Nick Bostrom & Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nick Bostrom's the guy who posited The Simulation Hypothesis, the long and short of which is that we could be living in a computer simulation, a virtual world.
The simulation hypothesis has origins in ancient Greece (Plato's allegory of the cave), in Buddhism (maya), in China (Chuang Tzu and his butterfly dream). It was revived by Descartes (deus deceptor), updated by Harmann (brain-in-a-vat), digitized by Nick Bostrom.
What I find intriguing is that these essentially skeptical hypotheses (questioning the authenticity of reality) are predicated on one singular truth: We can't tell the difference between reality and illusion.
From a Wittgensteinian standpoint there's no essence to either illusions/simulations or reality that could aid us in telling them apart.
A penny for your thoughts...
The simulation hypothesis has origins in ancient Greece (Plato's allegory of the cave), in Buddhism (maya), in China (Chuang Tzu and his butterfly dream). It was revived by Descartes (deus deceptor), updated by Harmann (brain-in-a-vat), digitized by Nick Bostrom.
What I find intriguing is that these essentially skeptical hypotheses (questioning the authenticity of reality) are predicated on one singular truth: We can't tell the difference between reality and illusion.
From a Wittgensteinian standpoint there's no essence to either illusions/simulations or reality that could aid us in telling them apart.
A penny for your thoughts...
Comments (166)
However argument against computer simulation is that it would take unimaginable amounts of computing power to simulate entire universe to such great details.
If we've only ever experienced one then how could we know which it is we've experienced? Obviously if there was a noticeable difference between reality and illusions, and if we've experienced both, then we can tell whether or not this is real or an illusion, but if we've only ever experienced an illusion then how can we tell that it's an illusion?
Wittgenstein explains that in interacting with others, we create the sense of meaning of words out of the context. These senses of meaning are realities constructed out of the fusion of our past histories with words with the novelty of the immediate context. I’m not sure that this idea of the real as socially constructed sense is compatible with your real vs illusion binary, which seems to depend on the context and culture-independence of what is real.
Yeah, that makes sense, but until we've done the calculations and have some hard figures to prove/suggest that is the case, I'm afraid simulations are still in the game.
Indeed, you're on target. We have to experience both - reality & illusion - to be able to tell the two apart. However, this is an empirical claim (experience being crucial to the issue). What about the rationalist position? Shouldn't we be able to deduce the difference?
Visit Wikipedia entry on private language, scroll down to the statement on how (paraphrasing) pain collapses the appearance/reality distinction. The takeaway seems to be that languages are unable to penetrate the inner sanctum, pain taken as representative, of consciousness. Can a coder/programmer code for private experiences like the ones Wittgenstein talks about in his well-known private language argumen? Perhaps our inner private lives are linguistically inaccessible because the creator of the simulation, if we are in one, wanted to, well, hide something in there from us. You see two heads are better than one, more the merrier, but in this case, no number of heads can solve the riddle of consciousness.
From what premises?
I dunno! Metaphysics time?
If we incorporate phenomenology to supplement Wittgenstein’s focus on interpersonal linguistic situations , we find that there is no such thing as ‘inner’ pre-linguistic experience. All sensory perception ( pain, vision, touch, hearing) is irreducible interpretive , a blending of prior expectation and appearance. All perception is constructive and perspectival. There is no ‘inside’ to consciousness, awareness is out in the world , as our interactions. So ‘inner’ perception works much the way that Wittgenstein’s language games function, as a pre-verbal language of sensation From this perspective the idea of a matrix, a simulation by an evil genius, is non-sensicalx, since whatever stimulation is beanies our way, we have to intercept it from our own perspective in ways that are pragmatically useful
for us. So the ‘same’ simulation or matrix will always be experienced in differing ways by different persons.
[quote=Queen of the Black Coast (1934)]I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.[/quote]
:fire: Amor fati.
@Michael
:up: Deduction! Magnifique mon ami.
Can consciousness be simulated? What's the difference between God (a creator deity) and a programmer of a simulation world?
[quote=Mario Livio]Is God a [s]mathematician[/s] programmer?[/quote]
It's nihilism, pure and simple. Nothing has any real meaning.
How true! If this world is a simulation, it would indeed be meaningless, given meaning is inseparably tied to the real. Nihilistic delusions (check out Wikipedia) are, on the whole, simply denials of the realness/authenticity of lived experience; Cotard's delusion (I don't exist) being an extremum, when one considers the fact that as per Descartes, cogito ergo sum.
However, what I said above doesn't imply that there's no, as you put it, jnside to consciousness; it's just that we can't discuss it among ourselves in a meaningful way (beetle-in-a-box gedanken experiment).
... or we're 'delusional zombies' – eliminationists – living in a simulation.
Zombies, supposedly, lack an inner life; they're unconscious as it were. Does that mean, from a Freudian & Jungian perspective (the unconscious), we're, contrary to our beliefs, NOT self-aware or we're only partially self-aware?
From a Metzingerian perspectiive, "self" is a (persistently embodied) phenomenal illusion re: .
Old habits die hard!
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure. Bostrom does say:
The related notion of Boltzmann brains wouldn't require this premise.
Your notion of consciousness and self is a bit too Cartesian. There is no inside to consciousness in the sense of some container with a substance, essence or content that sits there waiting to be reflected on. Consciousness is self-changing. That IS its only essence.
It makes no sense to talk about reflection as a mirror or distortion of something that is never simply itself but is always a new differential.
That seems pretty unlikely.
I don't quite follow, sorry!
I'm not surprised.
