Quoting Bartricks
...okay.
Quoting Bartricks
...this doesn't seem to relate to what that 15 on the leaf represents.
Quoting Bartricks
Not sure why, but okay.
Quoting Bartricks
Nope.
Maybe you should understand another property of my scale; one I've mentioned. My cat often stands on the scale spontaneously. Each time my cat does so, it displays 15.
That 15 is shown on the digital scale when the cat weighs 15 is indicative of its weight; contrast with your leaf, where it going into the window is coincidental.
"Begging the question" does not apply here. Begging the question is a logical fallacy where you assume the conclusion of your argument.
Quoting Bartricks
So what's the problem? 15 on the digital scale successfully represents my cat's weight. The 15 on the leaf blowing through the window does not represent my cat's weight. You may as well have my cat knock over a deck of Tarot cards in such a way that when I draw the top card it happens to be a 15. Your particular idea of the causal relationship to the symbol via the leaf is simply the wrong idea (and it's just a rehash of your pie in the oven).
There's something critically different between 15 being displayed on my digital scale and that 15 on your leaf blowing through the window. Put it this way; we can use that digital scale to weigh cats; we cannot use your leaf to weigh cats. In the use of the digital scale to weigh things, the weight is reflected by symbols on the display. The symbols displayed represent the weight.
To add to the chaos there is the class of inanimate objects that we deal with all the time. No agency in a tree or a mountain or the moon but you have the exact same process of information conveyance, perception and true belief.
Consider Descartes's lump of wax, for instance. I can be aware of its shape, its colour, its location, its texture, etc. How is this incompatible with the theory of evolution, without recourse to incomparable analogies?
Now, final time, the weighing machine example is shit. Why? Because it's DESIGNED.
I am arguing that our faculties need to have been DESIGNED in order to generate representations and not apparent representations. See?
No. Again then: the machine is designed. So it ain't a counterexample. It is designed! And it doesn't even make representations. If it did, it wouldn't be a good example. It doesn't, so it's even worse.When it says hello, it isn't greeting you. It isn't telling you your cat's weight. It isn't doing that either way.
You think the fact the machine enables you reliably to know the cat's weight is what's doing the trick, yes?
I keep refuting that with examples. And so you just repeat the same bloody point. A point that isn't the relevant one.
It has nothing to do with reliability. As I have shown. It has everything to do with design.
The clearest way to show this is with notes. This - this here, this 'message' - isn't representing anything if I am a bot. It is if I am a person.
If I am a bot, this isn't a message. It just looks like one. But it won't be.
Our faculties are bots if they evolved by blind evolution. Therefore the mental states that they create in us, like this 'message' if I am a bot, won't have any representative contents. They will appear to. They won't.
They need to have actual representative contents if we are to perceive by means of them. So we won't be perceiving anything ever if they're bot built. We won't be believing anything either. We will just be appearing to perceive and appearing to believe.
We do perceive and we do believe. Thus our faculties are not bot built. Thus they are not products of blind evolution, but design. They are the means by which an agent is telling us about the world.
I don't deny it's designed. The problem is:
Quoting Bartricks
...there's no representer (in the sense you mean it).
Quoting Bartricks
Sure it is, because the scale is not a representer.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes. Incidentally, I am an agent that speaks English.
Quoting Bartricks
You haven't refuted anything except in your imagination. We're still left with the symbols 15 that my scale displayed, and the fact that this indicates to me that my cat weighs 15. Somehow you got it into your mind that if you tell me a story about a leaf that by a fluke blows into my window with the number 15 on it, then it means that my scale isn't indicating my cat's weight. I have no idea how you came up with such a silly idea, but it's clearly wrong.
Quoting Bartricks
Reliability is critical. If the symbols have nothing to do with what my cat weighs, they can't possibly represent my cat's weight.
The weighing machine is designed. And, worse, it doesn't make representations. So it does not begin to challenge my case.
Then I refute the idea that reliability has anything to do with whether something is representing or not. And your response? A nay say. Brilliant. Okaaaay Anscombe, you bested me.
Sorry to tell you, but there is quite a bit of dispute about how and what we perceive.
Most people would probably agree that mental states come about because of perception. Try building a mental state about how sorry you are that the Trescian Water Mole is extinct.
Maybe you could finally explain why Banno's red cup is red.
Quoting Bartricks
So all through the thread you have been telling us that the information that we have been perceiving is sent from an agent, but you have no idea what that agent is!
Could you point me to where he said that please, I must have missed this gem.
An agent that designs the world is a description of God
Not about that though. Not about the fact that we perceive by being in mental states with representative contents.
Quoting Sir2u
What on earth are you on about? Good riddance to the little shits.
Quoting Sir2u
No, I have some idea. What's your point? Are you, perhaps, thinking that if I can't say who is responsible, then somehow that'll magically mean that blind evolutionary forces can create mental states with representative contents? How does that work, exactly?
Here's us at a crime scene:
Detective Bartricks: well, the axe lodged in the back of her head and 'die, you bloody bugger!' written in her blood on the wall makes me think she was probably murdered.
Sir Fit of Ignorance: Who murdered her?
Detective Bartricks: I don't know - I've just arrived at the scene. I'm establishing that she has, in fact, been murdered. We'll try and figure out who later.
Sir Fit of Ignorance: So all this time you've been banging on about how she's been murdered and yet you haven't got a clue who did it!! Back to the drawing board everyone - how did she die? She wasn't murdered until we find someone who murdered her. But until then she wasn't murdered. So, we're not looking for a murderer, because we don't yet know how she died.
This is a description of God: a person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.
That's all you need to qualify.
You don't have to have created everything (or anything).
You do realize you're fantasizing again.
Quoting Bartricks
And I've explained numerous times why it works. So if the number of times one explains things is a factor in how true something is, then we're about even in that department, so you had better get another metric.
Quoting Bartricks
And I might care, were it the fact that all you're arguing is that agency is involved somehow in semantics. But that's not what you were arguing. You were arguing that symbols must be intentionally given by an agent in order for them to represent something.
So my digital scale conveys signs to me, that I get to interpret as world states via the semantic content of the sign, and it is certainly not an agent (at least by my model of agency; pretty sure by your model either). At first, that didn't count because what if it didn't correlate to anything. Problem is, it does correlate. Then, it didn't count because that could possibly be a fluke. Problem is, with the digital scale, it's not a fluke. But now, it doesn't count because you already explained why too many times.
Okay. But that 15 on my digital scale still means my cat weighs that much. That's a string (syntax) conveying semantic content about a world state (weight of my cat) without an agent intending for that string to convey it (you keep mentioning the designer, but the designer didn't tell me my cat weighs 15).
That is not what I asked you to point me to.
So you are having trouble creating the mental state then. Difficult to do that if you have never really perceived them.
Quoting Bartricks
Never said that, so it must be a thought of your own. I don't think magic has much use in this world either. But the fact that your theory needs an agent but you don't have one does very little to disprove that evolution is responsible. Which I presume is your objective.
Quoting Bartricks
Point 1. why would anyone write "die, you bloody bugger" on the wall in a dead person's blood. Surely if the supposed murderer was using her blood she must have been dead already.
Point 2. seeing the evidence only made you think it was murder, you have not stated it as a fact. Is the mental state the scene caused not true because there is no agent to make it true?
Quoting Bartricks
I doubt anyone except the writer of absolutely pathetic writers of pseudo philosophical examples would actually think of asking that question. Something along the lines of "Any idea who might have done it?" might be a more common question.
Quoting Bartricks
So it is still not established, you obviously are having doubts about the whole idea.
Quoting Bartricks
Of course you don't have a clue who did it, you still have not made up your mind if it was murder or not. Again, after being told that you only think it is murder a sane person would not even waste their time asking such a silly question. It might be a good idea to ask if you are ware of anyone with a reason to kill her.
Quoting Bartricks
I thought you already knew the she had an axe in her head.
[/quote]She wasn't murdered until we find someone who murdered her. But until then she wasn't murdered. So, we're not looking for a murderer, because we don't yet know how she died.[/quote]
The only crime scene here is your attempt to use bullshit to try to convince people that they are wrong.
.
I was charitably trying to figure out why you'd thought it significant that I didn't know for sure who was responsible for our mental states with representative contents. Why did you think it significant then?
I'll hold your hand, Sir Fit, so that you can understand your own reasoning and just how unbelievable bad it is.
I have been arguing in this thread that mental states with representative contents require a representer. That is, absent a representer - an agent of some kind - the mental states in question will lack representative contents, no matter how much they may seem to us to have them. And thus, as perceiving the world requires us to be in such states, perceiving the world is not possible if the relevant mental states are the creation of blind evolutionary forces alone.
So, in my example that's analogous to the thesis that Jane has been murdered. You may disagree with that thesis - you may think the fact the axe murderer wrote "die you bloody bugger!" on the wall 'after' the event seems sufficiently confusing as to cast in doubt the 'she was murdered' thesis. But anyway, the fact is we'd at least then be discussing the plausibility of the murder thesis. Analogously, you might want to try and find some way to call into question my thesis that perception is impossible if our faculties are the creation of blind natural forces.
BUt then you have asked who the representer is. THat's to ask who the murderer is. And that really isn't the issue - it doesn't bear on it. See? No. Well, you are Sir Fit of Ignorance for a reason.
Quoting Sir2u
That was you, Sir Fit. Do pay attention to my parody, for goodness sake. You reasoned that as I can't identify the murderer for you, she therefore doesn't have one and there must be some other explanation for the presence of the axe in her brain.
I don't know for sure who the representer is. I am arguing that there must be one. I am not arguing that she's called Bethany and has red hair. I don't know who she is. I am just arguing that there must be one, for we're perceiving things and we wouldn't be if there wasn't a representer. YOu asked who she is, and I said I don't know. And you think - well, what do you think?
Quoting Sir2u
No, I am using reasoned argument to show that perception is incompatible with our faculties being the product of blind evolutionary forces.
And you don't understand the criticism. I'll say it more simply: language is not like awareness. There is information in both, but the former is very different. Trying to disprove X with an analogy that is about as far from X as is possible is a non-starter. Do you understand?
Oo but, but, 'language'. Bartricks is wrong because language. Langwoooidge.
When do we have language use and not just squiggles or sounds, child? Is it, perhaps, when we have a representer trying to represent something with those squiggles or sounds?? Yes.
A biscuit's definition is, I believe, matter of public record. A biscuit - unlike a cake - gets softer with age. Is the queen getting softer with age? Perhaps. Has she been baked twice in an oven? No.
Continuing with the same error is not a defense of it.
I find no significance at all in it. I don't think that there is an agent behind anything so it makes no difference at all to me.
But as you are the one claiming that evolution cannot be responsible I would presume that you have an answer.
Quoting Bartricks
You are beginning to repeat yourself,. No sorry, you have been repeating yourself for most of the thread.
Maybe if I stated what you you appear to be saying in plain English you would understand what the problem is.
"We cannot believe what our senses tell us about the world because it is not presented to us by an agent.
If we accepted that there is an agent that is purposely sending the information then we can believe it."
Quoting Bartricks
OK, let's try something else.
Define perception.
What are our faculties?
This applies to all representations. It is not as if just applies to noises and squiggles - for why should that be? So, in order for the content of a percept to 'represent' something to be the case, it would need to be being used by a mind for that purpose - the representative contents, then, comes from its being used to represent something. Used, that is, by a person.
