What can logic do without information?
Imagine you are born as adult, fully intelligent, in a completely empty universe. What does it even mean to be intelligent without having no any information about anything? Or do we get born with some kind of basic information with which we could then derive some basic concepts and eventually geometry and math? By the way, what are the minimum necessary concepts to derive the concept of colors?
Comments (46)
I can't really imagine that. Perhaps you should ask someone who's entered a sensory deprivation chamber because that's the closest you can get to being conscious in an empty universe.
Quoting Zelebg
I don't think there can be an intelligent being who literally doesn't know anything.
Quoting Zelebg
It's an old philosophical problem. Some philosophers believe we are born with a blank slate. I'm thinking of empiricists such as Locke and Hume.
We usualy get born with two eyes and one nose. With the help then of the sense of touch, perhaps that's sufficient to derive everything else in the Platonic realm of geometry and math, and who knows what else is there.
I doubt it. Without sensory input the brain would not develop beyond a mush of cells.
Mathematics is the recognition of patterns - no patterns, no maths.,
And without other folk, no language within which to enjoy one's existential angst.
Just a blank.
Quite a bit of behaviour emerges from learning how to react to a posteriori information, in Kant's lingo. Still, pure reason, i.e. a priori cognition only, is also possible. Mathematics, being language about language, has gradually become exclusively a priori, i.e. pure reason.
Quoting Zelebg
When you look at the basic beliefs, i.e. system-wide premises, in propositional logic (14 axioms), standard number theory (9 axioms) and standard set theory (10 axioms), you can clearly see that these axiomatic beliefs look arbitrary, speculative, and without possible justification. The fact that we readily adopt these seemingly arbitrary beliefs certainly suggests that they could be somehow part of our nature, i.e. our innate disposition.
Seriously, there is nothing rationally meaningful about these basic beliefs. That does not mean that they are wrong. It just means that reason itself is not possible without having such basic, unjustified, and therefore seemingly unreasonable beliefs. In other words, the foundations of reason are not reasonable.
Kant was wrong.
(There, that ought get this thread a few dozen more posts).
Quoting Banno
Logic is just grammar; ways of putting symbols together. Nothing to symbolise means no symbols.
I don't see how a color is a concept, or how it could be derived from prior concepts. It is a brute sensation. Actually, concepts are composed of colors. In this sense, colors are one of the basic building blocks of concepts. Every thought you have isn't composed of words. They are composed of colors, shapes, sounds, tactile sensations, etc. Words are themselves composed of these things. You can't use words without having eyes and ears, or the sense of touch for braille.
The form our knowledge takes is dependent upon the types of senses we have. The types of senses we have is dependent upon the process of natural selection.
It is communicated as a concept. Black to white grayscale is a simple concept of linear variable, brightness varies from 0 to 255 for example. So then RGB frame for color concept is combination of three such variables: Red, Green, Blue. But it might not be a simple combination, don't know.
Logic with information from the real world is real.
They are two entirely distinct domains.
As for logic without information, one can construct pretty Mandelbrot pictures, which are entirely abstract.
Logic without science is religion.
Is a completely different thing from colors themselves. The "concept of colors" can be anything, from 4 numbers representing the degree of red, blue and green, to just one concept "color" which represents each color. Both of these renditions do not let you see color however if you've never seen it
Quoting ovdtogt
Quoting chromechris
Logic validates reasoning as a specific epistemology* validates the assumptions from which we reason.
*(I was about to say science or observation but some live in a different epistemological world.)
Well, no. That is science. That is not mathematics.
Look at first order (predicate) logic, i.e. the language of mathematics.
It is a syntax/grammar along with the 14 axiomatic rules of propositional calculus that operates on variables that do not need to represent anything. For example, the following logic statement says that a particular real function f is continuous in point [math]x_{0}[/math]:
[math]\forall \epsilon >0\,\exists \delta >0\,\forall x\in D:|x-x_{0}|<\delta \implies |f(x)-f(x_{0})|<\epsilon[/math]
This logic statement expresses an abstraction ("continuity") about another abstraction ("real function"). It is an idea about another idea. These ideas are not part of the physical universe. They are merely concepts that live in a Platonic world constructed from scratch from basic rules as building bricks.
Such abstract, Platonic world is not observable and has nothing to do with observation.
Science and engineering do indeed end up using these abstractions in a real-world context, but then, very tightly governed by an empirical regulatory framework that seeks to maintain correspondence.
It is absolutely not advisable to use this kind of abstractions directly, in a real-world context, without empirical regulations.