It's not just that there is no essence that can help us distinguish the real from the simulated; it's that we are utterly embedded in a world, such that how we make use of words, including real and simulated is part of that world. The use of the word is what we ought consider when questions of meaning arise if clarity is our goal.
So for a first position, simulations in this world are quite different to reality; we have no difficulty in knowing when we are in a simulation and when we are not. Simulations occur within the world. Hence the first position of one following Wittgenstein might well be that the notion of the world being an hallucination is nonsense; that we cannot make sense of the idea of the whole world being a simulation.
We can dig deeper.
Austin, a contemporary of Wittgenstein, pointed out that we can tell the difference between reality and illusion. If we could not, we would not have the term "illusion" and its cognates. We and our language has developed ways of sorting out illusion from reality. Hence the assumption you bolded is wrong.
But we can go further, and ask what it might be like if we could not tell illusion from reality. We could not in that case have formed the distinction between illusion and reality. Hence, if the whole universe were a simulation, it would still be real. The way we use the word "real" applies to the things within the simulation.
Another way of putting this is that if it were true that the universe were a simulation, nothing in the universe would be different. That's Michael's point:
Quoting Michael
And further still, the reason the Matrix works as a plot (a debatable point...) is that the characters can move between the simulation and the real world. Without that premise there is no story. Similarly, without access to the meta-world in which this world is being simulated, the whole notion is moot; it amounts to nothing.
So is this world a simulation? If it is, given the consideration above, there is nothing to be said about it.
So the Wittgensteinian response is "Meh."
incorporation of phenomenological considerations notwithstanding.
Aye! It dawned on me, a coupla days ago, that The Simulation Hypothesis [all versions of it from Plato (Allegory of the Cave), Chuang Tzu (Butterfly dream), Gautama (Maya), through Descartes (deus deceptor), Harmann (brain in a vat), to Nick Bostrom (Simulation Hypothesis)] is unfaslifiable. The reason? The Simulation Hypothesis is predicated on the indistinguishability of reality from simulation. What I mean is The Simulation Hypothesis is pseudoscience which, to some, means poppycock. Odd that, because it's got "skepticism" written all over it and we know for a fact that science is big on skepticism.
Quoting Banno
Read above. Gracias!
Quoting Banno
For sure! Hence my point that we can't tell apart simulations from reality.
Quoting Banno
:up:
Question for you if you've followed my reasoning:
Is the unfalsifiabilty of The Simulation Hypothesis because
1. We don't know enough. There is a way to differentiate simulations from reality, we just don't know how...yet!
or
2. We can't know. The Simulation Hypothesis is unfalsfiable in principle.
:up:
Like second-order predictions (vide Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari) that have an effect on the predictions. A very simple idea: If I foretell your future, you can change it by doing something different!
If we call this a hypothesis, then it gives it the framework of a problem with thus an answer. But if we look at it as an analogy, it would be to illuminate something else (about knowledge), or if a fantasy (imagining) maybe we learn about our selves (our desires). I think @Banno is approaching it as, yes, we can tell (answer the question), and this shows that real and fake have more ordinary, practical incarnations. But sometimes we just can't know what is happening, or can't shake off that feeling of being unmoored, or want there to not be (or to be) unknowable.
Quoting Agent Smith
The realization from Witt is not that there is no essence (though something else...) to answer the problem, nor that they problem is nonsense, but that we don't solve the problem with knowledge, we live with it as part of our human condition. We act without knowing outcomes, we react to the other without knowing whether their pain is real. We have chances, and consequences, and carry hopes and are swindled.
Quoting Agent Smith
And this is another part Witt realizes (drawn out further by Cavell): the other is unknown, yes, because they are their secret to tell, but also, my desire to only know them is a refusal by me to enter into a different relationship to them apart from knowledge. My desire for control, for simplicity, for certainty, to be without responsibility for/to them; and even more, to not be known in the process, to not reveal myself in making assumptions, pre-judgments, etc.
What you say is debatable! Wittgenstein was specifically concerned about language in relation to philosophy. He, as far as I can tell, declared, with confidence I might add, that all philosophical issues were, get this, pseudo-problems - they were simply artifacts, so to speak, of language (linguistically-generated illusions)
[quote=Ludwig Wittgenstein]Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.[/quote]
I haven't been able to get my hands on both of his books, but that's the gist of Wittgensteinism in my humble opinion.
Part of the human condition? Yeah, all roads lead to Rome. I'm sensing a pattern here; quasi-postmodernism or postmodernism proper or a variation of it.
Witt wasn’t contrasting philosophy ( or reality) with language, as if language is always at risk of referring inaccurately or in a distorted fashion to real events and things. He didnt think this, because for him language is not a tool for referring to things. Language doesnt refer, it enacts realities, and the danger is that in our interactions with others , we can enact meanings in a way that leads to confusions about what we are doing
Well put. :up:
What often goes astray here is that not just anything we say works. There are restrictions on what can be sensibly said. If language enacts realities, it does so within certain strictures.
The gist of this sentence is misread. The battle is not against language, language is the means by which the battle is conducted--he uses what we say in particular occasions as a method to shed light on an issue.
Quoting Agent Smith
I'm not sure what those things are, or whether you want to say there is no distinction between a problem and a condition, but, if these things are debatable, I need a little more argument. From these comments, I can't seem to tell if you even understand what I am saying.