Incidentally, an objection to my view - and I might as well make it myself as it has occurred to me and I don't see anyone else making it - is that we ourselves could be said to be using our faculties to make representations. For though something may originally have been created by blind forces - and thus originally lacked any representative contents - that does not stop it from subsquently acquiring some by being used by an agent. The leaf with squiggles on it that looks like "there is a pie in the oven" does not tell me, or anyone, that there is a pie in the oven (even if some people acquire an accurate belief about it from the leaf). But if I find that leaf and form the plan to convey to you that there is a pie in the oven by showing you the leaf, then the leaf can now be said to bear representative contents, thanks to me. So perhaps the same could be said in respect of our faculties of awareness.
Yeah, er, I provided a defence of it in the OP. You've not said anything to challenge it. You've just said 'language is different'. Oh, ok. If you say so.
1. Evolution, the process itself, isn't unguided. It's guided by natural selection.
2. Most of our information processing isn't conscious at all. I think this is what you mean by awareness. We are only aware due to certain processes that require "awareness", like synthesizing sensory information into abstract concepts, or basic tools to aid us in survival. One could easily see how this could be a desirable trait in natural selection, given its parameters.
I don't think I agree with your definitions. Maybe explain what awareness means as well. Does this mean purely conscious thought or does this include subconscious thought too?
So why did you ask?
Quoting Sir2u
Why would you presume that? "I think Jane was murdered - there's an axe lodged in the back of her head and axe wounds all over her back". Sir Fit: "I presume that as you think someone is responsible for killing her, you know who it is?" Er, no.
Note as well that I am not claiming evolutionary forces cannot have built our faculties, I am arguing that 'unguided' evolutionary forces cannot be responsible for them, for then they would not be representing anything to us.
Quoting Sir2u
That's not a quote from me! That's not my view!
Quoting Sir2u
Perception denotes that which is involved in perceiving something. And you perceive something when you are subject to a certain kind of mental state known as a perceptual experience. This kind of mental state has 'representative contents' (though it is not the only kind that does) - that is, it represents something to be the case. And when that perceptual experience has been caused, non-waywardly, by its representative contents, then you are perceiving something.
Some philosophers will argue over how closely cause of the experience needs to match its representative contents; some will argue over whether the experience can exist absent the cause of its representative contents. I am not taking a stand on those issues. What I am arguing, in case you didn't know, is that unless an agent has designed the faculty that created that experience in you, it won't have any representative contents at all and thus won't qualify as a perceptual experience (just something that is introspectively indiscernible from one).
I don't think there are subconscious thoughts - the idea sounds contradictory. But if there are such things, then the same would apply to them as would apply to conscious ones.
As for explaining what awareness means - well, that's too much as a full account of awareness is the end point of philosophical analysis, not the beginning.
But a necessary (though not sufficient) condition on being aware of something, is that one be in a certain sort of mental state - a mental state with representative contents. That much is, I think, uncontroversial.
What I am arguing is that no mental state has representative contents unless an agent has put it there. For representations require representers, and mental states are not themselves representers. That is, mental states are not themselves minds - so they do not, by themselves, represent anything to be the case. Not without external assistance from a mind.
Quoting ep3265
I mean guided in the sense of 'being regulated by an agency'. So, for instance, our faculty of sight is not designed for seeing if it is purely the product of natural selection, for it does not express an agent's design. The word 'design' and 'guidance' when used in the context of purely natural processes that do not in any way express an agent's will are metaphors.
So, if our faculties are the creation of blind natural processes - to, processes that do not express any agents plan or purposes - then our faculties are impotent to create in us mental states with representative contents. At best they can only create in us mental states that appear to have representative contents. Though even that would require a faculty of introspection that has not been built by blind processes.
I used Y(o) which means a sufficiently large neuron group containing a non- physical.
Is your view any different and what would you correct?
You analyze the conscious mind and conclude it can't come with its a priori thoughts straight from matter. But it doesn't! You have to think subconsciously in order to latter think consciously. This is what sleep is about. And we can't really say what a subconscious mind can or can not do
Why just the duplicate?
I don't know what you're talking about. This thread is about states of awareness. And I am arguing that we are not capable of being aware of anything if the faculties that create those mental states have been created by blind natural forces.
The if, then form of your first premise contains a conclusion within the premise without giving the reasons for the conclusion.
And what does the first line of the paragraph below that argument then say:
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Just a few interesting notes regarding this profound and beautiful argument.
Why not just state "unguided evolutionary forces cannot produce faculties of awareness"?
As you wrote it, first faculties of awareness are a product of unguided evolutionary forces, then you conclude they cannot be.
You don't seem to get the point. If this is bot generated, it isn't a communication.
If your faculties are bot built, they aren't communication mechanisms.
When bot built faculties interact with a bot built world, they do not generate communications. That is, they do not generate mental states with representative contents - mental states that communicate something.
So 'there is a tree outside my window'. If that was bot generated, you were not just told there is a tree outside my window. That remains the case even if there is a tree outside my window and you now believe there is.
So, we are not perceiving the world if our sensible faculties are bot built. We just think we are, because the mental states they are generating in us are indistinguishable from genuine representations.
It goes all the way down. If our belief forming mechanisms are bot built, then they do not generate real beliefs, but imitation beliefs.
If our introspective faculty is bot built, then it too does not make us aware of anything.
Fake awareness will pervade us.
But, yeah, light and retinas and eyeballs.
I don't see how you have any unique argument on this question. It's the same old "matter must be designed to produce consciousness" without actually providing a proof for this premise because there isn't any. Many of us have seen your argument many many times
My actual argument is original, to the best of my knowledge. I think it could be classified as a kind of disjunctivist view, though such classifications do not really matter and original views will often defy existing classificatory schemes.
All you've said is meaning can't spring from matter. Yet not you nor anyone else knows what matter is ontologically. You can't rule out meaning coming from it alone
You've clearly plagiarized Descartes arguments
Descartes: I think, therefore I am.
Gregory: so you're saying that you think it is 1am? But it isn't, it's the afternoon. But time, ontologically, is matter spliced with consciousness. I'm a catholic buddhist by the way, which definitely makes sense.
Descartes: no, I am pointing out that the thought 'I exist' has the interesting property of being true wherever and whenever it occurs.
Gregory: so you are saying that whatever you think is true and as you think it is 1am it is 1am? No one can know what time is, because time and truth and ontology and whizz and lalala we are all consciousness, buddha, buddha, buddha....jesus.
Now, back to me and you: explain to me how my argument in the OP amounts to the claim that matter cannot produce consciousness?
If matter randomly forms into an organism, then meaningful thoughts can arise from this matter because it has a brain. That's the obvious answer to what you've argued. You don't think matter can do this and invoke something incorporeal to explain it. I question your distinction between matter and spirit and that you know what matter truly is.
And Descartes had two arguments for God and one for the soul. Your trying to use them in a new way but it's the same old stuff
No, you manifested it in the OP. I'd think, if you were serious, you'd welcome the invitation to provide a better illustration of your point.
Let's remind ourselves: you said you read his 5 meditations. 5! There are 6.
You said he published it in 1642. It was 1641.
Then you said you meant the French translation. But that wasn't published until 1647.
Now you're saying he had one argument for the soul. He gave three.
Who else have you read recently? Plato's Re: Pubic. (His important work on how to organize pubic hair). Aristotle's Nicolodean Ethics? (A series of dreary moralizing cartoons on how to build character, made by animators who attended his lectures).
All Descartes arguments are digestions of the same line of argument. And your argument is the resulting poop. Nothing new, same old smell
And your being creepy for always bringing up a previous discussion. I've read the works, got the dates of them mixed up, and forgot there was a 6th section to one. Ive probably read more Descartes than you. You assume meaningful consciousness can't come from matter. It must be frustrating that you can't refute it. This is a good time to examine your own motives
Now once more: how does the argument in the op assume that consciousness cannot arise from matter. Or can you not show that?
This premise is about "awareness" and much of the argument following is about "knowledge", but you don't seem to define either term here.
You seem to use knowledge in the way of "justified true belief", but importantly you only seem to count intentionally transmitted information as justifying a belief. But why is that?
The issue is not to do with knowledge. It is to do with how mental states get to be said to represent something to be the case.
They can't by themselves, because they are just mental states. They can't tell you anything anymore than they can dance a jig. But if an agent is using the mental state to transmit information, then it can be said to be 'representing' (though in truth it is the agent and not the state that does the representing).
As we are aware of some things, we can conclude that our faculties are designed. And thus, our faculties are not products of unguided evolutionary forces
"Representer" is a word you just made up, and phonetic similarity to "representative content" isn't an argument. The term "representative" denotes a relation, not an actor.
I will speed this up by answering for you: yes.
When it comes to a representative relation, what are the relata?
Well, there is normally going to be someone to whom the representation is being made. Let's call them the representee.
Then there is going to be the vehicle of representation. Let's call that the representation itself.
And then there is going to be the one doing the representing. Let's call them the representer.
The representer needs to be an agent.
Can there be desires without a desirer? No. Can there be thoughts without a thinker? No. Can there be precepts without a perceiver? No. Can there be representations without a representer? No.
And I illustrated with clear examples. Examples where a representer is absent, but everything else is in place. And bingo, no representation occurs.
What you're doing is focussing on the content of the representation. What I am arguing about is what it takes for it to be a representation.
So, help yourself to whatever theory of information you like - it doesn't matter for my purposes here. Let's just say your weight is 25 stone. That's the information. Again, don't sweat what information is. That's not the issue. That's like asking "what is weight?". Now imagine that a leaf grows in my garden and it has a pattern on it that seems to say "Nyquist weighs 25 stone". And I form the belief that you weigh 25 stone accordingly. That leaf did not tell me your weight. Right? It didn't 'tell' me anything. It was not representing your weight. It was just a pattern that I mistook for words. It was not telling me your weight, yes? Tell me you can see this - you can see that it is NOT telling me your weight.
If you had made those markings on the leaf with the intent thereby of conveying to someone that you weigh 1 stone, and I see the leaf and think "Nyquist weighs a stone" then I have been told your weight, yes?
I will assume you agree. So what's the difference? Why in one case am I not being told your weight, and the other I am? Is the light hitting my retinas in a different way in one case to the other? No. Are the squiggles different? No. Am I acquiring a different belief in one case and not the other? No. Is it that one set of squiggles is reliably linked to your weight and the other not? No. So what's the difference? Why is one conveying information to me, and the other not?
Because in one case you - a representer - are representing something to be the case by means of the leaf and the squiggles, whereas in the other there is no representer and thus no representing going on.
Now generalize that to all representations. And if you do that, you get my conclusion.
Is this not confusing to you. I know it is not a quote of something you said, but it is saying almost the same thing as you are.
Our sense cannot give us believable information.
Quoting Bartricks
You are very short sighted, you cannot see beyond the end of your own twaddle.
Quoting Bartricks
We all know what you are arguing, but I don't think many understand exactly how it could be possible.
Quoting Bartricks
No you certainly have not claimed that. You just said agent instead of god.
And why the freaking hell do people have to capitalize the word god all the time?
Anyways, I for one have had enough. It was fun.
Quoting Bartricks
...given you've chosen to open this can of worms, what does that make 250 stone me with my 15 stone cat?
You can play all kinds of word games like this, but none of this actually serves as an argument that all representation must be intentional. You're just using that as a premise.
Quoting Bartricks
That's a clever sleight of hand here, but I notice that all your examples are about the passive, non-acting end of the relation. Only with representation do you suddenly switch to a supposed actor.
Rather than prove your point, your list merely makes clear that we usually conceive of our relation with the world as some dualism, where information enters our mind from an outside source.