A very difficult scenario to make sense of. What would a lonely existence in an empty universe be like as an experience? Since the universe is empty the only thing left to become aware of, as a consciousness, would be the self. Would I as a conscious being, alone and surrounded by nothing, ever become aware of myself?
I don't remember myself as a child. Yes, I did feel mental and physical pain but my childhood, as is probably everyone's, could be described as a house with the lights on but without any occupants. So, even with constant external pressure, gently and sometimes violently, impressing upon me my own selfhood, the realization escaped me until the late teens and even then it was a very dim sense of selfhood. Only later, much much later, did I ever become aware of my own self and that process involved a great deal of prodding by the external world. If this description fits most of us then, it would be nigh impossible for a single inhabitant of an empty universe to know the only truth knowable in such a universe viz. knowledge of its own existence.
The self exists only in relation to a not-self. There must be an other against which a conscious being collides into and through that meeting become self-aware; an empty universe is devoid of such an opportunity and so it must be that a single denizen of an empty universe will find it next to impossible to gain the single piece of knowledge avaialble to it.
We cannot validate the assumptions, i.e. the first principles, from which we reason, because they cannot be justified.
We can generally also not validate the entire theory that rests on these assumptions. If you can prove in a sufficiently-powerful first-order theory (The problem starts occurring from Q, i.e. Robinson's arithmetic) that it is consistent, then it is necessarily inconsistent (Gödel's second incompleteness).
Hence, provable consistency implies inconsistency. It simply means that the theory is lying to you about its consistency, and through the principle of explosion, about absolutely anything it says. Therefore, you cannot trust anything such theory tells you.
Quoting Wikipedia: List of first-order theories
If the first incompleteness applies, then the second one automatically applies too (second incompleteness is provable from first incompleteness).
...and then you try to demonstrate this, using patterns...
Cutting out the slack, I'm pointing out that the private language argument shows that the world hypothesised in the OP cannot happen. Language is essentially social.
Machines very well understand (formal) language. Machines are not necessarily social.
How are you doing that? Color and all.
Put it in a code block with the "< >" button.
That's a fantastic question!
I suppose the short answer would be, in that case, then all logic would become completely abstract. Like (first order logic/language) mathematics without any real world applications. Or, in theoretical physics; the 10th dimension. Or, in philosophy, the Platonic world and metaphysics, et al.
Anything we ever learn is also thanks to the world.
Our frames of reference are world-logical.
If it was to cease to exist, what exactly is the worth of what you know? If you know what a 'tree' is, how can it be applied? You would laze off.
Anyway it's not an empty universe if you exist.
Seeing a live grenade in the room justifies my assumption that a live grenade is in the room. It may be an illusion but I can only act on my perceptions. I deduce that I should get the f*** out of the room as soon as possible.
That's the nature of science. Empirical experience is either consistent with or contrary to our logic tempered world model. When it contradicts we update our assumptions. When it falls in line with the experience we predict we take that as justification (even if only as a pragmatic model element) those assumptions from which we deduce the effects of circumstances and behaviors. I can't see how you could deny that process by which we all carry out our daily lives.
[edited addendum] I concur with your points about incompleteness. But there's a base level of primary logic which is consistent with respect to its own procedures. This is to say there is no internal contradictions.
Alternatives are systems which directly contradict their own rules (like the reasoning of the political left.) Of course we see how limited pure axiomatic logic is when we extend slightly further and construct infinite systems about which we wish to assert and prove/disprove propositions. But in practical terms Godel's incompleteness proof is not terribly meaningful. We don't work with infinite systems we just pretend to by leaving vague our level of finite precision and bounds. We do this specifically to see what we can deduce that's independent of the actual choice of precision and bounds.
I think you have posed a malformed question that has mislead commenters into an wrong direction. I think you/we/they have to first address/answer "What does it even mean to be intelligent .".
The intent of your question, however, might relate to a notion I've had for >10 yrs concerning static intelligence vs dynamic vs ??. One aspect of my notion on that is that all objects/structures have various degrees of static intelligence related to the manner which their structure is organized to impart a *potential* ability to reduce uncertainty or transform other energy/structures into higher/lower forms of organization. e.g., a complex crystal structure and self-replicating growth could be thought of in this light as having higher static intelligence compared to a steel rod or drop of water. Likewise, a catalyst in a chemical process has a smart ability to transform other molecular structures into higher/lower forms of molecular organization.
In this line of my theories, an approach to address your question, I'd say that the healthy human is born with the high static intelligence (e.g., structures & catalysts) that affords it a high potential dynamic intelligence. Yet to unlock, mature, the potential dynamic intelligence requires information and an experience of the physics/mechanics that governs it. The static intelligence might be the 'nature' and the information/environment might be the 'nurture' that is required for an actualized human intelligence.
I am not wording this in any kind of tight manner, just quickly conveying the general concept direction.
Hope this contributes towards elevating the discussion.
When you are born as a baby, your brain requires certain things to develop. If you were born as a baby in an empty environment without needing food, your brain would not develop properly. This is true with other animals as well. Without a stimulating environment, your brain does not learn. Learning is a part of development, you start learning when your brain has very high plasticity and making many new connections.
You say born as an adult though, but consider what that means. An adult animal has a brain that has been stimulated during the crucial development of the brain. You learned a language for one. It took your brain a few years in a very stimulating world to learn basic things, by seeing, listening, touching, tasting and smelling the world.
"do we get born with some kind of basic information with which we could then derive some basic concepts and eventually geometry and math?"
I would say no. We're more of a blank slate. You may be interested in learning about feral children. There is at least a couple of good studies on it. There is Dina Sanichar, who was raised by wolves.
"What can logic do without information?"
Logic needs information. You need to make observations. That's why science was able to push into places that philosophers could not reach. They went out and made observations, and created experiments to make precise observations. How do you infer something, if you have no observations to infer with?
"What can logic do without information?"
Logic is information.
I would imagine the universe could be built several different ways (atleast a handful), but i would imagine that person would build it in such a way to benefit his/her self the most, simply because that person got there first and probably believes he/she did the most planning. The book of Job covers this.
Yes i believe atleast some mathematical principles are not invented but are based on simpler mathematical principles. Perhaps all mathematical principles are just logic and none are invented.
I believe after much thought and anguish and scenario running (running scenarios in his/her head involving feeling the consequences), that person would pick a solution that best suited that person or atleast approached the threshold of the optimal solution for his or her self.
If you were so good at running scenarios in your head that you knew extremely well what would happen in any given scenario with all parameters set up a certain way, does that mean that scenario happened or is it still a figment of your imagination? I'm not that good at running scenarios so i wouldn't know.
I would imagine running the scenarios to this degree of accuracy might also involve feeling what every creature feels within the scenario (offset by time).
I would imagine if this person didn't have atleast some basic starting point in basic mathematical concepts, this person would not be able to move beyond to creating anything. The person and universe would be in perpetual limbo. Complex mathematical concepts (as you know) build off of simple mathematical concepts including geometry.
Concept is just a mental category. We categorize part of our brute visual experience as the concept, color, and language isnt necessary to do this. We can mentally categorize the world without using words. They are communicated as words. The concept stays inside your head and are translated into words, scribbles and sounds, to communicate the concept that is in your head to others.
If language is only social, and you can only derive concepts from language, then how did the first person acquire concepts?
The ways to put them together still remains - the grammar. The conceptual prospects still remain to symbolize. Logic without information is concepts. Try living with the prospects for all concepts forever. Even the dead can't escape that reasoning. It takes higher faculties of self-deception to pull that off. Nothing is not a thing. The concepts owning up to that truth is the purity of Kant's right in my opinion. Despite how little we are, with the prospects of it we can still think about it.
I hereby coin that color B: for Batch - the number of concepts required to derive a concept. If you ever figure the quanta of it's batch out; hit me up.
Love,
EL
It is observable too - as concepts. The world is dualistic, which means in the end that every statement is true to it. You're right, ofcourse - as well as non-exclusive. This is the inclusion. Duality is a bitch; but only for as long as it needs to be taught. After that we can always agree fundamentally.
Humans probably weren't the first "ape" to have a language. As for how man's predecessor stopped being able to procreate with our species, i don't know. I guess many would say the previous "ape" was wiped out or perhaps we killed them off.
Humans possibly weren't the first animal to have some rudimentary concept of math. I could be wrong and i have nothing to prove my point. This is conjecture.
First, what would it mean to be "fully intelligent" without information of some kind? Intelligence has to be measurable in some way. Second, the universe couldn't be completely empty if you're in it. Third, if you're in the universe, then there is information, namely, you, your hands and feet, and the rest of your body. Your fingers alone could give you some basic information about math. Although one would wonder if you could have a language in such a situation, probably not. If language couldn't exist in such a situation (because of its social nature), then there would be no concepts. However, this doesn't mean that there wouldn't be colors, it just means that there would be no concepts for the colors.
In terms of logic, if you were in the universe, then there would have to be some logic to your existence apart from you understanding that logic.
Why are you unhappy about that?
:up: