A priori, self-evident, intuitive, obvious, and common sense knowledge
What do we know without knowing anything? Without justification. My first answer is “nothing.” This type of knowledge is described many ways, among them a priori, self-evident, intuitive, obvious, and common sense.
My second answer is that they are assumptions or perhaps presuppositions. Here are some definitions of “assumption” from the web:
For the purposes of this discussion, I think the important difference between these definitions is that some imply that the assumptions are made intentionally and self-consciously and some do not.
A priori
Here are some definitions of “a priori” from the web:
A wise man once defined a priori truth as “An assertion I want to be true but that can’t be proven, that I can’t prove, or that I’m too lazy to prove.”
Self-evident
Here are some definitions of “self-evident” from the web:
Intuition
Here are some definitions of “intuition” from the web:
One question about intuition is whether or not it is based on experience or reason. My strong opinion, based on introspection, is that it is mostly, maybe completely, based on experience.
My preference would be that we focus on the general question of what can we know without empirical knowledge rather than spending all our time on arguing the definitions of particular words. That’s probably an unrealistic desire, so I won’t complain however it goes.
My second answer is that they are assumptions or perhaps presuppositions. Here are some definitions of “assumption” from the web:
- A fact or statement (such as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted
- An axiom, postulate, or assumption that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments.
- Something taken for granted or accepted as true without proof; a supposition
- An unexamined belief
- A philosophical assumption is the theoretical framework used to collect, analyze and interpret the data.
For the purposes of this discussion, I think the important difference between these definitions is that some imply that the assumptions are made intentionally and self-consciously and some do not.
A priori
Here are some definitions of “a priori” from the web:
- Independent from current experience. Examples include mathematics, tautologies, and deduction from pure reason.
- Deductive
- Relating to or derived by reasoning from self-evident propositions
- Presupposed by experience
- Being without examination or analysis. Presumptive.
- Formed or conceived beforehand
A wise man once defined a priori truth as “An assertion I want to be true but that can’t be proven, that I can’t prove, or that I’m too lazy to prove.”
Self-evident
Here are some definitions of “self-evident” from the web:
- Evident without proof or reasoning
- Requiring no proof or explanation.
- So obvious that there is no need for proof or explanation.
- Known to be true by understanding its meaning without proof and/or by ordinary human reason.
Intuition
Here are some definitions of “intuition” from the web:
- The faculty of knowing or understanding something without reasoning or proof. An impression or insight gained by the use of this faculty.
- A fundamental capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality.[Plato]
- A form of knowledge that appears in consciousness without obvious deliberation.
- The ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning.
- Pre-existing knowledge gained through rational reasoning or discovering truth through contemplation [Descartes]
One question about intuition is whether or not it is based on experience or reason. My strong opinion, based on introspection, is that it is mostly, maybe completely, based on experience.
My preference would be that we focus on the general question of what can we know without empirical knowledge rather than spending all our time on arguing the definitions of particular words. That’s probably an unrealistic desire, so I won’t complain however it goes.
Comments (171)
Seems plausible to me that instinct is empirical knowledge. Genetic knowledge evolves through world interaction.
fundamental or core knowledge comes from needs to survive.
all the knowledge is based around survival, either of an individual or group of people.
Knowledge of god can't be empirical, although you can see them all around. Somehow this knowledge resides in us. During education and participating in modern society this knowledge is delegated to the back seat or thrown out of the car altogether.
Sorry to disagree with you but I think that's only the basic principle of primary qualities as John Locke already written about. We all act with some survival instincts but, fortunately, our knowledge is not limited to this. We even have some doubts about what we consider survival at all... I guess this is why empiricism is key to debate about A priori or common sense knowledge.
I quote a brilliant critique from Locke to Descartes in terms of basic knowledge, what it is called as tabula rasa: Locke then spoils his own excellent argument against Descartes
We know certainly by Experience, that we sometimes think, and thence draw this infallible Consequence, that there is something in us, that has a power to think: But whether that substance perpetually thinks, or no, we can be no farther assured, than experience informs us. For to say, that actual thinking is essential to the soul, and inseparable from it, is to beg, what is in question, and not to prove it by reason; which is necessary to be done, if it be not a self-evident proposition. But whether this, that the Soul always thinks, be a self-evidence proposition, that every body assents to a first hearing, I appeal to mankind. [ibid., Book II, Chapter I, §10]
Yep, I am an atheist but I am agree that John Locke's empirical arguments towards God are so poor...
[i]§3 "He knows also, that Nothing cannot produce a Being." In the next place, Man knows by an intuitive Certainty, that bare nothing can no more produce any real Being, than it can be equal to two right Angles. If a Man knows not that Non-entity, or the Absence of all Being cannot be equal to two right Angles, it is impossible he should know any demonstration in Euclid. If therefore we know there is some real Being, and that Non-entity cannot produce any real Being, it is an evident demonstration, that from Eternity there has been something; Since what was not from Eternity, had a Beginning; and what had a Beginning, must be produced by something else.
§4 "That eternal Being must be most powerful." Next, it is evident, that what had its Being and Beginning from another, must also have all that which is in, and belongs to its Being from another also. All the Powers it has, must be owing to, and received from the same Source. This eternal Source then of all being must also be the Source and Original of all Power; and so this eternal Being must be also the most powerful. [ibid., Book IV, Chapter X][/i]
If we accept from the argument of the first paragraph that "from Eternity there has been something," it is a little surprising to learn in the second paragraph that Locke believes he has established the existence of a single eternal thing, i.e. God. The problem is an ambiguity in the word "something," which in the first paragraph need merely mean "something or other," i.e. "there must have always been something or other," to produce the objects that eventually are that ones we now see. In the second paragraph, however, Locke supposes that this can only have been a single, eternal object. That does not follow, and the ambiguity in the term makes the whole argument look like a kind of Sophistry.
Link: If Locke thinks that we can prove the existence of God, he manages to demonstrate it in a way that would seem to do the impossible: produce an argument for God even worse that that of Descartes.
Nothing. Knowledge takes the form of sensory data.
How do you know that you are reasoning if not by experience? Separating empiricism and rationalism into two separate camps is one of the failures of philosophy.
This makes sense to me, although I don't know if there are studies about experiences babies pick up in the womb.
Quoting Haglund
It seems like you are making a distinction between baby humans and animals. It is my understanding that some of the baby's first reactions such as sucking are built-in, instinctual, unlearned, much as the animals are. I'm not even sure it makes sense to call it knowledge.
I'm not a follower of any religion, so I may not be the right person to have an opinion on this. It has always seemed to be that religious faith is based on a human experience of something, something believers think of as God. I think introspection is a valid form of empirical knowledge.
I agree, but many people don't.
I can remember reading about the baby's retina aleady stimulating the brain with shapes. Don't ask me how they found out... Maybe you have seen it with your eyes closed. Concentric rings flowing in and outwards. Surely the bodily baby shape somehow projects in the baby brain.
Quoting T ClarkAgree. I find that intuitions are almost never based on reason, but rather instinct or experience. Many of those intuitions are not true, but don't confuse truth with beneficial.
:100:
Quoting T Clark
But introspection illusions, no? :chin:
Personally I don't value intuitions highly - I have known too many people who get to positions of 'burn the witch' based on intuition. But there may be different categories of intuition, some based on competent readings of experience. In other words, I agree with your point below -
Quoting T Clark
I would be interested to hear what others have to say about a priori - and synthetic a priori. There may be space in this discussion to explore the idea of properly basic beliefs. These are all part of a foundationalist view of reality.
As I said, this makes sense to me.
Einstein based his theory on thought experiments, for a large part.
Babies have to build their own worlds. They have to take in all the sensory information they gather and process it through neurological and mental mechanisms of their minds and use it to construct a model of how the world works. As we grow, the model increases in complexity and scope. This is my understanding based on introspection and reading authors such as Stephen Pinker, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Karen Wynn.
In my experience, most of what I know in the world is rapped up in that model. Most of what I know I know by intuition.
Can intuition be wrong? Of course it can. Does that mean it isn't valuable. Of course it doesn't. One thing intuition is very good for is setting off alarms when you hear something that doesn't fit. That happens to me all the time. When I go to check, I'm usually right. How good is intuition as justification for action? It depends on the consequences of failure. I'll bet a buck I'm right. Sure. Seems like a good idea, I'll put my lifesavings on it. Probably not.
Let me see if I have this straight - synthetic a priori means "makes sense, but I'd better check." That's fine, but it's not usually how people use the term in philosophy. At least not on the forum. It's generally used to mean that it's so obvious that it doesn't need to be justified. Sometimes even more than that - that it is somehow woven into the very structure of reality. Which is what this whole thread is about.
What is the value of knowing that all bachelors are unmarried?
:up:
That's an example of an analytic truth, not synthetic. The value is that it is definitional. It tells you what a bachelor is.
Geometrical truths are submitted by Kant to be synthetic a priori in that they tell you something substantive about the world without necessarily having to be experienced.
Quine disputes the analytic/synthetic distinction. You can look that up if interested.
The difference between analytical and synthetic is that there is no new knowledge produced in the former. Of course if someone didn't know the language well they could learn a new word. But 2 plus 2 is four and there is a process there which is more than finding new words. So there are linguistic skills learned analytically and processes learn synthetically, both being different in *how* humans learn them. Physics is about taking two phenomena of say motion and uniting them to find something that is greater than the sum of each (a law). That's far different from learning definitions and absorbing synonyms. So I think Quine is wrong
One quick point. How much does your question change when it is placed in time rather than regarded as an essentially timeless issue?
So speaking of "knowledge", or "truth", or "facts", has this unfortunate tendency to push it all into some Platonic realm of surety quite separate from the uncertain world. The truth "exists" in some eternal present. And yet knowledge is pragmatically a matter of experience. We develop habits of future expectation based on a history of past events.
Actual useable knowledge is thus tensed. There is the history that constrains what is to be believed or expected in terms of what in future could be the likely case.
Sure, it is useful also to take this kind of deductive approach to knowledge/truth/facts. We can abduct to make some general guess about what could be the past, and thus possibly be the future. From this hypothesis, we can then deduce the observable consequences.
That is, we can deduce the counterfactuals. We can figure out what we ought to see in the future if our guess is indeed right ... and thus also discover if what we guessed instead seems more like a wrong hypothesis.
The last bit - the checking of the predictions to confirm/deny the deductive argument - is the inductive confirmation. The more times the theory works, the more justified becomes our belief that it must be true.
This rational structure - abduction => deduction => induction - is simply the scientific method. And the deduction bit is the formal step, the application of a logical syntax or calculus - which allows us humans to step outside of our immediate experience and indeed formulate guess-based theories that have measurably-defined consequences.
Again, if you focus all your attention of the deductive apparatus, you tend to view "knowledge", "truth", and "facts", as Platonic entities - the inhabitants of some eternal present.
But if you step back to see how we came to add this formal step to our usual "experience based" habits of future forecasting, then you can see how there is a larger temporal arc at work.
Deduction - as abstract syntax - works when firmly anchored in the pragmatism of learning from the world so as to be able to live in that world. But knowledge, truth and facts aren't literally the objects of some other world.
Sorry. That sentence was a non-sequitur. I was talking about synthetic a priori knowledge and then switched to analytic. I didn't know the distinction between the two types of knowledge when I read @Tom Storm's post, so I looked it up. It seems useless. Synthetic knowledge is nothing but regular old empirical knowledge and analytic knowledge is trivial. People wave a priori knowledge around like it's a magic wand, but it's just fancy words for regular old stuff.
I thought that all mathematics is considered analytic a priori knowledge. That might make a certain amount of sense. There are studies showing that babies have a sense of number at a very early age.
Quoting Gregory
Are you saying that language is analytic a priori knowledge. It is pretty well established that very young children have an apparently hardwired ability to learn language. I guess we could call that analytic, although I'm not sure it makes sense to call a capacity knowledge. It's also true that children who are never exposed to language at a young age will never develop it, even if they are exposed at a latter time.
This is far truer of humans than other creatures. In what may have been a happy accident, we first became bipedal apes, but that new pelvis restricted the ultimate size of the birth canal. For hominids to keep increasing their brain size, our recent ancestors had to start giving birth to kids with the same sized skull who then had an extra massive burst of brain growth immediately after being born.
That is why human babies are so helpless for so long. A newborn is producing a ridiculous number of new synapses - so many that its cortex, its higher grey matter, is essentially not connected up. The circuits aren't even created at that level.
So newborn humans are vastly more plastic. That makes them helpless, which means humans have to be far more socially organised for parenting. And that works well for the highly plastic newborns as they then have the unstructured capacity to soak up the culture and language that underpins that kind of ultra-organised sociality.
It all makes a nice feedback loop that transformed Homo erectus into Homo sapiens over the course of a million years or so.
Being useless at birth is a neural investment in being useful as a socialised adult.
Homo erectus doesn't even seem to have had an adolescent phase as we know it. Only humans have a teenage stage where the highest parts of the cortex - the impulse regulating and socially calculating frontal lobes - don't become fully myelinated, or insulated and thus fixed in place, until 20 or so.
Being risk taking and error prone is part of the Darwinian plan. It takes time to learn how to be fully adapted human. Nine months gestation doesn't get a baby much past the lower brain instinctual stage. It takes some months for a child to realise it has hands, or even to begin sorting the visual world into colours, shapes and movements with any crisp organisation.
When children learn mathematics they learn a synthetic skill, not an analytic one. Sure they start out counting the numbers but even this is not analytic forr them since ultimately they are to develope a synthetic skill (as Kant pointed out). Synthetic ability is dum da dum creative intelligence! We use this in many areas of our lives as we go outwards to knowledge and combine ideas to create ideas greater than the sum of their parts. This thread is an example of the creative mentality while analytic thought is usually defined as finding meanings to language instead of combining words to form a new synthesis
That is how I see it.
Quoting apokrisis
This is what I think of when I hear "a priori." It is how it is often used.
Quoting apokrisis
I think I see what you're saying, but that seems like an odd use of the term "a priori." If I think A will happen based on my experience with the world, then I know if B happens, that I was wrong. It seems like people use the term to mean they don't have to perform the confirmation step.
Quoting apokrisis
As I said, some people at least use "a priori" to mean that there are things we can know about the world without justification. The recent example I think of is from our discussion about causation. Many people would say that the fact that everything has a cause is obvious.
Does that mean that riding a bike is synthetic a priori knowledge? I certainly would not have said so.
Quoting Gregory
I don't see how learning a language can be only analytic a priori knowledge.
Or maybe it's not a great term. I see Kant as very cumbersome here.
This is what Peirce fixed with his pragmatic theory of truth. He showed how reasoning involved this feedback loop of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation.
So the choice is either to rehash the confusions of Kant endlessly, or move on to the cleaner answer.
I've nothing against Kant as he took the next step in the conversation. But he didn't resolve things in a satisfactory way.
My take on knowledge and how we know things is very pragmatic. That's one of the reasons I ended up becoming an engineer.
Doesn't an engineer has synthetic a priori knowledge about the bridge?
Kant was probably influenced by Descartes remarks about analytic vs synthetic thinking. Descartes thought there were different kinds of mental operations. Kant thought the bachelor example was analytic and math synthetic.
If there is a difference between acts that are creatively intelligent and ones that aren't there is difficulty in saying which is which for practical purposes.
Yes. Many animals have very complex behaviors that are transmitted genetically. Humans seem to have just a few instincts - sucking and maybe an attraction to human faces. I'm sure there are more. We also have reflexes. Most of what we have seems to be capacities - language, numbers, some aspects of morality.
I don't know whether the story you've told about how this developed evolutionarily is accurate. It's certainly true that humans are born less developed mentally. Less able to take care of themselves. I don't know if this is the reason for our sociality. There are many non-human social animals. No need to go further on this. I don't know enough to argue effectively.
Two points - 1) Even if I'm not familiar with the particular landscape, I am familiar with landscapes in general. I'm also likely to move more carefully in an unfamiliar setting. 2) People from the city are probably more likely to fall off a cliff than someone who grew up in the mountains.
Quoting Haglund
If you mean constructed purely by deduction rather than by induction, then no.
Quoting Haglund
Yes. I said I had a pragmatic understanding of knowledge. I wouldn't call that a priori at all.
Whatever Kant thought, I agree the bachelor example is analytic, but I'm not sure about math. Perhaps it's both.
But if there were no bridges before they we're built, you must have had knowledge to build it. How can't that be a priori?
Same. I've argued (badly) for intuition over the years here, but I eventually realized it's self-evident that the vast majority of people in the world use intuition primarily, and it's only the smaller minority of analytically-minded people who would bother to join a philosophy forum that deride it's primacy. Then it becomes a twofold question of 1) are the vast majority of people deluded and only a select few understand how truth is obtained, and 2) alternatively, is this criticism of intuition just a prejudice of the intelligent against the less intelligent? And where does that path logically lead? The ivory tower is tall indeed.
This is an oversimplified story, a cartoon, but I'm sure people saw trees fallen across streams before we were homo sapiens.
I remember you and me being on the same side of this argument in previous threads.
Quoting Noble Dust
I find it hard to understand how people can believe they know most of the things they do by justified true belief baloney or some other mechanical process. We get most of the knowledge we have by falling out of trees, running through the woods, listening to other people, playing with dogs, swimming, hanging around with other kids...
But they never saw the first bridge built.
Yep. I guess it was useful in as much as I learned at university many years ago that we discover things a posteriori (by observation) or a priori (by theoretical deduction). The simple and common example of the latter being every mum has (or has had) a child. It's tautological, as you have stated. Some people might view certain arguments for god as a priori.
Does a bird which migrates south for the first time in its life use a priori knowledge to get there, or are they just copying the others?
:up: Some would argue that this type of thinking doesn't belong on a philosophy forum. To the extent that philosophy has become what it has in the modern age, I would consider this criticism justified. But to the extent that the "love of wisdom" has turned into a set of fractal linguistic circus games, criticisms against intuition and common sense begin to look like using quotes from a David Lynch film in a courthouse.
I’ve never seen justified true belief described as a process before. It’s just an observation (in the Theaetetus) of what we often mean when we speak of knowing, viz., something we believe, that is true and justified.
It seems to me that reasoning itself is instinctual and only realized through experience. How do you know you're being reasonable vs. unreasonable if not by some experience? What are you reasoning about? What form does you're reasoning take if not some experience of reasoning?
Let's take 2+2=4. What type of knowledge is knowing 2+2=4? How do you know that 2+2=4?
It seems that knowing that 2+2=4 is an experience of visuals or a voice in your head.
Is knowing 2+2=4 just you saying in your mind, "two plus two equals four"? I don't think so. This is just knowing how to say it - not knowing what it means or refers to. We all know that children can imitate language use without knowing what it means.
Is knowing 2+2=4 knowing how to arrange the symbols, 2, 2, 4, + and = in the right order? I don't think so. Knowing how to arrange symbols in the correct order is not knowing what the symbols are about.
Is knowing that 2+2=4 knowing what 2+2=4 is about, or how to use or apply to real-life experiences, or a representation of real-life experiences of quantifying and counting experienced objects? It seems that knowing that 2+2=4 is experiencing two of something and another two of something becoming four of something. In other words, 2+2=4 is only meaningful if it can be applied to, or representative of, experience of counting real-world things which are not numbers themselves, just as words are not meaningful if not applied to real-world things that are not words themselves.
Reasoning is only useful if it is about something, or can be applied to real-world experiences.
It seems to me that the invention of mathematics would not have been conceivable if experience itself was not in some way quantifiable.
For something to be beneficial, or useful, there must be some element of truth involved, or else how can there more or less efficient ways of using something - like intuitions? Instincts evolved because there are aspects of the world that stay consistent. It seems like sexual reproduction and consciousness evolved as ways of adapting to changes within those consistencies, as in the way that children question the previous generations' axioms and filtering instinctual behaviors.
The problem is that when people claim that something can be useful but not true, they are confusing our lack of knowledge of truths that are not relevant to what is being used with truths that we do know that are being used. Just because we may not know everything does not mean that we do not know anything, or that what we do know, instinctually or consciously, isn't true enough to be useful for the goal at hand - which typically isn't having a theory of everything.
Well yea. You brought up the 2+2=4 thing, but I'm confident that a human would never figure that out in the absence of experience. Humans are exceptionally helpless at birth, but several instincts are there, like the one to draw breath despite never having the experience of needing to do that before.
I actually question everything, even 2+2=4. Is it objectively true, or is it perhaps only a property of the physics or mathematics of say this universe, and doesn't work in another one? I cannot think of a reasonable counterexample, but that very issue seems to be one of the weakest links in my goal of finding a self-consistent view of how things are.
Quoting Harry HinduI can think of several exceptions. On the surface, how about "reproduction is beneficial"? It certainly doesn't benefit the individual. There are plenty of humans living more comfortable lives by becoming voluntarily sterile, but for the most part, reproduction is quite instinctual which is why the above goal can rarely be achieved via just abstinence.
At a much deeper level, one's feeling of personal identity is fantastically instinctual, and yet doesn't hold up to true rational analysis. It is probably a complete lie compliments of evolution (over 650 million years ago when it was put there), and it makes us fit as an individual, a pragmatic benefit at best. Assuming being fit equates to a benefit over not being fit, this makes the truth of the matter harmful, and the lie beneficial.
This is getting silly. Are you saying the only way I could have an original idea is a priori? I can't take things I've learned and put them together in a new way?
It's instinct, so I guess, yes, that is analytic a priori knowledge. Maybe not the impulse to fly south but at least the knowledge of how to get where their going. Salmon aren't shown the location of their spawning grounds. They just know it. I don't know if there are many, if any, things people know like that.
You can't talk epistemology without talking intuition, no matter what anyone says.
I've always thought of it as a process, like a checklist. It's true - check. It's justified - check. I believe it - check. Ding, ding, ding - It's knowledge. I don't think it matters whether we see it that way or not. It's the whole concept I don't like. It seems like a totally unrealistic description of how we really know things and how we use the things we know.
No. I'm saying that you gotta have a priori knowledge of something you gonna construct. If not, the plan is doomed to fail. How can you have knowledge of something not existing before you have made it? How does a beaver know how to build them dams?
Quoting Harry Hindu
There seems to be disagreement about what kind of knowledge math is. As I noted in a previous post, there are studies that show that very young children, babies, are aware of quantity, so there seems to be some inborn "knowledge" of math. On the other hand, we have to learn how to use it.
Well, this is something like what we are doing in philosophy, rather than what people are doing when they come to know things. It's what some philosophers do when they're trying to work out what knowledge is. But the comment I referred to was this:
Quoting T Clark
This suggests that you understand the process to be one that's proposed to be undertaken by people generally, when they come to know things in everyday life, and not particularly as part of philosophical examination.
You think the innate concept of quantity, undeniably present in animals, is an innate knowledge of math? Dunno. You can elaborate playing with quantities in space endlessly. Construct zillions of relationships between them. That evolves. Giving a priori knowledge of the world. Einstein never saw curved spacetime. He had a priori knowledge of black holes. A baby has a lot of instinctive knowledge about the world when pooped in it. It has too. Without a priori, tacit, instinctive, intuitive, knowledge, necessarily vague still, it won't be possible to continue living after being pooped.
I think maybe you're overusing the word "instinct." I've been using it in ways that might not be accurate too. I'm going to check. Here are some definitions from the web:
Looks like the meaning is broad enough to take in all the ways we're using it. I think I was unclear, even to myself, how I was using it.
That doesn't make sense to me.
Quoting jamalrob
I don't really make much of a distinction between what we do in philosophy as opposed to what we do in life. In philosophy we try to be more careful. More formal. But, to me, the processes are the same.
ex. If I know nothing I still know that I am.
Otherwise, I think this is the right track:
Quoting T Clark
Grouping all of this stuff under the same term is surely just a historical artifact. Just say no to epistemology.
Quantity is number. You can't do most math without numbers. So, yes. That doesn't mean there aren't learned parts.
Quoting Haglund
I don't think all the types of knowledge you've listed are necessarily the same thing.
Do I agree with that?.....I guess I don't. From a pragmatic point of view, the purpose of knowledge is to direct how we take action. If that's true, you can't separate knowing things from knowing how we know them. Or have I misunderstood what you wrote?
Quoting jamalrob
Epistemology is why I'm on the forum. It is philosophy to me. It's the underlying theme of most of what I've written here and most of what I think about when I'm really thinking.
I think that's probably not true.
Okay. Let's analyze. When you construct a bridge, don't you need a kind of premonition of how to do that? Don't you somehow construct it mentally first? Don't you need a priori knowledge of the bridge you construct first? Knowledge which practice, later, during or after construction, can be amended?
That's design, not a priori knowledge. Design is applying principles I've learned elsewhere to a new situation.
I'm not sure if that's true in the first place, in my humble opinion. To recognize yourself in the mirror (without being scared...) you need some knowledge of your face.
It's design, true. But you need to know in advance if your design won't crumble on construction. In other words, you have to know in advance, a priori, what the new construction must be about, more or less. Of course you have seen trees over a river, but to base your bridge on a fallen tree... There has to be, somewhat vague still, premeditated knowledge of some sort. Your design will influence your knowledge and vice-versa. True, some based on previous encounters, but new a priori too (which may turn out good or bad, like the resonating of the bridge.
We're not getting anywhere with this. You and I are talking about different things with the same words.
Still, Mandelbröt, when he contemplated his set, emphasized that he thought he truly had dis/uncovered a truly, really existing feature of reality. So not a "mere" construction of the mind. That seemed important to him.
I fear so too. It's not exactly clear though what you mean about a priori knowledge and what kind of knowledge you refer to. You give a lot of definitions from the web, but its still somewhat unclear to me. But, of course that can be me. What if knowledge is god-given, or partly predetermined in the moment of creation? So some thing we know are already "known" unconsciously at birth, a priori, without any experience whatsoever? If...
The purpose of this thread is to thrash this out among ourselves. I'm doing the best I can to be clear, but some vagueness and confusion is to be expected.
a priori knowledge is supposed to be theoretical right?
:up:
I think examples might help. And maybe from there give abstractions, generalizations, knowledge categories, or meta knowledge.
A neonatico must have knowledge of the world already when pushed out of the womb. A priori knowledge has to be theoretical, or else it wouldn't be a priori, indeed.
Every new form of knowledge is based on instinct and countless unconscious "experiments", encounters with reality. Every new stage of knowledge is like being pooped in the world again.
It would be true in any universe in which there are categories and a quantity of things within that category.
Quoting noAxioms
Again, what is beneficial and comfortable is dependent upon the goal we're talking about. What makes reproduction not beneficial to an individual? Wouldn't that depend on the goal we're talking about?
Quoting noAxioms
Nah. I don't think that alpha males and females and the individual in which an DNA copy "error" occurred that provides the benefit from which is then propagated throughout the gene pool is an instinctual illusion. Those are real things. If not there from where do beneficial genes come from if not individuals within a gene pool?
Which is just another way of saying that conscious experience is quantifiable, like I said, and from there we develop symbols for communicating these quantifiable experiences.
The example I gave previously is causality. Some people believe that all events have causes and they know this as an a priori truth.
What I wrote and what you wrote don't seem to me to be the same thing.
Even ants engineer a bridge when there isn't one already there. It's hardly a unique human accomplishment.
Quoting T Clark
Maybe so, but besides the point, which is: there are falsehoods which we believe and find intuitive. Some are deep enough that I know they're wrong, yet still believe them, which sounds oddly contradictory.
Quoting Harry HinduOK, but if it was an a-priori truth, it would be true even in a universe without meaningful countable anything. I mean, imagine the sum of 2 and 2 was 4 because an omnipotent god said it was, and had it decreed that the sum was seven instead, then it wouldn't actually be four. I mean, what's the point of being omnipotent if you can't do stuff like that? Would the sum be actually 7 then, or only 7 because 'the god says so'?
Being fit, probably as a species. If a species is not fit, it gets selected out. It's not a purposeful goal, but being fit is definitely an emergent property of things that evolve via the process. As an individual, reproduction is arguably optional. The species often benefits from the members that are not potential breeders. Yes, the individual benefits one way or the other depending on the goal via which the benefit is measured, but for a species, it's being fit, and little else. I don't thing the human species is particularly fit, but that's just opinion.
I'm sorry, but we seem to be talking past each other. This doesn't seem to be a relevant reply to my comment, which I left up there. I'm talking about one's sense of self. The lie makes you fit, but the analysis of the belief seems to lead to all sorts of crazy woo to explain something that was never true in the first place. It leads to the hard problem of consciousness, something that is only a problem if you believe the lie, which everybody does, even myself.
What about the quark model or preon models? The knowledge of the quarks and their properties was known before they were actually observed, like preons aren't observed directly today. Can we say that they are somehow observed in the chaos of observations? Can we consider it as a priori knowledge? The model is of course based on observation but we never had direct evidence for them, in the low energy realm. Neither were there observations of black holes. Can we say prefabricated knowledge about the world is a priori knowledge?
Here you apply a dogma. It's a dogma, an unproven conjecture, that evolution progresses by accidental mutations of the genes. There is zero evidence that this is generally the case and as such on the same level as the gods conjecture.
Then explain what you meant by babies are aware of quantity if not that their experience is quantifiable. Are they born knowing the symbols used to represent some quantity? It seems to me that you need to establish mental categories or else there will only be one of everything.
Using an omnipotent god as an example is quite a stretch as the phrase, "omnipotent god" brings a whole host of other problems into the mix.
I just don't see how some string of scribbles could be true if the scribbles were not representative of some real state-of-affairs that exists somewhere and somewhen. I guess it comes down to how you define "truth".
Quoting noAxioms
Yes, but if a species doesn't reproduce which requires individuals within a species to do just that, then the species dies out. Reproducing isn't just the sex and the birth. It requires the raising of the young to a reproductive age, or else you haven't reproduced even at the level of species because if all the offspring of a new generation die then the existence of the species is threatened.
Sure, less competition for mates does help a species, and is also a benefit to individuals as they can find mates without having to expend much energy in doing so, as well as those that are not breeding contribute to the rearing of the next generation like educating or paying your taxes that goes to education. So it seems to me that any benefit to the species is also a benefit to the individuals that make up the species, or else what do you mean by "species" if not individuals of a particular gene pool?
Quoting noAxioms
What is the difference between an individual and a self? Do individuals exist? If so, and they are synonymous with selves, then selves exist. I don't see what the lie is that you are referring to.
The hard problem of consciousness is resolved by abandoning dualism and physicalism.
They are aware of quantities of things.
It is my understanding that mechanisms of genetic change other than random mutations have been identified. That doesn't mean there isn't evidence of evolution being caused by mutations.
It is not known if the mutations are random or steered by the organism.
I believe what you've written is not true, but I don't know enough to make an effective argument..
It's a scientific dogma. On which Darwinian/Dawkinskian evolution is based. There also is an organism based version of evolution. Not popular though. It's Lamarckian evolution.
As I said, I'm not ready to have this argument.
Okay. It throws a new light on revolution though. Eeeh.. on evolution. Viva La Evolution Revolution!
The neonatal brain is set up to acquire information, which it does immediately to a very limited degree. So, babies do not "know" who mama is until they have some good experience with mama, which one hopes happens post haste. In the days, weeks, and months that follow more information is acquired.
An interesting (observed, documented) phenomenon is that babies are born with very limited knowledge. I vaguely remember an experiment with new born animals. An optical illusion of depth was created and covered with glass. The little subjects were very reluctant to crawl beyond the point where the illusion began. Somebody did the same thing with human babies,
Human babies have been observed displaying surprise at confounding phenomena. The babies did not find balloons falling to the floor very interesting. When a helium-filled balloon was let go of and rose to the ceiling, the expression on the babies' faces indicated that they were shocked and appalled, as well they should have been.
The babies in these experiments were very young, and had not experienced much of anything yet, in the areas of optics and physics.
My guess is that newborn animals come loaded with the equivalent of "read-only memory" that enables them to start acquiring necessary information from the start. Some knowledge, but not very much, is built in.
A problem with "intuition" is that our brains (apparently) perform many functions which our conscious attention cannot observe. So, when we "sleep on a problem" we sometimes wake up with the solution in hand. Intuition? Or should we call it background mental processing?
Sometimes our reasoning is conscious and quite deliberate. Much of the time, it seems, whatever we call thinking and reasoning goes on through extensive unconscious operations working with decades of stored information.
This isn't any sort of new insight, of course. But we like to claim that we have control over our thinking, when--I think--we do not.
That's not correct. Empirical knowledge is known a posteriori, not a priori.. The roots of those words, prior and post, reference how the knowledge is obtained: before or after experience.
You're conflating synthetic with a posteriori. Synthetic references a truth about the world, analytic a definitional truth.
Calling analytic truths trivial overlooks the significance of syllogistic logic and its truth preserving function.
You're scratching the surface of Kant, so it's a bit early for you to critique the Critique.
Baby ? Neonate. I don't know if neonates know anything. They do stuff. Do you have to know stuff to do stuff? That question has come up a couple of times so far in this discussion. Does a capacity to learn language constitute knowledge? Does an instinct or reflex to suck constitute knowledge? How about a natural tendency to be in interested in human faces or voices? Older babies certainly do know things.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Human babies are certainly different from other young animals. Do the physical capabilities animals are born with constitute knowledge? Do migrating monarch butterflies have justified true belief?
Is this background mental processing the same thing as intuition? It certainly isn't reason as that is usually described, although I think most of what we call reason does take place behind the curtain.
Some small birds know to take hide if the overlying shape is hawk-like but cry out for food if it's a friendly shape. The animal forms are already known by the brain at birth. Which seems logical as the brain developed in that particular body.
I've looked at 23 definitions, examples, and descriptions of synthetic a priori knowledge. People seem to be really confused about what it means, even if you are not. Here's something I got from a really great discussion of synthetic a priori knowledge by a professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University:
Quoting Kent Baldner
I agree.