Quoting Bartricks
Your examples are interesting, but you're merely using them as ammunition for your pre-existing beliefs, rather than really engaging with the concept of justification. You're not committing to an epistemological position, and so your argument can simply flow where it needs to in order to justify your view.
Take your "letters in the cloud". How do we conclude that the letters are unrelated to the actual cake? You state that this is so, but how is the observer on the ground supposed to arrive at this conclusion? Somehow that person needs to decide whether or not the clouds justify a belief. How do they do that?
I don't have a good definition of "information", I can only describe it. I'd say information is anything that changes a mental model in any direction, either increasing or Decreasing your certainty about a prediction or explanation. You can only gain information about things you do not already know, and the two are therefore related.
Information seems to be very basic to the way our models of the world function, since it seems to be connected to entropy.
You do realize you're trying to pass off the rehearsal of prejudices as reasoning.
Can there be moving without a mover? Can there be burning without a burner? Can there be growing without a grower? And yet, things move without agents intentionally pushing them, burn without agents intentionally lighting them, and grow without agents intentionally farming them.
There is nothing further to adress. You haven't argued that there must in some way be a representer, only moved language around to argue that when people commonly use the term they refer to a situation where there is a "representer". I think that's also wrong, by the way, because when we talk about representation, we often talk about what something represents to us, not necessarily what the creator of some text intended it to represent. But again that's talking about usage of words, not about the world.
Messages aren't physical. When we communicate, I'm really just talking to myself, that is I'm imagining what a mental model of you is saying. Nothing actually travels from your mind to mine here, that'd be telepathy.
So really, it is a message unless I know based on other parts of my mental model that the message was caused by a process I don't consider sentient. From an epistemological perspective, truth and justification are congruent, since I can only ascertain truth via justification.
The message stops being a message if I think you're a bot, not if you are a bot.
But aren't we aware of it?
You've spent your entire OP, and a big portion of this thread, trying to argue that an agent must intentionally create a message in order for it to be a message, and that's precisely what you're doing here. But furthermore, this is presumably your key argument for "premise 1" in your OP (that is what you said it was), which is this:
Quoting Bartricks
...and you tie it in thusly:
Quoting Bartricks
...so we're aware of the message. Therefore, it is a fact that someone was trying to convey a message to us. So how could you be a bot?
'But it is a message' is not an answer to that question, is it?
So, what is the correct analysis of why this 'message' will not be a message if I am a bot?
That's simply the definition of the word, isn't it? A message is communication, and we don't consider a bot to have a mind that would communicate with us.
So.....the message won't be a message at all. It won't have any 'representative contents'. It isn't functioning as a medium through which you are being told something. It just appears to be, but isn't.
Now just apply that moral more generally and you get my position.
No no no... you stopped too early. You stopped at your message point and didn't relate it to awareness (remember premise 1?)
So let's not stop and handwave. Keep going:
Quoting Bartricks
It doesn't have a mind; it's not trying to communicate; it doesn't have goals, purposes, desires, and therefore, we (who do have minds, have goals, purposes, and desires) cannot be aware of... what?
I don't think that follows. I am being told something, about the way the bot works for example. The message still represents something, it's just not communication.
Still no answer to my question. Maybe I can get to this through another angle. You see, here you're obsessed about making a point that messages have to be made by agents, and as a result you're having us play pretend that you are a bot.
But I've got a real bot for you... it's called Garmin. Garmin sits in my car; it has no microphone in it, so I have to punch things onto its display. But it does mimic speech. I can go to a brand new location I've never been to and pull up restaurants in the area on the box, pick one, and drive to it. Then the thing starts barking apparent orders at me... things like: "In 1.8 miles turn right on Belmont street". On following some to most of those orders there will arrive a point at which it makes an apparent truth claim: "You have reached your destination". Now GPS devices similar to this are incredibly popular... so some variant of this situation happens some millions of times each day. And for now, let me just say that there's a reason they are popular.
But this is all supposed to be your argument for premise 1:
Quoting Bartricks
...so you're being asked to follow through. If your pie in the oven sky writing is proving we aren't aware of something because an agent didn't intentionally try to tell us pie is in the oven, then there must be something we aren't aware of with Garmin when it tells me "you have reached your destination", because Garmin isn't intentionally trying to tell us we've reached our destination either. Garmin is a bot if there ever was one.
So what is this thing we're not aware of? It appears to me that there is no answer you can give to this question that doesn't expose a problem with your argument. So show me I'm wrong.
Yes. But:
Quoting Bartricks
...the destination was not trying to communicate with me; likewise for the Garmin.
If you're going to use the argument, it has to be the argument you're using. Designed things cannot merely be special pleaded into an exception just because it happens to fit your premise; they have to be an exception specifically because your argument suggests it.
Not really. it's premise 1:
Quoting Bartricks
...that you're trying to argue for. But you're giving a particular argument that alleges to do so. That this argument supports that premise is the question.
Quoting Bartricks
Good question. Here's what you just got finished saying about a bot:
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
So we have scenario 1. In this scenario there is some sign s that some entity x produced. In this case, s is a post, and x is Bartricks. You just said above that if x is a bot, then s is not a message. You just said above that if x is a bot, x doesn't have a mind; x isn't trying to communicate because it doesn't have a mind, x doesn't have goals, purposes, and desires. You just said above that therefore ("therefore" being a translation of "So.....") the alleged message won't be a message, and that it won't have any representative contents.
Enter scenario 2. Here, s is "you have reached your destination". x is Garmin. If the above follows above, it should always follow, and therefore it should follow here. So if x is a bot, then s is not a message. x is a bot. Therefore, s is not a message, for all the reasons you gave in Scenario 1 about Bartricks-bot.
You were happy to say Bartricks-bot isn't producing representative content. You patted Echarmion on the back about it, as if you were his proud papa. But suddenly you're calling foul when the bot is spelled with a capital G instead of a capital B. If there's a nuance with Garmin, there's a nuance with Bartricks. If your Bartricks argument is solid, then the Garmin argument is solid.
So you tell me. How does this work?
I am arguing that faculties need to be designed if they are to be capable of generating representative contents.
Note: that's a necessary condition not sufficient.
You are trying to challenge that with an example of something that is designed to impart information.
How the hell is that going to challenge my case?
Think about it....
It's your exact logic! You have a problem with Garmin that you don't have with Bartricks.
If you cannot do something as simple as substitute tokens, all you're doing is faking having an argument.
This isn't about me proving you don't have an argument. It's your argument; you're the one who is supposed to make it.
Quoting Bartricks
Was Bartricks-bot designed to impart information? Funny the question never came up. With Bartricks you started with the premise it was a bot, and ended concluding there was no representative content, explaining why. All of those why's apply to Garmin, btw, despite it being designed.
ETA: Allow me to get you started.
ELIZA was designed to simulate a therapist. But the designer did not intend to... what? Bartricks-bot was (in any realistic imagination) designed to help people waste their times on nonsense. But the designer did not intend to... what? Garmin was designed to exploit the GPS system to help people navigate between locations. But that doesn't count because the designer intended to... what? Also note that the pie in the oven was baked by a person using a tool (under ordinary circumstances, bakers, which are humans, are the ones that put pie in ovens in such a context where it becomes non-obvious and thus necessary to communicate the same).
Incidentally, potential counter... unguided evolutionary forces produce two agents. One agent designed a Garmin. The other one used it to reach a destination. How does your argument refute this counter?
These things, btw, are the critical pieces of your argument. They're also the missing pieces. About all you're saying is that humans are involved when humans talk to humans, therefore invisible human like things made humans.
Here's my claim: our faculties need to have been designed to provide us with information before they can be said to generate states with representative content.
You're trying to show this is false with an example of something that has been designed to give us information and is successfully doing so!!
"Oh, but, but, but, bots - bots are designed and you used bots to make your case. Bots. Garmin. Bots. Bots."
Bots are not designed to give information. They are designed to randomly generate 'messages'.
But anyway, that will do nothing whatever to help you. For my case is in defence of a necessary condition for representative content, not a sufficient condition. And, once more, you cannot challenge my premise with a case that confirms it.
Shall I help you? You need a clear case of representation generation that is NOT the product of anything designed.
Yes, the justification is missing. However, what if this kept happening, even by fantastic coincidence: clouds keep spelling out true statements about the world to this one guy. Wouldn't he eventually be justified in assuming there's an agent at work with all these true cloud messages, even if he's not sure there's an agent at work?
Your argument. I have mentioned that several times BTW.
Quoting Bartricks
Okay. So what backs up that claim?
Quoting Bartricks
Wrong!! See above. My problem is with your argument. Your claim does not follow from your argument. Incidentally, this makes everything below this line:
Quoting Bartricks
...irrelevant.
Quoting Bartricks
Well... yes. You were the one who offered the Bartricks-bot argument; the logic I teased out from your argument when applied to Garmin shows that the Bartricks-bot argument doesn't follow. Now, as far as I'm concerned, you're just whining because I'm forcing you to do the work you claimed to have done in the first place.
Quoting Bartricks
Okay... are you saying Garmin is not a bot then? If so, why not? What makes Bartricks-bot a bot and Garmin not one? Incidentally, I'm not asking you because I'm consulting the great wizard. I'm asking you because this is your argument you're supposed to be making.
The only difference you have pointed out so far that could apply in this thread here is:
Quoting Bartricks
...and that doesn't cut it here. Nobody was trying to convey to me that I have reached my destination. Whatever "Garmin is designed to give me information" means, Garmin is nevertheless not trying to do anything, because despite being designed, Garmin is not an agent. I don't care that Garmin was designed; you're the one telling me Garmin is distinct. But your argument does not provide this distinction.
I'm fine with amendments, but what I'm not fine with is pretending you've made an argument you have not made.
I actually agree with him. I'm not prepared, with my evolved little monkey brain, to say definitively what a god can/can't do.
Suppose there's a world where, by fantastic coincidence, erosion patterns just happen to spell out (in a language the people understand) mathematical/scientific truths, and this has been going on since time immemorial. Also, by fantastic coincidence, erosion patterns that take the form of language never give false information- they're always accurate. Eventually the people of this world accumulate a huge store of accurate information about their world. But could it ever be said they know about their world?
IF they recognise the patterns as telling them truths, they must by that very fact have an independent way of verifying the truth of the markings. Hence yes, they are recording what they know.
That is, in order to recognise that the markings are making true statements, they must be able to independently verify their truth.
What's this to do with?
Is not proven. If anything there are plenty of situations where hiding useless information about the world is better for your survival instead of having an accurate mental representation of everything.
So no I don't think the evolutionist can claim we have knowledge of the world "as it is". But then again, who cares about the world "as it is"? What matters is how it seems because that's all we have access to anyways.
In other words, even given that the evolutionist can't do it, who exactly can say that we know the world "as it is"? How would they ever know when they only have access to the way the world seems (by definition), just like the rest of us? They would just have to arbitrarily claim that their representations are not faulty. The evolutionist at least has a weak argument for why they may not be faulty (that in general, an accurate representation of reality is better for survival, even if sometimes it isn't)
That's a good point.
If it is inaccessible, then it's of no consequence.
Contrive a possible world in which a contradiction occurs: in which both P and ~P are the case, in some direct fashion. then in that world, since (P & ~P) ? Q, anything goes. That is, any and every assertion is both true and false.
That is, in a world containing a contradiction, reason becomes impossible.
Hence, if Bart holds that we do indeed live in a world in which contradictions are possible, reason becomes impossiblein this world.
Hence he renders himself outside of reason.
:up:
Yes, but the claim was about possibility, not consequence. Is it possible God could draw a square circle in some way that is inconceivable to us? I'm not ready to rule out that possibility. I admit that it would be of no consequence to me.
If you amend that to "we do indeed live in a world in which [Godly] contradictions are possible", then if God is the only one that can do contradictions, reason is still possible for us, since we need not fear being wrong by a Godly contradiction(s).
No, I don't think so because by hypothesis those 'beliefs' wouldn't be beliefs at all. A belief is a mental state that has representative contents. And I am arguing that the mechanisms by which such mental states are created have to be ones that have been designed to do so if the mental states in question are to have representative contents.
If blind evolutionary forces have built all of our faculties - including our faculty of belief formation - then none of our mental states will have any representative contents. And so our 'beliefs' will not be beliefs at all, they'll just be indiscernible from them.
Not just that, identity (p ? p) is gone, and meaning (whatever is said could mean anything and the contrary). Seems rather meaningless. Or more pertinently here, God is meaningless.
Second, I think the law of non-contradiction is true. True. Not false. True. I just don't think it is necessarily true.
Presumably you think if something is possibly true, it is true. That's dumb. ("Is it possible for me to be a billionnaire...yes....therefore I am a billionaire; Bartricks thinks it is possible for the law of non-contradiction to be false......therefore he must that it is false....yes, Banno is good reasoner"). Stop being dumb, Dummo. So a) bugger off and derail elsewhere; b) stop being dumb.
I do not deny the law of non-contradiction. I think it is true. I don't think it has to be. That doesn't mean I think it is actually false.
And in case you think that somehow this stops me reasoning, note that the above was reasoning. And I did it better than you and Dummo.
...you're really not helping yourself here...
Shall I help you out? I know what you're thinking better than you do. You're thinking "oh, but if he thinks it is true, then he also thinks it is false because he thinks it is possible for it to be false...and if it is possible for it to be false, then it is false....coz that's a thing....and if it is false, then a proposition can be true and false at the same time" - yes? Only that's not what I think, is it? I think that it is true, not false. I think it is possible for it to be true and false at the same time. I really do. But I don't think it is, do I? I think it is just good old true. Truey truingtons. True. Which is consequently what I think about all true propositions: they're true. Not true and false. Just true.
Anyway, this thread is not about the law of non-contradiction or necessary truths. It is about what it takes for a mental state to have representative contents.
Focus.
Have a good close look at the last couple of posts from Bart and a think about his logical skills.
Then decide if you really want to agree with his argument.
...is wrong. Indeed, it's guileless. It is precisely the extent to which "our faculties of awareness" give us knowledge of what is happening around us that determines the extent to which they are transmitted to later generations.
Quoting Bartricks
This odd little story doesn't even address the issue. Learning that pies are in ovens is a long way down the evolutionary train. Try learning that there is a leopard in the grass - that will give you an advantage.
Ya was very disappointed in you myself. He’s well fed and he won’t go away if people keep feeding him.
Ah, fuck I did it again.
Lol, you did. Repeat this mantra “Bartricks believes in squared circles”.
No you didn't. I think, perhaps, you're confusing two different senses of 'criticism'. There's 'your argument is rubbish and you're a terrible person and I hate you' - that's a criticism, but not a rational one. Then there's a rational criticism where you highlight some flaw in my reasoning or a false assumption. At best you did the former, not the latter (and then Dumbojones decided to join in).
Do you want to know what sort of pie it was that was in my oven? That might help you formulate a more pointed criticism.
My analysis is that you have presented a false dichotomy.
State 1 -Our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces and
therefore do not provide us with any true awareness.
-Or-
State 2 -Our faculties of awareness involve agency and therefore do provide us with true awareness.
No other options are allowed and your reasoning hasn't been given, specifically on why true awareness must involve agency.
Mental states do not themselves make representations, for they are not agents (they are states of agents, but a state of an agent is not itself an agent).
As for the false dichotomy - that mischaracterizes my view. The dichotomy I present is a true one: either our faculties are wholly the product of blind evolutionary forces, or they are not. That's exhaustive. (Note, I am not saying either they are wholly the product of blind forces or wholly the product of design - that would be a false dichotomy - I am saying either they are wholly the product of blind forces or they are not, which is logically exhaustive). If, then, they are partially designed and partially not, then it may be that they can generate states with representative contents. After all in my leaf example I did not create the leaf, but I used it to communicate something - and so though the leaf was not designed by me, it still managed to represent something.
There is no false dichotomy, then. This is why I think there is scope to argue that perhaps blindly produced mental states could nevertheless attain representative contents by being used by an agent . The problem with that move, however, is that one needs a starting fund of mental states that are successfully representing before an agent can be said to be using any others for a genuine purpose. And thus one would need there to be at least one faculty that has not been built by blind evolutionary forces. Yet if naturalism is true, then they all have.
Nothing stops another agent from using Boltzmann produced faculties for the purpose of making representations. But until or unless that happens, they won't be creating representations.
Possible and actual. Most people don't have much trouble grasping that distinction. It is metaphysically possible for the law of non contradiction to be false. It is not actually false. Simple. So, it is metaphysically possible for there to be square circles, but actually there are none. But you two do have trouble with it.
Is it metaphysically possible for Dodos to exist?
Bartricks: Yes. It is metaphysically possible for them to. But they don't.
Dumbojones: oh, so Bartricks believes in Dodos! Gosh, he's so stupid and mean and nasty and he can't reason and he thinks Dodos exist. He absolutely does. He said it is mega fizzy possible for Dodos to exist. So he thinks they do. And that they're really fizzy. He's such an idiot. When he goes out he takes his mega fizzy dodo net with him so he can catch a mega fizzy dodo.
Dummo: Yeah, thumbs up.
Dumbojones: too right! I'm laughing so hard blood has come out of my eyes.
Bartricks: er, no. I said it is metaphysically possible for Dodos to exist. That doesn't mean I think they actually exist. I think they don't exist.
Dummo: glad you now agree that they don't exist. You're so stupid. You don't argue anything, you just assemble premises in logical ways and extract interesting conclusions from them. Bart-thick.
Dumbojones: Or BloodyThick.
Dummo: I'm laughing so hard excrement is coming out of my eyes!!!
Are you claiming that a Boltzmann brain would have a mind (but not be aware of anything) or would it be mindless? A P-zombie, in other words.
Quoting Bartricks
Do you mean a subconscious mental event could be going on?
The world is a boring place right now, do you remember how enjoyable it was sitting in the park feeding the pigeons or squirrels? I used to loving going to a park in Mobile where the squirrels would sit in your hand to eat the nuts.
I am actually beginning to think that one of these might be the problem with Fartrix:
1. He never read the book about the topic, he just skinned the covers and maybe the introduction. Or got the Idea from the Amazon review.
2. If he did read the book it was either in a foreign language and he used google to translate it.
3. If the book was in his mother tongue he had it upside down or read from back to front.
4. He went to classes drunk or high.
5. The most probable is that he just does not know anything and is blowing ideas from his ass.
The whole problem could be solved by opening the oven and looking to see if there is a pie in it. That would eliminate any need of information being passed through any message and therefore even if there are such things as representers they would not be involved in acquiring information.
If I can then confirm that the pie is in the oven, it would seem that in some way I would have received that information directly from my evolutionary developed senses.
Now maybe if Fartrix can show why I am wrong, maybe I will continue to try to explain why he is wrong.
I think he just has a personality disorder and doesnt really know anything. Standard internet jerkoff.
That was possibility #6, but I am too polite to call people crazy even though it is possibly true. :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl:
The "or they are not" part to you is agency but logically it's not singular but in fact can be anything else that can be considered the source of our mental capacities.
And although identifying a source is an interesting exercise why wouldn't direct observation that we possess mental faculties in general be sufficient?
‘If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not provide us with any true awareness of anything (including that). As we are aware of some things, we are not wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces.’
I think your original question lacks clarity, which makes it difficult for people to answer. What do you mean by ‘true awareness’? ‘Some things’? Why would you infer that if we were just the product of evolutionary forces, our senses would be unreliable or partial? Etc, etc.
Isn't a mind always aware of at least one thing, though? The Cartesian truth that it is a conscious mind? So if evolutionary forces can produce a brain that has mental states, that's going to result in some awareness, if only of the Cartesian sort, which is why I asked if Boltzmann brains are mindless or not.
Nope, if you are so freaking brilliant you should be able to figure it out all by your self.
If you can't do that, tough shit.
He has no idea, and he will just tell you that it is in the OP and to read it again.
By the way, if you want to quote someone's text, just select it then click on the QUOTE button that appears.
That would require some skill. Leonardo da Vinci was capable writing backwards and so could presumably read backwards too. And he was a bright lad. So that's why it puzzled me. Why in a list of lame insults would you include the possibility that I have an extraordinary skill?
What I am arguing is that if all of our faculties are bot-built, then they won't create any beliefs, just 'beliefs' (where a 'belief' is introspectively indiscernible from a belief, but nevertheless isn't one). So, I am not denying what Descartes says. I am denying the existence of what Descartes is saying it about. If we are bot-built, then we never believe we exist, we just 'believe' we exist. And though it remains true that the belief 'i exist' is incapable of being true - and thus were we ever to have it, we could know ourselves to exist - the 'belief' I exist is not capable of being true (by hypothesis, it lacks representative contents). Thus if we are bot built we will not know anything.
We do know we exist and a whole lot else, of course.
A purer form of True Scotsman fallacy I have never seen.
Quoting Bartricks
Of course not. By your own admission you cannot even introspectively tell if you know things. So how could it possibly be obvious enough to say "of course"?
This seems unworkably incoherent. Maybe you should rephrase something.
So as we clearly do believe some things, and know some things, and perceive some things, we are sometimes in states that have representative contents. And as that would only be possible if the mechanisms that created those states in us were designed by some agency to do so, we can conclude that they have been. Thus we are not wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces.
I am not, however, denying that bot built things can have minds or be in mental states. I would argue that too, but that's not what I am arguing here. I am, if you like, assuming an agnostic position on what it takes for minds to exist.
Oh dear, did I give you the impression that the list was of insults? Terribly sorry about that old chap, maybe I should have explained better. That is nothing more than a list of possible reasons for your "mistaken" (read as "Fucked up") ideas.
Quoting Bartricks
That would be one way of explaining why you have these mistaken ideas.
Quoting Bartricks
No one said that you were/are capable of doing it. I think that you missed the point.
Penny will drop in 10 seconds from now, 9, 8,7..................................
But getting back to the rest of that post.
Quoting Sir2u
Don't you have anything to comment about it?
In the quote I underlined. This one: ======vvvv
Quoting Bartricks
^^^===== It's right there. It's underlined.
Introspectively indiscernible means not able to discern introspectively... in English at least.
Quoting Bartricks
There's no other reasonable meaning of "introspectively indiscernible" except that one cannot discern using introspection.
Quoting Bartricks
Don't care. If you are so bad at communicating that you say opposite things, that's not on me. Introspectively indiscernible means one cannot discern using introspection.
You're saying the following is false? "For any x, if x is conscious, x has a justified true belief that x is conscious." Is your claim that if x is the product of chance (or bot-built), x can't have a justified true belief about anything, even its own consciousness?
If the light is green, you can go.
InPenetrablyS: "so I can go"
What? No, the light is red.
InPenetrablyS: "But you said I can go. I go. You stupid shit talking farting person"
No, I said if the light is green you can go. I didn't say you can go. The light's red. Christ! And why are you calling me stupid? I am a highly qualified driving instructor and you are trying to learn to drive".
InPenetrablyS "You know nothing about driving. You have just seen some driving, probably backwards driving and you think you are knowing about driving. I am knowing about driving and you said "go!!"
'Beliefs' can't be true or false, so they can't have any knowledge (as knowledge requires having a justified true belief, whatever else it may involve).
In effect, all of their apparent states of awareness will be fake states of awareness.
It's pointless arguing with you, but anyway, in the hope that someone somewhere will get the point - imagine a portrait artist paints a picture of you. That's a pictorial representation. Now imagine a monkey in a room randomly flinging paint at a canvas. And imagine that by some pure fluke the image the monkey's mad antics create exactly resembles the portrait painter's painting. Is it a portrait of you? No. It's just some random monkey-flung paint on a canvas. It's indistinguishable from the portrait of you, but it's not a portrait of you.
Our visual sensations are random monkey-flung paintings if our visual faculties are bot built. And thus lookingin the oven is not something one can do with bot built faculties. All one can do is 'look' in the oven.
Quoting Bartricks
There's the gaslighting that has zero chance of working...
Quoting Bartricks
...and the fantasizing, right on cue.
Might I suggest an approach that would work a tad bit better... just rephrase your statement to mean what you mean.
But, let's do this.
Quoting Bartricks
Sure. Here's you're whole sentence:
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Indeed it does.
Quoting Bartricks
"If" introduces an antecedent.
Quoting Bartricks
That's irrelevant, because in the "full quote" above, the antecedent (p) is "all of our faculties are bot-built", and the consequent (q) is "they won't create any beliefs, just 'beliefs'". "(where a 'belief' is introspectively indiscernible from a belief, but nevertheless isn't one)" is a parenthetical phrase. That parenthetical phrase is not part of the consequent.
But, of course, you know that. Your reply has nothing to do with my being stupid, or incompetent in English. It is, rather, a doomed-to-fail strategy to try to avoid doing something very sane and simple... rephrasing your statement to mean what you mean.
Knowledge is justified true belief, but it also requires a knower and what is known. I agree with you that accidental/bot-built collections of matter aren't the sorts of things that can be "knowers", but conscious beings are the sorts of things that are knowers. If a bot-built collection of matter somehow gives rise to a conscious mind, then I think you're going to have something that is capable of awareness and belief, at least of its own consciousness.
Nope. It has something to do with your allergy to conceding even that which would benefit you, for who knows why.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes, it did. Exactly as I said last post:
Quoting Bartricks
There's the if, right before the underlined antecedent, the italicized consequent, and the bolded parenthetical.
Quoting Bartricks
Oh what narratives!
Quoting Bartricks
...oh what poetic drama!
But apparently the greatest thinker since Plantinga cannot tell a consequent from a parenthetical phrase. I don't believe you're that incompetent.
To recap: I have never, ever, ever said that we are not introspectively aware of things or not aware of things generally. Read the OP! I think we ARE aware of things.
Yeah yeah... Plantinga is a total amateur.
Quoting Bartricks
Ahem...
Quoting Bartricks
...and that means, well, what it says it means.
Quoting Bartricks
So you just said something you didn't mean. Maybe you should rephrase it.
Or maybe try something else, but how is that something else working out for you?
LOL! And round and round and round we go!
Quoting Bartricks
Sure I do. Indiscernible means not able to discern. Introspectively is an adjective, meaning by means of introspection.
Quoting Bartricks
Denial, contradiction and disinformation are key ingredients to gaslighting.
That's not what the problem is. The problem is:
Quoting Bartricks
...you absolutely refuse to clarify. It is not your intent to be clear. You'd rather be dramatic than do a simple reasonable thing. I won't speculate as to why, but you're making at least these things crystal clear.
Because:
Quoting Bartricks
...your claim ipso facto introspectively discerns two things (belief and 'belief') you claim are introspectively indiscernible. Because:
Quoting Bartricks
...you pretend not to realize that claiming something is introspectively indiscernible means you cannot introspectively be aware of it.
And because, you know this. You're not as moronic as you're pretending to be. You just refuse to do a very simple reasonable thing.
Sunflowers no. 4. It's a famous painting by Vincent van Gogh. It is in the National gallery in London.
Is it possible for there to be a visually indiscernible painting that's not by Van Gogh? So, a painting that 'looks' the same, but isn't by Van Gogh.
Yes, obviously that's possible.
Now, does what I have just said amount to me saying that I haven't seen Sunflowers no. 4?
No, of course it bloody doesn't!! Saying that it is possible for there to be a visually indiscernible fake van gogh does not amount to saying that what is hanging in the National is fake. When I look at the sunflower painting in the National, I am looking at a painting created by Van Gogh in late August 1888. The fact it is possible for there to be a visually indiscernible painting that was not created by Van Gogh does not mean that what I am looking at in the National is not by Van Gogh as anyone who is allowed to use metal cutlery realizes immediately.
Me: This is Sunflowers no. 4 by Vincent Van Gogh. It's the most popular painting in here.
InPenetrablyS: You don't know anything. It is by Rolf Harris. And everyone hates it. Idiot.
Me: er, no. It is a sunflower painting by Van Gogh.
Imagine if what's in front of us was actually produced by a machine. That is, imagine a visually indiscernible image, but machine-made rather than painted by Van Gogh. Well, then we wouldn't be looking at a genuine Van Gogh, but a fake one. Right?
InPenetrablyS: What, you are saying this isn't by Van Gogh? Good, you dumb twerp, coz it is by Rolf Harris.
Me: er, no. I am saying this painting is by Van Gogh. We are looking at a van Gogh. But it is possible for there to be a visually indiscernible image that is not by Van Gogh.
InPenetrablyS: So this isn't by Van Gogh. That's what you are saying. You are unjust an ignorant internet hound farting nonsense out of your face which is also your bum.
Me: no, how are you this stupid? I am not saying that what we are looking at is not by Van Gogh. It is by him. It has impeccable provenance. There is no question this is a real Van Gogh. How on earth does saying that it is possible for there to be a visually indiscernible fake amount to me saying that this here is a fake?
InPenetrablyS: stop gaslighting me. It won't work. You won't convince me I am dumb. You are the dumb one. I know what indiscernible means. And it means you are saying this isn't a Van gogh. And anyway you were previously talking about introspective indiscernibility, but in this stupid example you are talking about visual indiscernibility. That's quite different. I win. I win in the way that I win every game of chess I play too: by moving any piece however I want. Gaslighting meany.
No, which is why I didn't say you were committed to that view. I said you claimed something you didn't mean.
Quoting Bartricks
And yet, you are distinguishing them. That leads to my response to this:
Quoting Bartricks
...which was this:
Quoting InPitzotl
...in the case of Van Gogh, maybe we can pull out a magnifying glass. Maybe we can carbon date. Maybe we can check certificates of authenticity. But here you claim that "of course" we know versus 'know', which suggests we just naturally, introspectively know it. That leads to the first challenge.
But it's here where you squared the circle:
Quoting Bartricks
...and in the case of Van Gogh, if you cannot introspectively distinguish the genuine from the fake you ipso facto are not introspectively aware.
Honestly, this shouldn't require this much drama. You chose the drama route.
1. The environment we develop in and our education effect awareness.
2. Hence the word awareness.
3. I see what you did there.
This is an either/or false choice fallacy. Interesting strategy.
Edit: The first premise suggest there is a choice between unguided evolution and nothing else that would steer an individuals awareness. I believe this over looks the agency of people that influence an individual during development.
My wife thinks she has a similar argument:
1. Materialism means there is no free will
2. If there's no free will, we have no choice in what we believe nor can we decide whether evidence is good or not
3. If we have no choice in what we believe and/or no way to decide whether evidence is good or bad, knowledge is impossible.
4. Knowledge is possible, therefore materialism is false.
That makes 2 of us then. One that does not understand it and one that does not understand just how bloody stupid it is.
Quoting Bartricks
There seems to be enough consensus to let this go.
Quoting Bartricks
This still sounds like bullshit even after you have repeated it so many times.
Quoting Bartricks
If it is as good as the painters image of me and is indistinguishable from the other one then of course it is a portrait of me. Even if the monkey does not recognize the fact. Can you provide a definition of
"portrait" that specifies that only humans are allowed to create them or that they have to be intentional?
I think you have this wrong again. :gasp: All you have done were is try to prove that only agent created messages are capable of creating representative contents.
But even if I were to admit that it was true, which it is certainly not. It in no way whatsoever proves that the perception of those messages has to be through agent create faculties.
Quoting Bartricks
Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, BORING.
It is about time you got a dictionary so that you can stop using the dickionary you use. Maybe it will help to stop you fucking up so much.
Your lack of knowledge about the use of words, ignorance, is only surpassed by the flagrantly abusive use of them to suite your own ideas, dumbness.
And the monkey-flung painting is clearly not a portrait of you. However, if your reason says otherwise, then i think it is too badly corrupted to be of any use.
Re your wife's argument - well I certainly think free will provides compelling evidence that materialism about the mind is false. I wouldn't go via 'choice' though, as i think we can distinguish between free and unfree choices (though these too would be introspectively indiscernible).
Nope. You made that up.
Quoting Bartricks
That's incoherent. Introspection employs self observation and implies self awareness.
Quoting Bartricks
This is so muddled I can't interpret it. What is "it", what claims (plural) are you talking about, and why are you telling me what I think?
Quoting Bartricks
The problem would be if you claim both that they are visually indiscernible and to have visually confirmed which is the real one.
If I was abusive as you, I would correct your opinion of yourself to read piss drinking shit eating type of person. But I am not at all abusive. :halo:
Quoting Bartricks
Please explain how you dickionary contradicts my point of view. IF YOU CAN. :rofl:
I don't understand your edit. My premise assumes no such thing.
Oh dear, thank you so much. I never imagined that a dipshit like you was capable of paying such a compliment,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jackson-Pollock
There are a lot more famous paint flinger like him.
Thank you so much.
After I reviewed the two I came to the same conclusion. It isn't entirely clear.
Quoting Bartricks The rant about clouds and pie? Yeah, lets say I'm missing the correct tools to really give that it's proper treatment. I'm going to address the words in the premise only, because that's how a premise works.
If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not give us an awareness of anything.
Now, at first glance this appears like a contradiction. If we have awareness by way of X we do not have awareness. The reason is because of the contradiction. We can not both have awareness and not have awareness.
But anyway, you say this:
Quoting Cheshire
There is no contradiction because a faculty and what it gives one an awareness of are distinct. For example, if my eyelids are sealed shut then I still have a faculty of sight, but it is now impotent to make me aware of anything. I have sight, but I am unable to see.
So there is no contradiction, then. Admittedly someone could object that if our faculties are unable to generate any states with representative contents, then they are not really faculties of awareness at all any longer. And they'd have a point. But this would be to quibble over words and it would have no impact on the argument itself. I am trapped by our language for to date the idea that our faculties could be identical to what they actually are, yet be incapable of generating any states with representative contents, is not one users of the language have ever entertained, and thus there is no term for a faculty of awareness that has been rendered impotent in this fundamental way. I suppose I could put inverted commas around 'faculty of awareness', but that too would be misleading, for the first premise does not assert that our faculties are the products of unguided evolution and thus whether they are 'faculties' or faculties is left open. But like I say, this is pointless quibbling.
Indeed. I think everything you've said is a load of Pollocks.