Yes, Nick Bostrom. Transhumanist and firm believer that we have more to fear of AI than environmental, natural chaos, rapidly growing. Nick Bostrom is a guy who had severe mental problems. He declared to have been closed up in himself and had social problems and his escape in theoretical physics (which resulted in no considerable contributions) and AI did result in an attitude that made him think we live in a simulation and the "super" intelligences springing off from computer developments will be able to take over. What strange ideas, and he is even taken seriously! Anyone with a healthy brain can see the guy is wandering at the edge of psychosis and he probably has stepped over the borderline already long ago. There is an essential difference between illusion and reality though a clear-cut division between the two can't be given and illusion and reality certainly influence each other.
Wrong about what? That we live in a simulation? The universe is at most a material simulation of the eternal heavens with the eternal heavenly gods. But not a simulation of a material universe on another material substrate. I can guarantee you we don't live in a computer simulation. And he is taken seriously! For Christmas sake!
Oh, I agree. I was simply pointing out the fallacy of reasoning that "He is mad, hence he is wrong". Bad reasoning needs to be called out, less it become a habit.
Hyperreality...
Maybe you should read some Baudrillard?
He's psychotic. During psychosis you think your illusion is real. Wrongly.
Yes. You mean that I was right when I thought water came from exhaust pipes of cars? That there were dead bodies beneath the floor playing with ping-pong balls? Luckily there were people holding me back when I tried to suck the exhaust pipes! Are there people telling our friend Nick that he is wrong? Simulated reality and super intelligences... Wrapped up in quasi intelligent package. Yeah... of course...
Your argument seems to be "the world is not a simulation because Bostrom is mad".
Have you a valid contribution to make?
That is not my argument. I think he's mad to believe that and advocate it in all seriousness. That's all.
But that's the reverse of what you claimed above; your post was that he is mad, and that we should therefore dismiss his ideas: " What strange ideas, and he is even taken seriously! Anyone with a healthy brain can see the guy is wandering at the edge of psychosis and he probably has stepped over the borderline already long ago".
We could divert the thread into a discussion of the normative use of expressions such as "mad", "psychosis", and "healthy"...?
Yes. I said one can easily see he's in a state of psychosis, induced by his social difficulties. But I didn’t say that because of that he's wrong. I didn’t say that because he's mad, he's wrong. I'm quite mad myself, but I'm not wrong. If you have that impression I wrote that, then that's my writing capacities failing.
Meaning that we do or say things we don't mean?
Muchas gracias señor/señorita for the suggestion.
Would you like to discuss hyperreality? I've come across the idea in connection with the use of psychedelics. It's been described by people who were tripping as "realer than real". That makes it possible that this world we experience as normal people not under the influence of mind-bending drugs is a simulation/illusion; in a sense, with mind-altering drugs, we wake up and catch a glimpse of the real world!
Fascinating, wouldn't you agree?
Most intriguing!
[quote=Oscar Levant]There's a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.[/quote]
Psychosis, in psychiatry, is defined as the inabilty to distinguish the real from the unreal! So, you're on the right track, mon ami!
Yes, my friend! But the real genius is able to draw the line again after returning from the madhouse.
If we do nothing more than just extend his argument, semantics becomes irrelevant (it drops out of consideration) and all we're left with is syntax. I don't how I can even say this without shooting myself in the foot but that's how my brain understands Wittgenstein. We're basically like computers - all syntax, no semantics.
Thanks a lot for the response! Do cut me some slack here.
:ok: I would've preferred Wittgenstein's thesis to be exactly how I interpreted it in my previous post. That would've been awesome in my humble opinion. Imagine if language were creating illusions! Fascinating, oui?
...such as property, money, government, credit...?
Are these illusions illusions? How?
:ok:
On the contrary, I think we can (with this rule-of-thumb): where "the difference" is ambiguous (or vague), we encounter "reality"; on the other hand, where it is clear, explicit, definite, we perceive "illusion" – just like "the difference" between waking and dreaming, during the latter we don't get tired and cannot fall asleep (as if we're "more awake" than awake). Also a problem with the "Simulation Hypothesis" is the (conspicuously) hidden assumption of 'ontological (substance) dualism' whereby it makes sense to pose the question which can be answwered, if only in principle, one way or another; otherwise, absent this assumption, the philosopher (e.g. Nick Bostrom) is also a simulation and therefore the "hypothesis" makes no sense, as :strong: 'Conan the Barbarian' points out .
Good question. Is the illusion an illusion? I encounter this kind of self-reference a lot while crawling through philosophical discourse. The meta questions. Data about data or physica about physica. The truth about the truth. Wasn't it Kierkegaard who said that the ruling of the tyrant is over when they die, while the martyr's ruling then begins? Anyhow, are money and property illusions? To the poor, yes, and generally they should avoid illusions that more money and property is heading their way. But what about the concept of money and property? Are they illusions? No, of course not. A Zippo cigarette lighter can be as much your property as the brain in your skull. It's a real property of the lighter. And with money you can buy fuel for it.
Nice - what would be a good example of this?
I didn't participate in that thread because I lack the right equipment so to speak to do so.
Anyway, from what I can gather, to call those items you listed in your next to last post hallucinations is to only expose the fact that they're intersubjective. I wouldn't call such entities hallucinations or if I must they would be collective hallucinations (mass hysteria?).
A shared hallucination is closer to reality than one specific to an individual by virtue of consistency in the group that experiences it. What do you suppose are the implications of that?
You mean to say that clarity, consistency, certainty are markers of illusion? That's interesting! So the more you (think you) understand something, the more deluded you are (psychotic individuals tend to be 100% certain about their beliefs); vagueness, uncertainty, cognitive dissonance are the defining features of the real world, the real world is, as someone once said, messy.
Philosophy then must be a waste of time considering how it aims for the very things you've declared as hallmarks of illusions!
I think he's actually quite wrong, having a number of things backward. He's too enveloped by the idealist tradition.
Quoting Banno
These things are not created by language, they are created by human beings, with language as a tool. Remember the principle, "meaning is use". This makes language something used, like a tool, as the means toward various ends. When we use tools to bring about the existence of things, it is incorrect to say that the tool is the cause of existence of the artificial thing, the tool is just the means to the end.
This is the problem with platonic realism which Wittgenstein helped to expose. If we tie the symbol directly to the idea, as if we were naming an object, like when we say the symbol "2" represents a mathematical object, the number two, then the idea must be something eternal and unchanging, making it passive without causal capacity. This issue is commonly presented to dualists as "the problem of interaction".
We can avoid this commonly cited problem of dualism by portraying symbols as tools being used for various purposes, rather than as necessarily the name of an object (Idea). But then we have to account for the reality of intention, apprehending intention as having causal influence in the world. This is what is known as final cause.
Language doesn't enact realities. It's merely a means of reinforcing and express them. To a minor extent It's involved in shaping realities.
In a sense, yes. When we stand vis-a-vis the material world, it offers resistance to our expectations, ideas about it, and our perception of it. In our dreams, the ideas and perception, the illusions, have free play, and as such are seen as perfectly real. When illusion and reality meet, the world comes to be.
That's not what I "mean to say". :roll:
But it's an interesting angle, oui? The clearer the picture of reality in your mind, the less real it is! Where have I heard that before?
Too good to be true? :chin:
Remind me to stay away from idealists! I lived a life as one! It didn't work out!
@Banno
Is there a philosophical argument that attempts to prove that language & thought are the same?
I see no rational deduction coming out of that interpretation of reality so I don't really agree with that idea. When it comes to Hyperreal and Baudrillard it's mainly about how the simulation and reality are impossible to differentiate between. It's about more than just a cartesian analysis of reality and has to do with more stuff like how we invent concepts of reality on top of the actual reality we experience, and through that we lose touch with the actual reality and cannot know which is what. His philosophy is more advanced than describing it in short segments but I recommend Simulacra & Simulation if you want to know more.
We're in the dark and we're shooting! What could go wrong?
Then you and I support different philosophers and psychologists on this subject. Phenomenology , postmodern philosophies , enactivist cognitive approaches and Wittgenstein all argue my view.
:smirk:
I look from the scientific side. Not the philosophic side.
It all depends, I guess, on whether we're baffled or not?
So, are we baffled or not?
Aporia [math]\to[/math] Ataraxia [The Greeks anticipated all this 2.5k years ago]
Then you’re not reading the same scientists I am
Dunno. But I do know that language, insofar the genesis of ideas is concerned (and thus realities) has not a profound influence and certainly not as once thought.
We are beyond being merely stymied and reflecting on our history and practices to problem-solve; we are lost and don't know how to continue (having come to an end, Witt says); all our knowledge has not prepared us for this novelty or won't stand in our place, make the new decision for us, settle our accounts with each other. But from this moment (this "event" Ricoure points out) the skeptic has generalized to everything (and created reality as a solution), all the time, stuck trying to solve for the future.
Our doubt (Aporia, I gather) creates our fear (yet perhaps trembling), our wish to slip out from being held responsible for our choices and words. We court our confusion hoping for something "objective" "real") so it won't matter who stands on this precipice, whose character is forged by acting into the void. This is the time for philosophy to turn us on our community (for Witt, through language--what we say) for the possibilities of its extension, and the creation of our next self. Perhaps our perspecuity, our new attitude (as in perspective), our expansion, the ordinary made alive, is like Aratraxia as an epiphany, a deeping into the unnoticed already-there, a settling, at peace with our duty in response.
I read somewhere that the naysayers of philosophy accuse it of being nothing more than literature review. How would you respond?
I do take those who need to put something a particular way (say, Emerson, the later Heidegger, Wittgenstein (and Austin), Nietszche) to be as analytical as, even in response to, Kant or Plato (who insisted on things being put a certain way), say, by mustering "arguments" to get around our integral defensiveness to abandoning certainty as the only acceptable criteria of reason. Philosophy is inherently in critique ("review") of itself--reading itself differently, obliquely, further. The dismissals of: emotivist, subjective, relativism, or other easy label ("strain"), are analogous to logic's exile of "poetry", equivalent to the brush-off of saying something is "rhetoric" (syntax), in the same way that anything not involving "reality" is illusion, because we can not face that life (our categorical condition) is subject to illusion, isolation, madness, judgment, consequences, injustice, frailty, temptation, so we cling to certainty and are left with only chaos as the alternative, blind that we approach perfection, however pedestrian our ways.
Doing serious philosophy here for me would involve first questions and discussion, but what we probably have is a lack of interest rather than capability.
From actions we move on to motives?
The opposite though, mìght be the case as well.
Who the hell turned off the lights?!
Shared darkness might be closer to reality than the lonely night. I'll leave on a light... The Enlightenment hallucination, bathing the the Earth globally in it's hot radiation, might be a mass hallucination farther from the truth than the reality many lonely wanderers perceive.
No pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!?
Reminds me of Meno's Paradox:
If you know what you're looking for, inquiry is unnecessary.
If you don't know what you're looking for, inquiry is impossible.
What is nirvana? Is it a very private experience? Wittgenstein did make an interesting point. Was he into mysticism (re religious experiences)?
:up: Different degrees of darkness! Scientific!
The Enlightenment light originally was a warm, comforting, and promising light. The yoke of God could be buried and the future was indeed the pot of gold awaiting at the end of the colorful rainbow, shining in it's light.
We know how it turned out though...
Quoting Agent Smith
:chin:
Quoting Agent Smith
The Nirvana, in my humble (but not necessarily dumb,) opinion, is that Nirvana is the timeless eternal, infinite, higher dimensional structure of the quantum vacuum on which the universe and all life in it can play the games they do. The contemplation of this world beckons, like a liberation. Don't take it too seriously though... Eat it and laugh at it!
Quoting Agent Smith
I’d respond that that is probably your view as well. It was also mine when I was in college. Took me awhile to realize that it was a product of my own ignorance rather than some fault of philosophy.
Gracias!
?????
"Intersubjective" is one of those oxymoronic terms that folk use to avoid thinking. If the subjective is private, then the notion of the "inter" subjective makes no sense. If the subjective is not private, then adding "inter" to it is superfluous.
Nothing is solved by waving such a word around.
And you should have learned by now that Meta has no idea.
See Language of thought.
You might have to do some reading, I'm afraid. Unless you can find a short youtube video that will allow you to think you have understood a complex issue without the discomfort of putting some effort into it.
There's your problem, right there. You are attempting to solve philosophical problems with the wrong tools.
Quoting Hillary
That's just wrong. Get a hold of How to do things with words. Learn something new.
Playing with words is not my problem. That's the easy part. It's the ideas that count. And language plays a minor role in the world of developing ideas.
Risible.
Frisible! Prisible! Trisible! Chrisible! Chrisbible! Christ, the Bible!
You mean it does?
Math is just a means to express science quantitatively. The ideas precede their transformation into math.
I knew you would bite! No of course not. But by looking at a physics article in Russian I could see what was done by looking at the math only.
Math is a language.
That's what I said.
So did I. But you suggested I didn't.
Quoting Hillary
Quoting Hillary
Quoting Hillary
Ah. I agree that language may reinforce and express ideas. I disagree with your contention that it does not enact realities. As evidence, consider:
One might be misled by considering only the development of scientific ideas. People do much more than just look around and make up theories.
Don't think that's evidence. If I hadn't learned English, the connection would not be made. No enactive activity would take place.
Quoting Banno
Language per se doesn't enact the reality. It's the con"text" of language that does the trick. The words "morning dew" trigger a complete visionary or even sensory reality. The equation F=ma triggers an image of pulling and pushing, of motion, of change, of mass even. And the relation between them. Change F=ma in Fuck ma! and look what happens to the F, m, and a! "Morning dew" or "F=ma", or "Fuck ma!" are just black symbols, black lines with particular shapes. And it depends on context what you make of it.
...and hence language is what enables the activity to occur.
Language can be used to describe. It can also be used to enact. "I name this ship the Black Pearl" makes it true that the ship is named the Black Pearl. "I promise to see you tomorrow" makes it the case that I have promised to see you tomorrow.
Of course. It enables the expression of a world in a larger context. Language itself doesnt enact.
Quoting Banno
To enact. But it doesn't enact itself. When you have learned a word, the whole context is connected. And if you see that word again, the context "clicks" in.
Indeed. I don't deny that. Learned words can't be seen apart from what they enact. But the enactivation is not contained in them. They can cause enactment, but do they themselves enact? Or is that exactly what is meant? Language enacts realities or causes realities?
Quoting Banno
Quoting Hillary
I've been unable to follow your point here.
What I mean is, language itself, the symbols, contain no reality. The symbols are little works of art. On their own they are just curvy lines. But in the fertile soil of our brain they cause a flood of ideas, feelings, bodily stuff, etc. Call it enactivation.
:chin:
“Psychological underpinnings” sounds like you think it is not a rational (analytical) claim or argument. As to learning about our motives, philosophy began as a search for self-knowledge, to better ourselves by being aware of what is right and true. I’m not claiming our thought is shaped by our psychology (though what is Plato “remembering” but what we call unconscious). Our doubt, and fear, and desire for certainty are situational, part of being human.
So long as you keep this in the plural, yes. Language functions within a community. It's usually called collective intentionality, not enactivation.
There you go! (And here I come!) And considering the fact that there is a broad assortment of communities, languages convey a broad variety of realities, and dependent on the kinds of realities might or might not contain common syntax.
Differing languages have different grammars? Or did you mean semantics?
Different languages tend to agree as to the hardness of rocks and such like. Social reality differs in this regard from physical reality. Physical reality secures agreement.
Different semantics seems obvious. The Swahili word for house might have a different meaning than the American word (and even the American house might differ from the American). Likewise for things like rocks. The grammar of language might also differ (contrary to Chomsky's rigidity).
Take the following passage and replace "intersubjective" with "collective intentionality", and tell me how is "collective intentionality" supposed to resolve the problem you said "intersubjective" has.
Quoting Banno
All you have done is replaced one oxymoronic term with another. Nothing is solved by waving "collective intentionality" around.
:grin:
Good point. There's a thin line between intersubjectivity and objectivity, the two in my mind are identical twins (indistinguishable). However, I was told, the difference is subtle. One example is that money is intersubjective but the Eiffel Tower in Paris is objective. Language is social said Wittgenstein and something tells me that's relevant to our conversation.
Quoting Banno
Noted! Gracias!
I wuz simply trying to make sense of your post, that's all. You see, I'm not familiar with the particular brand of philosophy you seem to be championing. My bad!
Arigato gozaimus for your valuable input. I'll get back to you when and if I have anything wortwhile to say G'day mate!