This gets back to my suggestion that 'reproduction is beneficial' might be a lie. Sure, reproduction makes a species fit, but is being fit beneficial? So say smallpox goes extinct (just to pick something the extinction of which you personally are not likely to mourn). On the surface it would appear that it would not be beneficial for the smallpox species, but only if smallpox actually has a goal. It's evolved to be fit, but doesn't actually have a goal to be that way. Is any purpose actually not served by its extinction? Nature doesn't care. No smallpox 'individual' cares in any way we humans can relate.
Smallpox also doesn't have a belief/instinct that reproduction is beneficial, so maybe my example reached too far away. It doesn't reproduce to fulfill an irresistible urge. So maybe I need to illustrate with a more relatable pestilence like a tapeworm or something.
I usually take a relational view of almost everything, so I'd ask: What is the goal of a given species? Reproduction seems only a means to that goal, but the goal itself seems missing. Extinction is inevitable, so the goal is somewhere prior to that. Did any species now extinct ever meet its goal?
"Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory" -- Paul Simon
The 'I' in that line is the self, and 'Richard Cory' is an individual. The line only makes sense if they're different things, and the self wants to 'be' a different individual than the impoverished employee in the factory. The related question is: "Why am I me?". It seems baffling. There's so many other things you could be like a bug or perhaps even a dust mote. There's so many more of those other things, so why am I not only a human (top of most food chains), but one with the leisure to be pondering philosophy on a forum during the 2nd gilded age of Earth. What sort of lottery have I won?
Anyway, the 'I' in that question is the self again, and the improbability goes away if you deny the existence of it. Nothing won the lottery. Of course the gilded human would ask this and the bug would not. There's no improbability occurring. It's why dualism makes so much sense to my lying intuitions, but makes zero sense to my rational thought.
Does the individual (Richard Cory say) exist? That's a question of persistent identity, which gets into all sorts of trouble as described by Parfit. But he also says it is unimportant. Our sense of identity (not the sense of self this time) is very pragmatic and allows us to function. Anyway, the current Richard Corey doesn't seem to be able to demonstrate to my satisfaction being the same individual as an hour ago. The law of identity seems open to violation, rendering it a mere language convention and not something real.
Well I'm neither, so perhaps I'm doing something right.
That is, your attempt to understand the synthetic a priori is being impacted by your evaluation of differing philosopher's views.
I looked at the first post in your new thread. I'm not sure exactly how to deal with things that should be true, that we are obligated to think of as true. When I first started this thread, I thought about how how rights and morals would fit into the discussion. In particular, the American Declaration of Independence - We hold these truths to be self-evident. I avoided bringing it up specifically because I thought it would complicate and confuse things.
I'll pay attention to your thread and respond if I think I have anything to contribute.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I'll try to make clear what makes sense to me. I'm with Hume, at least as I understand him based very limited experience. It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience. I don't see how that is different from what is called a posteriori knowledge.
Hume is smarter than Kant. Kant was just an authoritarian.
Capacity is not equivalent to achievement; so, no: the capacity to learn language is not knowledge. Chidden who are deaf from birth (and are otherwise normal) can learn language, but not casually the way hearing children do. If they are not exposed to sign language, they will devise methods to communicate, but their language will probably be unique and deficient. (Oliver Sacks: Seeing Voices - A Journey Into the World of the Deaf; 1989). When a group of deaf adults who had not been taught sign language finally acquired it, their world became far richer in meaning -- plus they could communicate with strangers using ASL.
Quoting T Clark
Older babies knowing things (and continuing to add on to what they know) is a piece of our problem. We never get a cooperative, adult tabula rasa to experiment on. Even 1 year olds have accumulated too much to be called a blank slate. By the time we are old enough to think about all this meaningfully (between ages 25 and 95) we are packed, loaded, stuffed, saturated with all kinds of experience, knowledge, and new capacities we have developed (like the ability to estimate the value of a new abstract expressionist painting).
Quoting T Clark
I hope not. They have enough problems as it is.
Quoting T Clark
This is a less clear-cut case than whether "capability = knowledge". Instinct involves performance, not just capacity to perform.
Animals build nests without being taught (presumably). Bird nests are unique to the bird species, and they build them that way the first time out. Squirrels' messy looking nests are actually dense, constructed of layers of leaves wound around a core where the squirrel rests and does whatever it does in there -- like figuring out how to get into impregnable bird feeders.
It would appear that nest building animals (birds, bees, squirrels, etc.) "know" how to perform nest construction. It's competent, untaught, and very consistent. It's not entirely out of the question to say we have some instinctual knowledge, but because we are so knowledge acquisitive from the get go, it's hard to tell.
Maybe instinctual knowledge was sacrificed by evolution where knowledge acquisition was critical. Primates seem to need instruction to survive. We aren't born knowing which berries to eat and which to leave well enough alone. It seems like many group predators (wolves, lions) have to learn how to cooperate.
Monarch Butterflies aren't hatched out with on-board maps, but they apparently possess some sort of cueing system that tells them it's time to move south, and to maybe guide flight with an inborn pattern of light waves. A cueing system isn't knowledge.
Agreed, but maybe it's more complicated than that. Pinker and Chomsky think that grammar is inborn. If children learn a pidgin - a minimally grammatical mixture of several languages - they will turn it into a creole - a fully grammatical language. The example often used - in Nicaragua, they brought deaf children together into schools for the first time in the 1980s. Each child knew only informal signing they had figured out with their families. The second generation of students turned it into Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The slate is not blank when we're born.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Which is one of the reasons I started this thread.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Apparently monarchs use very specific routes to go from the northeastern US to south of Mexico City. There are specific locations with a particular type of tree where they go. It is my understanding that it is very hard to get a hotel room in those areas in the winter. Some groups of butterflies are forced to stay in Motel 6.
This is correct, to a point. You put your keys on the table; there is then the experience, so you know you put the keys on the table. You know it because you did it. This is knowledge a posteriori.
You’re going to go get your keys, you know beforehand and therefore a priori the keys are on the table because you put them there, but you have yet the experience of picking them up from the table, so you don’t yet have the knowledge a posteriori that in fact they are there. This is what Kant calls “impure” a priori knowledge, insofar as there is an element of experience contained in it...you put them on the table before you went to get them from the table. This is the only form of a priori knowledge Hume grants, which he calls “constant conjunction”....a fancy word for “habit”......indicating simply that there never has been an occasion where you put keys on the table and they weren’t there when you went to get them. End of the simple story.
In Kant but missing from Hume and Enlightenment empiricists in general, on the other hand....and for whatever it’s worth....is the notion of “pure” a priori knowledge, that in which there is no element of experience whatsoever, and these are principles, most obvious in geometry and propositional logic. The beginning of a very complex story indeed, and to some hardly worth the effort and consternation, considering the result.
The "human exception" tendency prefers to think that we learn everything, unlike 'lower' animals which are born with some knowledge. If the capacity to learn language and organize grammar is genetically encoded, then it would seem quite possible that our brains carry encoded knowledge.
What constitutes 'fair play' might be encoded, for instance. Dogs display a rudimentary sense of fair play (observed in laboratory experiments). Young children display a fair play ability early on (so I am told).
That's a dogma just as the central dogma in biology.
The knowledge of an organism can be projected in genes.
The brain structure can be such that it follows knowledge and language, so not the other way round.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Right, which is to say that conscious experience/awareness of things are quantifiable - but only by first establishing a category for things first. You must have a category of trees before you can attribute more than one thing as being part of the category of trees.
You seem to be implying that quantities of things is something that is mind-independent that minds are made aware of via the senses.
As I said, quantities of things are dependent upon there being mental categories that quantities of things would be a part of. Are (mental) categories mind-independent? If not, then quantities are not something mind-independent that one can be aware of, rather they are an integral part of the experience, hence conscious experiences are quantifiable, or members of a mental category are quantifiable.
I'll let you decide for yourself. Here is my understanding of the test the psychologists use.
Babies have been shown to respond to novelty. Seeing something new interests them and they will look at it longer than something they've seen before. The baby sits in it's mothers lap and the psychologist puts a single item in front of it. The baby will look at it. Then it is repeated until the baby becomes less interested as measured by the amount of time it will look at the item. Then the baby is shown more than one of the same item and it again will show increased interest by looking longer. This is repeated more times with different numbers of items.
As I said, the sum of two and two is true in this universe. Whether it is not true somewhere else is irrelevant. Something else would be true in the other universe, like 2+2? 4, but that has no bearing on whether or not it is true in this universe. We're talking about two different universes, and just like some knowledge of me (I am a white American male) cannot apply to you, or be true about you (you might not be a white American male), the same thing that may be true for one universe may not be true in another, but this has nothing to do with whether or not it is true in this universe.
Quoting noAxioms
:brow: Seriously? You really think that there was ever a chance that you could have been a bug? Are you claiming that there is a soul that is separate from the body in that your soul could have been put in a different body? I think that you problem is dualism. As I said, your problem can be resolved by abandoning dualistic thinking. Your Paul Simon quote isn't saying anything other than "I wish that I could be a different I".
Why am I me? Because a unique arrangement of half of my mother's genes and a unique arrangement of half of my father's genes were fused together to make the unique me. We are all unique outcomes of different halves of our mother's and father's genes.
If babies are shown to respond to novelty, then why would they show more interest in multiple objects that look the same? It seems to me that they would show interest in unique things, not things that are the same.
What would happen if you showed the baby three red balls and one blue ball and a blue cube? How do you know if they would be interested in the quantity of balls or the quantity of the color blue? What if they ignored the balls and focused on the blue cube - being the novel thing in the whole group of things being shown to the baby?
It seems to me that a better experiment could have been performed to show if babies are aware of quantities. It seems to me that we would need to know how the baby forms categories, as in there being a quantity of balls or a quantity of the color red or blue.
I was just reporting my understanding of how the tests were performed. If you'd like more detail, I'm sure it's published somewhere.
You make it sound like everything I know is a priori. If I have to wait to know they are on the table till I pick them up, then they aren't even on the table anymore. Then they were on the table. Do I actually have to be standing there looking at something before it is a posteriori?
So I know the keys are on the table because I remember leaving them there. Or do I know they are there because that's where I always put them. Are either or both of those a priori?
Quoting Mww
I hadn't heard the term "pure" in this context before. How are pure and impure different from synthetic and analytic? What you are calling pure a priori sounds like analytic.
The distinction is between what can be known only contingently on the basis of ongoing events and what can be known as necessary based on reflection about the nature of all our experience. So I know a priori that I won't know whether it will rain today until it does or the day is over, and I know a priori that rain can be more or less intense and comes in different forms, that it will have a certain duration and that like all things in nature it is never exactly the same from one event to the next..
Technically here, what you know a priori is in the remembering of what you did, so the conventional iteration would be, I know I left them there. Here is where the element of experience makes your a priori knowledge regarding the keys, “impure”. In effect, your knowledge at this time, is the memory of putting the keys on the table, given from the original experience, but not the experience itself. It is knowledge of the same object, but at different times. This was Kant’s refutation of Hume, nutshell version.
Another way to look at it: you know the keys were on the table because you put them there, that activity is in itself an experience, giving a one-to-one correspondence between knowledge and experience. Given that procedural necessity, you can not know the keys are still on the table, because you don’t have the experience of perceiving them as being there. But the initial knowledge doesn’t just disappear, so it must be accounted for....sorta like entropy, donchaknow.....so you are entitled to say your knowledge is now of the memory of the prior experience, which you certainly wouldn’t deny. You know the memory is just as certain as the initial activity, the former is properly intuition, the latter is experience.
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Quoting T Clark
All analytic propositions/judgements/principles are pure a priori, but not all pure a priori propositions/judgements/principles are analytic. The distinction resides in the relation of the concept in the predicate to the concept in the subject of such proposition/judgement/principle constructions. A further distinction is that analytic constructions are tautologies, they are true necessarily, hence require no empirical proof. Synthetic constructions, on the other hand, are not necessarily true, hence require experience for such possible proofs.
As I said....for whatever that’s worth.
I'm lost. Not your fault. I'll blame Kant.
One more thing - the way you are defining "a priori" is not the way it is normally used here on the forum. Again - not your fault.
His concern was whether there were a priori synthetic judgments, meaning could some new fact be known about the world through reason alone. That is, unlike knowing that bachelors are unmarried (analytic), when we determine the length of the hypotenuse from the length of the other sides of the right triangle, we now have new knowledge prior to experience (synthetic).
That would be a disappointment, but barring an example, I suspect otherwise.
You misunderstood what I wrote then. I was trying to illustrate why the ‘why am I me’ question is baffling only if dualism is assumed.
[quote=noAxioms]Anyway, the 'I' in that question is the self again, and if you deny the existence of it, the improbability goes away.[/quote]
I said I (the self) could no more be a bug than it could be me. I denied its existence. There is nothing ‘being’ me.
The point of the example was to illustrate that everybody knows what Paul Simon meant by those lyrics. People have a dualistic instinct, a lie that is pretty much impossible to disbelieve.
Without it, the lyrics don’t make any sense since X is X (a tautology) and cannot be Y. But it makes sense to suggest the experiencer of X were to experience Y instead.
Yes, given dualism, there are a lot more non-human things to be (bugs being one example) and thus odds of winning the ‘human lottery’ are suspiciously low. Some get out of this via anthropocentric assertions, that humans are special this way. Questioning the lie is often not an option.
Even that makes no sense. How can say a cat be a dog? A thing is what it is and cannot meaningfully be something else.
That’s why your physical appearance is what it is, which wasn’t the question. The question asks why you look out of Harry’s eyes and not the eyes of another. The question makes no sense outside of a dualistic context since under monism it is tautological that a creature looks out of its own eyes (exceptions to robots with bluetooth).
This thread was never intended to be about Kant, although what he wrote is relevant to the discussion. As it says in the OP, the subject is "What do we know without knowing anything? Without justification... This type of knowledge is described many ways, among them a priori, self-evident, intuitive, obvious, and common sense." So a priori knowledge is part of it, but what babies know is also part. The discussion has focused on Kant quite a bit, and I'm fine with that. I've learned a lot, although I'm still confused by the terminology - synthetic vs. analytic; pure vs. impure.
The pure/impure is Kantian terminology specifically, meant to show the distinctions in what can be considered a priori. The thing with the keys shows there is a kind of a priori in common usage but hardly recognized as such, but it is the other kind of much more importance, that being, absent any element of experience whatsoever, that is, pure, which if not from experience, must the be from reason itself. Your list of a priori conditions on pg 1 are both kinds, but without the distinction of which is which. Conventionally speaking, that is sufficient, insofar as conventionally no one cares, but both scientifically and metaphysically speaking, it is very far from it. And, of course, you did ask a metaphysical question after all, so......just thought I’d weigh in. Or.....wade in, more like it.
Anyway.....of much more importance is the analytic/synthetic distinction, a priori being given. There are no analytic statements that are not a priori, which leaves synthetic statements. The whole scheme evolved from Enlightenment academia, as to whether or not there is any such thing as a synthetic a priori condition, and if there is, what is it for, what would it do, what can we get out of it. Believe it or not, the long and the short of it is.....and you know....for what it’s worth....., the question was asked about such things, because the question was first asked.....how is mathematics possible? Which is hardly as silly as it seems, insofar as an entire paradigm shift from Renaissance intelligencia in the ways and means of human knowledge, still in force to this day, resulted from such a simple question. Einstein, it goes without saying, did the same thing, except for the natural scientist rather than the philosopher.
One of Kant’s many claims to fame is the logical proof for them, and from it, the absolute necessity for what they do. Since, of course, there have been refutations of both the proof and the use, on the one hand, and deductions of them under other premises on the other, but nevertheless, the first and the most readily understandable iterations of them, are his.
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Quoting T Clark
Do you think there has been a satisfactory answer to that?
So Kant's pure reason is a priori reason? Are we born with reason? Can we find it somewhere hidden in a cave? Between the lines maybe? How we know it's not declared a priori after it's introduction?
It seems to me that your understanding isn't an understanding at all if you are unable to communicate it without contradicting yourself. It seems as if you are the one that needs to search for the publications and read them if you want to make an argument against anything that I've said (like experience is quantifiable).
Quoting noAxioms
If there is more than one universe then are we not already acknowledging that there are a number of universes, and that there might be different universes where there are two universes in which 2+4=4 and 2 in which 2+2=7, but there are 2+2=4 total universes?
Would it make any sense at all to say that we can add 2 universes to 2 other universes to get 4 universes yet 2+2 does not equal 4 in a certain universe? So it seems that 2+2=4 isn't dependent on the property of some particular universe, but is dependent on there being more than one of anything (including all universes). Even if there are only two universes, then 1+1=2 would be true regardless of what is true in either universe.
Quoting noAxioms
Because you are assuming that there is an I that is separate from the individual (dualism). The question, "why am I me?" is a meaningless question (many philosophical questions are) if you understand that you are the result of a causal chain of events, and that if there was a different chain of events, it would not be that you would be some one else, rather you wouldn't exist at all.