There's nothing incoherent about it. Let's use the visual analogy. There can be a visually indiscernible painting from a genuine Van Gogh, and it not be a Van Gogh. Presumably you think that's incoherent. It clearly is not. Fakers endeavor to create them. And sometimes they succeed.
Note too that to say two states are introspectively indiscernible, is not to suppose that there is someone who is failing introspectively to discern them. You seem to think it does suppose that (Christ knows why - that's like thinking that the claim there can be a visually indiscernible Sunflowers painting that is not by Van Gogh supposes that there is someone who is visually failing to discern them).
Quoting InPitzotl
What are you on about? The claim that two paintings - a genuine Van Gogh and a fake one - are visually indiscernible is not equivalent to the claim that the two paintings are indiscernible tout court, is it?
Similarly, the claim that two mental states - one a genuine state of awareness and the other not - can be introspectively indiscernible is not equivalent to the claim that those two states are indiscernible tout court, is it?
Indeed, look at what I am arguing. I am arguing that we 'are' aware of things - for to hold that we are unaware of everything is to have a self-refuting position - and thus we can know that at least some of our conscious states genuinely represent things to be the case. And we can also know, by the kind of careful reasoning that I have engaged in above (and that you seem incapable of following, perhaps because you are so determined that I am confused), that this would not be possible unless our faculties were not wholly the product of blind evolutionary forces. And thus we can, by careful exercise of our faculty of reason, realize that some of our mental states are genuine representations. We are not noticing this by introspection, but by intellection.
Sure there is. Incidentally, you just quoted my description of why it's incoherent, yet failed to address it.
Quoting Bartricks
The visual analogy is not analogous. Van Gogh's can be visually indiscernible from fakes. That has nothing to do with introspection requiring self awareness.
Quoting Bartricks
If I'm looking at two paint swatches I cannot distinguish, they could possibly be metamers. But to talk about my inability to visually distinguish C from E flat is simply a category error. It's only the former case that distinguishability is an issue; the latter case is more fundamental.
Looking at a paint swatch is analogous to introspecting on a mental state. But whereas looking employs vision, introspection employs self awareness. To introspect on a mental state is to be aware of a mental state, never mind whether that state per se is awareness.
That's the first issue. The second one is:
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Bartricks
...what are you objecting to? The bolded part of your response certainly does not align with the bolded part of the thing you replied to.
Quoting Bartricks
You are mocking yourself. You're referring to the use of careful reasoning in your response to my post, and you have completely failed to notice what the objections were. If this is supposed to indicate how good your argument is, then you must be completely failing to address your premise analogously to your complete failure to understand the post you just replied to.
Thanks for directly addressing the matter. I found this defense of the premise to be much more coherent and informative.
I think what you are trying to say is evolution alone can not account for the ways in which humans think as there aren't environmental stresses that move an animal to paint a picture or write a song.
Quoting Bartricks
The value placed on a discussion is subjective I suppose. It may be pointless if you have a belief already established and this is an effort at rationalizing it.
For an analogy, imagine a faker of banknotes has made a machine for printing notes that are physically indistinguishable from genuine currency. That machine is not printing money. It is printing fake money. What do we call such a machine? Well, that's not a philosophical question and it really doesn't matter when the point that is being made is that this machine - whatever we may call it - is not printing money, even if it is identical, mechanically, to those machines that do print money. For whether a machine is printing money or fake money is not a matter determined solely by how the machine functions or the intrinsic properties of its product, but also its relational properties.
Your analysis of my argument is wrong. Again, using the forging machine above to illustrate: we have a machine that is spitting out notes that are physically indistinguishable from genuine banknotes. Is it printing money? Well, that depends on who made it and who is using it, right? You can't tell from just inspecting and describing the machinery in ever more detail or scrutinizing the notes themselves, for by hypothesis the notes are physically identical.
That's what I am arguing in respect of the faculties that create some of our mental states, namely those by means of which we gain awareness, if gain it we do. Those states are the pieces of paper that the mechanism is producing. To be capable of giving us awareness they need to have 'representative contents'. In this analogy that is equivalent to the property of being a genuine banknote as opposed to a fake. And I am arguing that to have that status, the mental states in question need to have been produced by a mechanism that was designed to give its bearer the contents in question, or is being used to do so. So in the analogy, that would be like saying that the machine that produced the note needs to be being used to do so by some legitimizing government agency.
I am arguing, then, that if our mechanisms of mental state production are the creation of blind evolutionary forces, then the mental states they create in us, though introspectively indiscernible from the genuine article, will be fake and thus will not give us any genuine awareness of anything.
Any why is this? For I have not blankly stated it, but argued for it. Here's why. In order for a mental state to give one an awareness of something, the mental state in question needs to have 'representative contents'. That is, it needs to represent something to be the case. It needs, in effect, to be telling us something.
However- and this is my argument - only minds can make representations. For 'representing' is an activity - an activity of mind. Mental states themselves do not make representations. That is as confused as thinking that thoughts think. Thoughts do not think. Thinkers think (and they think by having thoughts). But thoughts do not themselves 'think'. And likewise, no mental state makes a representation. Minds make representations, but mental states do not.
How, then, can a mental state 'tell us' anything about anything? Well, the same way a note can. A note saying 'close the window' is not itself telling you to close the window. Rather, someone is using the note to convey to you their desire that the window be closed. When that's the case, we may say "the note told me to close the window", but this is not literal: we mean by it that someone told us to close the window by means of the note. Likewise, our mental states cannot literally make representations. But we can talk about them as if they do when they are being used by an agent to make representations.
But if the faculties that generate our mental states - including those we take to have representative contents - are built by blind forces, then the states in question will not have any representative contents. And thus they will be incapable of giving us any awareness of anything, even though our introspective situation will be indiscernible from what it would be if they were genuine representations.
Your attempting a reductio ad absurdum against secular scientific evolution. Saying that if it was unguided, then it would be otherwise. Which supposes the effects of non-intervention on a theoretical human mind. I'd be more likely to just believe it out right than think anyone could correctly guess the outcomes of an evolutionary system sans divine intervention. So, if you are correct, your argument is impossible. I wish I could help.
Quoting Cheshire
What on earth are you on about? No it isn't! And what 'help' do you think I need? I have made an argument apparently demonstrating beyond all doubt that our faculties are the product of design, not chance. And you think I need help?
Yes, and for this reason. cheers
It's the same essential objection as the one three days ago.
Quoting Bartricks
Okay, but why is this too tedious for words now? You've spent 10 replies on this:
We can leave this hanging if you really want. But the original problem is still there.
You must have been working on your charm class homework very hard. Some many compliments.
But you have still failed to address what I said.
From a psychological point of view it is extremely interesting to see how you abuse others that fail to meet your pathetic expectations even when they have the courtesy to write replies to your hogwash. But you do not even have the courtesy to reply.
Indeed, I think that everything you have said is a load of bollocks that is completely unsustainable in any form that you care to spout it.
Your right about that, and he will probably stick around for a while longer. :rofl:
This made my Friday worthwhile. Thank you.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/thephilosophyforum-ignore/makbinojcaolplmpbneielaccnondnko
Credits to @SophistiCat.
Well, it hasn't improved with time. I mean, I don't know what you objection is. You just keep saying that there is something incoherent in the idea of, well, what? Two mental states that are introspectively indiscernible, but one of which is a state of awareness and the other not?
I have said what I need to about that. There is nothing remotely incoherent about it, as countless examples show. I can keep coming up with them until the cows come home.
I mean, what the hell do you think is going on in a case of hallucination? It's possible you're hallucinating right now, yes? Well, there's quite a big difference between a case of hallucination and a case of veridical perception. There's a debate over exactly what the difference is, but the fact remains that a case of hallucination is introspectively indiscernible from a case of veridical perception. So the notion of introspective indiscernibility is a coherent one, else we could not even make sense of the possibility of hallucinatory experiences.
So I don't think your objection can really be that the notion of introspective indiscernibility is incoherent, for it just so plainly isn't. I am at a loss, therefore, to understand what your objection is. You seem very confused to me. Yet at the same time you seem very confident that you've got some stunning objection to me. I really don't see it.
I have literally no idea what you're on about. Here's my argument from the OP:
Quoting Bartricks
I then defended 1 and 2. Now, which premise are these Neanderthal cousins questioning? (Perhaps InPitzotl can help us out)
This really confuses you? I'm aware that I have thoughts. Whether or not the thoughts are awareness, being aware of thoughts is in and of itself awareness (of thoughts).
Quoting Bartricks
Sure. If I genuinely see a cup, there's a cup there. If I hallucinate a cup, there typically isn't a cup there.
But both require having a percept. If you did not in fact have the experience of seeing a cup, you did not hallucinate it. Analogous to the big difference between a hallucination and veridical perception, there is a big difference between reporting having a hallucination and lying about having one.
Quoting Bartricks
That's not where the incoherency lies. "Introspective indiscernibility" is perfectly coherent. What's incoherent is the suggestion that you can introspect about something without awareness.
You have implied there exist such a thing as Quoting Bartricks or guided evolutionary forces which is implied. Then supposed you could know the difference one or the other would have on human cognition. Essentially stating, because things are the way they are I am correct. But, you take a step further and pretend to know how they would be different. The nature of an evolutionary system sort of disallows the ability to make that claim with confidence. Agree or disagree aside, do you understand my complaint?
No, I don't know what you're arguing. You are confused. Not me. You. I don't think you have a criticism.
Quoting InPitzotl
No. A belief is not a percept. Yet if I believe I am perceiving something, then my situation is introspectively indiscernible from what it would be if I was in fact perceiving something.
Quoting InPitzotl
Why don't you actually read what I take the trouble to write? I addressed this stupid and irrelevant point earlier. Here:
Quoting Bartricks
So once more, InPenetrablyS, what - just what - is your objection? You don't have one, right?
Read the OP again. Then challenge a premise of my syllogism by presenting some reason to think there can be representations absent a representer.
Nope, still haven't a clue what you're saying. The OP starts by presenting a syllogism. Which premise are you trying to take issue with?
Quoting Bartricks
But a hallucination is not a belief; it is a fictive percept. A person with Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) for example experiences hallucinations, but does not confuse the hallucinated objects with real objects (which is a giant problem for you; they introspectively distinguish the reality of their percepts). They do, however, have fictive percepts.
So:
Quoting Bartricks
...you must be confused about hallucinations.
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
(D) is wrong; I think no such thing. (A) does not imply (C) is wrong. Therefore, (B) is wrong; (B) does not address (A), (B) addresses your confusion about (A).
Analogously, I can see; in particular I have color vision. There are spectra I can distinguish (loosely, colors) and spectra I cannot distinguish (metamers). I need not be looking at the things for this to make sense; somewhere in China there are three paint swatches, where two are metamers and the third is a different color. We can talk about this because I have vision. By contrast, Cleverbot does not have color vision, or vision at all (or self awareness or awareness); any speak about what Cleverbot can visually distinguish is a category error.
That you think the problem I pointed out has to do with the objects of introspection is your own fault. The problem is that introspection in and of itself presupposes awareness just as vision in and of itself presupposes sight.
Oh, that's soooo clear. Jesus. Let's unpick that mess, shall we? (Bet you hoped I wouldn't).
So, you have said that D is false. Thus, assuming you understand English (which is bloody generous of me) ,you do not think that 'introspective indiscernibility' requires that any introspection be occurring. Thus two mental states - X and Y - can be introspectively indiscernible, even if no one is failing introspectively to discern them.
And thus if no one has a faculty of introspection capable of generating any states of awareness, that is entirely compatible with there existing mental states that are introspectively indiscernible from states of awareness.
So that's what you think, given you have just said that D is wrong. And it's what I believe too.
Then you say that A - the claim that the notion of introspective indiscernibility is coherent - does not imply that there needs to be someone who is failing introspectively to discern them.
Er, I know. I said that. Thanks for saying what I said a whole order of magnitude less clearly. Your point??
But then you say - bizarrely - that therefore B is wrong. That is, that somehow what you just said above shows that you did read and understood what I said. No, how on earth does that follow?
Now, once more, what is your actual objection to what I have argued? This?
Quoting InPitzotl
Yes, so? Introspective indiscernibility - as you have now acknowledged - does not require that anyone actually be failing introspectively to discern anything. So what on earth are you challenging with this banal claim? Be clear: what are you challenging?
I presented a syllogism in the OP. What is your objection to it? WHich premise do you deny and why?
Apparently so. You're just now grasping that I'm not talking about what you fantasized I was.
Quoting Bartricks
That is incoherent. It's a tangled mess. There's no such thing as a faculty of introspection incapable of generating states of awareness. Without introspection, there's no such thing as introspective discernibility/indiscernibility in the first place.
Quoting Bartricks
Nonsense. I don't think such a thing... it's incoherent.
Mostly this one.
Quoting Bartricks
What is an unguided evolutionary force? Secular evolution?
We can categorize views all day. It is the view itself that is important, not what label you put on it. Now, I have told you what I mean by unguided evolution. What is your objection to the case I made in support of premise 1?
A peahen is an agent. Peahens have sexual preferences that guide the evolution of peacock tails. According to Bartricks's definition, sexual selection among peahens is guided evolution (as far as I care at least).
Look, I don't think you have a clear objection. Why don't you read what I said in defence of 1?
Awareness requires being in a mental state that has representative contents. Or do you think otherwise?
And a state can only represent something if it is being used by an agent to do so - no representation without a representer. Or do you think otherwise?
Yes; just a typo... corrected.
Already stated, multiple times. Your premise does not follow from your arguments.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes it does. You state 1 type of evolution results in 1 type of awareness. It is the entire cornerstone of your position.
Quoting Bartricks
Objection: You suppose 2 types of evolution and to know the result of each as a binary effect on your concept called awareness. I submit your powers of observation don't provide you with the ability to pick between them. Which you for some reason agree with...
Quoting Cheshire
Quoting Bartricks
Did you intend to concede the position or would you like to reverse this statement?
You just worry about this unresolved incoherency for now. This is the latest post there. We're well over a dozen posts into the reply 1 (before we get back to the original in this line), and you're still as inconsistent as you were then. Knock that light out.
Start by telling me either how one can have a faculty of introspection without awareness, or what it means for things to be introspectively indistinguishable without such faculties.
Ah, I see. You'd rather crow than address the inconsistency.
Already provided. Here's the re-re-spoonfeed of it.
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting InPitzotl
So two is the latest count of the number of times I referred to it again. I even rebuilt the link in this quote for you, so you wouldn't have to be bothered to use your mouse scroll button to scroll up a single screen full. I'm afraid I cannot click that link for you.
But zero is the number of responses so far to that post. I thought you were going to knock its light out?
IF you can't discern between the products of guided or unguided evolution, then it does not follow you can state with certainty the effect it has on awareness.
Premise 1 states there would be no awareness in the case of unguided.
Premise 1 could state there would be awareness in the case of unguided without contradicting any evidence.
You can have a faculty of introspection without being aware of anything, just as you can have a faculty of sight without seeing anything (I explained above - I don't know to which of you bozos I explained it, as you've all congealed into one big mass of stupid in my mind - but if my eyelids are sealed shut, then I would still have a faulty of sight, but I would not be seeing anything with it).
But anyway, as I keep stressing - and the point seems too subtle to register with you (and it is not very subtle) - for two mental states to qualify as introspectively indiscernible, no one needs to be failing introspectively to discern them. So, the claim that a mental state is introspectively indiscernible from another does not presuppose that there are people with working faculties of introspection. This is not a hard point to grasp.
My argument is that if our faculties are built by unguided natural selection, then they will not create in us any states of awareness, just states introspectively indiscernible from states of awareness. Under those circumstances - circumstances I have argued do not obtain - no-one would have a faculty of introspection, just 'faculties of introspection'. That's not a problem. That doesn't indicate some incoherence in my claim.
I have suggested that you must think otherwise and that this silly point is somehow at the heart of your mysterious objection. But you have replied that you accept this. Yet you persist in pointing out that if no-one has a faculty of introspection, no one will be failing to introspectively discern that which is introspectively indiscernible.
So again, I do not know what your objection is. I don't think you have one. Lights out.
No, it is just true. And i haven't admitted anything about my first premise - again, what are you on about? My first premise is true, and I provided argumentative support for it. You've said nothing to address anything I have argued. Nothing.
Quoting Cheshire
Where did I argue that you can't discern them? The argument itself establishes that our mental states are 'not' the product of unguided evolution. There: they are discerned from states that would be introspectively indiscernible from them but would provide no awareness if the produced by unguided evolutionary forces.
Again: we 'are' aware of things. SO we are sometimes in states of awareness. Those states are 'introspectively' indiscernible from states that are not states of awareness. But so what?
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Cheshire
Quoting Bartricks
Slightly wrong in the vision department, but workable. You can have a faculty of vision without seeing anything (hypothetically), and you can also lack a faculty of vision without seeing anything. The difference between these two things is that a person with a faculty of vision can see.
Analogously, an entity can have a faculty of introspection without introspecting something, and one can also lack a faculty of introspection without introspecting something. The difference between these two things is that the entity with the faculty of introspection can introspect.
So let's suppose there's a bot-built entity:
Quoting Bartricks
...that you're describing here. Either the bot-built entity has a faculty of introspection, or it does not have a faculty of introspection. In the former case, the bot-built entity is capable of awareness. In the latter case, it's meaningless to discuss introspective discernibility.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes, you do, and it keeps being irrelevant.
Quoting Bartricks
This is still incoherent. Let's call the swatches in China A, B, and C. Introduce Tom, who is totally blind from birth. A and B are the metamers; they're red. C is green.
Tom has no faculty of vision, so Tom is "failing to visually discern" B from C. But as you said:
Quoting Bartricks
...I can have a faculty of vision without seeing B and C. In that case, I too am "failing to visually discern" B from C. So does that make B and C visually indiscernible to me?
So, you asked me how one can have a faculty without having any awareness, yes?
I then answered that stupid and irrelevant question (irrelevant because it in no way bears on the credibility of my argument). If I have a faculty of sight but my eyelids are sealed shut, then I have a faculty of sight, but no visual awareness. So one can have a faculty without having any of the awareness the faculty is in principle capable of giving you.
Your question showed that this did not occur to you. That, as far as you are concerned, having a faculty of awareness involves being aware of things. That's a mistake, as I have just shown you. It's also irrelevant to my argument - but it is a mistake. A mistake on your part. Consider that a big punch on the nose.
Quoting InPitzotl
Quoting InPitzotl
Not really following things are you? It doesn't have a faculty of introspection. It has a 'faculty of introspection' - that is, a faculty that will generate in its possessor states that are introspectively indiscernible from states giving introspective awareness.
And no, it is not meaningless to discuss introspective indiscernibility in that case, for......and for God's sake will you please grow the relevant part of the brain needed to grasp this simple point - whether two states are introspectively indiscernible or not does not depend upon anyone failing introspectively to discern them. Christ! The creature in question will not have a faculty of introspection. They will have a 'faculty of introspection'. And they will not have any introspective awareness of anything. They will be in states that are introspectively indiscernible from states of introspective awareness. But they will not be in any states of introspective awareness. This isn't hard.
The rest was just the failure to recognize this simple point made over and over again.
Now, once more, you haven't actually objected to anything I have argued. What is your objection to premise 1?
No. Awareness can refer to either a state or an ability; and what I'm asking is specifically about introspection (not generally about faculties). The question is how one can have a faculty of introspection without the capacity of awareness. You've mutated that into how one can have a faculty without a state of awareness, but that was not the question.
Quoting Bartricks
But not without a capacity. Incidentally your objection doesn't even make sense; are you honestly going with bot built facilities having their introspective eyes shut?
Quoting Bartricks
Nice try, but it is never my fault when you fail to make an argument. It's not on me to guess what you mean; it's on you to say what you mean.
Quoting Bartricks
Nope... doesn't work. There seems to be some attempt to use quotes here analogous to the p- usage in a Chalmersian analysis, but it collapses in on itself. We have no faculty of introspection, and yet, we have a faculty and we have things being introspectively indiscernible, by means of some 'faculty of introspection'. What?
Again, it's not on me to guess what you mean. If your single-quoting is meant to make some sort of Chalmersian distinction, you need to be consistent so that it's clear. If you're referring to some weird Bartricksian 'faculty' thing you invented and never explained, your argument has yet to be made.
Quoting Bartricks
There's that phrase "failing introspectively to discern them" again. What does that mean? Try working this out by responding to the swatch example.
Very questionable. What is your definition of knowledge ?
But I'm not gonna argue about that, this is not the subject of the thread.
The over arching point is probably that your conclusion could be right in theory, but this argument doesn't prove it. It seems like you may be arguing more for sport than to actually fix it, so really nothing more to say about it that hasn't been repeated 3 or 4 times by myself and others. Feel free to pretend you don't understand. Cheers.
So what's questionable then?
The above represents the requested contradiction. Feel free to make philosophical noises at it.
Presumably you think you've already done that. You haven't. If you say "X presupposes Y" and I say "No it doesn't" that doesn't mean I am saying Y is not the case.
Me: I have a cake and a coffee.
YOu: If you have a coffee, that presuppose you have a cake.
Me: No it doesn't.
You: So you don't have a cake. That contradicts your earlier statement.
Me: No it doesn't. I do have a cake. But having a coffee does not presuppose possession of a cake.
You: you contradicted yourself.
Me: No I didn't.
You. You did.
Repeat a 1000 times
If X, then Y
If X, Not Y, Then Y
You: I know the outcome of guided evolution is X
You: So, the outcome of unguided evolution is Y
Me: So you know the outcome of two types of evolution
You: Yes, No, Maybe, Cake
No one: Compelling.
"X presupposes Y" is false. X and Y may be the case. But X does not presuppose Y.
Look, you don't even know how to address my argument, do you?
If X, then Y
If X , then (empty set), then Y
Not better.
If X then Y. That's called a conditional. It doesn't assert X or Y. It just says 'if' X, then Y.
So, if I deny "If X then Y" I am not thereby denying either X or Y.
Christ.
Now, I haven't contradicted myself at any point.
Address my argument. Read the OP. And address the argument.
Thanks for disproving science...
Read the OP. Marvel at its brilliance. Address the argument.
:starstruck:
Right, but no one accused you of that; your first premise which is...1. If our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary forces, then they do not give us an awareness of anything.
It looks like an if...then statement. But, you can't defend it because you have ZERO reason to suppose you know the outcome of 1 type of evolution(unguided) versus another type of evolution(guided implied).
If you fail to acknowledge this for the pathologically umpteenth time I will send an invoice.
Premise 1 doesn't 'look like' an 'if...then' statement. It is one. Not looks like. Is.
The 'conclusion' of the syllogism is that our faculties are the real deal, do create states of awareness, and are not the product of unguided evolution.
The conclusion doesn't follow from 1 alone. It follows from 1 and 2.
So, if you have a problem with premise 1, address the argument I gave in support of it. You haven't.
If you have no problem with premise 1, but have a problem with the conclusion, then you need to address premise 2 and what I said in defence of it.
Do one or other of those things.
Right, and if..then statements requires a connection between two things that are not satisfied by an 'or'.
Quoting Bartricks
One has to be true and it isn't. I can't make it true and I won't pretend it is; because I think that's a disservice.
Quoting Bartricks It's unintelligible, probably means something to you but otherwise requires a cipher. And it's unnecessary because people can't "know" the outcomes of hypothetical evolutionary system alterations.
Quoting Bartricks
I obviously have a problem with premise 1, why would you think otherwise?
Because you haven't said anything to address the argument I gave in support of it.
I mean, what do you think my argument is?
Evolution was guided because I have an X type of awareness instead of a Y type of awareness. In the structure of a filibuster in the key of E.
Quoting Cheshire
Y type of awareness = "none of us are 'perceiving' reality at all."
You describe the counter to JTB and then toss in the qualifier "guided/unguided" and apply it to evolution. It's like a diversion and then quick sell. If it's causing distress I can pretend to believe you. At this point, I don't mind. You are right in the sense, JTB is inaccurate. It's more of an academic tool than a real world description; like comparative advantage in economics.
But anyway, that's my defence of premise 2, not 1. Premise 1 turns on what it takes for a mental state to have representative contents. And what I argue is that for a mental state to have representative contents, it has to be being used by an agent for the purpose of representing what it is representing.
Is that analogous to being unable to answer the question "Are you sleeping" in the affirmative?
Quoting Bartricks
It's less clear how this informs one about the nature of evolution.
No.
Quoting Cheshire
Because if true, then in combination with premise 2 it tells us that the evolutionary processes that have furnished us with our faculties of awareness have not been unguided.
It comes across like I am therefore I think.
Different. The idea that I do not exist contains no contradiction. Yet I am confused if I think the idea a reality. Similarly, the idea that all of our apparent states of awareness are in fact fake, contains no contradiction either. But once more, we would be confused if we ever thought it a reality.
Then you say, for god knows what reason, Quoting Cheshire
No, for it is both metaphysically possible that I am sleeping right now (and thus that this is a dream) and I can believe it coherently. I may even acquire evidence that it is true (if, for example, I suddenly find that I am a horse or something). So just not the same at all.
Quoting Cheshire
Stop being tedious.
I don't know what you're on about now. Look, my example was just to illustrate something - to illustrate how we can acknowledge that something is metaphysically possible at the same time as acknowledging that it is epistemically impossible for it to be the case. What's the point in coming up with other examples when mine does what's necessary? I mean, can't you see that it is both metaphysically possible that you not exist, but epistemically not possible? If not, doesn't matter. The point is that it is metaphysically possible that all of our apparent states of awareness are fakes, but not epistemically possible.
But anyway, do you have any objection to what I argued in defence of premise 1? That is, do you agree that for something to be a representation, some agency needs to be using for that purpose?
Frankly, I'm a bit neutral. It sounds like it intends to be self-evident much like the other premise. Are you asking if I'm hearing something I must be deliberately using my ears? Quoting Bartricks I thought it was beneficial to confirm I understood what you were saying well enough to demonstrate it through an adjacent example. I was having trouble nailing down number 1's defense, so why not confirm number 2.
I can't help but notice you didn't address my word choice question again. The selection of the seemingly double negative Not Un-Guided versus Guided. It looks like a cumbersome choice to be made for no reason.
Quite the opposite apparently:
Quoting Bartricks
...assuming having a 'belief' that you're aware means you aren't aware, we wouldn't even be able to tell, at least through introspection. What other tests of awareness besides introspection can we perform?
I think it is self-evident, but I also illustrated its credibility with examples. I don't think you appreciate how my argument - and so arguments in general - work. You just veer from telling me I've contradicted myself to refusing to say clearly which premise you dispute. I ask you what objection you have to premise 1 and you give me concerns that only make sense as concerns about premise 2. You're all over the place.
Now, premise 1 first. Premise 1 says:
Quoting Bartricks
What problem do you have with it? I defend it with examples. And you now reveal that you're neutral over its credibility.
Right - so are you neutral about the sky 'writing'? Are you being told there's a pie in the oven by the clouds? If you're sane, then you agree that you're not being told there's a pie in the oven by the clouds.
Why? Because clouds aren't agents. Nor are pies. They're not 'telling' you anything.
Now, round and round in circles we go. For god's sake recognise that the correct analysis of why hte clouds are not telling you anything is that they're not agents.
Now, apply that more generally. And now you'll find that premise 1 is true. No representation without a representer.
Don't waffle on about something orthogonal to this issue. Just focus. Focus on premise 1 and its incredible plausibility. It isn't open to reasonable doubt. To doubt it is to think that there can be representations that lack a representer. And that's to think that the clouds could be telling you about a pie in the oven.
Once you've appreciated how unbelievably plausible premise 1 is, move on to premise 2.
Premise 2 is not open to reasonable doubt either. You seem to think that I think it is. I don't. See the OP. I don't think it is open to reasonable doubt. It is metaphysically possible that all - all - our apparent states of awareness are fakes. But it is not open to reasonable doubt that some are, in fact, real states of awareness. Hence 2 is true. If you have trouble understanding this, I gave you an example to illustrate: it is metaphysically possible for me not to exist; but I am not able reasonably to doubt my own existence. Don't try and come up with another example of your own - you're not good at it. Just reflect on mine.
Once you've noticed that 1 and 2 are not open to any reasonable doubt, note how 3 follows from them.
If you didn't think 3 was true, revise that view. You've just been shown it is.
What? You keep doing this - you keep quoting me saying entirely consistent things and then just insist they contradict. I am not going to do your work for you, so kindly explain how the hell those two claims contradict!
Bartricks... this is trivial.
If 'belief' is introspectively indiscernible from belief, and:
Quoting Bartricks
...then 'belief' that you're aware is introspectively indiscernible from belief that you're aware.
Quoting Bartricks
...and 'belief' that you are aware does not constitute knowledge that you are aware.
So:
Quoting Bartricks
...how do you know you know, given you could just be dreaming you know? Introspection is the wrong answer, because knowing cannot arise from 'belief', and belief and 'belief' are introspectively indistinguishable.
You keep whining about this over and over and over. Ironically, the only reason there's a conflict here is because I'm taking you at your word. I explicitly said a long time ago that you might not really mean what you said and might want to rephrase it. But, hey, if that's what you mean, that must be what you mean.
But it's just a raw hard fact. What you mean leads to this. So if you keep asking me WTH, what else is there to say, but that this is TH?
Incidentally, WTH do you mean by "your work"? Are you not offering an argument? You bit off a burden; it's your job to meet it.
Quoting InPitzotl
Does 'X is introspectively indiscernible from Y' entail that we cannot know whether we have an X on our hands or a Y?
You think it does, right? (It doesn't - as I keep explaining to you, again and again and again and again - all to no avail).
That's the only way you could possibly think my claim that we can know we're aware contradicts my claim that it is metaphysically possible that all our states of awareness are fake.
No. But I think "of course we know" appeals to introspection. And you're way too busy trying to ask me stupid questions to bother answering the one I asked you.
So, here it is again... how do you know you're aware? In particular, how do you know in such a manner that it's obvious that you do? It's not by introspection. Is it by magic? Do you have an awarometer?
Quoting Bartricks
The contradiction has to do with something being "introspectively X" to an entity that isn't aware. What I'm highlighting here is just a conflict (that you're dodging).
See the defence of premise 2. Although given how badly you reason there's not much point.
Do you now see that there is no contradiction? I can know that I have a real banknote in my pocket even though it is possible for there to exist a visually indiscernible note that is not real. See?
Your defense of premise 2 doesn't erase the conflict.
Quoting Bartricks
You're stuck again. Try a re-spoon feed:
Quoting InPitzotl
Did you read it this time?
Quoting Bartricks
Sure. You reach in your pocket and boom... there it is. (Of course, that's refutable using lines from your OP, but let's set that aside).
Do you have your awareness in your pocket too?
Here's the thing you're avoiding saying by all means. It's intuitively obvious that we're aware. We can tell we're aware by simple introspection. We don't reach into our pockets to find awareness... we introspect.
Premise 1 establishes that in order for us to be aware of anything our mental states would need to have feature P.
Premise 2 establishes that we are aware of some things.
We thereby establish that some of our mental states have feature P - a feature incompatible with our mental states being the product of unguided evolutionary forces.
Deal with it.
FTFY.
But:
Quoting Bartricks
...means fake belief is introspectively indiscernible from real belief. Hey look there's a squirrel doesn't change what this means.
It's been five pages since you said that. Still no answer to the question of how you know, if not introspectively.
So? Still no answer. I'll let you give the last word for now, since this isn't supposed to be a chat room. But it'll probably still not be an answer.
Like I say, read it when you can understand it, and then address it.
Yes, we covered the contradictions which you didn't find compelling. So, I was at least trying to understand the matter from your point of view. But, I don't think I can without knowing what implications you believe are being demonstrated by this information. All I honestly know is that it seems you want to make a statement about evolution and you are trying to derive it along the lines of an 'ergo sum'. However, you don't seem to believe it is without flaws yourself due to the excessive appeals to emotion and evasion of plain questions.
In summary;
Premise 1 is said to have defense, but you make no reference to evolution, the guiding or unguiding of evolution, what is implied by "wholly" as in I should imagine there as a degree of precision that is even implied.
Premise 2 is a bit of a novelty.
Premise 3 Inserts the novelty into premise one as if it some how relates to evolution.
It seems like a pseudo religious type argument where there's an irrational implication being reserved because no one would otherwise take this all seriously. What is it out of curiosity?
Quoting Bartricks
And like I say, you've got this backwards. It's your job to make a valid and coherent argument, not my job to prove to you that your argument is invalid. Anything I do is gratis.
Your argument for premise 2 is lousy in the first place; you undermine it by that conflict you've yet to address. But to humor you:
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Picking out the logic, here's how this reads.
1. Your pie writing suggests that:
2. If an entity is the product of unguided evolution, and the entity is persuaded it isn't aware, then the entity is forced to admit it is not aware.
3. 2 doesn't make sense.
4. (implied) therefore the entity's faculties of awareness provide the entity with some awareness of something
The biggest problem here is that 3 doesn't imply 4; it's not even logically connected... you are expressing the form "'if A and B then C' doesn't make sense therefore D". In fact, it's so ludicrously disconnected that it's bizarre how you can even think it's an argument for the premise in the first place. It has more in common with the Chewbaca defense than a rational argument.
Even if I pretended it has some semblance of validity, what would this imply for an entity that is bot-built but persuaded it is aware? Would it reach the same conclusions about itself that you do about yourself (and us)? Add this in:
Quoting Bartricks
...and we lose the ability to tell if we are aware. Your argument doesn't show that; 4 doesn't even apply to us, since we think we are aware and 2 is just talking about an entity that thinks it isn't aware. How do you know you're not, as you put it, bot built and just dreaming that you're aware?
Introspection is ruled out... not because I ruled it out, but because you did. Your argument for premise 2 not only doesn't follow but doesn't apply to entities that think they are aware. Apparently, by the argument at least, only bot built entities that think they aren't aware must be aware, because something doesn't make sense therefore they're aware or some such nonsense.
Tell me this isn't satire. A literal 'pie in the sky' argument. Orthogonal? The word used in a premise isn't orthogonal.