1. A,simulation can't be distinguished from reality.
There's an obvious difference between The Matrix and the Real World. It's just that when in The Matrix, there's no way of knowing that. This is just like being in a dream state. Lucid dreams? Is nirvana one?
2. Leibniz's 2[sup]nd[/sup] law of identity: The identity of indiscernibles; according to Wikipedia, a controversial claim. Identical twins!
I would suggest not worrying so much about boxing things into a "philosophy" that we just defend or attack. It seems to get in the way of even starting. Good luck.
Muchas gracias!
But will you actually start to read?
The term "intersubjective" was first needed when Husserl had to backtrack after his exploration of subjectivity ran into solipsism. He needed empathy in order to bring other people into exist. An approach that seems inordinately, convolutely silly.
Other people talk about sharing.
Collective intent is simply doing things together for a common purpose.
Ummmm....I'll think about it! :grin:
Quoting Banno
See, in my universe, what Husserl did is what philosophers worth their salt do/should do! Ideas seem to be always, well, pregnant so to speak - new ideas are gestating in them and at the right moment i.e. as and when necessary, they're taken to the maternity ward and delivered into the Ideaverse. In the wild they mature and memetically speaking they must be fit to survive what is essentially an assault from all directions (chakravyu re the Mahabharata).
But I digress (I think).
:lol:
:smirk:
Not just any idea will do; and intersubjectivity serves to hide what is going on here by dragging it into the mire of subject/object...
Pseudo-intellectual fashion.
:ok:
Actually, there is an "essence" underlying perceived reality : I call it "Information". Unfortunately, materialist scientists have ruthlessly dissected reality looking for its fundamental substance. The problem is that they imagined that substance as tiny balls of hard stuff. But eventually, Quantum researchers have been mystified to find that the foundation of material reality is mushy Mathematics (Fields of intangible potential ; invisible WaveForms ; mind-stuff). Their "substance" is essentially the Information necessary to describe the statistical probability of their physical existence at a particular place & time. So, it seems that Reality is based on illusory gambler's odds.
The current issue of Philosophy Now magazine (149) has an article that mentions Bostrom's "simulation hypothesis". His issue is to know whether there is "a mind-independent reality". And Nozick's similar Experience Machine thought-experiment concluded that a convincing simulation of Reality would "prevent us from grasping any deeper reality". So it seems that, for all practical purposes, Reality is what you experience : the information you take-into your mind, from which to build a model of the source of those incoming bits of experience. However, speaking for most of us, Nozick said, "we want to have a genuine relationship with reality, not live a fictional life that only feels real. (a la Matrix). "This means that for many people there must be something --- perhaps reality itself -- that is valuable in addition to the feels of experience".
I suppose it's that feeling of incompleteness & imperfection in the perceived world, that caused ancient philosophers (e.g. Plato) to propose an Ideal World, of which our mundane Reality is merely a simulation. Perhaps, the felt need for "something more" is what allows the majority of people to imagine (and believe) in super-gods & heavenly homes, where Reality is closer to Ideality. So, how can we tell them apart : the mind-model of Reality from the unknown real-Reality? Does it really make any difference? Obviously, some people feel strongly that it does. Which is why Morpheus, and his crew, chose to live in a hadean underworld, instead of the "normal" matrix simulation. If only we-in-the-normal-world had magic pills, so we could tell them apart. :cool:
A small defensive word in favor of the scientist... Quantum mechanics is the same small hard ball approach. Even worse, as it treats particles as geometrical points that move according to the laws of chance within the confines of a wavefunction, thereby probing space. Scientists have done a fairly good job figuring this out, and any attempt to use quantum mechanics and it's big brother quantum field theory, in some great scheme of consciousness, or an underlying informational computation leads us nowhere.
It could even be argued that the wavefunction constitutes space. It's the notion of the particle being a point that is problematic. The notion robs the particle of its true identity. An identity which entails more than a lifeless, dead point particle.
True, scientists tend to dissect material reality, thereby stripping it from complicated interaction effects between parts. It are the naturally occurring interactions and patterns and forms and shapes emerging from them that molds the magical particle contents into life and it's magical, quasi-divine content.
So, if mind is part of matter, can there even be a reality independent of mind?
We don't want to live in the real world, it's too depressing (re suicide & melancholia). :chin: Antinatalism?
Only to a simulated agent (within it's native simulation) which, in that case, makes the question itself moot since "real" – ineluctable – to the agent is what matters ontologically independent of epistemology.
("By Crom!" )
Good point
1. Ontological: Either true that the world is real or the world is unreal.
2. Epistemological: We don't know.
Remember our discussion in the other thread (God & Existence). It looks this thread is about the same issue: Real (nonphysical) vs. Unreal (nonexistence). Can tell them apart!
How do we know reality, and even our simulating brains themselves, are not a simulation? Can a simulation be simulated? When I dream, I see a simulated world. Can you dream in your dream? Wake up from a dream and thank god it was a dream, after which the nightmare continues. Will we finally wake up from the nightmare of life when we die? Or will we enter the next nightmare instead.
Basically, there are two versions of a simulated world, which I call the weak and the strong simulation hypothesis. The weak simulation hypothesis assumes our simulation device, the brain, already there, in a vat, as you wish, or in our body, while being unconscious, for the sake of keeping it alive. We then stimulate the senses to let us experience the world we would have experienced in the case we were truly walking around in the world. We need to be made conscious again, and the senses should be stimulated in a coherent way, as if they came from our sensory devices of our body actually walking around in the real world. We effectively need a real world to accomplish this fate, and stimulating the senses as presented by a computer, needs a computer simulation of the real world, and the simulation appropriately reacting to our mental reactions to it. This is the kind of simulation as pictured in The Matrix. Neo is stimulated by means of a fat plug and play device on his nerval spine on his back, which makes the visual stimulation questionable. You can put a VR helmet on, but then you stimulate the brain by real means. No virtual reality is presented in VR helmets. The hearing illusion or the skin sensations and smell sensations idem dito, although the skin sensations might be presented by the spinal tap (phantom limbs!). All in all, a technically quite difficult feat to achieve, and in our dreams, the brain actually does it for us!
Then we arrive at the strong version. Even the brain is simulated here What can I say? Megalomaniac visions of the computer addict? Can the dream be simulated?
I wasn't denigrating quantum scientists. They're doing the best they can with the counter-intuitive feedback they get from sub-atomic experiments. Since such concepts as "Superposition" and "Wave-Particle Duality" don't make sense to our classically-trained brains, the pioneers of Weird Science were forced to resort to conventional physical metaphors, that made them seem somewhat less meta-physical, but still quite strange. In my thesis, I encapsulate those paradoxical dualities in the coined term "BothAnd", as illustrated in the Yin-Yang symbol.
"This picture of quantum mechanics is said to be ontic, from 'ontology' . . . . the alternative view is that the wavefunction is epistemic . . . . our state of knowledge".
____Phillip Ball, Beyond Weird
Quoting Hillary
I don't know if the wavefunction "constitutes space", but it potentially fills all of space, until forced to "collapse" to a specific location. Even the math of Schrodinger's Equation is weird, in that it requires "imaginary numbers, which is not something that has a physical meaning". (ibid) Since the physical foundation of our reality can only be described in mathematical terms, it fits neatly into my thesis that everything in the world is a form of Information (the potential to enform, both physically and mentally). :smile:
Quoting Hillary
The "correct" answer to that question depends on how you look at it. Just as Einstein was forced by the facts to conclude that macro (space-time) reality is relative, it now seems that quantum reality is also relative to the observer. If you look within, your world-model is integral with your-self, but it you look without, it seems independent of your mind. :nerd:
That may be why humans have always imagined that there must be something better, something more, than this "vale of tears". Our advanced animal brains are not limited to the here & now, but can create alternative possible worlds, such as Plato's Ideal, and the Christian Heaven, or somewhat more mundane, a Garden of Eden, where grass-fed lions lay-down with their fellow vegetarian lambs. :joke:
Something's not quite right, ja?
The world, as it is, is dukkha (unsatisfactory), oui?
Yet, the attitude which I recommend is one that's common knowledge: If life gives ya lemons, make lemonade!
Make the best of what you have, si señor?
There's (probably) more...there always is, but that's all (for now).
Au revoir!
What is the ‘this’, the ‘here’, the ‘now ‘ , the ‘ it is’ which is being assumed as Reality. Heidegger began Being and Time telling us that we need to put into question the simple copula ‘is’. His conclusion? The ‘is’ supposedly points to a static state of affairs , ‘here and now’ that traps us, but in fact the ‘is’ points to transformation and temporalization.
The something better, more, different is already ‘in’ the state of affairs , the ‘here and now’ that we assume as confining and locking us in.
The hidden variables are the constitutes of space. Even with no real particles present, the hidden variables make them move reversibly, constituting primordial non-directional time structure, in a higher dimensional reality on which two mirror universes are pulled, emerge into real particle existence. Real thermodynamic time, real particles accompanied by hidden variables (the emergent space) moving irreversibly in the emergent space. Space offers a means for the particles to explore. Empty quantum space offers a means for interaction. The real particles couple to the virtual field and the hidden variables let them explore space (the hidden variables). Now, how can point particles couple? They can't. Only by making them spatially extended, a small Planck sized curled up volume in a higher dimensional space, they can interact.
That's the best philosophy I have encountered! :grin:
I know right? Talk is cheap though! Translating words into deeds, that's the hard part. Too bad, just when I was beginning to feel better! Oh well, sic vita est!
But not the best part. Though fresh lemonata with crushed ice and pure honey or ahorn syrup is pretty good. Limoncello after it, and some pure high quality opium as dessert...
I need to get out more.
Yes! Animals have no choice, but to grimly gulp the lemons, while making a lemon-face. But humans can add a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. :joke:
Great pictures! "Beeeehhh!!! To much sugar mummy!" :grin:
What is meant here with the "bewitchment of our intelligence"? And why should philosophy battle it by means of language. Does language has the power to fight against bewitchment? Isn't language part of the bewitchment?
Do you think the red pill that Mr. Anderson took was sour (or bitter)? It couldn't have been sweet, he didn't look like he was enjoying the experience all that much.
The movie also depicts how a person extracted from The Matrix (awakened) has to adjust to reality, an homage to Plato (re The Allegory of the Cave) who went into some detail on what the experience of being taken out of the cave into the light would be like (let's just say it's gonna be a rude awakening).
Perhaps it was bittersweet, like reality itself. :wink:
Bittersweet :
1 : being at once bitter and sweet especially : pleasant but including or marked by elements of suffering or regret a bittersweet ballad bittersweet memories.
How does the Earth actually look like in The Matrix? Where did sentinels come from in the first place? How do the alien machines actual look? Are they themselves maybe a simulated reality? "The Matrix 5: The Next Layer, soon in a theater nearby!"
BothAnd?
Nice!
Yes. In his book on quantum physics, Phillip Ball addressed the paradoxes inherent in the Copenhagen Interpretation. Scientists now accept QM as the foundation*1 of macro reality. However, such concepts as Wave-Particle Duality and Superposition are counter-intuitive, so for pragmatic purposes, they can only trust the numbers : "shut up and calculate". "They generally arrange quantum outcomes in such a way as to apparently permit the answers Yes and No simultaneously". Therefore, I have come to accept that the superstructure built upon such a squishy foundation is both Real & Ideal, Physical & Meta-physical. That's why I labeled my personal philosophy as BothAnd. :nerd:
*1. One way to look at it is to consider everything down to atomic scale as classical Reality, and anything below that as imaginary : Ideal. For example, when Gell-Mann coined the term "quork" for the constituent "building blocks" of subatomic particles, he seemed to have tongue-in-cheek. It was a made-up word for a mythical particle. The James Joyce term "quark" seemed to imply "non-sense". :joke:
The BothAnd Philosophy :
* [i]Philosophy is the study of ideas & beliefs. Not which are right or wrong – that is the province of Religion and Politics – but which are closer to universal Truth. That unreachable goal can only be approximated by Reason & Consensus, which is the method of Science. In addition to ivory tower theories, applied Philosophy attempts to observe the behavior of wild ideas in their natural habitat.
* The BothAnd philosophy is primarily Metaphysical, in that it is concerned with Ontology, Epistemology, & Cosmology. Those categories include abstract & general concepts, such as : G*D, existence, causation, Logic, Mathematics, & Forms. Unlike pragmatic scientific "facts" about the physical world, idealistic Metaphysics is a battle-ground of opinions & emotions.
* The BothAnd principle is one of Balance, Symmetry and Proportion. It eschews the absolutist positions of Idealism vs Realism, in favor of the relative compromises of Pragmatism. It espouses the Practical Wisdom of the Greek philosophers, instead of the Perfect Wisdom of the Hebrew Priests. The BA principle of practical wisdom requires “skin in the game”* to provide real-world feedback, which counter-balances the extremes of Idealism & Realism. That feedback establishes limits to freedom and boundaries to risk-taking. BA is a principle of Character & Virtue, viewed as Phronesis or Pragmatism, instead of Piety or Perfectionism.
* The BA philosophy is intended to be based on empirical evidence where possible, but to incorporate reasonable speculation were necessary. As my personal philosophy, the basic principle is fleshed-out in the worldview of Enformationism, which goes out of the Real world only insofar as to establish the universal Ground of Being, and the active principle in Evolution.[/i]
BothAnd Glossary
One question (a foolish one probably)
First of all, there's a very "good reason" (???) why there's so much friction/conflict/bad blood in the world, philosophy is no exception. That "good reason" (???) is the law of noncontradiction. Given two opposing views - one affirmation and the other its negation - it "cannot be" that both are true! All this, of course, in what I call classical logic.
Hence, from where I stand, your BothAnd principle has to either modify/discard/other the law of noncontradiction. What do, or rather what did, you do to the law of noncontradiction?
There is one approach very easily pictured by classical thinking. With an odd non-local twist though, and it explains identical particles and their fermion and boson collective behavior intuitively clear.
I follow the pragmatic suggestion of Richard Feynman : "shut-up and calculate"! That's not ideal, it's a real-world compromise. Non-contradiction is not a law of nature, it's a philosophical rule-of-thumb. If you think you see a contradiction, first re-examine your own premises, then look at the conflicting parts in perspective of the Big Picture (the Whole System). :cool:
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." ___Ayn Rand
Both/And Principle :
[i]* My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
* The Enformationism worldview entails the principles of Complementarity, Reciprocity & Holism, which are necessary to ofset the negative effects of Fragmentation, Isolation & Reductionism. Analysis into parts is necessary for knowledge of the mechanics of the world, but synthesis of those parts into a whole system is required for the wisdom to integrate the self into the larger system. In a philosophical sense, all opposites in this world (e.g. space/time, good/evil) are ultimately reconciled in Enfernity (eternity & infinity).
* Conceptually, the BothAnd principle is similar to Einstein's theory of Relativity, in that what you see ? what’s true for you ? depends on your perspective, and your frame of reference; for example, subjective or objective, religious or scientific, reductive or holistic, pragmatic or romantic, conservative or liberal, earthbound or cosmic. Ultimate or absolute reality (ideality) doesn't change, but your conception of reality does. Opposing views are not right or wrong, but more or less accurate for a particular purpose.
* This principle is also similar to the concept of Superposition in sub-atomic physics. In this ambiguous state a particle has no fixed identity until “observed” by an outside system. For example, in a Quantum Computer, a Qubit has a value of all possible fractions between 1 & 0. Therefore, you could say that it is both 1 and 0.[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Possibility space.
1. p: p
2. ~p: Not p
3. p & ~p: both p AND Not p.
4. ~(p v ~p): Neither p Nor Not p.
Yes. Collective behavior of randomized particles is statistically predictable. It's only when we try to keep track of individual dots that things get fuzzy. Way back, when I first was faced with quantum queerness, I imagined the photons in the slit-experiment as an aggregate of machine-gun bullets. They inundated a whole area, like a tidal wave, but it's the one with-your-name-on-it that gets you. :gasp:
You won't really understand my "system" until you read the thesis. The website shows how the general idea originated from quantum & information theories, and the blog illustrates how it has evolved since, from a hunch into a universal worldview. :nerd:
PS___You can call me Mr. Sir. :joke:
Enformationism :
http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/
:grin: Ok Mr. Sir!
I bookmarked your site for later!