Quoting noAxioms
Dualism is not an instinct. Babies are born solipsists. Most animals are solipsists. Solipsism is instinctual. After a period of mental development, babies become realists in realizing object permanence (that objects continue to exist even when not being observed or thought about).
Dualism is indoctrinated at an early age with the introduction of religion (soul vs body). The notion that you can exist independently of your body is a delusion created as way to deal with the knowledge of your death.
Quoting noAxioms
There is no lottery. There is no luck. Things happen for a reason (prior causes or pre-existing conditions). If something else happened instead then you wouldn't be here asking these questions. Someone else would be.
Quoting noAxioms
That was my point. Either way you put the question, it's a silly question given that we know that you are the outcome of a particular sex act between two specific people and the subsequent development (life experiences) without which you wouldn't exist at all, not that you'd be something else - as if that were ever possible. It isn't.
Quoting noAxioms
Well, yes, which is why I said you need to abandon dualism if you want to avoid asking silly questions that simply don't take into account what we know today in modern times when religion and it's dualistic thinking is on the decline and replaced with scientific theories of biology, genetics and evolution.
As I noted, I found the discussions about pure vs. impure and analytic vs. synthetic, interesting and useful. I wasn't questioning their value, I was just expressing confusion. In my experience on the forum, many people use the term "a priori" to mean something that can be known without justification. Often, they aren't talking about tautologies or logical deductions, they are talking about metaphysical properties. My most recent example is causality - that all events are caused. I think there are good arguments for this positions, but there are also good arguments against it. To claim it is a priori knowledge is to shut down debate.
Quoting Mww
This discussion has been really interesting and satisfying for me. I've gotten a lot to think about.
But the question is why you are that particular combination of particles originating near the big bang leading to the life you lead from baby on. Why are you not another combination of particles leading to, for example, a current crocodile?
Kant describes what he means by “pure”, that being absent all elements of experience. Even if describing a priori with it, I think it safe to apply the term to reason as well. I don’t recall Kant defining pure reason as such, but usually just meaning how reason itself is to be understood from its use.
To be somewhat technical, understanding is the faculty of rules, reason is the faculty that unites the rules under principles. All principles are a priori and all rational deductions are free from empirical conditions, so.....
Again, technically, nothing can be known without some kind of justification, the possible exception being knowledge acquired by sheer accident, which merely indicates neither experience nor logic suffices.
The Greeks liked to divide knowledge into knowledge of and knowledge that. Russell called it knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. Either way, the dichotomy reduces to knowledge before submission to the cognitive system and knowledge as a result of the system. Like..... I know I just got bit, but I don’t know what bit me. That I got bit is not something the least a priori knowledge, for it is an affect of some kind on the senses, and if I don’t know what bit me, that can’t be a priori because it isn’t anything.
Regardless, if one thinks knowledge to be a relative condition of certainty, that is only possible by being justified by something.
Or so it seems.....
I agree with this. Some people seem to think that just saying "a priori" is all the justification that's needed.
Your profile says you're Indonesian, not an "American white guy".
Quoting Harry HinduThat would be a meaningless question if the sum of two and two is not objectively meaningful. You’re asking an objective question there, not one related to a particular set of laws.
You said that 2+2=4 is true in our universe, which I’ll call U0. So U0 ? 2+2=4
But I’m going for a relation in the other direction: 2+2=4 ? U0, U1, etc.
If mathematical law holds objectively and not just relative to our universe, then I can explain the existence relative to us of our universe. That’s why I’m interested in it being objectively true. It has been a weak point in my argument.
I suppose in the universe where 2+2=7, there would objectively be 7 universes, but we’d count only 4. That sounds like a contradiction since it is an objective quantity being discussed, not a quantity of anything that is part of one universe or another. That’s fair evidence that 2+2 objectively is 4, but I’ve not enough of a formal mathematical background to assess the validity of that argument.
The question assumes that, yes. Hence I rationally reject the question as either meaningless or begging. The question “why is there something and not nothing” is similarly meaningless/begging, and is why I abandoned the realism that it begs.
I might agree with the solipsism thing, but my suspicion is that language is what then introduces the dualism, just like it introduces object identity and reinforces presentism, something that babies/animals already have. Religion (organized religion at least) is just a parasitical entity evolved to prey on these beliefs and the natural resistance to death.
Rationally, I’ve rejected all those things, even fear of death. But just rationally. I obviously hold multiple self-contradictory beliefs. As I said, the lies make you fit, and I’d not survive the day without them.
Yes, warm fuzzies so you can sleep. Most people rationalize the lies rather than rationally analyze them, but most people don’t give a philosophy forum a second thought.
I’ve watched my mother rewrite her memories as a method of holding on to the warm fuzzies. It’s harder to see yourself do it, but it’s a necessary coping mechanism. Humans are excellent at rationalizing, but incredibly poor at rational thought. I struggle to be otherwise, and maybe even fool myself into thinking I’m on some kind of right track, but deeper down I realize that’s probably a rationalized conclusion. Go figure.
Agree, but you expressed incredulity about the bug, so I thought I’d explain from where that idea came.
Thank you. I appreciate that. I can say that same about you. :up:
Quoting noAxioms
My profile actually says that my location is Indonesian fields, not necessarily that I am Indonesian, but then don't believe everything that you read on a person's profile. :wink:
Quoting noAxioms
For it to be objective, it would have to be true regardless of what is true in each universe. It would be true outside of all the universes. If there is only one universe, then there isn't a problem.
Like I said, it doesn't make any sense to say that we can count universes - which is an act that we can only do if we put ourselves outside of all universes - while in a particular universe counting works a different way. It's like saying that in one universe there is only one universe, when there are actually many. How would you acquire the truth if not by leaving this universe and going to another? The truth that there is only one universe isn't true within a particular universe. It can only be true if you are outside of all universes.
I admit that this is all challenging my ideas of objectivity vs. subjectivity and my ability to communicate how I am trying to conceive them. But I think that ultimately we need to go back to what I said before that counting itself seems dependent upon (mental) categories prior to what is being counted. You can only count cats if you have a "cat" category that individual members are a part of. If you have no "cat" category, then there is only one of each individual animal. The same can be said of universes. What qualifies a universe to be a universe, or part of the category, "universe"? It seems that needs to be answered before we can even begin to wonder if there is more than one in the first place. So the question is, do (mental) categories exist independent of minds? Are categories objective features of reality?
Quoting noAxioms
For me, it is the ironing out of the self-contradictory beliefs that make me fit. All knowledge must be integrated. It's more likely that your self-contradictory beliefs have no bearing on your goal to survive, which is why you can hold them and still survive. When you actually apply those beliefs to goals that they have an impact on, then you will find that your goals cannot be realized.
Quoting noAxioms
That's the thing that we need to iron out. Is our goal to feel warm fuzzies and cope with the reality of life, or is to acquire true knowledge of reality? When we are discussing what is the case independent of ourselves, then bringing your emotional state into the discussion isn't useful at all.
& Quoting Mww
You seem to be describing the difference between belief and knowledge, not different kinds of knowledge. Beliefs seem to be those interpretations of sensory data from a single sense, while knowledge seems to include justification from all the senses. How do you know that you were bitten if you don't know what bit you? After all, it could be that you stepped in a claw-trap. You interpreted a single sensory perception (tactile) based on previous experiences of being bit, rather than confirming with your eyes what the source of the tactile sensation is. When you use your eyes, you are getting real-time information about the circumstances, not from the past in the form of memories or past experiences.
Now our eyes can "lie" to us too. Initial visual observations can lead us to believe that water is on the ground (mirage) when there isn't. It isn't until we make more observations, like moving towards the "pool of water" and observing it disappear that we go from justifying based on prior (and possibly outdated) experiences (information) to justifying based on current experiences (information). So by accumulating more observations over time, can we say that we have acquired justification for what it is that we claim that we know. So the difference seems to be the degree of justification. Ideas based on preliminary observations that have not been confirmed using real-time information of other senses qualify as beliefs. Ideas based on the information acquired by more than one sense, and over a period of time, and is confirmed with current observations, is what qualifies as knowledge.
Essentially, the difference between beliefs and knowledge is that beliefs are justified by either empiricism or rationalism alone, while knowledge is justified by using both together.
ALL our knowledge is empirical. All are axioms are tested empirically every time we use them. Even logic has rules that are grounded in the empirical ''face" of the reality we experience.
You won't be able to point to "a priori, self-evident, intuitive, obvious, and common sense." without first experiencing and interacting with other members empirically.
Btw on intuition, Nobelist Kahneman won his Award by exposing the untrustworthy nature of intuition.
Good that it only seems.
I'm generally in agreement with you, although I think you've made too strong a statement. It is my understanding that our brains and minds are built with capacities, structures, that provide a framework for processing our experiences. This shows up with language especially but also other cognitive functions. As I noted in an earlier post, studies have shown that very young babies have what appear to be built-in capabilities for numerical and moral judgements.
Very late edit:
Is 2+2=4 a realist statement? Is it conditionally true only if either quantity is real or there are real things that can be quantified, or is it unconditionally true even without there being anything real to count? I can make it a little harder by picking a non-integer since it eliminates the relevance of just counting things.
Tegmark listed four different ways to do that. His first is the kind I referenced above, a set of finite sized hyperspheres that overlap, separated only by distance. That’s four different ways to define a cat.
I’m the first to admit that defining a word is a human language thing. It isn’t a physics thing at all. What delimits the cat from the not-cat? At exactly what point does the cat and food system become just cat?
In Dr Who, a character had a teleport device strapped to his wrist. Hit the button and you’re suddenly somewhere else. My immediate (no hesitation) reaction to that was to ask how it knew what was you and what wasn’t. In terminator it was a nice define sphere and if your foot was outside that line, it doesn’t go with you. But the wrist device needed to know apparently that the clothes needed to go with you, but not say the post against which you’re leaning, despite the post being closer to the device than many of your body parts. It really bothered me, never mind the whole impossibility of the device in the first place, which I readily accept as a plot device.
I’d have said that abstract is abstract and there is no cat until something names/models it. The word cat is strictly a mental construction. So are atoms if you come right down to it, but at least atom has a physics definition that the cat lacks. I’m not asserting anything here, just giving my thoughts.
The lies have a huge bearing on my ability to survive. So it must be the rational beliefs, far more likely to be true, that have no bearing. I’d say they do, but the rational side isn’t in charge, but instead has a decent advisory role for matters where the boss hasn’t a strong opinion. Fermi paradox solution: Any sufficiently advanced race eventually puts its rational side sufficiently in charge to cease being fit.
I have to admit that the rational side is like an engineer, not having goals of its own, but rather is something called upon to better meet the goals of its employer, even in cases where the goals are based on known lies. But I’m not sure whose goals you think are not being realized. They’re working on ‘live forever’.
OK, there’s a rational goal, since I rationally want to do the latter. Surprisingly, there are warm fuzzies on that road as well, despite the denial of that possibility from the theists, who assert oblivion as the only alternative to eternal orgasm in the sky.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
We've been modern humans for only a short time. Our current morals are only a few generations old. Yes, there are some crude rules built into our instinct, but siblings regularly do some pretty cruel things to each other, so it's a stretch to say the morals are an evolutionary product instead of a product of society, and a rapidly changing one at that.
That simply is a conjecture. Do you have proof?
What's your proof then?
Interesting, and it's no doubt what happens in the progress of knowledge. But knowledge needs a reference frame, a perspective, or a filter, to construct the empirical world with. The knowledge of these is not part of empirical knowledge. Without this a priori knowledge you wouldn't even be able to start the gathering.
-Our empirical language and reasoning.
-"The knowledge of these is not part of empirical knowledge."
-Of course it is. Our symbolic language all the meaning and concepts within are developed by our interactions as toddlers with our environment.
Quoting Haglund
-Even our a priori predisposition to syntactic composition, numerical symbols etc are the product of thousands of years interacting with our empirical world. There is a reason why toddles and animals are startled by a cucumber laying on the floor instead by a tomato....
Seem: to give the impression of being; To appear to be probable or evident.
If it isn't how it seems, then maybe you should explain what you see the difference between belief and knowledge as being, instead of being sarcastic? But if sarcasm is all you have then that is sad, not good.
Hmm. It seems strange to say that you are not a realist when you've been engaged with me in this conversation for some time now. Is it your belief that I only exist when you are reading my posts? Is it your belief that I am only a post on an internet philosophy forum and not a real human being even though you have never seen me? Do you only exist when I read your posts?
You're the one that brought other universes into the discussion, no?
Quoting noAxioms
Now I'm not really sure by what you mean as "realist". I am a direct realist when it comes to the mind and an indirect realist when it comes to the world. Our minds are of the world and about the world, thanks to causation (information).
Math and language are approximations of the world and about the world thanks to causation (information). As you pointed out, math problems like dividing by three gives you a an infinite regress answer. Our present goal in the mind determines how many significant digits we use (how close the approximation needs to be) to accomplish that goal. Is the goal to divide the last piece of pie among three people equally, or is the goal getting a spacecraft to Mars?
I see the reality as like an analog signal and our minds are digital interpretations of that analog signal. Our minds need to categorize the world to make sense of it to accomplish even the most basic goals.
Quoting noAxioms
So we can't determine whose posts are whose on this forum? I have often thought about it the way you are describing it but I eventually come back to the idea that there must be some kind of distinction between objects that does not only exist in our minds.
Sure there exists similarities in all animals, but there are clear differences too. It depends on what you are comparing. When trying to explain how life evolved there will probably some issues in distinguishing a non-living cell from a living cell, but there is surely a difference between a cat and a fish that does not simply exist in our minds.
It seems to me that similarities and differences exist not as a product of our minds, but as a result of similar or different causes, which are not necessarily mental.
If categories only exist in our minds does that mean that every organism is unique (there is only one of everything) and we can share similarities as a result of common causes, or does that mean that there are no boundaries and there is only one thing (reality, mind, etc.) and there are no individuals? The latter seems to imply solipsism.
Quoting noAxioms
Then what are we naming or modeling? There is something that we are naming and the naming refers to the similarities of particular organisms. I don't think the similarities and differences are products of our minds. Categories are useful most of the time and are only challenged when we find things that challenge the boundaries. But those are few and far between, which must mean something. It means that similar causes leave similar effects, but every cause is unique. Similarity and uniqueness are not contradictions. You can share characteristics of others thanks to your similar causes but you are also an individual in space-time accumulating your own life experiences.
Quoting noAxioms
If you are able to say that they are lies, then you obviously know what the truth is is yet you are still able to survive. How is that?
It seems to me that the ability to adapt to a wide range of environments is a result of our our rational side (science and technology). Being able to survive in a wide range of environments, and potentially all environments, is about as fit as you can get.
Quoting noAxioms
Then the engineer has the goal of meeting the goals of its employer, or of having an income to support themselves and their family, which are not lies, but are actual states-of-affairs in the world. When you lie, you have the goal of misleading others or yourself. To be capable of lying you must know the truth.
Keep in mind that I am expressing a view, not a belief. I'm not asserting that my way is the truth, and thus technically I am not asserting that all of the things I qualify as 'lies' are actually false. But they have serious problems that seem more substantial than with alternative views. So I'm not evangelizing my pet theory, but rather looking for feedback to help find the holes in it. In that capacity, this conversation is a big help. I suppose to fully describe what I've worked out, it would need to be explained in more detail and these posts are just a pragmatic rough sketch. The details are harder to discuss in natural language since a sort of B-speak would be necessary which avoids not only references to the present, but also to persistent identity, and that gets cumbersome. So anyway, the rudiments of a relational take on things:
You exist relative to me. It’s a relation born of measurement, at least in this universe. It is not a function episemology. There are billions of people I don't know which nevertheless exist relative to me.
Being a non-realist means that the property of being real (existence) is undefined. Relations are not affected by the meaningless property. There is precedent. People have no problem saying a unicorn has a horn on its head despite the lack of existence of the horn, or running a simulation of a car hitting a wall to measure its safety properties despite the lack of existence of the car. The unicorn horn exists relative to the unicorn despite their lack of the meaningless property. I don’t exist to the unicorn since it doesn't measure me.
It’s something like the Rovelli view, except I’ve seen it expressed that it implies a sort of momentary ontology where a system exists only at the moments in which it is measured, and not between, but the moon is quite there (relative to us) when not being looked at. For one thing, it is pretty impossible to not continuously measure the moon, and for another thing, you can’t un-measure a thing, so the moon once measured exists to all humans, even humans that might not exist relative to me say in some other world.
Humans/life forms play no special role in this. It isn’t about epistemology. You always existed relative to me long before either of us posted on any forum. We exist relative to my mug since it too has measured us, despite the fact that the mug doesn’t know it. Any interaction whatsoever is a measurement, so the only way to avoid it is by isolation by distance or Schrodinger’s box and such.
Simple exercise: With begging the opposing view that being real is necessary for A to relate to B, design a device that can detect if it is real or not. It’s kind of similar to asking the presentist to design a device that measures the rate of advancement of the present, an absolute clock of sorts. Thing is, there’s no empirical difference between the rate changing by say a factor of 100, or stopping altogether. Absent an empirical test, assertions about the reality of the posited thing (the present) is superfluous. Likewise, being real seems to be superfluous to empirical observations, so dismissing it opens different options for consideration.
But I hopefully didn’t go so far as to suggest that these other universes exist. I'd have expressed that our universe doesn’t exist relative to them, and they don’t exist relative to us.
For one, that’s more specific than the typical description. ‘Realist’ is an adjective of sorts and the word on its own doesn’t say what you’re realist about. My big beef against realism is how one explains the reality of whatever one considers real. So the deist types just add a layer to the ‘cause of the universe’ but fail to explain the existence of the deity vs the nonexistence of same.
OK, about the 2+2=4 thing: This is probably the shakiest part of my view: Is the sum of (just to pick a non-counting example) 3.600517 and 12.8119 objectively equal to 16.412417 or is it contingent on instantiation of those values somehow somewhere, on say a calculator adding those specific values. The latter would require the thing performing the calculation to be more fundamental (it would exist, relative to the sum) than the sum of the value. I propose otherwise. I suggest the sum is 16.412417 even in the absence of anything calculating that particular operation or two objects of those dimensions somehow being combined, or in particular, even in the absence even of the meaning of something being objectively real (e.g. ‘nothing’ is a meaningful objective state of reality, so I don’t suggest ‘there is nothing’). From this premise (that mathematics doesn’t require instantiation to be valid), I can build our universe. There are other hurdles, but that’s been one that bothers me.
That’s just a decimal representation of a third. A number is a number, regardless of the impossibility to express that number precisely in any conceivable representation. I mean, pi is a number expressible with a single character, but most real numbers cannot be expressed exactly. This doesn’t affect the number itself, it just affects the ability of it to be physically represented.
My goal doesn’t involve anybody or anything actually performing a calculation. That would make the truth of 2+2=4 contingent on the thing doing the adding. A simulation does such calculations, and yes, they’d be approximate. I’m not talking about a simulation, which is just a sub-structure implemented on a deeper structure, all very much like the deity-universe relationship.
On what statement of mine did you conclude something like that? Done correctly, the quotes are signed.
I wasn’t talking about the difference between a cat and something similar to a cat. I’m talking about the boundaries of a specific cat or river or whatever. Which atoms belong to the cat and which do not, and precisely when does that designation change? Physics doesn’t care about it. It is just a language thing. But build a physical device that say cleans a cat and you’ll have to define the boundary to a point so it doesn’t waste it’s time grooming the carrier or something.
With organisms, not, it isn’t just a mental thing. Two eukaryotic organisms are the same species if they can produce fertile offspring together. It gets harder to distinguish different species of organism that reproduce via mitosis.
We are getting seriously off topic here.
Because the part in charge doesn’t believe the ideas that the rational part comes up with. The boss very much believes the lies and the rational part is fine with the goals that come from them. Mostly...
No immediate argument, but * rant warning * I do notice that we rationally can see the environmental damage being done, but the parts in charge do not. For all we pride ourselves in being this superior race, we act less intelligent than bacteria in a limited petri dish of nutrients. The bacteria at least don’t see the problem. We do and we (temporarily at least) have all this technology at our disposal, and don’t do anything different than the bacteria. * end rant *
Being able to sustain that ability would make us far more fit. So far, from the point of view of the planet, we’re just another pandemic, an extinction event. The first one (Oxygen Catastrophe) never went away and resulted in astonishing complexity that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred. If I could name a goal for the human race, it is to do that sort of thing again. Move to the next level instead of collapse back down to pre-bronze-age conditions.
I suppose, yes, but it's still a falsehood despite lack of deliberate deceit by any willed entity.
It comes down to what you mean by "exist". Imaginings exist in the same way non-imagined things exist. They are both real in the sense that they have causal power. The imagining of a unicorn (mental states) can cause a human to use colored ink and paper to form an image of a unicorn on it (physical states). The difference between an known thing and an imagined thing is that one is understood to represent things whose existence is not dependent on a mind and the other's existence is completely dependent upon a mind. An imagined thing is not a representation of anything. It is a thing in and of itself. The word, "unicorn", or a piece of paper with colored ink would be the representation of a unicorn in and of itself.
Quoting noAxioms
This is the really mind-bending part. In what way does some system exist independent of it being measured? If any interaction is a measurement and humans/lifeforms are not special in this role, then the Moon and Earth existed prior to humans as a measurement? Are you saying that it is measurements, or relations, all the way down, and are what is real or exists? Any system is a relation between its constituents and the constituents are also systems. It seems like an infinite regress, but it could also be that reality is infinite and eternal.
Quoting noAxiomsIs your beef against realism a real state-of-affairs that can be explained? I understand your explanation (your use of scribbles) to not be the actual beef you have against realism but the explanation of such and that your beef against realism is a real state-of-affairs that I can only be aware of by your use of scribbles, with your scribbles being the effect of your beef with realism and your intent to explain just that. So, am I correct in my assumption that your explanation is of a real state-of-affairs (that you have a beef with realism) that is true despite if you had explained it or not, or even if I believed your explanation or not?
Quoting noAxioms
The answer to the question of if values added together objectively equals another value seems to be proved by finding those values in the universe independent of the scribbles we use to represent those values - meaning that values can't be just other scribbles. What is the relationship between the scribbles. 3.600517 and 12.8119 and 16.412417? Why is there a relationship at all? There must be something going on inside the calculator that forms a relationship between them that is more than just the rearranging of scribbles.Why does the calculator always display 16.412417 when pressing specific buttons in a specific order on a calculator?
Quoting noAxioms
Your goal doesn't perform the calculation. It determines what kind of values and the calculations, or measurements that you will use, as well as how specific you need your measurement to be successful in achieving your goal. The success or failure of your goal is dependent upon those values and calculations being representative of some actual state-of-affairs or not, and not just being some scribbles being rearranged in your head at whim.
Quoting noAxioms
This:
Quoting noAxioms
Which scribbles belong to you and which belong to me, and why? It seems that physics is what explains how some scribble is yours and which are mine by causation. If it were just a language thing, then I can simply rearrange quotes, and some of your posts would be mine. What is plagiarism?
Doesn't the fact that I can design a physical device that isn't a human being but possesses sensors like a human being that can determine the boundary of a cat in the same way a human can, mean something? It must have something to do with both of us having sensors and what those sensors were designed to sense (a boundary) that exists independently of the representations of those boundaries in the human mind.
Quoting noAxioms
If the rational part is fine with the goals, then the rational part must share the goals because the rational part must realize that the boss and itself are part of the same being that the outcomes of their behaviors affects them both. Then the rational part doesn't seem rational at all if it doesn't at least attempt to overthrow the boss when it determines that the boss is making the wrong decision that will impede their natural and social fitness.
Quoting noAxioms
This is not specific to humans. Alpha-males in most species are fine with maintaining the status-quo where they maintain their power and access to resources and mates at the expense of everyone else in the group.
The point of the unicorn example was to show that expression of such relations is commonplace. I picked a unicorn because it exemplifies a thing lacking the property of existence. I’m talking about a unicorn, and not the abstraction or representation of one.
Your wording uses ‘exist’ as a property, and is thus meaningless in the relational view. In short, using quantum rules, a thing doesn’t exist relative to Y if Y hasn’t measured it, and thus there is no existence relative to Y in the absence of measurement. A photon ‘in flight’ for instance isn’t measured by anything. It is probably the number one example of a counterfactual. Existence of an unmeasured photon is denied pretty much by any non-counterfactual interpretation of physics. Not so with a classical pulse of light, but such a pulse has been measured.
Relative to what? Question is meaningless without that.
Relations all the way down, yes. Exists no, since that isn’t a relation. No, I’m not saying relations are ‘real’.
Not infinite. There’s only finite stuff that exists relative to me for instance, all of it in my past light cone.
Not being a realist, my ‘beef’ does not have the property of being real, but it’s real to me.
It being categorized as ‘real’ is meaningless (not even wrong). It is real to me, and also to you regardless of my having explained it or not. Explaining it just changes some epistemology, but the measurement was unavoidable since there’s no practical way for the two of us to isolate from each other.
I don’t like the talk of scribbles since I’m not in any way suggesting that the numbers require representation in any way in order for them to relate in this way. To sink the view you’d have to show that the relationship is necessarily only formed by some process in the calculator or some other instantiation, and I don’t think that can be demonstrated. Lack of ability to demonstrate this doesn’t prove the view, but most views such as this are interpretations, not provable theorems.
Nothing needs to calculate or quantify anything. This is sort of an exercise in logic, finding a view consistent or somehow self-contradictory.
Both cases seem to constitute instantiation. If a state of affairs is actual (real), then the sum seems contingent on that reality. If it is just scribbles, then it is contingent on being represented somewhere. I want the sum to be what it is without any of this, for the sum to be objectively this one value, not contingent on anything. I don’t see why 2+2 isn’t 4 until being instantiated, so I consider the suggesting of it being an objectively true relation isn’t immediately falsified on logical grounds.
I say it is just a language thing, without which there would be no defined ‘you’ to rearrange quotes. Indeed, there is no meaning to plagiarism in physics without definitions of system boundaries.
It’s actually pretty hard to do. Closest I can think is a self driving car which needs to glean objects and then sort out which ones are potentially mobile. The cars still get it wrong sometimes.
[quote=Harry Hindu]Mostly...
— noAxioms
If the rational part is fine with the goals, then the rational part must share the goals because the rational part must realize that the boss and itself are part of the same being that the outcomes of their behaviors affects them both.[/quote]Mostly...
Well that’s what it’s there for, so of course.
But how can you talk about something that doesn't exist? As I said before, it can't be a representation if what it "represents" doesn't exist. It is the thing itself and "unicorn" the word is the representation of the abstraction. Yes, you are talking about unicorns, and unicorns only exist as abstractions. Abstractions are the relation between various sensory impressions. Unicorns are an abstract amalgam of horses and horns. We can only ever talk about our ideas and mental states. Whether those ideas and mental states are representative of other things is a different question. I don't see a difference in the idea of existence for abstractions or non-abstractions for they both have the causal power and I defined existence as having causal power.
Now that seems like what you are talking about here:Quoting noAxioms
Then the structure for defining X and Y is prior to the relation of X and Y? How does this structure exist as a relation to what? And when I ask how does it exist, I'm asking how does it have causal power as in causing a relation between X and Y?
Quoting noAxioms
It seems to me that a relation is a type of property.
Do relations exist? If so, then relative to what?
Quoting noAxioms
Relative to each other. So for the Moon to exist it must have a relation with something, say the Earth, and this relation existed before humans, right? If humans are not special in this role then you don't necessarily need an observer for quantum decoherence. You just need other relations, no?
Quoting noAxioms:gasp:
So relations are like unicorns?
Quoting noAxioms
Yeah, but that stuff exists relative to other stuff, not just you. It also existed before you and will continue to exist after you, no? Or are you saying that all other relations of things other than with you do not exist when you don't? That would be solipsism.
Quoting noAxioms
Quoting noAxiomsBut I am a realist. So now what? You like to postulate other universes when you don't believe that there actually are. Is it so hard for you to pretend that maybe you're not an anti-realist? You say 'real' has no meaning and then go on to categorize your beef as being real and existing as a relation with you.
Our conversation is unraveling quickly. What is meaningless is your use of language.Quoting noAxioms
Not really. My iRobot vacuum cleaner seems to locate the walls of the house just fine and never tries to clean the outside. It also seems to sense areas that are more dirty as it focuses on cleaning those areas and then moved to other areas when done.
I can also program a computer to send me e-mails when its temperature or power consumption reaches a certain threshold.
Basic sensors can be designed to detect basic boundaries. Boundaries can be stable or dynamic, like in your driving car example. Dynamic boundaries I would agree are more difficult to manage.
Quoting noAxioms
Scribbles don't necessarily represent anything. That is the difference between what makes a scribble a number or word and not just a scribble. So are 2 and 4 scribbles or numbers? If they are scribbles then asking if any relationship between them is objectively true is a silly question. If they are numbers, then they represent something.
I see little evidence of active mod activity on this site, but I also see a delicious absence of true trolls here, so maybe I’m just not privy to the silent but deadly actions being taken.
I’m a mod myself on another forum (not a philosophy site) and have split my share of topics, and that site indeed seems to be a troll (and spam) magnet.
Sorry for the long post, but more details are needed to answer at least the one question.
Quoting Harry HinduI didn’t say it doesn’t exist. I said that there is no meaning to ‘X exists’ or ‘X doesn’t exist’. It puts us and the unicorn on equal footing. To the unicorn, I don’t exist, so all nice and symmetrical.
Continuing to use language that presumes realism is inhibits the ability to discuss a view that doesn’t. I looked at nihilism, but it seems to give meaning to such a property, but asserts that nothing has it. So it gives meaning to ‘exists’, but then says nothing exists. So I’m not a nihilist. I cannot find a reference to what I’m describing.
Agree with that.
Under a relational view, this statement is not even wrong. It references a realist bias (that there is a property of ‘exists’ and we have it and unicorns do not, making us real and not the unicorn). Step one is to drop that bias, because the view needs to be driven to contradiction without resorting to it.
[quote=Harry Hindu]If you want to get down and dirty, the relation seems to depend on the nature of the structure defining X and Y. So for instance, in this universe it seems that quantum decoherence defines X to Y: Y measures X when information of X leaks to Y.
— noAxioms
Then the structure for defining X and Y is prior to the relation of X and Y? How does this structure exist as a relation to what?[/quote]Much better question. Yes, it is a structure, and if that’s what you mean by infinite regression, there isn’t infinite regression. The structure, if not a sub-structure of something deeper, doesn’t exist relative to anything.
The view is a mix of Tegmarks mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH, mathematical structures being fundamental, but without the ontology suggested), Everett’s relative state formulation (RSF, also known as MWI: one universal wave function, making it a mathematical structure) with no wave function collapse, and Rovelli’s relational view (RQM), which is mostly just RSF with different ontology including collapse. RSF has a single postulate: “All isolated systems evolve according to the Schrodinger equation”. This doesn’t mention ontology at all, but somehow MWI evolved into somethings that suggests the existence of the universal wave function. MUH similarly suggests that various mathematical structures ‘exist’, and heated discussions ensue over exactly what ‘breathes the fire of existence’ into one structure and not another, which is exactly the sort of problem I'm trying to avoid.
I bring all this up for terminology purposes. Level 1 is universes separated by physical distance (visible universes). Level 2 comes from inflation bubbles that have different physical constants like multiple dimensions of time and field strengths that don’t allow particles to form and such. Level 3 is other worlds per MWI. Level 4 is unrelated structures, of which I have a few choice examples. All of these ‘universes’ are inaccessible to us, hence (in relational terminology) don’t exist relative to our Earth.
The first three of these levels are part of the same quantum structure, so that one structure encompasses all these different components.
I think that’s an important point since the relation between them is more like the relation between 3 and 5 and not a relation of Y measures X. So all the components of a structure are related as being a member of the whole, which is very different from the concept of an ‘existence’ relation which involves measurement and only applies to temporal structures with causal physics.
Some of my pet examples:
1) The Mandelbrot set is an oft-cited example of a non-temporal two-dimensional structure in the complex plain. It is complex, beautiful, but not being a causal structure, there’s no measurement going on. I’d say that Mandelbrot discovered the set, not that he created it. It can be independently discovered by anybody without any specific empirical observation, hence is a priori knowledge. The parts of the set relate to each other in a member-of relationship. Value X is a member of the set. Value Y is not.
2) The set of all possible chess states, including move history. This is not in any way to be confused with a game being played. This is a temporal structure and serves as a wonderful analogy to wave function collapse. The structure is finite: There is a maximum length possible game something on the order of 5 thousand moves. It is temporal: It starts at some initial state, and time is measured by half-moves (one move is a move by both white & black). Each state has one prior parent state and several child states. This is thus a causal structure of sorts. Each state can only be caused by its parent. Relative to any position Y1, the parent X exists but the sibling states (Y
3) Conway’s game of life (GoL) is a fairly classic and crude analogy to our physics. It has one dimension of time and two of space (there are versions with more), a speed of light, and causality. It is a counterfactual structure unlike quantum physics, so it is unclear how a ‘measures’ relation might be expressed. It is complex enough to simulate itself, which is more than I can say about our physics. It lacks a specific initial condition, so each initial state defines a different structure.
Causal powers are inherent in the structure properties. It’s real obvious in the GoL example. Any defined state defines all the subsequent state in the same way that 2+2 determines the sum 4 despite the lack of any calculator instantiating the sum.
There are views that are realist about relations. I’m trying to avoid being realist about anything, so no, it is not meaningful to discuss the existence of relations except as relations to its relata. Yea, I suppose ‘measures X’ can be thought of as a property of Y.
[quote=noAxioms]Relative to what? Question is meaningless without that.[/quote]
Relative to each other.[/quote]
Think MWI here. The moon seems a direct result of a specific Theia event. So some worlds have a moon, and yes, it orbits what can be named Earth. Some worlds have a different Theia event leaving a much different Earth any different moon or no moon. Relative to a world where the Theia impact did not occur, there is probably still something that is the future version of what had become our Earth in our world. Some (most) worlds don’t have our solar system at all. Some worlds have unicorns on them, but probably not human maidens to adopt them. The ones with unicorns (evolved from the same primitive live as did we) very much have a moon in their sky. The exact same Theia event exists relative to the unicorn as it does to us. The branching of worlds that cumulated in those two states most certainly occurred. It’s like two very different chess game states (one with (horny) knights still on the board, one with only bishops) both sharing a common first dozen moves.
Yes, our prehistoric Earth is related to our prehistoric moon. They very much measure each other, in a Bang-Ding-Ow way (I hope you get that reference).
With the exception of one (Wigner) interpretation that was so unpopular that it was abandoned by its creator, decoherence or wave function collapse has absolutely nothing to do specifically with humans or consciousness of any kind.
[quote=Harry Hindu]There’s only finite stuff that exists relative to me for instance, all of it in my past light cone.
— noAxioms
Yeah, but that stuff exists relative to other stuff, not just you.[/quote]That it does. Some of it exists relative to the unicorns, as I spelled out above, but nothing particularly recent.
Relative to say my mailbox after I’m gone, stuff that was in my past light cone will be in its past light cone, so yes. I assumed the name noAxioms, but I do hold a few axioms that are not necessarily self evident or true, but without which no progress can be made. These include that my sensory input is not a lie. If I’m being fed fiction (evil BiV scenario), then I have zero knowledge and cannot help getting it wrong, sort of like the N Koreans. (Two Korean references in the same post, wow). I also assume humans are not in any way special. That path leads to a different dark hole.
Yea, it would. The Wigner interpretation mentioned above can be driven to solipsism, which is why Wigner abandoned it.
Now you punch holes in my idea.
Same with the unicorns, but I don’t postulate their existence, I just reference them. Yet again, it is meaningless to talk about if they actually are or are not. Lacking the meaning of the property, the other universe is on no more or less stable ground than this one. That’s the beauty of it.
Which is different than any of that just existing.
I’m trying. Part of the problem is that most basic assumptions are part of the language, such as all the verb tenses that presume presentism. It’s all very pragmatic, but not so useful when it gets in the way of understanding a different point of view. So other than my continued nattering about using existence, ‘is’, or being real in an objective way, please point specific points out where my language gets in the way.
That is the difference between what makes a scribble a number or word and not just a scribble. So are 2 and 4 scribbles or numbers?[/quote]I’m talking about the latter. What is written down is a representation, an abstraction of sorts, not the thing.
Well, that goes against my original question of if they needed to represent anything. I think somebody working in pure mathematics (not applied) would still say that 2+2=4.
The problem in MWI is shifted towards the branching points. Tegmark's view suffers from the question what math structures are made of of approximations. If no exact solutions exist, what's the structure?
For what it's worth, the original discussion about a priori knowledge has mostly played itself out. As the original poster, I have no objection with you carrying on your discussion here if that's what you want to do.
Quoting noAxioms
And I appreciate your intellectual honesty and the time you are devoting to addressing all points. I wish that was a more common virtue on these forums. I can't complain too much as this forum is far better than any interaction you can have on Twitter or FB, and the moderators seem to have loosened their grip on some of the speech that can be used over the past year or two. It's certainly one of the better places to have these kinds of discussions on the internet. First, I'd say that we need to eliminate any contradictions.
Quoting noAxioms
You're free to use language however you wish, but I would think that you'd want me to understand so that you aren't wasting your time. I'm fine with abandoning terms like "realism", "exist" and "real" if that works for you. My main goal here is to figure out where we might be using different terms but are still talking about the same thing or not.
First, I need to understand what you mean by "exists". You contradict yourself by saying that there is no meaning in using the phrase, "X doesn't exist", and then you go on to say that that to the unicorn, you don't exist. It seems to me that the unicorn's existence is dependent on your existence to imagine it's existence. If the term, "exists" is the problem and is what is causing this contradiction, feel free to use a different term that captures your meaning.
In what way did you exist before you and I had our first interaction? Did I exist? Did you exist prior to our first interaction? If so, in what way did we exist? Again, you are free to use whatever terms you want, so saying that it is meaningless doesn't help. If it is meaningless then tell me what you do mean without contradicting yourself. Contradictions are meaningless.
If you'd like, for the purpose of this discussion, we can say that existence, or exists, is just a state-of-affairs, or what is the case. X and Y are each separate state-of-affairs and any potential relation between them is another state-of-affairs. If there can be two states-of-affairs prior to any relation (potential vs. actual) then the the two states-of-affairs are not dependent on the relation. You could say that once they do form a relation the two states-of-affairs are now different states-of-affairs, but not totally different as they still maintain links to the past as in each subsequent relation is an effect of prior states-of-affairs.
If X exists in relation to Y, then what are X and Y independent of the relation? Just because I had no information about you prior to us meeting, does that mean that you didn't exist until I did? Does this mean that there are not parts of the world that have changed as a result of you being in it independent of my first meeting with you? This is what I mean by exists - that it is a relation of causation. As such, the unicorn in your mind exists as a causal event of you having experienced the idea before. The unicorn in your head is not the unicorn in my head and this is the result of us both having different experiences in learning about and conceiving of unicorns. This also puts us and the unicorn on equal footing in that we all exist as a result of some causal relationship as well has being the cause of other things, like this conversation we are having - something that would not exist if we did not exist prior to starting it.
Are you saying that X and Y are states-of-affairs prior to the state-of-affairs of existing in relation to each other? Does one come before the other?
Quoting noAxiomsBut that isn't what I've been saying at all. I've been saying that unicorns exist as well as us because they are both causal. Abstractions are the effects of an experienced mind and the ink scribble, "unicorn" is the effect (representation) of that abstraction. Certain experiences cause certain abstractions to exist within our minds and those abstractions in turn cause us to behave in certain ways like drawing scribbles and pictures of unicorns - none of which would exist had not the previous conditions been met.
Quoting noAxioms
I don't see how. You're simply talking about spatial relations in the components being a member of a whole. I don't believe in any fundamental scale of reality independent of some view of reality. Wholes and members of wholes are the products of different views (measurements) of the same thing.
Quoting noAxioms
If they don't exist (have a causal relation) relative to the Earth, then how did humans on Earth come to contemplate it or know about it? How did we acquire this information? How do physicists and philosophers come to talk about this? How did you come to talk about such things?
Quoting noAxioms The only property of Y? If so, then it seems that Y is dependent upon the there being an X to measure, but then what is X?
What you seem to be saying is that there is X and Y and Z is the relation (existence) between them. My question is what is X and Y independent of this relation, as in you and I before we ever met.
I'm not sure if this is an adequate example, but think of a 3D open-world game installed on your computer. Before you run the game, the game is just a program written in some computer language stored as an executable file on your hard drive. All the events within the game have already been written. The past, present and future events within the game all exist at once within the program. The programmer already knows what will happen and has happened before running the program, but the player does not. It is only in playing the game - of living the life of one of the characters in the game - that time's passage becomes apparent, but outside of the game there is no time as all the causal events of IF-THEN-ELSE in the code happen all at once. Everything is happening all at once and it is our own mental participation within this that stretches these causal relations into independent causes and effects (time).Quoting noAxioms
Quoting noAxioms
Sounds like causation to me. Seems that thinking of MWI is thinking of causation. So we seem to be using different terms while talking about the same thing. "Results of specific events" is talk of effects of specific causes.
Quoting noAxioms
You know that you exist. How you exist is a different story. You know you have a mind, but the relation between your mind and the world would be a different story. So you would still possess some knowledge. Even evil BiV scenarios cannot make a case against "I think, therefore I am". Anything beyond that would be assumptions. An evil BiV scenario would still be a world in which brains and vats exist, and I wonder if the evil scientist knows if he isn't a BiV himself, or what it's universe is like that can have brains and vats and evil scientists - doesn't sound much different than the universe I currently find myself in.
Quoting noAxioms
First, I have to understand your idea. :smile:
Quoting noAxioms
Then "real" and "existing" are dependent on each other - you cannot have one without the other? In a way, I do agree with you. Abstractions exist and are real in the same way as non-abstractions in that they are all states-of-affairs. They are what is the case. They have causal power. Again, we seem to be saying the same thing in some respects, just using different terms and means of expressing it.
Quoting noAxioms
But scribbles are concrete things as well, ink marks on paper, patterns of light on your computer screen, or voices in the air. The abstraction is the causal relation between the ink marks and what caused them, which is some idea in the mind. How does an abstraction cause ink marks to appear on some paper? How does reading ink marks on paper cause an abstraction in the mind? To answer such questions seems to me to require thinking of unicorns and ink marks, as you put it, "on equal footing.", in dissolving the distinctions that we normally think of between mind and world, body and mind. They both have a causal influence. They are both effects of prior causes and causes of subsequent effects. In this sense, I think of everything as information - the relationship between causes and their effects.
Quoting noAxioms
Which my response was that they wouldn't represent anything. They'd be scribbles. I don't know what pure mathematics (scribbles) is if it isn't applied (representations). I'd have to ask the pure mathematician why they are thinking of or writing the scribbles, 2+2=4. How did they come to think of these particular scribbles? Are they just copying some scribbles that they have seen, or is there some purpose to thinking of and drawing the scribbles, 2+2=4?
[quote=Hillary]Tegmark's view suffers from the question what math structures are made of of approximations.[/quote]While I’m definitely adopting a good chunk of Tegmark’s MUH, I am unaware of this issue with approximations. A reference might help clarify.
Quoting Harry HinduI do notice a lot of terse replies in most threads, but that’s more like a conversation over a table with continuous interaction. I’m frequently not around for hours (days?) and must reply in full to all points necessary. I do try to keep my reply shorter than the post to which I’m replying, but I’m failed at that lately. I mean, who actually wants to read a long post like this?
I don’t exist relative to the unicorn. It’s expressed as a relation. “X doesn’t exist” is meaningless because no relation is specified.
If you really cannot accept the name ‘unicorn’, then just think of it as some word arbitrarily assigned to some creature on a different evolutionary future than the ones with humans.
Some relations are bidirectional. X and Y are both members of some common structure and are related in that way. So the unicorn seems to relate to us as both being part of the same structure, the structure perhaps being expressed as a universal wave function. So I’m typically pitching the unicorn as some alternate evolutionary path on this same planet. It’s a reasonable creature (minus the rainbow blowing out of its butt) and it would be dang unlikely that it’s not a valid future of Earth state from say 100 million years ago.
Some relations are unidirectional such as Y measures X, meaning Steve the stegosaurus exists to me but I don’t exist to Steve. This sort of relation seems only to work with structures with a Hilbert space going on, such as the chess states example, but not with the GoL example. Nothing measures anything in GoL. There’s no ‘wave function’ collapse, meaning measurement has nothing to do with the existence of related states. GoL is entirely deterministic in one direction, so in that sense, relative to any given state, all future states are determined and thus they relate to that given state. Future states exist relative to it, but past ones do not since GoL doesn’t have a unique history property like our universe, so prior state cannot be determined. It’s sort of the opposite of our physics in that way.
This is expressed without a relation. It very much exists relative to anything that gets gored by that horn. I’m not suggesting that imagination/abstraction has any causal powers beyond creation of ideas. I’m talking about the unicorn, not the idea of a unicorn, but I necessarily must use ideas to discuss it just like I necessarily must use ideas to discuss the mug in front of me.
Plenty of philosophical views redefine words like ‘exists’ and ‘universe’ to mean different things, but I get your point. What other word conveys to me that we can interact, that it is not possible that you are not in the world I see, or more in particular, that some part of your worldline is within my past light cone? I don’t have a word that better expresses that, except it has to include the relation: You exist to me. You don’t exist to the unicorn, but Steve probably does (yes, the very same Steve).
Let’s say I’m older. If you qualify ‘me’ and ‘you’ as unique worldlines, then no part of your worldline was in the past light cone of my younger moments, so you didn’t exist to me then, but some part of my worldline is in the past light cone of your first moment, so I always exist to you, even if I die first, just like Steve exists to us despite the termination of its worldline.
Our first interaction took seconds. Quantum decoherence occurs incredibly quickly, especially when there’s no vacuum separating us. It has nothing to do with being human or any kind of say deliberate information transfer. Remember one of my few axioms: Nothing special about humans or even life.
After that decoherence, each of our states is a function of the state of the other. But the state of the unicorn is not a function of our state.
Only if you say ‘the state of affairs relative to X’ since the state of affairs is technically different for every event X. The wording implies a moment in time, and so far I’ve avoided that by talking about worldlines instead of events at specific times along those worldlines.
Having thought about it, we can replace ‘X exists relative to Y’ with ‘Y measures X’. This identifies a unique relation that seems to apply only to a very limited number of structures. The ‘fellow member of some structure’ relation is different. Then perhaps we could avoid the word ‘exists’ altogether.
Neither a worldline nor an event along a worldline is especially a state of affairs, but there is a state of affairs relative to it. I am not ‘war in Ukraine’, but there is a state of war in Ukraine relative to me (a system at say the time of posting this). On the other hand, I, as a system at a specific time, constitute the state of that system, and thus am a local state of affairs. By identification of a time, I’ve dropped down to speaking of events instead of worldlines, which opens up a different can of worms about identity of those events.
If a measurement has been taken, then that measurement makes the measured state actual to the measurer. If not, then none of the potential states exist relative to that non-measurer, just like neither the dead state of cat nor the live state of cat exists relative to the exterior of the box. There I go using ‘exists’ again, but it seems trivially tautological to say “If not, then none of the potential states are measured relative to that non-measurer”. Ontology in this universe is measurement. To say something exists in the absence of measurement is to assert the principle of counterfactual definiteness, a principle which necessarily must reject locality and thus accept things like cause significantly (years) after its effect.
Maybe we’re talking past each other, but that’s how I’m best able to work in your wording into a relational description.
Our meeting had nothing to do with it. You had information on me, which is what decoherence does. Technically, X existing to Y means X is some ‘state of affairs’ in the past causal cone of Y, which is approximated by a light cone, but in special circumstances where information transfer is totally inhibited (Schrodinger’s box), can be a smaller subset than that.
Meeting has nothing to do with anything. I (worldline) exist relative to the state of affairs of this planet today (event), therefore it has measured me (worldline).
It seems to be a relation of non-counterfactual wave function collapse, a relation unique to non-counterfactual physics that support it. A universe counterfactual physics such as GoL or Bohmian mechanics, the definition doesn’t work since these models posit existence that is not a function of measurement. Causality in GoL is straightforward, but really complicated in Bohmian mechanics where the state of a system might be determined by causes in the far future. I’m not concerned with this since my model holds to locality for this universe. No reverse causality.
X is prior (earlier in time) to Y in this case. The relation is a way of expressing that the state of affairs Y is causally a function of the state of affairs X. Not sure if you’re using ‘prior’ to mean something else like ‘more fundamental than’.
Again, I’ve not been talking about abstractions. I’m talking about an alternate mammal species on Earth in a world with a different evolutionary history. I’m using it as an illustrative device.
It’s not necessarily spatial. How does 3 relate to 5? One doesn’t cause or measure the other, so it isn’t that sort of relationship, but more of a ‘members of set of numbers’ kind of sisterhood, an equal relationship. We have a similar relation with the unicorn, a different relation than the 1-way ‘measures’ relationship. OK, there is a sort of spatial relationship between 3 and 5. The chess example (a tree structure) has no immediate spatial relationship between the various states. Two states might be related by how long a tree walk would be between them, but would only have a causal relationship if that walk was one way, that the one state was a parent node of the other. The members of the Mandelbrot set are just complex numbers, relating to each other by little more than ‘fellow member of the set’ and such.
I couldn’t understand that. Perhaps an illustrative example would help.
Each of them follows from some theory, principle, or interpretation. A level one multiverse results from the cosmological principle among other things that assume that Earth is not the exact center of a universe. Level II is from inflation theory, which otherwise leaves unexplained the ‘fine tuning’ of our universe. Each level results from a rejection of geocentrism in a different way.
Because it is painfully difficult to explain empirical observations with geocentric interpretations. This is what I’m doing. I’m rejecting the bias that our universe (the spacetime in which we find ourselves) is preferred, even at the ontological level.
Dependent for what? In a causal structure, if Y measures X then Y is dependent on X to be ‘caused’, but I’m not equating ‘caused by’ with ‘exists relative to’. The relation here is one way, so Y doesn’t exist to X. It’s only a possibility to X, or to be precise, Y is a valid solution to the evolution of X’s wave function (or rather the wave function of the environment including X since X is not a closed system), but so is ~Y.
There’s two ways to answer that. Assuming the pragmatic view that natural language presumes, the view that you’ve taken with your question above, X and Y are worldlines of persistent systems (systems with identities), such as you and I or a brick.
But the pragmatic view can be driven to contradiction in a more universal context, and thus to be technically accurate, X and Y are events, not worldlines. They represent the ‘state of affairs’ of a specific system at a specific time. Natural language then fails and one must resort to something akin to B-speak where references to meaningless persistent identities are avoided similar to how B-speak avoids references to the meaningless present. Then X and Y have have a relation of ‘measures’ or they don’t.
I’m old enough that I had to look up the term ‘open world game’.
Not sure what you mean by this. You make it sound like a movie, a story with all the events pre-planned (determinism) and no choices to be made by an outside entity (the player). The programmer certainly doesn’t know how the game will progress. There are more possible events than there is code.
Not following. Outside the game the code doesn’t ‘happen’ at all, and during the game, groups of instructions are indeed executed in sequence. Usually there are several (4 to hundreds) of instruction streams running at once.
Maybe I’m not getting your usage of ‘at once’, which I’m probably incorrectly equating to ‘at the same time’. This is sort of the language used to describe a block universe, a completely self-contained structure containing time, but without change to the structure itself. It is said that all moments of this block exist ‘at once’ and don’t ‘happen’, which is different than saying that the events are at the same time, which would be wrong as saying they’re all at the same place.
Yes, the Moon and Earth on which humans eventually evolve existed relative to each other. My MWI digression was due to my confusion as to which Earth and which moon since some worlds have a moonless Earth.
Rovelli would disagree, and I'm with him on that point. He says a system cannot measure itself (cannot collapse its own wave function) and thus cannot meaningfully assess the state of its own existence just like inability of the cat in the box to determine what the observer outside the box will observe upon opening the box. It was the reading of Rovelli on which much of my view is based. He’s the one that defines existence (at least in this universe) as a measurement relation. I’m driving it a bit further I think.
It is the difference between a physical rock made of protons and such, and the abstraction (or the referencing) of a rock, consisting of mental process and discourse. I’m not talking about abstractions. A rhino is almost a unicorn, if only it leaned more on the equine side. Surely unicorns are a possible future of some fairly recent state of Earth’s biological history. The unicorn of which I speak probably doesn’t look completely like the abstraction I have in mind, but that’s also true of say you.
Depends if you define them in ways that they’re synonymous or not. I’m defining ‘exists’ as a relation the way Rovelli does. I’m keeping ‘is real’ as the property so as not to take away all my vocabulary for that concept. As a non-realist, I don’t have to explain the reality of whatever I assert to be real, which removes a significant issue with any view that does. Per Rovelli’s arguments, there seems to be no empirical test for being real. Nobody seems to be able to design a device that behaves differently only when its real. That reduces ‘being real’ to an interpretational choice, and I’ve chosen to discard it as superfluous.
But I’m not talking about scribbles or abstractions. You keep attempting to drive things there. I’m not disagreeing with your discussion of abstractions and scribbles, but it’s not on topic.
It is admittedly harder to think of numbers being things in themselves and not just abstractions, but imagine if mathematics worked even without humans or other life forms to utilize them. Imagine the sum of two and two actually being four and not only being four when some calculator executes the computation.
I know, it’s like asking you to imagine something independent of an imaginer.
No, they’d not be scribbles, which is an abstraction. I’m not talking about abstractions or any instantiation of the numbers. I’m proposing that mathematics is more fundamental than the scribbles that allow us to abstract it.
Yes, indeed. The branching points are the points where a superimposed state splits into the two separate states after measurement. There is no collapse here, but the state before is different from the state after to conserve unitarity. That's the only reason the MWI is developed, to conserve unitarity. But the splitting is non-unitary, although it seems there is no collapse at all.
Tegmark doesn't say what the math structures are made of and non-exactly solvable problems or processes, which are most in nature, have no corresponding structure, while the processes exist.
Every interaction involves a collapse of the wavefunction. All particles in the universe were interacting from the moment they were created and still are interacting. By means of photons and CMBR, by local interactions, by gravity, and by the other two basic forces. The total wavefunction is constantly reshaping and collapsing.
In nature, there are in fact very few instances of exact mathematical shapes, apart from straight lines and spheres. All mathematical exact special functions are rarely seen and appear only in strict experimental set-ups.
You dont necessarily need to specify a relation if it is implied. It seems to me that "X doesn't exist" would be a relation between X and the one making the statement.
Quoting noAxioms
Where is this creature in relation to me? Doesn't "X exists (in relation to the one making the statement)" and "X doesn't exist (in relation to the one making the statement)" describe two different kinds of relations? If so, then what is the difference? What other types of relations are there besides "exist/not exist"?
It's not about the name by itself. It's about the name's relation to what it references, and whether or not it actually references something or if we just believe that it does. Can we say the same for the name, "god"? Can there not be relations where we believe relations to be? Can there be relations that we aren't aware of and therefore cannot talk about? What about the infinite number of creatures that have no name?
What if I were to say, "there is no relation between X (me) and Y (unicorns/god/Harry Potter)"? If "X exists" and "X doesn't exist" are both relations, then what use of language describes no relation? What use of language describes a relation between X and Y, a relation between Y and Z but no relation between X and Z? If there are X, Y and Z and only two of them have a relation, then how do we describe that situation? Would Y be the relation between X and Z? Can there be an X and a Z with no relation?
Quoting noAxioms What do you mean by it being a reasonable creature vs the version that has rainbows blowing out of its butt? If we can talk about both versions, then what makes one string of scribbles more reasonable than the other? What do the different strings, "some creature on a different evolutionary future than the ones with humans" and "some creature with a rainbow blowing out of its butt" of scribbles reference, and how does what one string reference differ from what the other references?
Quoting noAxioms But you said that X doesn't exist in relation to Y is a relation. So there is a bidirectional relation. It seems to me that in saying that X (me) does not exist in relation to Y (Steve) is to say that there is no relation at all. Only this way can there be a unidirectional relation because there is no relation rather than a different relation. Or, there could be no direction at all to relations, which seems to make more sense. What if I were to say that there is not a direction to relations? What effect does that have on your statement of the opposite? What would be the type of relation between the two conflicting statements (string of scribbles)?
"It seems to me that the unicorn's existence is dependent on your existence to imagine it's existence."
Quoting noAxioms
Then are you talking about the mug in front of you or your idea of the mug in front of you. There is the possibility that you could be hallucinating, or lying. Drawing the scribbles, "unicorn" is caused by your idea of a unicorn, imaginary or not. If you had never heard of unicorns, would you be able to write the scribble, or a draw a picture? It seems to me that your imagination is the effect of prior ideas. Could you imagine a unicorn if you had never seen a horse or a horn? Imaginings are unique amalgams of prior experiences.
Quoting noAxioms
"Causation".
Quoting noAxioms
But I wasn't aware of your existence, nor were you aware of mine, until our first interaction. So you seem to be implying that there can be relations that exist without our awareness of them, which seems to answer one of my questions I asked earlier in this post. Is awareness a relation? If so, then in what way is the relations of awareness and existence different? A "worldline" would be another relation, no? What is a "worldline" a relation of?
Quoting noAxioms
I'm not asking about our interaction. I'm asking about your "worldline" prior to our interaction, which is just an exchange of scribbles on a screen. After all, I might not be a human at all. I could just be a program like Eliza that you are having a conversation with, which goes to what I was asking before in how what ideas we may have could be incompatible with what is actually the case.
Quoting noAxioms
If X (some state of affairs) exists in relation to Y (you) and X (some state of affairs) exists in relation to Z (me), then how do we know that X is the same state of affairs that we are talking about? It seems to me that we would always be talking past each other, and if that is the case, then I don't see any reason to continue this interaction. There must be some reason you are communicating with me - what is that reason if not to share one's ideas about a state-of-affairs that exists for both of us? Does this conversation exist just for us, or for others who might come along and read our posts? Is it the same conversation for us - the participants as it is for non-participating readers? Are both of us and readers suppose to find our conversation useful? What would it mean for some conversation to be useful?
Quoting noAxioms
The war in Ukraine is a relation between Russia and Ukraine, so you're talking about relations in relation to another relation. You are a relation between your various organs and stored information that make you you. In other words, it's (causal/information) relations all the way down.
Quoting noAxioms
If you are older, then in what way did I measure you prior to our interaction? It seems to me that you were a state-of-affairs (a relation between you and your friends and family and everything else you've interacted with, or that has measured you) prior to our interaction. So when we interacted, was I measuring a prior measurement?
Quoting noAxioms
I had no information on "you" until we met. Even then, we haven't actually met. I've only met scribbles on a screen. You could be a computer program and not a human. Until I actually meet you in person, then your scribbles are all that exists in relation to me. Are your scribbles a measurement of you? Do your scribbles exhaust all there is to be you? If not, then there is some state-of-affairs that makes you you that I am not aware of, or haven't measured.
Quoting noAxioms
Of course it does. I haven't actually met you. I have met your scribbles. What relation does the state-of-affairs of your scribbles on this screen have with the state-of-affairs that is you? Are the scribbles all there is to being you?
Quoting noAxioms
Seems like a use of scribbles (on state-of-affairs) that references another state-of-affairs that exists independent of my awareness or belief in or understanding of such. If I don't understand what you just said, then what does that say about the state-of-affairs that you are referencing? If it's understandable to you but not to me, then have we not established two different relations that are incompatible with each other? Is your understanding of what you just wrote and my lack of understanding of what you just wrote about the same state-of-affairs (the state-of-affairs that your scribbles reference, not the use of the scribbles)? If you are not writing about some state-of-affairs that I can measure in the same way that you have, then how do we know that our ideas are about the same thing?
Quoting noAxiomsSounds like an abstraction to me. Where is this alternate mammal species in relation to the scribble, "unicorn" and where is this different evolutionary history in relation to the scribble, "different evolutionary history"?
Quoting noAxioms
Sound like something similar to this:
Quoting noAxioms
The problem with this though is that it requires a measurer for any state-of-affairs to be the case, but then who measures the measurer? It's measurements all the way down.
Quoting noAxioms
A disagreement. If you and I disagree about the nature of some state-of-affairs, then are we taking different measurements of the same state-of-affairs and talking about our measurements and not the state-of-affairs that is being measured? Again, it seems to me that the implication of your use of scribbles is that we can never talk about what is measured. We can only talk about our measurements which would be two different states-of-affairs, and we would be talking past each other. So what is the point of having a conversation if we can't talk about the same state-of-affairs?
Quoting noAxioms
Sure there are choices, but not an infinite number of choices. You can only make choices that are made available in the code. Any other choice would crash the program, or simply produce an error (which is part of the code). The player's actions are constrained by the code.
Quoting noAxioms
Outside the game the code is a state-of-affairs - one that can be downloaded and then loaded into the computer's memory. Once loaded in the computer's working memory the code transforms inputs to outputs per it's instructions. The code remains the same even though different players may make different choices (inputs) that produce different outputs, but all are constrained by the code. A player will most likely never execute some bit of code because they never made the choice to pursue that part of the game and chose to pursue another part, but that doesn't mean the code for those inputs are not there. It just means that those functions in the program were never used or executed. The open world is one particular world. It may be a fantasy world as opposed to a sci-fi world. That world is defined by the code. All potential actions by a player are constrained by the code. A player can't use a baseball bat in the game if there is no code for a baseball bat in the program. The player can only use objects that are in the game and go to places that are in the game. The events in the game force the player along a specific timeline. If the player wastes to much time exploring or taking on different quests that are not part of the main quest then the villain ends up taking over the world and that timeline is defined by the code. All of these events and objects are defined by the code that was written before any player loaded the game on their computer. We are both playing the same game, which is to say that we are using the same code and restricted to the same timeline and events despite the fact that we may make different choices in playing the game. No matter who plays the game, the villain takes over the world at a particular point per the instructions in the program.
Quoting noAxioms
Then how do we know that we are talking about the same thing?
Quoting noAxioms
My point is that we can talk about scribbles and abstractions in the same way we can talk about unicorns and mugs. We are talking about relations and scribbles and what they reference is a type of relation, so it isn't off-topic. I'm trying to understand the relation between your use of scribbles and what they reference, and how that relation would be useful to me if to me it is a different relation than it is to you. In effect we would be talking past each other.
How is what you are talking about when not talking about scribbles or abstractions, the same for me if they are different relations or measurements? If "X exists in relation to you" and "X exists in relation to me", are you talking about the relations or X? If you're talking about the relation, then how can I ever understand the relation between you and X when I am not you, but I am me and the relation between X and you and X and me are two different things. If you aren't talking about abstractions then you aren't talking about relations. You are talking about X independent of any relation. Only then would I find your use of scribbles useful or understandable to me.
Quoting noAxioms
The same goes for any scribble, like words. I don't understand what you mean by mathematics working even without humans to utilize them. It seems that for something to work, it needs to be utilized. How would the sum of two and two equal four if not by there being a quantity of some thing, and for there to be a quantity of some thing there must be a category of some thing that different, yet similar, things fall into. For there to be two of anything and subsequently four of anything, there must be a category of things in which there is at least two things that fit into that category, or else there would be only one of everything.
If "2+2=4" is more than just scribbles on this screen, then what is the relation between the scribbles and what they refer to? What form would 2+2=4 take if not just a string of scribbles, but is something more fundamental? In what way would 2+2=4 be the case independent of these scribbles? You would need to illustrate 2+2=4 without using these scribbles. Maybe you could use unicorns. :nerd:
Quoting noAxioms
What I am asking for you to illustrate the form that this fundamental nature of mathematics takes independent of the scribbles. Does this help?
aa + aa = aaaa
Interesting. You can add scribbles just like you can add unicorns.
Scribbles are not abstractions. Don't you have scribbles in front if you in the same way that you can a mug in front of you?
Scribbles are tools that we use to communicate in the same way that a hammer is a tool that you use to build a house, or a mug you use to hold your coffee.
Is, "alhg;alhdjlshtjh;ajhj;thjk b:Jbfjht" an abstraction? The reference between the patterns of light on your computer screen and what they reference is the abstraction. The relation is arbitrary. In other words, the relation between the patterns of light and what they reference would be the abstraction and in talking about (some) relations you'd be talking about abstractions. This explains why your relation with unicorns and my relation with unicorns are abstractions in the sense that they are not the unicorn, but the relation between unicorns and each of us, and in talking about the relation, we'd be talking about different things (the relation), not the unicorn.
Quoting HillaryI cannot think of a single ‘exact mathematical shape” even in a ‘strict experimental set-up’, especially since all matter shapes are comprised of seemingly a finite number of dimensionless points with only probabilistic positions.
Quoting Harry HinduOnly if the implication is obvious, which it often isn’t in this discussion. So with the unicorn, it’s not implied. One often has to be explicit such as when you ask if the earth and moon exist without humans which explicitly excludes the implied reference of ‘relative to that which asked the question’.
Yea, but then one gets careless and says something like “I exist” which is tautologically meaningless (per Rovelli). My ontology is pretty straight-up Rovelli’s relational view, so most of what I’m repeatedly explaining is that.
Quoting noAxioms
It isn’t in relation to you, at least not in the Y-measures-X sort of relation. Both you and the unicorn measure Steve (the stegosaurus, remember him?), so you’re related to each other (a bi-directional relation) in that sense. Bryce DeWitt (coiner of term ‘MWI’) would have said that you and the unicorn exist on Earth in separate worlds with Steve being in the common history of both, neither existence being more preferred than the other, but MWI doesn’t define existence as a function of measurement. Only collapse interpretations do.
The ‘measures/exists’ relation is a strange one and I’m hard pressed to find other examples of it. It seems to be a product of a tree structure, like ‘X is a parent node of Y’ but Y is not necessarily ‘the one child’ of X, just ‘a child’, so at best, Y is a potential child of X. Most of asymmetric relations imply a mirror relation, like 3 being less than 5 implies 5 being greater than 3. There is a one-way relation of ‘is a member of’, such as I am a member of the universe, a relation between different categories (set/member). The unicorn is also such a member, so we have a relation of ‘fellow member of set U’ relation with the unicorn and the universe, which is a 3-way relation (Y and Z are members of U). There are, as you point out, negative relations. I am not an integer, a relation that I have with the set of integers.
I would probably do better if I had formal set theory training and spoke the language more correctly. I did read a condensed summary of ‘Law of Form’ which is incredibly insightful. It seems more fundamental than mathematics, and despite my comment above to Hillary about mathematics not being made of anything, if it was, LoF would be a description of how this could be so.
Well, language references concepts, and thus it’s about the concept’s relation to some physical entity or not. I mean, I might talk about how a lion takes down its prey, but I’ve not identified a specific lion, so the comment pretty much associates the word ‘lion’ with the lion concept and little more. Similarly I can talk about the nearest start to a point exactly 100 billion LY north of Earth (a point on a line of the Earth’s spin axis). That’s a very specific point in space that’s real relative to us, but again references only a concept, not a particular entity. Sure, were something to be at that particular point, it would indeed measure some closest star, but relative to us there’s no fact to the matter, at least not in a universe with local physics. I didn’t identify Steve exactly. He’s some hypothetical real (measured by us) stegosaurus just like the lion. So am I referring to the actual creature, or only the concept? I certainly have the option of picking a real one like the one in museum X whose bones have been found. If that’s Steve, then there’s very much a specific physical entity corresponding to the concept brought up by the word ‘Steve’. But I’m not doing that. He’s real (measured), but not specific. The distant star is not measured and exists to me no more than does the unicorn.
Sure, why not? The name refers to a concept, and like the distant star, doesn’t correspond to anything that I’ve measured.
My physical ontology has nothing to do with epistemology. You’re talking about relations between language and shared mental states, something on which I’ve not expended a great deal of effort.
Concepts that have never been conceived would seemingly not have words to describe them, but the word-concept relation perhaps is still valid. This word potentially corresponds to this concept, except we know of neither, so cannot speak of either. They don’t exist to us is all.
They’re not part of human epistemology, or maybe they are but we’ve never bothered to name them. You’ve already named them ‘creature’, so that already binds it into language to an extent.
But there is since in all three cases I’m at least loosely aware of the shared concept connected to those words. If you say there’s ‘measured’ relation between you and them, I’d agree with all three. But I personally suggest the unicorn is a plausible creature of our physics that the other two are not, which in my opinion makes it (just like the distant star) a bit more related to you than is Harry Potter, but not a relation of ‘exists’. Still, more related than Harry Potter since nothing exists relative to both you and the distant star, but something does exist (Steve) to both you and the unicorn.
One answer is that itself is a relation of sorts. Another answer is that it’s like the nameless thing, something which cannot be referenced, not even categorize as ‘thing’, which we’ve already done here. Again, I’m more concerned about the physics than how language and concepts and abstractions fit in, but I’m answering as best I can since these things seem of more importance to you.
Don’t know. If there’s language to describe it, there is a relation, no? I mean, I relate to some number that is my age. Something completely incomprehensible to me (not part of this universe) also finds meaning in that same number, perhaps a number of dimensions of its functionality. But that thing (which isn’t even so much as a ‘thing’) seems fairly unrelated to me.
The latter doesn’t seem a possible outcome of Earth evolution any more than does Harry Potter’s abilities. Maybe I’m wrong about this. I can take a garden hose and produce a fine spray in which a rainbow is visible. If that qualifies as a rainbow being blown out of the hose, then I’m sure any creature that expels spray from its butt can do it. It was the supposed supernatural magic to which I was actually trying to reference with the rainbow thing.
Right, but that relation (say between the unicorn and I) isn’t a relation of ‘is in the causal history of’. It is instead a mutual relation of
OK, so maybe instead of unidirectional, I should say ‘identical’. If X exists to Y and Y doesn’t exist to X, then the relation isn’t identical, but each is related to the other. My grandchild doesn’t exist to me today, but I exist to my grandchild. I’m willing to qualify that as a two way relation.
Well the asymmetry needs to be expressed somehow, and that asymmetry defines a direction of sorts. The arrow of existence seems to point backwards actually. If Steve exists to me, it’s my measurement that makes him exist, so existence seems to be caused by future measurements, not past causal states. That seems to be an unintuitive property of existence being defined by measurement instead of classical causation such as you have with the GoL where existence is a function of past states, not future ones.
I’m talking about the mug but must necessarily utilize shared concepts to do so. The existence of the construct that I’ve happened to qualify with the word ‘mug’ is dependent on my measuring it, not on my concept or awareness or naming of it.
Measurement is about decoherence and has zero to do with awareness. People/conscious entities are not special in this regard. I’ve said this repeatedly.
Awareness is a relation which seems to relate epistemological states to sensory input. It has nothing to do with the sort of existence I’m describing.
A worldline seems to be an identity, which in turn seems to be an abstraction only. It consists of a series of what are effectively events (states) related by this abstract identity, and in particular, the identity of the terminal state of the worldline. I see papers by Rovelli talking about terminal states and beables and such, the former identifying a unique worldline, and the latter identifying an observable.
An exchange of scribbles is communication, not a worldline. I’m talking about sets of physical system states, not the concept of them. Sure, you potentially are not human, but some physical process is generating your end of this discourse, not just my concept of these posts. Said process, if not human, I suppose would have a less clearly bounded worldline than would a human one.
If we measure each other, then it cannot be otherwise. If I measure a dead cat and you measure a live one, then we cannot measure each other.
That’s right. Did I suggest otherwise?
It is the same for everybody that we measure, per the logic above.
Seems irrelevant to the points being made.
Interaction is measurement, so you interacted with me from the first moment. I am part of the cause of your existence, so there is no way I was ever in a state of nonexistence to you. Decoherence works very quickly most of the time and it takes extreme efforts to prevent it.
I’m talking about measurement, not knowledge. None of this is about epistemology. A rock measures me as much as you do.
No. Some entity (human or not) made the scribbles, and you’ve measured that, and the scribbles is only one way you’ve made that measurement, and certainly not the first.
What you’ve measured and that of which you are aware are entirely different subjects. I’m only talking about the former.
Our ideas and understanding have nothing to do with your measurement of the state of affairs, an almost unavoidable occurrence. If you don’t understand what I wrote, you can ask for specific clarifications. I was contrasting quantum interpretations that hold to the principle of counterfactual definiteness vs interpretations that hold to the principle of locality vs interpretations that hold to neither principle. I’m in the 2nd camp. The two principles are mutually contradictory so they can’t both be true.
It doesn’t exist relative to the scribble.
Or all the way up, yes. I see this as a solution, not a problem. My ability to measure past states of affairs is not a function of my existence (or lack of it) relative to some future state of affairs.
You seem to be talking about epistemology again. It is physically impossible for us to take different measurements and still subsequently communicate. It would be a contradiction.
[quote=noAxioms]Usually there are several (4 to hundreds) of instruction streams running at once.[/quote]
[quote=Harry Hindu]Maybe I’m not getting your usage of ‘at once’, which I’m probably incorrectly equating to ‘at the same time’.[/quote]I mean at the same time. There are many instruction streams being executed at the same time in a modern game. Sure, there was one back in the old pacman days, but things have moved on. I’ve spent most of my career writing code that has to operate correctly even in the face of other processors accessing and changing the same data that I’m using. This all seems kind of off-topic to me. Where was this going?
What if he builds one? The code won’t know it’s a bat, but the player can still use it if the physics of the game is sufficiently versatile. Admittedly, most games these days are still astonishingly crude and are for the most part constrained in the ways you indicate.
We’re often not. But the word ‘rock’ means something fairly similar to both of us, a consensual usage of the term, enough for pragmatic purposes.
OK, I think I already answered that. Scribbles reference language. Language references concepts. Concepts sometimes reference physical things. One can directly discuss the scribble in the absence of its relation to language. Here’s a scribble: W
Where is that scribble? Is the one on my screen the same as the one on yours? Does it go away if I close the tab? Does it have a worldline? Does the scribble exist to you before I post this reply? Does any of this have anything to do with the scribble referencing something?
I’m talking what I suspect is a view that is more self consistent than most people’s choices of view, but it would help if inconsistencies were identified.
To directly answer the question, when saying statements like the ones above, I’m probably talking about X, and the rest is implied.
If we can talk, then my relation to X is effectively the same as yours. This is assuming a pragmatic definition of ‘me’ and ‘you’.
Well I’m not postulating that necessity.
Let me put it this way. What prevents the sum of two and two from being four in the absence of anything to quantify? You have to demonstrate that the postulate above (the one I’m rejecting) is necessary, else I’m free to reject it. I’m not making a claim other than the negative claim of the necessity of the postulate.
Granted, scribbles are not necessarily meaningful language and hence don’t necessarily correspond to abstractions.
We are talking about your proposition that "X exists" is a relation. What are the components of this relation if not X and the one making the statement about X existing? There is also the relation between some scribbles and the state-of-affairs it represents ,as in " "X exists" is a relation". I'm assuming that you are using scribbles to refer to a state-of-affairs (like "X exists" is a relation) and that state-of-affairs you are referring to is not more scribbles.
Quoting noAxioms
Why would "I exist" be any different than "X exist"? You said that "X exists in relation to me". What does the scribble, "X exists in relation to me" refer to, or are you just making scribbles on the screen that don't refer to anything (in other words you aren't saying anything at all)? Are you trying to communicate a truth of reality - something that is true whether I am aware of or agree with it or not? What is your intent in putting these scribble on this screen if not to communicate some state-of-affairs, or some truth about reality?
Quoting noAxiomsWhat is the difference between the relations between Steve and the unicorn and me and the unicorn? I have no idea what you are talking about when you say that the unicorn and I exist on Earth in separate worlds. Are "collapse interpretations" a state-of-affairs? If not, then what are you referring to when you use the scribbles, "collapse interpretations"?
Quoting noAxioms
I depends on what you intend to communicate. You couldn't talk about how a lion takes down its prey without watching a specific lion. If you haven't seen a specific lion take down its prey and are just going by what you have heard, is what you heard or read about a specific lion or an abstract one? How do you know how a lion takes down its prey? If abstract lions have no relation with specific lions, then what leads you to make statements about how lions take down their prey? What are you actually saying, or talking about? What is it that you want me to know or understand when reading your scribbles? Do you want me to know what specific lions do or what abstract lions do?
Quoting noAxioms
What is a concept and what is the I that holds it and talks about it? If you can talk about concepts like you can talk about specific lions, then what is the difference between the two if not some measurement?
Quoting noAxiomsWhat is possible is just another abstraction which is different than what is actual. I'm not interested in what is possible, only in what is actual so maybe we should stick to lions and not unicorns because you could be wrong about what is possible, no? If not, then what you call "possible" is actually "actual".
Quoting noAxioms
You only need to use shared concepts if I wasn't there sitting across from you measuring the mug with you. It would be redundant for you to say "the mug is in front of me" because the existence of the construct of the room with with you and the mug is dependent upon my measurement of the room which includes the mug being in front of you. If the mug is in front of both of us then are we measuring the same mug? If we both say, "the mug is in front of me" are we talking about the same relation or the same mug?
Quoting noAxiomsStrange. How can you talk about measurements or decoherence that you are not aware of? If you aren't aware of some measurement or decoherence, then those measurements and decoherence that you are not aware of that you are talking about can only be abstractions, yet you keep saying that you are not talking about abstractions.
Quoting noAxioms
But that is what I'm asking: what is the difference between the relation of awareness and the relation of existence?
Quoting noAxioms You've used the word, "worldline" at least a dozen times just on this page alone while at the same time asserting that you are not talking about abstractions. So, every time you've use the word to support something else you've said, what you said is based on an abstraction.
Quoting noAxiomsConcept and abstraction are synonyms. You just described a worldline as an abstraction and then now say it's not a concept. These "physical systems states" seems to be what I've been talking about when I use the phrase, "state-of-affairs" and "what is the case". And your use of the phrase, "some physical process is generating your ends of this discourse" is what I mean when I use the term "causation". This discussion is having of problem of moving forward because you seem intent on moving goalposts and disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. I don't see the world as convoluted or as complex as you seem to be describing it. At the end of all this scribble-making I am no closer to understanding your position than I was at the beginning.
Quoting noAxioms
I'm saying that the absence of anything to quantify is what prevents the sum of two and two from being four. I'm also saying that the absence of categories is what prevents quantities of anything from existing. In rejecting it you are making a positive claim that there are ways of demonstrating two and two being four independent of categories and the quantity of members that form that category. I've asked you several times now what that would look like. To reject it means that you must have some other idea of what "four being the sum of two and two" is. What do you mean by the scribble "two" and "four", if not some quantity of similar objects the define a category? You used the word, "sum". What do you mean by that if not conclusion of adding quantities? In using the terms, "two" "four" and "sum" you're making a positive assertion about something. What is it?
In classical mechanics, the components are simply the two systems, the one measuring and the one being measured. In quantum mechanics, the thing measured (X) is a physical variable, or quantum event, and then only if the state of the measuring system becomes a function of the measured variable of the measured system.
An identification of a relation doesn’t seem the same as a description of a state of affairs. No physical state of affairs is described by your example comment. I suppose it is context dependent. In your context above, ‘X’ might be a state of affairs, but “X exists” is not, but the scribble “X exists” is a state of affairs which happens to represent an action having been taken, arguably not a state of affairs. At the end of last post you showed a scribble that didn’t represent anything. Similarly, some scribbles are meaningful but are not necessarily an expression of a state of affairs.
In QM, a measurement collapses the wave function of the measured thing, but no thing (the cat say) can collapse its own wave function, at least not relative to anything not-cat, so the statement seems not to represent any sort of measurement other than one expects any system to be in a self-consistent state. The dead cat doesn’t measure live cat components and v-v.
That scribble refers to language.
I’m trying to communicate a view of the universe (which I’m reluctant to call reality). I’m not asserting it to be any kind of necessary truth.
To communicate a consistent view, minimizing unresolved issues. Sorry, but I’m not some troll insisting that his pet view must be the truth.
Both measure Steve, but neither you nor the unicorn measure each other. So you’re related through Steve, but not through measurement.
Well both measure Steve who lives on Earth, so in that sense both you and the unicorn measure a common Earth, even its only a prehistoric one. Calling them worlds is an MWI term. Other worlds exist in MWI. They don’t in a relational view since you can’t measure other worlds by definition. Those worlds can’t measure you either.
No, it’s a category of quantum interpretations that posit collapse of a wave function upon measurement. RQM technically isn’t a collapse interpretation, but the classic version of it (one that has meaningful persistent objects) is.
You asked about how scribbles, and the language to which the relate, relate to states of affairs. This example (of how a lion typically takes down its prey) gets little further than the relation to the concept. The lion itself relates in the way a particular relates to a universal. 2+2=4 is sort of a universal statement, not a particular one.
Part of the mental realm is that it only deals with concepts. The potential correspondence of those concepts to hypothetical or actual states of affairs is I believe part of the philosophy of mind. Different topic I’d say. I prefer my measurers to be rocks and such so that one doesn’t have to deal with such epistemological sidetracks.
No, because you very much used ‘actual’ there as a property and not a relation. If discussion is confined to things that you’ve personally measured, then the view cannot be conveyed. It necessarily must involve things that you’ve not measured, be they distant particular stars or hypothetical creatures that are only fictional to us.
In a classical sense, yes, but the same thing can be said of Steve instead of the mug. The difference with the mug is that we mutually measure each other, but only in a classical sense.
Only in a classical sense. If we get down to the physical variable level, then no since for instance we cannot both detect the same photon coming from the mug system. I’m trying to mostly keep the discussion at the classical level.
Talking about stuff requires something akin to awareness, but decoherence of a system doesn’t involve talking or awareness at all. A rock can do it as much as any person.
It seems very difficult to drive home the point that humans or consciousness is not special in physics. Are you capable of grasping such a thing?
I don’t see how it could be otherwise. The very word implies sensory input, and not just the concept of sensory input.
Existence of X relative to Y doesn’t require either X or Y to be aware.
Worldlines are physical, at least at the classic level. That I have a word that abstracts to my concept of one doesn’t mean that a rock doesn’t have a worldline in the absence of anything abstracting it.
All communication is done necessarily via abstractions, but it doesn’t necessarily imply that it’s the abstractions being discussed. Classical physics is emergent from more fundamental things which don’t have classical properties like worldlines. A classical named thing (like you, me, a rock, Earth) are admittedly pragmatic abstractions. Physics doesn’t recognize them as systems with boundaries and identities, but they operate as if they did, even in the absence of language and abstraction. When I want to explicitly call out a classical object, I might call it a worldline. It implies a persistent classical identity, but no persistent quantum thing holds to the law of identity in the view I’m describing, as well as other interpretations. People are often averse those views because one’s identity is a strong bias and people don’t like having their biases challenged.
Parfit did a lot of exploration showing how classical identity is inconsistent, but also unimportant. In my case, and dropping to B mode: noAxioms of May 10 (called noax10) cannot measure noax20, but noax20 can measure noax10. If noax10 and noax20 are the same thing, then how is one measurable and the other is not? It would be existing and also not existing, a contradiction.
Words are concepts/abstractions. I agree with the synonym. But such concepts also have physical counterparts. I have a physical mailbox, despite the word mailbox initially invoking a mailbox concept. Concepts sometimes relate to physical states of affairs. Worldline is one such example, even if it falls apart outside the classical level.
But I’m trying to discuss the ‘state of affairs’ and it seem to me that you keep steering things towards the mental representations of those states and not the states themselves. This is what I’ve seen pas reventing progress. I’m not trying to disagree for its own sake. Sometimes if you push for details, the goalpost does move, such as discussion of a physical thing (like a bridge) really isn’t a ‘thing’ at all on close inspection but is rather a series of physical variables which doesn’t sound much like a bridge at all.
Just asserting this or would some contradiction result?
OK. Think of say a pair of complex numbers. Complex arithmetic works despite the lack of any quantity of members that form that category.
It seems that any attempt to suggest ‘what it would look like’ reduces it from a fundamental thing to it being instantiated by a more fundamental abstractor or observer.
Also,
Hello, hello, 911, T Clark just shot himself!
:chin: