Creativity: Random or deterministic? Invention or discovery?
Creativity seems to be popularly held to be some kind of non-deterministic, random process of some kind of magical, metaphysically free will, but I hold that that is not the case at all. I hold that there really isn't a clear distinction between invention and discovery of ideas: there is a figurative space of all possible ideas, what in mathematics is called a configuration space or phase space, and any idea that anyone might "invent", any act of abstract "creation" (prior to the act of realizing the idea in some concrete medium), is really just the identification of some idea in that space of possibilities.
It would be possible in principle to set out on a deterministic process of mechanically identifying every possible idea, though as that space of possibilities is likely infinite this process would likely never finish identifying all of them. Watching the output of such a process would not feel like watching a creative genius, though, even though the process would be continually spitting out new, previously unidentified ideas. But neither would watching the output of a process that generates (or picks from out of the possibility space) new ideas completely at random, however.
That, I hold, is because it is not the determinism or randomness of the process of invention or discovery that makes it "creative" in a way that would be called such by audiences watching its output. Rather, it is a specific feature of the process, which requires that the process be at least partly deterministic, that grants the appearance of creativity.
That feature is that the invented or discovered idea must be recognizably similar to previously known ideas, and yet also noticeable different from them. That alone is only the bare minimum of creativity, however: something that is just like something else with a slight twist will be rightly called only a variation on a previous theme and not especially creative. However, something that is completely unlike any prior work will seem so random, out of context, and therefore unapproachable, that audiences will be unable to appreciate it. The kind of new ideas that seem really creative are the ones that make apparent the structure of the space of possibilities, connecting and re-contextualizing previously known ideas.
If two genres of some medium are well-known, for example, with many variations on the same theme, and then a new work of art is made in that medium that blends elements of both genres in a way that shows them both to be the ends of a longer spectrum of genres, then that will be seen as very creative. It will also open up the potential of still further creativity later, as other works located along that same line in the space of possibilities can then have the context of that spectrum to anchor them, to give them purpose in filling in the unexplored regions in the middle of that spectrum and beyond its known ends. If one such spectrum of possibilities is already known, and a new work can bridge between it and ideas that lie off of it in such a way as to expand the spectrum into a new dimension, suddenly even more structure in the space of possibilities is made apparent, and even more opportunity for further creativity is opened up.
In relating already known ideas to each other across a space of previously unexplored ideas, new works can give further context and significance to existing ones and draw context and significance from them, and it is that process of connection and contextualization, not mere nondeterministic randomness, that constitutes creativity.
It would be possible in principle to set out on a deterministic process of mechanically identifying every possible idea, though as that space of possibilities is likely infinite this process would likely never finish identifying all of them. Watching the output of such a process would not feel like watching a creative genius, though, even though the process would be continually spitting out new, previously unidentified ideas. But neither would watching the output of a process that generates (or picks from out of the possibility space) new ideas completely at random, however.
That, I hold, is because it is not the determinism or randomness of the process of invention or discovery that makes it "creative" in a way that would be called such by audiences watching its output. Rather, it is a specific feature of the process, which requires that the process be at least partly deterministic, that grants the appearance of creativity.
That feature is that the invented or discovered idea must be recognizably similar to previously known ideas, and yet also noticeable different from them. That alone is only the bare minimum of creativity, however: something that is just like something else with a slight twist will be rightly called only a variation on a previous theme and not especially creative. However, something that is completely unlike any prior work will seem so random, out of context, and therefore unapproachable, that audiences will be unable to appreciate it. The kind of new ideas that seem really creative are the ones that make apparent the structure of the space of possibilities, connecting and re-contextualizing previously known ideas.
If two genres of some medium are well-known, for example, with many variations on the same theme, and then a new work of art is made in that medium that blends elements of both genres in a way that shows them both to be the ends of a longer spectrum of genres, then that will be seen as very creative. It will also open up the potential of still further creativity later, as other works located along that same line in the space of possibilities can then have the context of that spectrum to anchor them, to give them purpose in filling in the unexplored regions in the middle of that spectrum and beyond its known ends. If one such spectrum of possibilities is already known, and a new work can bridge between it and ideas that lie off of it in such a way as to expand the spectrum into a new dimension, suddenly even more structure in the space of possibilities is made apparent, and even more opportunity for further creativity is opened up.
In relating already known ideas to each other across a space of previously unexplored ideas, new works can give further context and significance to existing ones and draw context and significance from them, and it is that process of connection and contextualization, not mere nondeterministic randomness, that constitutes creativity.
Comments (238)
Surely every possibility is already possible, right? There is some (infinite) set of things that are possible, and by discovering that something is possible, we don't thereby become the cause of its possibility; it was already a possibility, we just found it among that infinite set of possibilities.
What I say "idea" here I'm talking about roughly a picture of some way that things might be; a possible state of affairs. All of those possible states of affairs, those ideas that could be had, are already possible; when we "come up with" an idea, we may feel as though we're inventing something, but as the thing we're "coming up with" is just a possibility, and all the possibilities were already possible, then really we've just discovered something.
That doesn't mean we can't have been the first person to discover it, or the first person to write it down, or the first person to popularize it. But that's just like it's possible for someone to be the first person to walk upon a new land, or the first person to map that land, or the first person to settle that land; despite all of that, the land was still already there. Finding it didn't cause it to come into being.
Even when granting that infinite possibilities eternally exist (if I'm not misunderstanding your claim), there is yet a limited, and hence finite, set of what can be, or else is, actual—limited both by time and space when addressing physical givens; yet again quite arguably limited existentially when addressing metaphysical givens (such as can be argued for actual, rather than what we epistemically consider to be possible, laws of thought).
We as sentient beings not only discover possibilities but actualize realities (not reality in the singular; rather real events or states of affair in the plural). Our actualization of some such realities is then an act of invention, else stated of creation—for the actualization did not exist prior to our instantiation of it nor would it have existed as it does without our instantiation of it. Artists, for one example, are known for and expected to accomplish such feats. Yes, some of the actualized art was discovered by the conscious artist (e.g., the notion that a statue was already preformed within the marble or wood comes to mind); but, generally speaking, creation, and hence invention, played at least an equal role in the artwork’s manifestation—and hence in the idea(s) the artwork conveys. In this example, the artist caused their artwork to come into being.
So it’s known, I’m in no way disagreeing with the notion that we are bound by a limited, finite, set of both physical and metaphysical actualities (rather than possibilities) which we hold the capacity to discover. In other words, I agree that we are bound by reality (in the singular). Yet given these existential boundaries, there is nothing to evidence that we as individual sentient beings, and as collectives of such, do not also create actualities—and thereby cause them to come into being.
You’re right, though. Creation of X translates into the causal origination of X—even when this creation is influenced by myriad givens. And such causal mechanism, when address without bias toward its being or not being, can logically neither be that of randomness nor of a full determinacy.
Yes, but the production of an idea in a concrete medium is not usually what we take to be the act of "creativity": it's the coming-up-with of ideas themselves. This is why I wrote...
Quoting Pfhorrest
...in the first paragraph. It's that mental creativity that's the topic here, not the physical production of those ideas in concrete artistic (etc) artifacts.
I'm contesting the seemingly common notion that such mental creativity can only come from sort of non-deterministic process, the likes of which (for instance) could not possibly ever be programmed into an AI. I'm arguing that abstract creation is indistinguishable from discovery, either way it's just plucking an idea out of the abstract space of possibilities, and the determinism or randomness of that "plucking" process is completely irrelevant: it's a specific pattern in the (at least adequately determined) process that constitutes the thing we call creativity.
You seem to be conflating possibilities and ideas. You say that there exists an infinite set of possibilities and that an idea is a possibility (or a possible state of affairs). You say that "coming up with" an idea is the same as "coming up with" a possibility, and that both of these are just the discovery of a possibility.
However, a significant difference between ideas and possibilities, I believe, is that an idea cannot exist without someone first thinking of it, "coming up with" it, writing it down, or popularising it, unlike possibilities which exist regardless and may never be thought of.
We can think of the "coming up with" process as something like nature photography, then. All the stuff you're taking pictures of is already out there. The photographer just goes out and picks a specific part of it to capture. (This isn't to denigrate photography at all; I've just been sorting through my own photography for my portfolio just a moment ago). This thus blurs the lines between "making" and "finding" something, between "invention" and "discovery". I'm not saying there's only one and not the other; I'm saying there really isn't any difference between them when you get down to it.
And I'm saying that may be true only if you conflate ideas with possibilities.
...and then after collapsing invention vs discovery into a distinction with no difference, I'm talking about what makes for a "creative photograph", so to speak. One could mechanically go about taking every possible picture in order, but we wouldn't find that creative. One could (we can imagine at least) teleport the camera around randomly taking pictures at random, but we wouldn't find that creative either. What then makes for a creative "photograph" (idea)?
The rest of the OP, which nobody seems to have gotten to yet, is all about that.
Yes, I get that. I was intending to present a viable possibility of creation in fact being such a form of non-deterministic process. Of course, in a fully deterministic worldview, both the novel idea and the manifestation of it in physical realms will be fully deterministic. Creativity, or creation - of an artifact or of the idea(s) that are used to actualize it - however specifies that that which creates X will originate X of its own momentary being. And, again, such causal mechanism (when not rejected on grounds of determinism) can neither be random nor fully deterministic.
As to strong AI, I'm of the opinion that were such to ever be actual, it would necessarily then be endowed with the same causal ability of creation that we humans are sometimes quite apt at.
But if your approaching the issue from a preestablished worldview of determinism, the viable possibility I'm mentioning will be denied a priori due to the confirmation bias of the worldview held. Question then becomes one of whether determinism is the only viable possibility. But I don't want to argue this at present.
I think you are contesting it. You're effectively saying that ideas can only be discovered and cannot be invented, because ideas are possibilities, and the set of possibilities already exists. I refute that ideas are equivalent to possibilities.
There is a sense to be made of the difference between the abstract content of an idea and the concrete having of an idea by a person. That is the nature/photograph difference. That’s what you say I’m conflating, but that difference is a trivial one that I take for granted and am not talking about at all. I’m only taking about the content of the ideas, which I’m saying is like the content of nature photographs.
The "concrete having of an idea by a person" is not relevant to whether ideas are discovered or invented? Or you're not interested in this question despite the discussion title?
It seems you've made your mind up anyway:
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
Sure you could say someone discovers novel ideas in themselves. But that doesn't mean they were already there.
I think the hole in your argument is that creative thinking involves both this deductive reasoning (from the general to the particular), but more importantly, that inductive leap from the particular to the general.
We have to hazard some guess as to a deeper principle that may account for a variety of outcomes - a pattern generator that then generates the patterns.
And that step involves a kind of non-computational insight where instead of using information, we are seeking to erase it. What can we do without, rather than what do we have once we have crunched every possibility?
That is what biological brains find easy to do. A Bayesian style of reasoning where we make guesses about the information that would reduce our uncertainty. We are looking at the world and trying to model the deeper processes generating its ever changing variety.
Biological brains aren’t geared for deductive reasoning at all. What you describe as a mechanical process of computing every outcome of some formal language is indeed only something that came on to the evolutionary scene when humans developed grammatical speech as a cultural learnt habit.
The British empiricist would applaud you. Most scientists would say "your not in the business" . Scientists, to explain further, often don't like philosophy because it tries to categories their processes of thought. I like philosophy though and I do that all the time.
I like to emphasize that creativity often involves acting, or thinking, irrationally. Consider the creativity of conspiracy theories for example. They are often very creative and irrational explanations for some event or phenomenon. I think this is the issue with AI being creative. AI’s must follow a code; their programming. If you think of their programming as a representation of rationality/reason, then you see the issue. They cannot act irrationally, or against their programming. Humans are seemingly able to do this. My guess as to why would be that our programming (our DNA) is flawed, so to speak. We don’t always follow the rules or act rationally. We may not even do so most of the time. Humans are more like open-ended questions; there’s more than two ways to respond, whereas AI’s options are necessarily limited by their programming, and are therefore only capable of responding in a limited number of ways.
Quoting Pfhorrest
To me, discovery means not changing whatever it is you found. So like you say, part of creativity is simply finding an unusual idea and expressing it, but if someone finds two ideas, and then combines/synthesizes them to form a new idea, that seems different than just discovery.
There is a first cause, and since from first cause all ideas and mind came so first cause must necessarily have ideas and mind otherwise things may be coming out of nothing.
If you believe you're discovering stuff in the data rather than inventing stuff then you may as well say where did the stuff come from. And then the philosopher comes to believe that it eternally existed.
That in itself is a hard problem. I don't think we are evolved to answer it. But as far as creativity goes, it's obviously a social term because there are people who are "uncreative" and do the opposite. Derrida was absolutely correct you can deconstruct most terms by looking at their opposite.
I think it was John Searle who asked if a software program was doing addition or "quaddition". He was trying to argue against the emergence of reason from pure matter, but I think the argument works against him. You can fill in the blanks. We don't know what AI could do
Only the distinction between that and the content of those ideas is not relevant. Of course any idea is had by someone, but bringing that up has nothing to do with where the contents of those ideas “comes from”. I’m just saying that distinguishing between “coming from the person” (invention) and “coming from the world” (discovery) makes no sense when were talking about ideas; they amount to the same thing.
Consider just things like numbers, even just the counting numbers. There are an infinite quantity of counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, etc forever. There will always be some number in that series that nobody has counted up to yet, that nobody has had any reason to instantiate in any concrete way. Does that mean that such a number doesn't exist yet? Are there not actually infinitely many counting numbers, just because we can't ever finish counting to infinity? NB that that would mean there is such a thing as "the biggest counting number", and which number that is would be constantly changing, as people count up to, and so "invent", new numbers.
I'm not asking about the status of abstract objects here, just saying that, in whatever sense it is that we mean when we ordinarily say "there are infinitely many counting numbers, even if nobody has counted to them yet", there are likewise already infinitely many ideas available to be had, even if nobody has actually had them yet.
Like numbers, consider different mathematical structures. Take complex numbers like "i" for example. Was that invented, or discovered? I think there's no sense to be made of any difference there: the possibility of doing math involving two-dimensional quantities (which is all complex numbers are) was always there, and someone was the first person (recorded by history to which we have access) to "come up with" the idea of doing that, but to ask whether that person "invented" or "discovered" complex numbers is a nonsense question, because those amount to the same thing.
As every imaginable thing, every idea, can in principle be rigorously described if we care to do so, and so made equivalent to some mathematical structure, this principle that mathematical structures are equally "invented" and "discovered" applies to all ideas.
Quoting Janus
That this language of "discovery" doesn't make a lot of sense (where were they sitting, waiting to be discovered?) goes to my point that in the context of abstract ideas there isn't any difference between "invention" and "discovery". I am not saying that there is no invention, only discovery. I'm saying that neither of those, in senses distinguishable from each other, really works as applied to abstract ideas. In that context, they are the same thing, indistinguishable; we equally make and find ideas, kinda both, kinda neither.
What you say about finding patterns, rather than just extending them, sounds like it's very much in line with what I say creativity is in the OP. It's not just enumerating on instances of an existing pattern or structure, and it's not just random possibilities unconnected to any structure, but rather it's finding/making new/previously-unknown structure in the abstract space of possibilities, contextualizing and connecting those possibilities to each other in a way that gives them meaning.
Quoting Pinprick
Conspiracy theories are often the result of over-eager pattern matching. Often times, there really is a pattern, and the conspiracy theorists just get it wrong. See for example alt-right nutbars who think The Jewish International Bankers control the world because of a laundry list of reasons... reasons that actually point at a pattern of the failures of capitalism. They're seeing signs a real pattern that's there, but falsely attributing it to a racial, individual-conspiratorial issue (a handful of evil Others working together to intentionally keep Us down) instead of a class-based social-structural issue (a handful of fortunate people selfishly doing what most people would do in their position because the rest of us let them get away with it).
Computers can do pattern recognition. They can even (mostly) do bad pattern recognition: I asked Google Lens to identify a bush the other day and it told me it was a "plantation", then I asked it to identify a flower and it told me it was "marine life". And have you seen things like Google Dream? Google would make a great conspiracy theorist. It'll take a lot of work to make it less "creative", and better capable of critically weeding out its flights of fancy.
Quoting Pinprick
But the possibility of combining those two ideas was already "there", in whatever sense the possibility of the simple ideas were "there" too.
1) are you an empiricist like Locke?
2) isn't the working energy in the human intellect what this thread is about
3) are you talking about just humans? Could dolphins have pure creative imagination?
I don’t understand your second question.
But no, this isn’t just mean to be about humans specifically, but a specific function of intelligence more generally.
Thanks for the honest reply. I think Leonardo da Vinci would disagree with your thesis. And maybe dolphins lol. A math teacher of mine wrote a paper saying that angels naturally think with calculus, while humans have to learn it. Don't underestimate the gods either. Enough said. I hope I didn't disrail your conversation
It's not relevant only if you assume the pre-existence of ideas. As I said in my first post to this discussion, "discovery" implies (or connotes) the pre-existence of ideas, whereas "invention" requires someone to be the originator of those ideas.
It seems you are attempting to re-define invention as discovery, i.e., to assert that any case of invention is actually a case of discovery. I doubt you would agree to the reverse: that any case of discovery is actually a case of invention, as this would imply, e.g., that Wiliam Herschel "invented" Uranus, or that Californians "invented" the gold in them thar hills. In order for your attempted re-definition of invention to work, one first needs to accept or assume the pre-existence of ideas. I don't accept that; someone needs to come up with those ideas.
Quoting Pfhorrest
All of the numbers pre-exist in the sense that mathematics is algorithmic; the numbers simply "fall out" of the algorithm, e.g. "n+1". What similar algorithm exists in order for us to "discover" the supposedly pre-existing ideas of the Mona Lisa or the toaster?
No, I’m saying that in the case of abstract objects like ideas, it makes no sense to differentiate invention from discovery. Not that invention goes away and only discovery is left; discovery is every bit as problematic when it come to abstract things as invention is. Your talk about planets and gold is missing the point: there is a difference there, in concrete cases. But not in abstract ones.
Quoting Luke
Trivially, one could mechanically iterate through every possible series of brush strokes on the canvas (more clearly illustrated if we think of a digital image and iterate through every possible series of pixels) and eventually get the Mona Lisa. Likewise one could iterate through every possible arrangement of atoms and eventually get a toaster. Or instead one could randomly throw together brush strokes or atoms until eventually one got the thing in question — like the infinite monkeys with typewriters producing the complete works of Shakespeare.
But neither of those processes would actually seem like creativity, which is the main thrust of my OP if we can get past the more trivial opening comments. It is not the determinism or the randomness that makes for creativity, but something else aside from that issue—something I already covered in the OP.
This presupposes that all ideas already exist in their entirety prior to being discovered.
The statue, being art, must have both concrete qualities (in having a physical form that can be directly observed by the senses) and abstract qualities (such as beauty, that cannot be directly observed by the senses).
However, both concrete ideas and abstract ideas are dependent on relationships - whether the concrete spatial relationships between the statue's particles of matter or the abstract conceptual relationships that determine the statue's beauty
In the world independent of any observer, particles of matter exist and space exists. But do relationships exist in a world independent of any observer ?
If relationships do objectively exist in the world, then in the world every possibility is already present, and the artist, when looking at the uncarved marble, can discover the concrete form and abstract beauty of a pre-existing statue.
However, if relationships don't objectively exist in the world, and the existence of the statue's concrete and abstract qualities depends on relationships, then the possible relationships can only exist in the mind of the observer. This means that if relationships don't exist in the world then they cannot be discovered in the world, meaning that they must have been invented by the artist.
My belief is that relationships only exist as mental concepts, because, if relationships objectively exist in the world independent of an observer, then this leads into the mereological nightmare where my pen together with the Empire States Building is a unique object, for example, as unique as a table or chair.
Concrete ideas and abstract ideas are both mental concepts dependent upon relationships and therefore invented in the mind and not discovered in the world.
I don't think he has clearly distinguished between (1) innate ideas (2) getting all our knowledge from our senses. You have to make that distinction before you can tackle the issue of creative imagination
I remember when I was improving my spelling in elementary school. I used creative imagination. I saw patterns that strict logic would make you doubt. May be I'm not addressing what your saying :(
If you don't think the distinction makes sense in relation to "abstract ideas", what about in the context of technology? Was the steam engine invented or discovered? Or penicillin?
In any case I still disagree with you regarding ideas. When I write a poem, am I inventing or discovering it? I would say inventing because that is different than, say, calling to mind a poem I have previously memorized, which would be an act of discovery of or finding something already there, however complete or incomplete it might be.
Of course I am not suggesting that invention is an act of creation ex nihilo, but it is, I would say in any context, the bringing of some novel form and content into the world, something that had not previously existed. Since discovery is not bringing anything new into the world, either in the physical world or the world of ideas, but rather of revealing something pre-existent, I continue to think the distinction between discovery and invention is a valid and useful one.
What about fictional concepts/characters? Surely they are invented and not discovered?
Quoting Pfhorrest
I find it odd to speak of the "invention" or "discovery" of abstract ideas (only). I had assumed - with respect to creativity - that you weren't just talking about the ideas, but also the realisation of those ideas.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This sounds more concrete than abstract.
But getting back to your OP:
Quoting Pfhorrest
Perhaps the difference between "discovery" and "invention" in these terms could be viewed as whether the space of possibilities exists completely - awaiting to be discovered - or whether the invention of new ideas help to create and open up new spaces of possibilities.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I'm unfamiliar with the explicit idea that creativity is a result of "nondeterministic randomness". Perhaps creativity could be viewed in contrast to following the same deterministic pattern that went before. Anyway, I broadly agree that creativity is a "process of connection and contextualization".
For me the "space of possibilities" has either a logical or physical sense; the senses being everything we can coherently imagine as potentially existing or everything that is a real physical possibility.
I'm not seeing how creating anything new could add to or, the obverse possibility, subtract from, either of these "spaces of possibility". I would rather say these spaces of possibility subsist than "exist"; they are not actual, but "sleep" inherently, in logic and physicality respectively.
Yes. These are cases where the distinction doesn't make sense; the possibility of steam power was always there, and inventing the steam engine consists of discovering and making known that possibility; the fact that certain substances produced by molds kill bacteria was always there, and inventing penicillin consists of discovering and making known the usefulness of that fact.
Quoting Janus
Writing a poem is again that combined invention-discovery of abstract things. Discovering a pre-written poem is the discovery of a concrete artifact, or at least some record of a historical fact that such artifacts were created; the original poet discovered-invented the poem, and you discovered that he had discovered-invented the poem.
Quoting Janus
Sure, that is the distinction between invention and discovery: one is making, the other is finding and revealing. But all the things that could possibly be made exist already as possibilities in the "world of ideas" as you say -- it didn't only become possible to write that poem because you thought to write it, that was always possible, you're just the first to think of doing so -- so that distinction breaks down when we're not talking about concrete things that come into and out of existence.
That's really the crux of the matter there, actually. Concrete things are temporal: there are times where they don't exist, and times when they do. Bringing them into existence is inventing them; finding out that they already existed is discovering them. But abstract things are timeless, eternal; all possibilities always existed and always will, but their "existence" is just as a thing-that-could-be-made, so neither "finding" them nor "making" them really completely applies -- or both do, at the same time.
The casual English speaker in me wants to agree that they’re simply invented, but the philosopher in me thinking about what they actually are demands they get the same treatment as everything else we’ve discussed: invention and discovery are the same thing here. It seems like the less obvious a “discovery" is the more inclined we are to call it an "invention", and the more obvious an "invention" is the more inclined we are to call it a "discovery", but they're really the same type of thing, just with a spectrum of obviousness.
Quoting Luke
Yeah, as far as invention vs discovery goes, I'm talking about the ideas themselves in the abstract. The realization of them is different... sort of like mapping out the "space of ideas". You're "drawing in" stuff that "wasn't there before" on the map, but you're doing so by "figuring out" stuff that was "always there" in the space.
As far as determination vs randomness goes, I'm talking about that "mapping" process, with the background understanding that such "mapping" is not cleanly either all invention or all discovery. It's that process, and the determination or randomness of it, that's my main concern.
Quoting Luke
I'm giving examples of concrete procedures to algorithmically explore spaces of abstract possibilities. Counting numbers is just as concrete. You can count numbers in your head, but you could also, with sufficiently sophisticated imagination and good memory, step through these other algorithms in your head too.
Quoting Luke
"Opening up new space" is the exact language I use when talking about the process. In the "mapping" analogy, it's like you've got... actually, let's use a different analogy. You've got literally space, like outer space. It's fully of invisible etheric structures but we can do things to pull them into reality and make them solid. If you pull a structure into being somewhere way away from the inhabited structures everybody's on, that's kind of useless... nobody can get to it, it's inaccessible even though it's now solid out there. If you extend the structures everybody's already on, though, you open up the space that people can move around in... and if you build a bridge between one big structure and another, you really open up space for people from each big structure to now move about to a whole other new kind of structure without having to take a scary disorienting spacewalk to get between them.
Quoting Luke
Contrast with determinism is exactly what I mean. Randomness is the absence of determinism, so those who think determinism is an impediment to creativity (like say, Searle, or anyone who thinks strong AI is flatly impossible) are saying that randomness is required. I'm saying neither randomness nor determinism matters; it's the details of the process (which thus needs to be somewhat determined at least) that make for the creativity.
Quoting Luke
Those details, exactly. :up:
Quoting Janus
:up: :100:
Quoting Janus
Eh, except the ephemeral "existence" of possibilities makes calling it "discovery" about them kinda wonky too. That's why I think "invention" and "discovery" merge in that regime, and it's not clearly one nor the other but in some ways both or neither.
That makes sense to me. :ok:
As regards the Knowledge Argument, I agree that there is scientific equipment that can measure the wavelength of red light. But the question is, is the scientific instrument conscious of the colour red, as we are conscious of the colour red.
As the concrete quality of the wavelength of red light exists independently of an observer it can be discovered in the world, but as the abstract quality of redness doesn't exist independently of any observer it cannot be discovered in the world.
Similarly, scientific instruments could measure concrete alterations in the brain state when we observe a beautiful object, but there is no current scientific instrument that can measure our abstract consciousness of beauty.
Indeed, all ideas already exist, only waiting for minds to discover them. Here’s a proof: It’s certainly possible for two individuals, say, Alice and Bob, to come up with the same idea EID independently of each other (this happened e.g. with Newton and Leibniz independently discovering calculus). But what gives us the right to say that they have both come up with the same idea? Well, if Alice and Bob had independently invented EID, then Alice’s EID would be different from Bob’s EID, and there would be no basis whatsoever on which we could rightly say that Alice and Bob came up with the same idea EID. Therefore, Alice and Bob must have independently discovered one and the same idea EID, which is an abstract entity which always was and always will be and whose existence is independent of Alice and Bob.
It is only on ground of both Pfhorrest and I having independently discovered the idea that ideas are abstract and cannot be made and how to show this, that it is meaningful and true that we both came up with the same idea. Like that, we can use the theory that ideas are eternal and uncreated to prove that very same theory :wink:.
Another proof uses possibilities, which Pfhorrest already mentioned. It runs thus: For every idea EID that anyone can come up with, the possibility that someone can come up with EID must have always existed. But since this possibility is essentially tied to EID itseld, EID must also always have existed. I used a very similar argument with the same idea some years ago on another forum to show that coming into existence and going out of existence are illusions.
Quoting Pfhorrest
For example like this: Write a program that systematically outputs all possible finite-length strings of letters: a, b, c, ..., z, aa, ab, ..., az, ba, bb, bc, ..., bz, ..., ..., aaa, aab, aac, ... . For every idea EID expressible in finitely many symbols (including relativity theory, quantum mechanics, Plato’s Theory of Shapes, his unwritten Theory of Principles, the plot, theme and ideas of Hamlet, to name just a few), this program will output a description of EID after a finite amount of time. Does that mean that the mind is unneeded for finding new ideas? Certainly not, for the program doesn’t understand the meaning of the symbol-strings which it outputs. What you still need is a person (or group of people) who reads every string output by the program. The system made up of program and person (or group of people) will find every finitely describable idea after a finite time in a fully deterministic, uncreative way, independently of all other folks who might come up with the same ideas in the more traditional (and efficient) way. This shows that all the ideas must be abstract and uncreated, and it is the nail in the coffin of any claim that ideas are invented rather than discovered. It also shows that while the mind is totally needed and indispensible when finding new ideas, its creative faculty is not needed in the least; rather, what is needed is the mind’s ability to understand, to “see” ideas, and to map symbol-strings to ideas.
Quoting Luke
We have already shown at length that this claim is indeed false.
Quoting Luke
We have already given concrete examples of such algorithms. The Mona Lisa is made up of finitely many atoms; hence, my algorithm will spit out a complete description of the Mona Lisa after a finite time. The same goes for the toaster – the algorithm will spit out a complete and accurate description of the toaster after a finite time. This description is then read by the reading person in a finite time, whose mind is thus directed to “look at” the abstract idea of the toaster. No invention needed whatsoever.
Ok, but unless the programming is altered, it will reliably make the same mistakes (and correct answers), right? IOW’s it’s unable to be spontaneous. Humans are sometimes very rational, and sometimes very irrational, but it’s difficult to predict when they will be one or the other. Simply following code doesn’t count as being creative.
In any case, we don't know for sure that human behavior is significantly random either, any more than any other macroscopic system is. It seems very likely to be chaotic -- to produce vastly different outputs from tiny changes to the input, and thus to be very difficult to predict -- but machines can be chaotic too. Chaos doesn't require randomness, it can coexist with determinism.
"We"? "at length"? I must have missed it. Can you quote where this was "shown at length"?
Quoting Luke
Indeed :wink:.
Quoting Luke
Here are some points with which Pfhorrest and I have shown that ideas are eternal and uncreated:
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Tristan L
We have given more than one proof for the uncreatability of ideas. We have also given you the algorithm that you asked for, which can deterministically find the Mona Lisa and the toaster without any need for creativity whatsoever. However, you have yet to answer our rebuttal of your point.
In your quotation of and answer to my quotation of and answer to you, you demonstrate quite nicely that you have made an unsubstantiated (and, as we have seen, false) claim about the nature of ideas without justification, and when irrefutible evidence against it is given, you simply ignore it.
Would you please actually read what Pfhorrest and I have written and then reply to each point?
No, it does not presuppose anything. Here’s why:
Quoting Tristan L
When you’re writing a poem, you are discovering it, not inventing it. There’s a fixed, eternal, uncreated 1-to-1 mapping between the set of all poems and the set of all natural numbers. This fact is obvious and uncontroversial. Hence, since all natural numbers are uncreated and eternal, the same goes for all poems.
However, while the poem itself is an abstract entity and therefore uncreatable, concrete instances of it aren’t. When you creatively write a poem, you discover the poem itself, but you invent a concrete instance of that poem. When you remember someone else’s poem, however, you not only don’t invent the poem (this is always the case), but you don’t even invent a concrete instance of the poem. Rather, you only discover a concrete instance of the poem.
In response to all of your quotes: Possibilities are not equivalent to ideas. I don't deny that such things are possible.
You’ve answered one point (but still have to reply to this my answer to your reply), but not the others:
They each came up with the same idea independently. Isn’t that what you’ve told us? What other ground do you need?
Quoting Tristan L
I didn’t imply that it couldn’t be done. I asked what algorithm exists. Such an algorithm does not exist.
He’s asking on what grounds can the independent inventions of two people be called “the same thing”, unless we’re talking about the abstract eternal idea, not the specific instances of them. If Alice and Bob are both programmers and both independently come up with the same new image compression algorithm (say because they’re both programming image software and so facing the same kinds of challenges to which the same solutions are applicable), we must be talking about the idea of that algorithm, not some specific instantiation of it, because Alice and Bob did not both write the exact same (numerically identical) lines of code at the exact same time.
Separate concrete instances of ideas are not the same as each other, only the ideas themselves are the same. But it is only the instances that are clearly made or invented, not the ideas themselves.
This has already been answered to the point by . I'd only like to add that Alice and Bob might also come up with the same idea by complete coincidence.
Quoting Luke
Actually, that is not true, for such an algorithm does very much exist. Here is a working implementation in PASCAL which I have written:
You can get the Free Pascal Compiler from here.
Not at all; like all ideas and indeed all abstract entities, they are discovered, not invented. However, instantiations of them are invented. Abstractly, there is no difference in realness between Albert Einstein and Sherlock Holmes - both are eternal and have always existed. However, there is a difference between them regarding how either is instantiated in our world: We call Einstein real and Holmes fictional because there is a concrete manifestation of the former in our concrete world as a human being of flesh and blood, whereas the only concrete instance of the latter in our world is as instances of sequences of symbols written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Einstein’s instance was invented in his mother’s womb, whereas Holmes’ instance was invented in Doyle’s head.
Likewise, the very property of being the king of the gods, having might over thunder and lightning, (supposedly) being the god of justice, being a womanizer asf. (and so forth) always exists, and it is the abstract Zeus, a fictional character. That this character itself hasn't been invented by the Greeks is shown thus: If the universe or multiverse is endless, then it's almost certain (probability = 1) that on another planet, sapient living beings will have come up with the selfsame character description of Zeus as the Greeks wholly independently of them. If the Greek Zeus himself had been invented by the Greeks and the alien Zeus himself by the aliens, there'd be no point in calling them the same. However, they certainly are the same, which can only be explained by an underlying eternal abstract fictional character Zeus being discovered by the Greeks and by the aliens independently of each other. What the Greeks did invent is their concrete thoughts about Zeus. The same goes for the aliens. Whether the universe is actually infinite or not is irrelevant; that if it is, there’d be another independent discovery of Zeus, is enough.
I don't see the issue. I've never denied that ideas are about something, or that they have content. In the example of two people coming up with the same idea, they are each coming up with the same idea. @Tristan L claims that it has been demonstrated "at length" to be false that anybody needs to come up with ideas, yet his supposed proof of this involves two people coming up with the same idea. I thought it was your position that both/neither "invention" and "discovery" are correct, but your apparent endorsement of Tristan seems to confirm my initial assessment that you are in the "discovery" camp.
What does it do? Anyway, I doubt I’ll get to see it spit out every possibility within my lifetime.
Which is pretty much what I wrote earlier:
Quoting Janus
Tristan makes great arguments against the invention-only side. I wouldn’t say that that means ideas are discovered-only though, because the act of finding the content of an idea is also an act of creating an instance of it, which is why I don’t think the two can really be distinguished.
I forgot to ask: how does two people coming up with the same idea demonstrate the existence of “abstract eternal ideas”? I get that they both came up with the same idea, but how does this prove that ideas exist independently of either (or any) person, and eternally so?
Each irrational number is an "idea", so this process cannot exist.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Complex numbers and complex variable theory are more than simply doing math in two dimensions. For example, (x,y)->(u,v), u = 3x + 4/y, v=x-y does that.
Admittedly nit-picking, but clear concise arguments need to be accurate.
In mathematics there is no strong consensus on creation vs discovery. But a practitioner may create a mathematical object and then discover its properties. It makes little to any difference in practice. I always consider it a kind of exploration.
So you say, but do you have any argument to support this assertion of pre-existence? Why can’t two people invent the same idea independently without that idea having pre-existed?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Right, so it is your position that ideas (not possibilities) exist prior to their “discovery”.
Quoting Pfhorrest
But you most definitely imply that possibilities are “lying around out there in space somewhere apart from the instances of people doing them” because you keep talking in terms of their discovery. How can they be discovered unless they already exist? If they don’t already exist “in space” then where/how do they exist?
There is no algorithm that will eventually spit out every possible irrational number? I know they can’t be put into a linear order, but is there no way of generating them without any particulars order? I would think something like a space-filling curve would be in the ballpark for something like that.
No, I mean if the “idea” is not its content but its instantiation, then two people who separately instantiate it, who separately invent it, have invented two, albeit very similar, things, not the same thing.
The only sense in which those two instantiations can be called instantiations of "the same thing" is a sense in which that thing of which they are instances was not created by it being instantiated, but already existed in some sense.
Quoting Luke
In a sense that is distinct from the discovery of them, yes.
With concrete things, it makes sense to ask whether someone made the thing or just found it pre-made. There is a clear way in which those are different.
With abstract things, ideas, that's not so clear. Because abstract things are just possibilities to begin with, and being the first one to do something that was always possible doesn't make it possible; but it's also not like the possibilities are lying around out there in space somewhere apart from the instances of people doing them. So neither invention nor discovery in the sense that we use them of concrete things really makes complete sense applied to abstract things, but something that's kind of like both of them at the same time does.
Wouldn't that be tantamount to counting them? A Turing machine algorithm?
Yes, I understand, but you’ve simply repeated your stipulation that two people cannot invent the same idea (content) just because they are different people.
Quoting Pfhorrest
So you say, but do you have any argument for this supposed pre-existence of ideas? Why is it not possible for two people to come up with the same idea (content) independently without that idea pre-existing?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Right, so it is your position that ideas (not possibilities) pre-exist their “discovery”.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You definitely imply that possibilities/ideas “are lying around out there in space somewhere apart from the instances of people doing them” because you keep talking in terms of their “discovery”. If they don’t exist “out there in space somewhere”, then where/how do they exist?
There's a clear distinction in meaning as @Luke pointed out but perhaps you wish to say it's distinction without a difference. Well, if whatever is being invented were impossible then it can't be invented. The "possible space" you mention must have inventions as a potential and in that sense they pre-exist, rendering Luke's view on the distinguishing characteristic between the two meaningless.
It's not because they're different people, it's because they have made two different instantiations, so if the instantiation is the idea, as you seem to put forth, then that's two different ideas, not the same idea instantiated twice.
Quoting Luke
See above. If coming up with an idea creates it, in the same way that building a chair creates that chair, and two people independently come up with something, those are two separate acts of creation, and so two separate creations, not the same thing. If two people build identical chairs, they haven't built the same (singular numerically identical) chair. But if two people think up the same design for a chair, independently, then they've "come up with the same idea", even though their thoughts are separate events and they build separate chairs, which indicates that the "idea" we're talking about in the phrase "came up with the same idea" isn't the event of them thinking it or the fixing of that thought in a material object, but some abstract thing that's separate from the thought event or the chair object, and wasn't created by the thought event, otherwise the second person to independently come up with it couldn't have created it since the first person already had.
Quoting Luke
In the sense that discovering doesn't make them come into being, sure. Complex numbers "existed", in whatever sense that can be said to "exist", before anybody thought that maybe taking the square root of a negative wasn't simply impossible.
Quoting Luke
I'm not taking any stance here on what the sense in which they "exist" (presently or pre-discovery/invention) is. I'm just saying that in whatever sense we can say two people "came up with the same idea", the thing that they're "coming up with" is in some way or another independent of them having come up with it, otherwise what you'd be saying is that one numerically singular concrete thing (the instantiation of some idea) simultaneously exists in two places (in the minds, i.e. brain-states or whatever, of two different people).
And I'm not (at least trying not, maybe I've slipped up somewhere) talking about their "discovery" simpliciter, specifically because that seems to have implications that they were just... out there somewhere, waiting to be found, in the same way that concrete things are. I don't think abstract things, ideas, exist in the same sense as concrete things, and so the sense of "discovery" that we use of concrete things doesn't apply to them. And neither does "invention". "Coming up with" an idea is both invention-like and discovery-like in different ways. (This is kinda like wave-particle duality. Is a photon a particle or a wave? Yes. Yes it is.)
Quoting Pfhorrest
I cannot take any credit for your argument because I've never claimed that the "instantiation is the idea". When I speak of someone coming up with an idea, I don't mean an idea devoid of any content, obviously. I mean what you mean: the same idea instantiated twice. I still don't follow why this requires the pre-existence of the idea.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Right, this (above) is what I mean by two people coming up with the same idea independently. Why is this not possible?
Quoting Pfhorrest
How is "coming up with the idea" different to "thinking it (up)"?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Right, that's the instantiation of the idea.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The "abstract thing" is the idea itself. The "thought event" is (equivalent to) "coming up with the idea". Why shouldn't two people be able to have separate "thought events" and come up with the same idea? Why does that idea need to pre-exist each of their "thought events"? How can it?
If you mean the "same chair design" scenario, that is totally possible, and I never said otherwise. What I mean is that that doesn't constitute two separate acts of "creating an idea", but two separate acts of instantiating an idea, and that if it were two separate acts of "creating an idea", then that would result in two separate (but identical) ideas (because there were two separate acts of creation, each of which must have its own product), which is absurd.
Quoting Luke
It's not, but the idea itself is separate from the event of thinking it up.
Quoting Luke
They can. The absurd conclusion that they can't is the consequence of the position you're taking, and I'm bringing it up only to show that that position has to be wrong.
Quoting Luke
Because if the thought-event was identical to the idea, or at least created the idea, then separate thought-events would be identical to, or create, separate ideas. Say Alice from 1900 came up with an obscure idea, it was lost to history, and then Bob in 2000 came up with the same idea, independently, without knowing about Alice at all. How could Bob's thoughts create an idea that Alice's thoughts had already created a hundred years before? If Alice's thoughts created the idea, then it already existed by the time Bob thought of it; and if thoughts create ideas, then Bob's thoughts must have been a different idea, not identical to the one Alice had. But if Bob and Alice did have the same idea, which is how we'd normally talk about it and I think that's the right way to talk about it, then Alice's thoughts and Bob's thoughts can't be identical to, or have created, the ideas that they're about. So in whatever sense those ideas "exist" after having been thought up, since thinking them up can't have brought them into "existence", they must have already "existed", in whatever way they do now.
How is it absurd?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Yes, I said that in my post.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Didn't you say this was absurd?
Quoting Pfhorrest
I already went over this in my previous post. You are conflating the "thought event" with the idea itself; or attributing this conflation to me somehow. You are fighting a strawman. Alice's and Bob's thoughts ("thought events") are different from the idea itself; they have the thought event in order to come up with the idea. I do not claim that the thought event and the idea are identical, so I still fail to understand why the idea's pre-existence is necessary.
No, I said the implications of your position that thinking up an idea creates that idea would make that situation absurd.
If thinking up an idea creates that idea, and there are two separate events of thinking-up, then two different ideas have been created... even if they are qualitatively identical, what we would normally call “the same idea”. That’s the absurdity, calling two separate instances of the same idea “two different ideas”.
Contrapositively, if those two thinking-up events result in the same single idea, as we usually say, then that idea can’t have been created by the second event if it was already created by the first event, so it must not have been created by either event. If it was not created by anyone thinking it up, then in whatever sense it can be said to “exist” after being thought up, it must have already “existed” in that sense before.
That is only one of three proofs which I have given and which independently of each other show the uncreatability of ideas. The other two are the one with the possibilities and the one with the deterministic algorithm.
It systematically outputs all finite-length strings made up of the printable ASCII-characters, including spaces, letters (uppercase and lowercase), numerals, and punctuation marks. That your lifetime likely isn’t long enough to see it output many interesting ideas has no bearing on my argument. What matters is that for every expressible idea EID, without exception, the implementation of my algorithm will find EID and spit it out after a finite number of years. You originally claimed here that no such algorithm exists, but when I showed you otherwise, you didn’t concede the point, but rather tried to divert attention to something irrelevant.
Quoting Luke
I think that I’ve made it clear enough that I indeed argue for discovery-only when it comes to ideas themselves, but that I also hold that in discovering ideas, one invents instances thereof, in which Pfhorrest seems to agree with me:
Quoting Pfhorrest
By the way, here we have a great example of two people – namely Pfhorrest and me - coming up with the same idea. Indeed, there are several ideas which we discovered independently of each other, such as
Quoting Luke
As I’ve already said twice and will say again, I don’t think (but also don’t rule out) that ideas are possibilities. However, every idea EID is essentially linked to the possibility that someone can find EID, and since that possibility must exist from the start if anyone is ever to come up with EID, EID must also exist from the start. It’s like the existence of the fact that 5 is odd needing the existence of 5 itself. The failure to actually read what I write goes on ...
Here, I actually disagree with you slightly on some (but not all) points. Firstly, I don’t think that all abstract things are possibilities, but whether that is so or not doesn’t matter for my arguments. What matters is the essential tie between abstract entities (such as an idea EID) and corresponding possibilities (such as the possibility of someone coming up with EID).
Secondly, I am quite certain that abstract entities broadly and possibilities in particular do in fact “lie around” in some abstract “space”. That is what our arguments show.
Furthermore, I think that it does actually make perfect sense to distinguish between discovery and invention, and that both of these terms are always meaningful: Ideas can only ever be discovered, and in discovering an idea, you invent an instance thereof. These two can be distinguished, but as they always happen together, they cannot be separated.
However, I strongly agree with you that being the first one to do something that was always possible doesn't make it possible.
They already are in linear order, but I think you mean well-order, right? If so, then you may be pleasantly surprised: They can be put into a well-order by the Well-Ordering Theorem.
So it’s even better: all the irrationals exist eternally even though no algorithm can find each of them after a finite time. The set of all linguistically ideas, though, is countable, so an algorithm (an implementation of which I have given here) exists which outputs each idea after a finite time. This means that ideas are at least as eternally existing and real as irrational numbers.
Moreover, if you allow transfinite time, then all the irrationals can actually be found.
You’re the mathematician, so you’d know better than me.
It seems though that since Cantor has the diagonalization method of aways coming up with a new real number that’s not yet on any supposedly-complete list of real numbers, you could start with a list of any one real number, diagonally generate new one to add to that list, diagonally generate another new one, and so on, and mechanically spit out new real numbers without end like that.
How does your algorithm give us the Mona Lisa? Or a toaster?
Quoting Tristan L
Obviously if you assume that ideas have some type of pre-existence then their discovery must be possible. I challenge the assumption.
Who's calling them "two different ideas"? I've asked you repeatedly why it's absurd or impossible for two people to create/invent the same idea independently.
Quoting Pfhorrest
What if they both came up with it at the same time? Anyway, it is your position that neither of them can come up with the idea without it pre-existing, so why is it absurd/impossible for the first person in this scenario to come up with the idea without it pre-existing?
By saying that the act of coming up with an idea creates that idea, YOU imply that two separate acts of coming up with something must result in two separate ideas. That’s absurd, so your premise that coming up with the idea creates it must be false.
Quoting Luke
And I’ve said repeatedly that THAT is not absurd, but the implications of your view of idea-creation are contrary to that, in an absurd way.
Quoting Luke
The point is to refute your claim that coming up with an idea is a clear act of invention. If it were the case that the first person to think something up created that idea, but the next person to independently come up with it did not also create the numerically same idea (because someone else already created it) nor created a numerically different idea (because that would be absurd, numerically two qualitatively identical ideas), then the second person would have to be merely “discovering” the idea despite the fact that they did exactly the same thing as the first person, who instead “invented” it. Thus illustrating why there isn’t a clear distinction between invention and discovery of ideas.
I think you’re still interpreting me in an unnecessarily Platonic fashion. I’m not saying that, unless some idea already exists “out there” somehow, it’s not possible for someone to think of it. I’m saying that it makes no sense to talk of making or creating ideas (not merely instantiating them), so their existence status doesn’t change when someone thinks of them. They don’t come into existence or go out of existence, we can’t do things to make or destroy or change what kinds or ideas there are to be had. We can just have them, start having them, stop having them, but they themes don’t change, only what we do changes.
But what they are is nothing more than the possibilities of us doing (thinking) things, so it’s also not so clear that we’re “discovered” them like we discover concrete things. We’re just also not “creating” them like we create concrete things either.
Quoting Tristan L
You appear to be a platonist, in that you seem to be asserting the substantive existence of possibilities. There are two kinds of possibilities as I see it; logical possibilities, which are such only by virtue of not involving any contradiction, and physical possibilities; what could (but, I suppose, does not necessarily have to) come to exist given invariant natural law, and neither of these, as I see it, have any substantive existence.
It is logically possible, although perhaps not physically possible, that rainbow coloured, translucent leprechauns exist; but that doesn't entail that they really exist in any sense. Also, it may not be physically possible for them to exist. If something is logically possible, yet not physically possible would you still want to say it enjoys substantive existence of any kind?
If you don't mean to make a substantive existential claim, then to say that possibilities exist is a mere tautology, because obviously, in accordance with ordinary parlance, in that sense if they didn't exist they would not be possibilities in the first place.
What is a "list of any one real number"?
Cantor’s diagonalization starts with supposing you have a list of all real numbers (you really can’t), and then goes on to show how to make a new real number that isn’t on that list (thus showing it’s really not a complete list). I take it then that we can thus start with a list of any size, even just one item long, and continually generate new numbers that aren’t on it to add to it.
I’ve already demonstrated this to be a straw man argument: the “thought event” (i.e coming up with the idea) is not identical with the idea it produces. I’m sure you agree. Therefore, it does not preclude the possibility of two people having separate thought events but coming up with the same idea independently. I have never implied or stated otherwise. Since I’ve never laid any claim to your straw man argument, then you must either deny that it is absurd for two people to come up with the same idea independently, or else you still owe us an explanation of the alleged absurdity.
The absurdity you imply doesn't stem from the thought-event and the idea being identical; that's just one possibility, and you've made it clear that's not your position.
But when we're talking about concrete objects, if I make a chair, and you make an identical chair, we've still made two chairs, not one chair.
If in coming up with an idea, I make that idea, I create it, invent it, bring it into being... and elsewhere independent of me you come up with an identical idea, in the same way that I already did unbeknownst to you... then you and I have made two different, but identical, ideas, like the two different but identical chairs.
That's absurd. I'm not saying that's what happens. I'm saying that's an implication of your position that coming up with an idea creates the idea.
Quoting Luke
I have, repeatedly. The absurdity is that your view logically implies that this obvious normal thing, two people independently coming up with the same idea, should not be possible, in the same way that two people can't independently build the same single chair, because you say that coming up with an idea is like building a chair: a clear act of creation.
This conflates the idea with its instantiation: the idea of the chair and the chair. You are again trying to attribute to me the view that the "instantiation is the idea", which I have already rejected. I agree that two people independently coming up with the same idea is an "obvious normal thing", but there is a disconnect - or lack of explanation from you here - in why the idea must pre-exist either of them. You have repeatedly stated that two people cannot come up with (invent) the same idea because it implies that an idea is its instantiation, or that an idea is its thought event. I don't follow why that must be the case, and I have offered arguments for why it is not.
EDIT: I also don't follow why I must commit to the view that an idea is a concrete, non-abstract object, like a chair.
An observer not knowing the idea of squareness could look at several instantiations and discover that sometimes the four elements ABCD form a plane figure with four equal straight sides and four right angles.
After observing several instantiations, the observer could invent the idea of squareness, but the observer could never discover the idea of squareness within the instantiations themselves - because there is no discoverable information within the instantiations themselves that links in any special way one particular form within one instantiation to another particular form within a different instantiation.
You have that implication backwards. If ideas were their instantiations or thought-events, then two people couldn’t independently come up with the same one.
I know you’re not claiming that now, but it doesn’t matter because what it seems you are claiming still has the same implication:
If ideas are created by the act if coming up with them, then two people couldn’t independently come up with the same one.
(Because the same numerically singular thing can’t be independently made by each of two different people. They could make it together, but that’s not what we’re talking about).
Since two people CAN independently come up with the same idea, it follows that coming-up-with is not creating.
And if ideas are not created by coming up with them, then their existence status doesn’t change when people come up with them.
So if they can be said in some sense to exist after coming up with them (and this is the “if” you should really be questioning), then they can be said to exist in that same sense before anyone has come up with them.
Because coming up with them doesn’t change whether they exist or not.
I think you don’t understand what a configuration space is. It’s also called a state space or phase space. I think this is the most straight article of those three terms:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_space
Suppose your space is the interior of a unit square in the Euclidean plane and A, B, C, and D are points in that space. Please demonstrate such an algorithm.
Step by step? An algorithm? If so, then you are generating all the real numbers and counting them as you do so. Perhaps you refer to an uncountable algorithm? Is there such an animal? :chin:
Yes, you bet that I am. The philosophy of platonism (lowercase ‘p’) is the only option which doesn’t contain contradictions or absurdities. It still strikes me that so many people do not see this wonderfully simple and overwhelmingly obvious truth.
Moreover, while I’m not a Platonist (uppercase ‘P’) since I’m not a follower of others, I do hold many basic tenets of Plato’s Theory of Forms and his unwritten Theory of Principles, and I also feel that there must be a totally unsayable experience of the Holy above and beyond philosophy and reason which underlies all of philosophy. This is something that Plato experienced according to Christina Schefer (for more info, see my comment). But I digress.
Quoting Janus
Yes, and speaking
Quoting Janus
of tautologies, asserting the existence of possibilities is simply asserting their substantive existence.
Quoting Janus
That doesn’t make much sense to me. If something exists, then it exists.
Quoting Janus
Yes, and even the logically impossible exists in a way. To make clear what I mean, we have to distinguish two kinds of existential statements:
So what about logically impossible things like odd even numbers? Well, just as the property of oddness exists and is very real, so the property of being an odd even number also exists and is very real. That must be so, for every property has the property (propertihood) of being a property, and to have properties, you have to be and therefore to exist. Also, being an odd even number has the property that I can think about it. However, it has no instances, and indeed it cannot have any instances, that is, the disjunction of all propositions of the form “n has the property of being an odd even number” is logically false. That is what we mean when we say that odd even numbers logically can’t exist.
So if even logically uninstantiable properties exist, then both logically but not physically instantiable properties, and physically instantiable but uninstantiated ones, exist all the more. In any case, the very property of being a rainbow coloured, translucent leprechaun exists and is real. Indeed, without it, the fact that there are no rainbow coloured, translucent leprechauns in our world (as far as I know :wink:) couldn’t exist.
By the way, just because something isn’t physically possible in our universe or world doesn’t mean that it isn’t physically possible in another universe or world.
More importantly, the length of the list that you start with can be transfinite. By repeating the process an uncountable infinite number of times, you can actually list all real numbers. The final list, which includes all reals, and each one exactly once, will be indexed by the uncountable well-ordered set of all ordinals whose cardinality is less than that of the continuum. If the Continuum Hypothesis is true (which I don't know), then this is the uncountable well-ordered set of all countable ordinals.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Actually, I also interpret you in a (lowecase ‘p’) platonic way, and that is the impression that you give of yourself. Also, you seem to argue (very well, I think) for platonism, in which case I would fully support you. I’m a platonist myself, and I certainly am arguing for platonism, whose truth is self-evident imho.
I don’t really see how these true words (in which you only forgot the elves :wink:):
Quoting Pfhorrest
are compatible with this claim:
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
Actually, ideas are likely not mere possibilities. For example, even if no physical universe and no minds existed, so that it would not be possible to come up with the Van-de-Graaff-generator, the property of being a VdGG would still exist. Actually, without it, the hypothetical very fact that coming up with the VdGG is impossible could not exist.
I think that it’s very clear that we discover ideas rather than invent them, but that in doing so, we invent conrete mental instances of them unless we find the ideas deterministically (e.g. with my algorithm), in which case the instances wouldn’t be created in the strict sense (but still in a broader sense).
Quoting Pfhorrest
Making two chairs independently of each other is very much like coming up with the same idea independently of each other; in the former, Alice and Bob independently create two different physical instances of one and the same Shape of Chairhood, while in the latter, they independently create two different mental instances of one and the same Shape (Form, Idea), and this Shape is what we call “idea”. By the way, we talked of VdGG-hood and toasterhood as ideas, so the same goes for chairhood, doesn’t it?
Quoting Pfhorrest
That’s right, and in the same way, we can see that making a chair does not make the Form of Chairhood itself.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Actually, the two are very alike. The only key differences, I think, are that in the former, the idea is discovered and its created instance is mental, whereas in the latter, the idea is already known and its created instance is physical. In both cases, though, the concrete instances are clearly created, and the ideas themselves are clearly not created. However, the concrete instances are only created in the strict sense if their creation wasn’t forechosen, so in the case of my algorithm or when there is a pre-existing order to build a chair, the concrete instances aren’t created in the strict sense (though they’re still created in the broad sense).
This is another thing that I’ve said before, but I’ll say it again. The algorithm will output an exact linguistic description of the Mona Lisa, for example by specifying the stroke order to draw the painting, giving a raster description of the Mona Lisa in terms of pixels, or even by telling you which atoms lie where on the paiting. In fact, the Mona Lisa that you see on the Internet is just a sequence of 1’s and 0’s, so it has already been converted into a number, and my algorithm will output that number. Likewise, the algorithm will spit out an exact description of the toaster, complete with sequences of 1’s and 0’s that define digital images and even videos of the toaster. The understander only needs to read and understand these symbolic descriptions, and voila – he (used in a gender-neutral way) finds the idea of the toaster. Without any creativity whatsoever. The same goes for the Mona Lisa. Hence, both ideas already exist at least in the algorithm, only waiting to be “unpacked”.
Quoting Luke
You’ve gotten the implication the wrong way round. In reality, if discovering an idea is possible, then the idea must fore-exist. That’s the direction in which I argue. If it had not always been possible to discover an idea, then at some point in the past, it must have been impossible. But then no one could ever discover it. For example, if it had once not been possible that someone could come up with the Van-de-Graaff-generator, then by definition of possibility and impossibility, Robert Jemison Van de Graaff could never have invented an instace of it, which he clearly has.
Quoting Pfhorrest
What is the ground for that qualitative identity? It is that both share in one and the same abstract eternal uncreated universal, and this is what we call “an idea”, from Greek “????” = “Shape, abstract “look”, (abstract) Form.
Quoting Luke
What if the events of coming-up are separated by a space-like spacetime-interval, so that neither event is first, but the events also don’t happen at the same time?
The key point is that even if Alice was first, there could have been someone before her, so the thing which explains the likeness that her thought bears to Bob’s must have been able to jump in before Alice’s coming-up.
Quoting Luke
Could you please say where?
Individual squares do indeed not only instantiate squareness, but also rectangle-hood, parallelogram-hood, (four-sider)-hood, (geometrical-shape)-hood, abstractness, thinghood, and many more properties. Therefore, you’re right in saying that they could never by themselves cause someone to find squareness itself. That’s why finding ideas does involve creation, namely the creation of mental instances of them. It’s creation in the strict sense only if the finding of the ideas wasn’t pre-determined, though.
You can see that squareness can’t be invented by realizing that all folks find the same squareness and that you cannot change anything about your supposed invention even one wee bit.
Like I said, you’re the mathematician here, not me, so you tell me where I’m going wrong. I’m working directly from Cantor’s proof that the reals are uncountable, which hinges entirely on this ability to always generate a new real that’s not on any supposedly complete list of reals. That process of course can’t ever end up generating any complete list of all the reals, else that proof would contradict itself. But surely any given real will eventually be included on the ever-growing list, even though the list will never be complete?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Suppose you start with .1111... and end up in a finite number of steps at sqr(2)-1. How do you do this? Just curious.
I don't know how to figure out the route from a given starting point to a given end point. But if sqrt(2)-1 has a(n infinite) decimal expansion, as I think it does (correct me if I'm wrong), and you start an unending process of adding to a list of infinite decimal expansions new infinite decimal expansions that aren't yet on that list, you would eventually get to the infinite decimal expansion of that. No?
In trying to better grasp the notion you're presenting:
Common sense has it that the truths we discern are discovered, but are not in any way givens we create or originate. Likewise, common sense has it that the lies we tell are inventions, i.e. that they are alternate realities we come up with, are ideas that we create or originate, which we furthermore intentionally peddle to others as full scale truths (unlike fables and allegories, which are acknowledged to be of human creation but intend to tell often deeper, but always uncreated, truths via our fabrications as vehicle for the telling of these truths).
While I disagree with the following, I can somewhat understand the metaphysical position that would uphold all lies to be discovered within an ocean of boundless potentiality, or un-bounded possibility. This as though each possibility were itself an actuality awaiting to be discovered?
However, this yet leaves truths unaddressed. If the obtainment or all ideas occurs via a hybridization between discovery and creation, and if truths are ideas that correspond to reality (here taking explicitly held beliefs to be ideas), are truths then also partly of our creation?
But then - if both truths and untruths are ideas which we in part create and in part discover - how would one go about distinguishing the obtainment of truths from the obtainment of untruths?
Especially pertinent when considering that the untruths we would be discovering (rather than strictly creating) would themselves correspond to aspects of a reality consisting of boundless potentiality. Hence, they would themselves then correspond to reality.
Maybe I phrased some or most of this improperly. Still, there to me seems to be an important dichotomy between, for example, the discovery of truths and the invention of truths.
When you say "eventually get to" I take that to mean in a finite number of steps. The sequence S(n)=1-1/n does not eventually get to 1, but gets pretty darn close in a large but finite number of steps. In your process you apparently use the Cantor notion of replacing a digit at each step (or a set of digits?) - I'm not clear on this. There are an infinite number of digits in sqr(2)-1.
I suggest you move on to other aspects of creativity, rather than get entangled with this issue. Others are more knowledgeable of transfinite math than me.
So truths and lies are different ways ideas are employed, but not themselves ideas.
Does Harry Potter exist? You would seem to be committed to saying he does. If so, does he exist in the same way you do?
Can’t say that your notion of idea matches with mine. What makes a mental image an idea but a mental sound (else an imagined smell, taste, or tactile feel) not an idea? There are also mental representations of the actual, rather than the possible, and these seem to me to be ideas as well. Furthermore, many ideas are thoroughly abstract, and as such lack tangible sensory information, including those of mental images. The idea of arbitrariness serves as one example.
Quoting Pfhorrest
To claim that an idea is accordant to reality is indeed to engage in a doing, yes, but the state of affairs that the idea is accordant to reality is not something which we do, i.e. is not something which we produce or else in any way originate. Moreover, how can one obtain a correspondence to reality in the absence of some idea which so corresponds? (But this question might be colored by our different understanding of "idea".)
Still, this is why I hold that we discover truths sans our creation of them. More tersely expressed, truths are uncreated aspects of the world … that, again, can solely be discovered.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You however conclude that truths are not ideas but what we do with ideas. Maybe there’s something lost in my translation of this statement. For instance, the idea that “planet Earth has trees on it” can be either a truth or a falsity given what employment(s) of it?
This may be true of physical instantiations but why must it also be true of abstract ideas?
Quoting Pfhorrest
This does not follow. Your implicit assumption here is that two people cannot create the same idea because an idea cannot physically be in two places at once. Obviously ideas can be in two places (or minds) at once and this has nothing to do with their creation. It is because ideas are abstract concepts, not physical objects.
Creativity is not random, nor is it deterministic. What makes creativity seem random is it's immediateness. An idea takes shape, and there it is. But this is no random process; the creative process itself is made up of subconscious work which the creative brain is doing all the time. There's nothing random about the subconscious. The subconscious is made up of all sorts of things; the (sort of?) conscious part of the brain makes signs and symbols out of this subconscious stuff. What this stuff is or means is anyone's game; rather, it's the game of art interpretation...or expression? Yeah, who decides, really?
Creativity is not deterministic for the same reasons; By nature (by definition), creativity brings concepts to the fore of the conscious mind that were not at the fore before. Nothing determines what does or does not come up into the conscious mind in this process. It's extremely personal to the person who's consciousness is doing the work. The process is different for every creative person, and so there's nothing that determines just exactly how the process happens/takes shape. There are of course patterns that can be mapped. But for every mapped pattern of creative effort, there are at least as many unmapped anomalies that defy any sort of determinism.
Yes, he certainly does and always has – the property of being a male human wizard, having parents called “James” and “Lily”, being called “Harry Potter”, being the arch-enemy of a mighty evil sorcerer, asf., exists. After all, we’re thinking and talking about it right now. However, there is no object in our universe (as far as I know) which has that property – (Harry Potter)-hood has no flesh-and-blood-and-mind instance in our universe. The only concrete things in our universe associated with him are things like thoughs and texts about him.
Quoting Janus
No, for unlike Harrihood, the property of Tristanhood does have a flesh-and-blood-and-mind instance in our universe. Because of that, its manifestation is this universe is much realer than Harrihood’s.
Exactly, and by the definition of abstractness, they are neither spatial nor temporal and thus cannot have a beginning in time. In particular, they cannot be invented.
We have to wait? I thought all ideas already existed?
It seems that your algorithm will also produce (mostly) junk strings of symbols that aren't ideas. Is there some method to distinguish the ideas from the junk?
I also wanted to return to some earlier comment of yours:
Quoting Tristan L
Why do you expect the number of years to be finite?
Quoting Tristan L
Possibilities are not ideas. Being the first one to think of an idea does make it a new idea. Unless you believe that ideas do not require someone to have/think them? Similarly, it seems to require someone to interpret a string of symbols in order to understand the idea it may contain.
Quoting Tristan L
The direction of the implication is irrelevant to my point. It is all based on the same assumption.
Quoting Tristan L
I don't know who that is, but you could say that he invented the idea (not the possibility; the idea).
Quoting Tristan L
From which reference frame can the events be judged such that "neither event is first, but the events also don't happen at the same time"?
Quoting Tristan L
Then the "someone" before Alice would have invented the idea, I suppose, or we might just say that they both came up with the same idea independently. That is, we could go back to your own example of Leibniz and Newton.
Quoting Tristan L
In the preceding discussion on the previous page.
Quoting Tristan L
I had in mind a definition of abstract such as this: "existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence." As far as I know, only physical, temporal, living beings have thoughts and/or ideas.
When one composes music, one's subconscious gives one possibilities of what note to play next and the like. In the creative process, isn't the conscious self that which decides on which of these alternative possibilities to make actual at expense of all others?
Agreed that creativity is neither random nor deterministic. But doesn't the conscious self serve an active creative role in manifesting the final product, this via the choices taken?
Eh, I dunno. When I write music, my subconscious seems to determine what I write. I.E., all the time I'm trying to step outside my comfort zone, but I always seems to go back to what I know; My conscious mind is saying "do something knew", but the unconscious is what dictates what I actually do. So maybe that's determinism? Idk.
I don't know what you mean.
Odd. My experiences are different. I'm more apt at painting (not claiming to be good at either). I start with a general idea or intent of what I want to convey and how I want it conveyed. Then reality bites in terms of implementation. Here there are creative dry spells and creative eureka moments. And there are alternatives I'm presented with. Based on what is most true to me - true in a more artistic sense of truth being aesthetics and the aesthetic being true - I then make my choices of how to compose my piece. The final product is then always a conflux of me as conscious choice maker and my subconscious as provider of often contradictory ideas between which I choose.
I wouldn't address this as determinism, though. Then again, I'm one to uphold the common sense version of freewill.
Quoting Noble Dust
Does the just mentioned better clarify what I was getting at?
I don’t mean just visual images, but the all-sensory sense of “image” used in the very way you just said “IMAGined” smell etc.
Quoting javra
Here you’re using “idea” in the same sense as I am. Figurative, you’ve got a drawing, which could be put to several uses: it could be used as a representation of reality, or a blueprint for something to make real, etc. The drawing is the idea, and one thing you’ll can do with that drawn is say “this represents reality”. The use of it as a representation, and the accuracy of it as a representation, is not a part of the drawing—the idea—itself.
Quoting javra
For clarity I would phrase that as “the idea of planet earth HAVING trees on it”, “having” in the gerund mood, with the indicative mood “has” in “planet earth HAS trees on it” instead showing the employment of that idea as a representation, and the usefulness or correctness of that use as representation determining whether that indicative statement is true or false.
Quoting Luke
It has nothing to do with that. Ideas aren’t concrete, so they don’t have locations. I say they also don’t have temporal location, or any other temporal features; they don’t come into being or go out of being or change over time, which is the main reason why I think it makes no sense to say a human being at some point created an idea. Abstract things aren't in space and time like that.
But the argument I've been making about that toward you, since you think they can come into being over time (by being created, invented) is about the incoherence of two people separately bringing into existence the idea. So you think the idea didn't exist before, from the dawn of time until some day one person brought it into existence, then later another person separately... brought something that already existed into existence, again? That doesn't make sense. The only way it can make sense that two people both did an act of creation, that each separately brought an idea into existence, is if they are two separate ideas that got brought into existence. But that would mean that those two people didn't separately come up with the same idea, they just came up with two different, but identical, ideas.
Except we already agree that that's not correct, so then you have to follow the chain of inferences backwards, contrapositively: since those two people didn't come up with two different ideas, but if they had each brought an idea into being they would have, they must not have each brought an idea into being. You might want to say that the first one brought the idea into being, but not the second; except then you're still denying what we've both already affirmed, that two people can independently come up with the same idea. So it must be that neither of those two people coming up with that idea brought it into being. Which means whatever the state of existence we can ascribe to the idea after they came up with it, we must also ascribe to it before they came up with it.
That could be that it neither existed before nor after. It could be that it existed before and after. It could be that "existence" is a confused thing to ascribe to an abstract object in the first place. I'm not taking a stance here on the ontology of abstract objects, like you and @Tristan L are arguing about. (I have one, and I'm pretty sure it's not the same as either of yours; going to do a thread about that soonish).
But one way or another its state of existence didn't change when someone came up with it, or else two people couldn't have both separately come up with it.
Right, and that's just what I mean by "substantive" (as opposed to imaginary) existence. Not sure what you mean by "in this universe", though. If 'this universe' is the name given to the totality of everything that exists, or has existed; then there is nowhere else for his "manifestation" to be any different.
And even if there were how would you establish that any such entity was identical to the fictional Harry Potter? My answer would be that you could not establish this, because by definition any substantive entity could not be identical to a fictional one.
No, this is where we disagree.
What you mean by "two different, but identical, ideas" is just what I mean by "the same idea independently". I've been asking you all this time why it is not possible for two people to come up with the same idea independently. I think it is perfectly possible for two people to come up with "different, but identical, ideas". To be clear, when you say "different" here, I take you to mean "had by two (different) people". Otherwise, the quote above makes little sense to me.
And yeah, having numerically different but qualitatively identical ideas doesn't make much sense. That's why I called it absurd. And I know that you don't think that that's what's actually happening; neither do I. But that's what logically has to happen if coming up with an idea means bringing it into existence. Which is why coming up with an idea can't bring it into existence.
I don't find it absurd. I don't understand why you do! Whether or not it is "actually happening", I think it is very possible, and makes perfect sense.
We have to wait to actually see the ideas, but it is already forechosen now that we will see them. Hence, they must already exist now.
Quoting Luke
Might I ask why you keep failing to read through what I write again and again and again? I’ve already said that the system consists of the mechanical string-outputter, e.g. my program, and an understander, who is the person or group of people who reads/read every finite-length string put out by the string-outputter. My program even asks its user to “Please read and understand the following text if it is meaningful”. If the string is meaningless, the understander simply ignores it. If it is meaningful, the understander maps it to the idea which it represents, thus finding the idea. The understander’s mind is absolutely needed and indespensible, but only in its capacity to understand, not in its capacitity to create. The understander only has to be very good at understanding, but doesn’t need any creative ability at all. Of course, he (used gender-neutrally) has to actually read through the symbol-sequences, making the job rather unsuitable for some :wink:.
Quoting Luke
Because the algorithm systematically outputs all strings of finite length over the same finite alphabet one after the other (here, I only use lowercase letters for illustration): {empty string}, a, b, ..., z, aa, ab, ..., az, ba, bb, bc, ..., bz, ca, ..., ..., aaa, aab, ..., ..., elf, ..., ..., goc, god, goe, ..., ..., aaaa, ..., ..., fast, ..., ..., ..., igotoschool, ..., ..., eismcsquared, ... . It does this by first outputting all strings of length 0, then all strings of length 1, then of length 2, then of length 3, and so on. This gives a one-to-one function between the set of all natural numbers and the set of all finite symbol-sequences over the same finite alphabet. It follows that for every finite string str over the alphabet, there is a natural number n such that str is the nth string output by the algorithm. Don’t tell me that you don’t accept this basic mathematical fact ... do you?
Quoting Luke
I’ve never claimed that ideas are possibilities, and I’ve even said that I don’t think that they are. I’ve made it clear that my argument relies on the fact that every idea is essentially obviously linked to a possibility belonging to it. Yet here you are, still attacking the strawman.
Quoting Luke
I’ll say it again: Let EID be an arbitrary idea that someone, call her “Alice”, came up with. Since Alice came up with EID, it must always have been possible for someone to come up with EID. This means that the possibility Poss(EID) that someone could come up with EID must have always existed. But Poss(EID) is defined in terms of EID, so without EID, Poss(EID) could not exist. Hence, EID must have always existed along with Poss(EID).
Quoting Luke
No, I’ve shown just now that ideas cannot need someone to come up with them, for Poss(EID) is the very ground on which someone can come up with EID in the first place, so EID and thereby Poss(EID) depending on the coming-up would lead to a vicious circle.
Quoting Luke
As I’ve written above, I already said that a long time ago, for example here.
Quoting Luke
Have you found a new logical law which says that the implication-operator is commutative? Please do tell! I have shown that if discovering an idea is possible, then the idea must fore-exist. Yet you claim the conclusion of that argument to be an assumption. You do know the difference between assuming and showing, don’t you? Could you please be clearer make your point less confused?
Quoting Luke
He’s the guy who invented the Van-de-Graff-generator (VdGG), that is, who created a mental (and then a physical) instance of the Shape of VdGG-hood.
Quoting Luke
Could you back up this bare claim with a justification? But don’t worry if you can’t, for we’ve already seen it to be false, and what is false cannot be rightly justified, or so I think.
Quoting Luke
From every inertial under-lightspeed reference-frame. That’s because when the spacetime-interval between two events is space-like in one inertial under-lightspeed reference-frame, it’s space-like in all inertial under-lightspeed reference-frames.
Quoting Luke
Actually, Alice is the first one, but the fact that someone could have found it before her means that the thing (the Idea itself) which underlies the sameness of Alice’s idea and Bob’s idea must have been able to jump in and therefore to exist before Alice’s time.
But now consider an infinitely old and big world (which our world may well be; think eternal inflation for example). In such a world, it’s almost certain that for every idea EID and anyone who finds, there is someone who found it before him (again gender-neutral). Therefore, nobody could have invented EID, because there is always someone who came up with it earlier. Yet EID still exists. Hence, it can’t have been invented. Since whether or not ideas are invented is an essential feature of ideahood and thus can’t depend on the features of our concrete universe, it follows that ideas can’t be invented.
Quoting Luke
Yes, they both discovered calculus independently of each other, each thereby creating his own mental manifestation thereof.
Quoting Luke
Could you be more precise?
Quoting Luke
Actually, according to my understanding, abstractness is the property of being not-physical, not-mindly, not-timely, not-spatial, and simple. However, it’s not just according to my understanding that abstract things aren’t mindly (see e.g. the SEP-entry on abstract objects and in particular the definition given in the second paragraph of its third section).
Quoting Luke
Actually, the soul is an abstract entity, and the free soul is really the most aware, conscious, and thoughtful thing there is regarding abstract objects. Indeed, when it becomes embodied and thus forms a living being such as a plant or an animal (such as a human), it’s mindly abilities usually become weakened. How much depends on the computational power of the body which it lives with. Yet what it gains is knowledge of concrete and temporal objects and the ability to interfere in the temporal realm (and indeed the ability to interfere at all, for in the abstract world, nothing can be changed). A big part of this is the ability to make concrete instances of abstract things. However, all this is a matter rather different from the topic of this thread.
By “this universe”, I mean the spacetime-continuum which we live in, along with all the physical things inside it.
Quoting Janus
There’s a subtle point here. There isn’t actually any individual called “Harry Potter”. Rather, “Harry Potter” is a variable used to give a linguistic representation of Harrihood, just like “n” is a variable used to give a linguistic representation of primeness in the following:
Primeness is the property of being a positive whole number n such that for every positive whole number m, n can be divided by m if and only if m = 1 or m = n.
When you ask about the identity of the fictional Harry Potter, it’s like asking about the identity of n. The mistake lies in using “Harry Potter” or “n” as if they were proper names when they are in fact variables.
The same goes for names of real people other than myself. I can directly “see” only my own self with my “mind’s eye”, and therefore, I use “Tristan” as a proper name to refer to that self. However, not being a telepath, I can’t see your self, so I use the name “Janus” as a variable in defining the property Janushood:
Janushood is the property of being a person Janus such that Janus is a philosopher and Janus is active on the forum The Philosophy Forum and Janus is talking with Tristan about whether ideas are invented or discovered and ... .
Indeed, I can’t use Janus as a proper name. For all that I know, you might be several people sharing a single forum account, or you may be an extraterrestrial scientist studying human behavior, or you might even be a bot who just behaves in a way which suggests awareness; but the only thing which I can be sure to have awareness is that self which I call “Tristan”. Needless to say, if you are an aware being, then my awareness is equally unprovable for you.
I hypothesize that Janushood is instantiated by exactly one thing in this world. Under this hypothesis, when I say “Janus is/does so and so”, I mean the proposition that for all things x, if x has Janushood in this world, then x is/does so and so in this world.
Quoting Janus
I think that there is no such thing as a fictional entity. Rather, the illusion of a fictional entity arises when a variable is treated as if it were a proper name. The same goes for proper names of other concrete things. In both cases, a variable used to specify a property is treated like a proper noun. The only difference is that in the case of fictional entities, the (real) property in question (such as Harrihood) is believed not to be instantiated in our world, whereas in the case of “real” things, the (equally real) property in question (such as Janushood, or from your POV Tristanhood*) is believed to be instantiated in our world.
*Remark: You use the word “Tristanhood” differently from me. You use it to mean a property which involves The Philosophy Forum, but I use it to mean the thisness of myself.
They currently exist only as possibilities. Possibilities are not ideas, as you agree.
Quoting Tristan L
How does the "understander" know whether a string is meaningless or meaningful? Given that not all ideas have yet been "discovered" (right?), then wouldn't the "understander" require perfect knowledge or omniscience to be able to distinguish the meaningful from the meaningless? A symbol-string that seems meaningless to us now might be meaningful to someone 1000 years from now. Given your definition of an understander as "the person or group of people who reads/read every finite-length string put out by the string-outputter", how is it (humanly) possible that any understander will rightly distinguish the meaningful from the meaningless? Also, it is self-evident that the meanings of words and symbols change over time.
Quoting Tristan L
You mean to tell me that your algorithm produces only representations of ideas, rather than the ideas themselves? How can we be sure that we have ever interpreted the symbol-strings correctly? But maybe that's the point. Given every possible combination of symbols, you can read whatever meaning you want into it.
Quoting Tristan L
The set of natural numbers is infinite, and I assume that a particular symbol can appear in a sequence more than once. Doesn't that imply there will be at least some symbol-sequences of infinite length, requiring an infinite time to output? Also, why assume that all ideas can be expressed as finite symbol-sequences?
Quoting Tristan L
The events can be judged to be neither simultaneous nor non-simultaneous in all (
If I didn't know the idea of squareness, when looking at shapes in the world, I could discover a particular shape having four equal straight sides and four right angles and have the idea that in the world there are shapes having four equal straight sides and four right angles, which for convenience I could name squareness. Ideas are external to the shape, as there is no information within the shape that can establish the shape has a single identity. As the idea of squareness has come after the discovery of the shape, it cannot be the idea that was discovered.
True, the words invention and discovery have different meanings whether we are assuming a deterministic or non-deterministic world. Even in a deterministic world, it still makes sense to say that the billiard ball has discovered the corner pocket. It is likely that someone who assumes determinism when using the words invention and discovery means something different by them to someone who believes in non-determinism.
However, I could have an idea and invent a definition to express my idea - for example - I could define X as a square with red inside - as long as I told someone else my definition of X - they would find the same Xness in the world as I do
What I meant was that in this context each of the points {A, B, C, D} in the unit square [0,1]X[0,1] corresponds in a one-to-one manner with a point in [0,1], and we've seen that these points cannot be counted or determined by an algorithmic output. That's all.
I don't see this as a workable analogy.
What is "Harrihood"; that is, how could you explain it without reference to Harry Potter and all the events in his fictional life (actually should be 'Harry Potterhood')? Whereas primeness is explicable without any reference to "n".
So, I continue to think that 'Harry Potter' is not a variable, but a proper name for the fictional character presented in the books by J.K. Rowling.
Discovery suggests the absence of creativity, and this is incoherent as something must cause another thing to exist. Something must be created before it can be discovered.
A discovery cannot be made without consciousness – by something that is not conscious, and consciousness is a creative process absolutely! Like the tree in the forest, things do not exist until we become conscious of them, and in the process of becoming conscious of them, we subject them to a creative process - we create them in a certain light – consistent with our consciousness.
Thus things cannot be discovered until they are subjected to a consciousness process, and when they are subjected to such a process they are created in a certain light.
Art as well as all matter is created.
In the early universe information entangled energy to create matter. Subsequent to this event, infinite possibility no longer existed, and the causal chain follows from here, at every juncture choices are made and the breadth of possibility is reduced, until we are where we are today.
For art to be produced matter has to be entangled by a consciousness. – we have no experience of art that does not follow this rule. It is a process and choices are made along the way, thus reducing the subsequent possibilities until finally no more possibilities exist, other then the actuality that is the work.
EDIT:
A possibility is something that may exist, but before it can exist it has to be created. So it is not until something is created that you can definitely say it existed as a possibility.
So, it seems, not that everything is determined, but that everything becomes determined through our actions - through creativity.
But the possibilities themselves are actual; it’s actually true now and has always been actually true that the ideas can someday be discovered. Moreover, in the case of my algorithm, the possibilities are actually certainties; it is certain now that the ideas will someday be discovered. But the always actual possibilities are defined in terms of their belonging ideas, which are therefore essentially bound to their actual possibilities. Hence, the ideas must always be actual as well, and in particular, they must be actual now.
Quoting Luke
The understander has perfect knowledge of the syntax and semantics of Modern English. He knows what individual English words mean, he knows how English words can be put together, and he knows how the meaning of the resulting composite term is defined in terms of the meanings of the individual English terms.
Quoting Luke
Yes.
Quoting Luke
No, just as you don’t need to be all-knowing in order to read and understand new books. If you can judge whether the Harry Potter books written by J. K. Rowling are meaningful or not, you can also judge whether the Harry Potter books output by my algorithm are meaningful or not. Indeed, if all-knowledge were needed to understand texts, then that would all the more need the pre-existence of all ideas.
Quoting Luke
These practical issues are beside the point. There is an infinite set of ideas expressible in Modern English (that is, the English speech spoken in 2020 CE, including its syntax and semantics), yet by far not all of them have been discovered, and new ones are being found all the time. For example, the idea of Harry Potter discovered by Rowling is described in Modern English. According to you, Rowling invented the idea of Harry Potter, but my algorithm will also spit out the Harry Potter books, and the understander will understand their meaning and thus find the idea of Harry Potter just as you can find it by reading Rowling’s books. (As a side note: You can’t be sure that Rowling knows anything about the idea of Harry Potter at all, for she might be an awarenessless automaton that just behaves in a way suggesting consciousness. What matters to you is only your own awareness and your ability to map texts to ideas.) If I give you copies of Harry Potter’s books, could you tell whether they were written by Rowling or by my program?
To remove the practical issues which make unneeded diversions, let’s regard a fixed formal speech and a creative process associated with it: a programming language and programming. According to you, a programmer who writes a new PASCAL-program invents that program itself, right? For example, you consider me as the inventor of the program AllEndlyStrings itself, am I right? Yet AllEndlyStrings will output each possible source-code of a PASCAL-program after a finite time, including the source code of AllEndlyStrings itself, but also all PASCAL-source-codes that will ever be written. And the Pascal Compiler can compile every one of those texts so long as it obeys the PASCAL-syntax. For that, the compiler doesn’t have to know all possible source-codes. Moreover, since PASCAL is Turing-complete, my program AllEndlyStrings, together with the Pascal Compiler, will deterministically write every Turing-machine / every program that could ever be written.
Why, then, have I included a copyright notice in my program AllEndlyStrings? Because that particular instance of the program has indeed been invented by me, not merely discovered. So I can’t hinder you from writing the same source-code as I per se, but I can hinder you from writing the same or a similar source-code based on my instance of it, for example from simply copying it. Of course, if you would write the same source-code, it would be overwhelmingly unlikely that you didn’t copy from me, so in that case, for all practical purposes, I could be pretty certain that you would have copied from me.
Quoting Luke
Of course; since I’m arguing for the fore-existence of ideas all the time, how could I claim that my algorithm creates the ideas? What my algorithm does is get the understander to “see” ideas without the need for any creativity.
Quoting Luke
In the same way that the Pascal Compiler can decide whether a text obeys the syntax of PASCAL and in that case compile it, without having to know every thinkable source-code, and in the same way that you can do calculations with any natural number without having to know each natural number individually. Also see above.
Quoting Luke
No, certainly not. Also see above.
Quoting Luke
Yes, that’s right.
Quoting Luke
Yes, that’s true. However, my program only outputs symbol-strings of finite length. It could be extended to output all symbol-strings of infinite length, but for that, it would also need infinite time. (For example, to output all strings of finite or countably infinite length, each of which is indexed by a countable ordinal, it would need an uncountable ordinal number of seconds.)
Quoting Luke
Firstly, I don’t do that, but if the algorithm argument (which isn’t as far-reaching as my other two arguments) shows that all finitely expressible ideas must fore-exist, then why should things stand otherwise with other ideas?
There are certainly not-finitely-expressible-ideas since there are uncountably many abstract things (e.g. real numbers), and there are also totally unsayable ideas, I think, but
1. why should they be any different in terms of fore-existence than finitely expressible ideas (bear in mind that each of the uncountably many reals also pre-exists)?
and
2. of what everyday practical importance are they (by “everyday practical”, I also mean actual “real-world” science, art, and philosophy)?
Secondly, could you please give me one example from our world (the “real world”) where an idea is expressible, but not finitely expressible?
I’d love to read the infinitely long tale about Alice and Bob and the Mystery of Infinity by Charlie Endless. Should I buy it from Amazon or from Google Books?
Quoting Luke
Would you say that the very first star to “forge” a magnesium atom in its heart invented magnesium?
Let’s say that you have two electrons which were created independently by different processes. On what ground can you say that they’re both the same kind of particle (indeed, even if you swapped them, you wouldn’t have changed anything, not even in principle)? On the ground that they’re both excitations of one and the same quantum field, namely the electron field. This field has been existing since long before the two electrons were created.
I have already given compelling arguments showing that the observer cannot create that idea. The square was a square (and many other things, too) before the observer saw it, so it must have been sharing in the idea of squareness (th.i. (that is) the Shape / Form / Idea of Squareness) before the obsever saw it. Hence, squareness itself must also have existed before the observer saw the shape. The observer has no might at all over squareness, so he (gender-netrally used) can’t have created it.
Quoting RussellA
Okay, so you’ve gotten a glimpse of the idea of squareness and given it the the name “squareness”. That’s all.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, the Shape of Squareness is external to, separate from, and independent of a particular square (be it an abstract square or an even more particular physical instance of that square). It’s also true that each particular has many properties, so it doesn’t contain enough info to define those properties. However, I never claimed that your discovery of a particular square is the same as your discovery of the Shape of Squareness itself. Rather, your discovery of a particular square can start an undeterministic chain of events which leads to your discovering of squareness itself, creating a mental image of that Shape (uppercase!) in the process. For that to be possible, though, you must have at least some basic, subconscious, intuitive awareness of squareness itself.
Quoting RussellA
Actually, it is your conscious awareness of squareness that comes after your discovery of the particular shape. However, that neither means that the idea itself comes after your discovery, nor indeed that you didn’t have under-counscious knowledge of squareness itself before.
Quoting RussellA
Why? Because they “see” the same abstract Shape (Form, Idea) X as you do.
“Harry Potter has property E.”
is short for
“For all x, if x has Harrihood, then x has property E.”
It isn’t much different for names of “real-world” people. For example, “(Albert Einstein)hood” is the name we give to
the property of being a male human Albert Einstein such that Albert Einstein was born in Ulm and Albert Einstein has such and such genes and ... .
(I’m not sure that this is the right definition, but this is just an example.)
The sentence
“Albert Einstein discovered relativity theory.”
is short for
“For every x, if x has (Albert Einstein)hood in our world, then x discovered relativity theory is our world.”
Quoting Janus
True, though “(Harry Potter)hood” is even better. Then again, there are “real-world” people called “Harry Potter”, so even “(Harry Potter)hood” is ambigious in that sense. Likewise, “Janushood” not only means the property of being you, but also the property of being the Roman god of beginnings. That’s why we can stick with “Harrihood” rather than the other, cumbersomer terms.
Have you discussed this in another thread? If not, perhaps you could begin one on the subject.
The notion that all ideas have always existed as actual possibilities is illogical. Ideas can only exist relative to a consciousness. A consciousness has to create the ideas, otherwise what is the substrate that they exist on?
That's all true it seems, but "Harrihood" would seem to be an even broader term that "Harrypotterhood", given that there are many more Harrys than there are Harry Potters.
This is true if we accept that the world is deterministic.
And I do think that the world is deterministic. Yet I believe without self-contradiction in man's creativity.
Man has limited brain power. To harness the huge amount of original ideas that had been made possible by the arrangement of the universe, is impossible for man, because man's brainwork capacity is not large enough to create or imagine all ideas. If it was large enough, yes, there would be no creativity. But that is not the case. Therefore creativity exists.
-------------
In other words: the model of creative thought is not that of picking off ideas from a presented full set of possible original ideas. Instead, the creative thought combines available elements and manipulates them into hitherto non-existing new thought. The combining and manipulating is what creativity comprises.
===============
To use your nature photography metaphor:
Yes, man can take infinite photos of nature, given infinite time and resources to make photos.
But he has neither infinite time, nor infinite resources.
So he is restricted to a finite set of photographs.
After taking some photographs, man IS capable of creating scenes on canvas that had never appeared to him in reality. He combines visual elements, he manipulates them, and bang, there is a photograph-like creation that most likely has a real equivalent, I mean, an equivalent in reality, but that the photographer can't access in his life time, yet he can create it without accessing it.
Nope, I just claim that creativity doesn't lie in non-determinism, for reasons that hinge on there not being a clear division between invention and discovery.
That lack of division means that the same problems that make the most obvious deterministic approach seem uncreative also make a random (non-deterministic) approach seem uncreative.
Because creativity is not in the (non)determinism of the process, but in specific features of the process. Which must be adequately determined to have identifiable features at all, but it doesn't have to be wholly determined, and being wholly undetermined doesn't help anything.
I kinda feel like nobody read past the first paragraph of the OP. That's all groundwork. The important part is the end:
Quoting Pfhorrest
Well, if that's a true description of your claim, which I believe it is, and I shall treat it as such (and therefore please don't alter it in this thread), then I have a better answer for you.
What you claim as muddled distinction between invention and discovery is muddled because you do not differentiate between the two point of views: a human inventor, and an all-knowing discoverer.
I agree with you that all inventions can be formulated as ideas, and all ideas have existed in this universe. Therefore there are no original ideas.
But a human being simply does not have access to this warehouse of information. We do not mine the warehouse to discover useful ideas.
Instead, we, humans, gather, analyze, manipulate information (data) to come up with ideas that had been not known to man before. This is an invention.
A discovery is simpler: you see something or sense something in some way, which you haven't before, and you add it to your information base.
[i]An invention by man is an invention from MAN'S POINT OF VIEW, and it is such due to the process HOW IT IS DEVELOPED.
An invention from the point of view of a hypothetical all-knowing being (whether it exists or not) is a discovery. The all-knowing being does not have to develop an idea, only has to find it in the warehouse of knowledge.[/i]
This does not deal with the topic of whether creativty is discovery or not. This is a different topic, namely,how the creative process works.
I am not sure if you've realized that the true reason your second part is not answered by anyone, is because it is not an integral part of your firstly presented lemma. In this second part you try to point out how the creative process is a determined course of action. I have no argument against that, I agree with that, as I am a firm advocate of determinism and of the deterministic nature of the universe we liive in.
Quite the contrary: In order for someone to come up with an idea, it must actually always have been possible that someone could someday come up with the idea. The actually existing possibility of finding the idea must necessarily fore-exist any and every actual coming-up with the idea, for if it wasn’t possible to come up with the idea, how could anyone find it?
Hence, the claim that the actual possibility of finding the idea doesn’t come before actually finding the idea is really unlogical. Therefore, and since the possibility itself always actually exists and is essentially bound to the idea, the idea must always actually exist, too.
Please also see my other arguments in this thread.
Quoting Pop
That is an unwarranted assumption. In fact, it’s even false, as I have already shown in this thread at length. Can you back your claim up?
Quoting Pop
They don’t need any substrate at all; they just exist. On the contrary, each individual awareness/consciousness needs ideas, specifically the Shape (Idea, Form) of Awareness/Consciousness, in which it has to share in order to be an awareness/consciousness in the first place.
The overarching question I start with in the OP is whether creativity requires nondeterminism. My answer is that it does not, but instead requires a certain kind of pattern of exploration or mapping of the abstract space of possibilities in relation to already known possibilities; a process that could be deterministically carried out, but by a different algorithm than just iterating through every possibility in order. (Or randomly picking them out in no order).
Giving that answer requires first establishing that abstract space of possibilities, which comes about from the dissolution of the distinction between invention and discovery. So I first mention that dissolution and the consequent concept of that abstract space of possibilities, so that I can then give my answer to what creativity actually is, if not mere indeterminism, in terms of that abstract space.
You seem to think ideas exist in the ether, and that they are not tied to a consciousness ground, and not subject to evolutionary principles.
You seem to be arguing that cave men could have flown to the moon?
Quoting Tristan L
Really? What substrate do your ideas exist on?
Quoting Tristan L
Human ideas exist on a substrate of human consciousness.They are shared via a collective consciousness know as culture. Human ideas and human consciousness evolved together - inextricably linked - ideas are an expression of human consciousness!
Today's consciousness is not applicable to cave men, so the ideas of today are not possibilities for them, they are impossibilities.
For an idea to exist it must exist somewhere - If "they just exist", where do they just exist?
Nothing just exists, everything exists relative to something.
More on how art and consciousness are linked can be found here
It seems what you are asking is what is creativity?
The short answer is that consciousness is creativity. The long answer is a theory of consciousness. :sad:
The interesting answer is that in art there exists an X factor. It is given as the difference in what one sets out to create ( the idea ), and what one actually creates. There is always a difference - sometimes for the better, and sometimes not. Sometimes it steers the work completely off course such that what is created is completely different to what one originally intended. To beat this sucker, sometimes artists have no original intention, but there is definitely an element of randomness that creeps in - entropy? The future being probabilistic? - who knows? The process of creating art, and I imagine in all creation, is one of trying to maintain order in the face of disorder - just like in biology, just like in consciousness. Creativity is a struggle - just like ordinary life. Who can predict that they will be here tomorrow? Who can predict that they will actualize an idea? Nobody. So the possibility has to be proven, through creation, before one can say that it truly existed.
This doesn't follow. Why is it certain that all existing things will be discovered?
Quoting Tristan L
I don't understand what "possibilities are defined in terms of their belonging ideas" means, or how it follows that "ideas must always be actual as well".
Quoting Tristan L
You previously defined an "understander" as "the person or group of people who reads/read every finite-length string put out by the string-outputter". Do you know of anyone who has such perfect knowledge? You seem to be talking about a theoretically ideal "person or group", not an actual "person or group".
Quoting Tristan L
Perhaps, but your algorithm could take thousands or millions of years to output many of the symbol-strings, by which time Modern English (2020) will most likely have evolved or died.
Quoting Tristan L
Yes, omniscience requires knowing every idea. The point is that nobody is omniscient, including any actual "understander".
Quoting Tristan L
You are arguing that all ideas pre-exist, are discoverable, and will be output by your algorithm. But you think that the practical issue of being able to discover them in the output of your algorithm is beside the point?
Quoting Tristan L
Your algorithm will supposedly spit out every possible combination of symbols. This is virtually irrelevant to the supposed pre-existence of ideas. Your algorithm doesn't just output representations of ideas; it outputs mostly junk. This is hardly an algorithmic way of discovering ideas. Your algorithm will also take infinitely long to output all possible combinations of symbols and it requires someone with perfect knowledge of Modern English to understand each and every idea. This is all fanciful.
Quoting Tristan L
Yes, because your program wouldn't be able to recreate those books in either of our lifetimes.
Quoting Tristan L
The algorithm wouldn't be able to write its own program if you hadn't first invented the algorithm.
Quoting Tristan L
Is there a program that has perfect knowledge of Modern English? Unlike the output of your algorithm, I don't have to disregard a whole bunch of meaningless junk when dealing with the natural numbers. I can simply find any number I want whenever I want.
Quoting Tristan L
At what point does your program stop outputting?
Quoting Tristan L
Your argument is that if your argument is true, then why shouldn't your argument be true? That's not much of an argument.
Quoting Tristan L
It is your claim that your algorithm will output every idea. If some ideas cannot be output by your algorithm, e.g., because they are "not-finitely-expressible" or because they are "totally unsayable", then your algorithm cannot output every idea and therefore your claim is false.
Quoting Tristan L
I don't need to; you've already conceded that "There are certainly not-finitely-expressible-ideas".
Creativity is simply the ability to discover previously undisocvered solutions to problems. How you're going to discover such solutions is completely irrelevant. In other words, you can use a deterministic process but you can also use a random process. It does not matter.
On the other hand, I do agree with you that most people discover such ideas by following a deterministic process. (Most are merely not aware that what happens under the hood is largely, if not entirely, deterministic.)
I disagree with the bolded.
I will repeat what @Luke said.
"Discovery" implies that the thing that is discovered existed before discovery whereas "invention" implies that the thing that is invented did not exist before.
If you are talking about the set of all possible ideas, these can't be invented, since they already exist; they can only be discovered.
But that's because we're talking about the set of all possible ideas. The set contains all ideas that are possible -- there is absolutely no room for new ideas. If we're talking about the set of all actual ideas, however, one can introduce new ideas to it so as long it does not contain all possible ideas. An actual idea, that one that either existed within someone's brain at some point in time or did not, can be invented, provided there was no brain within which it existed previously.
Yes, of course, just as numbers, functions, sets, properties, relationships, and all the other abstract things exist in the ‘above-heavenly world (hyperuranion)’ – which is just another way of saying that they don’t exist in space or time (but not outside them, either, for outsideness is a spatial notion) – and aren’t tied to awareness or evolution or anything conrete for that matter, be it physical, mindly, spatial, or temporal. However, instances of abstract entities of ideas, such as my thought about the fact that all ideas are timeless, are often: concrete, subject to change and evolution, and in need of a physical and/or mental substrate.
Quoting Pop
Not at all, for what does the one have to do with the other?
Quoting Pop
What you call “Tristan’s ideas” are actually mental instances of ideas, and these exist in my consciousness.
Quoting Pop
If you replace the word “ideas” with the phrase “instances of ideas”, I’ll agree with you.
Quoting Pop
Actually no, just as numbers don’t have to exist anywhere in order to exist. Indeed, what just exists (abstractly) has a purer shape of existence and is at least as real as what exists somewhere (and therefore concretely).
Quoting Pop
The question is wrong, in a similar in way in which the question “What color is the electron?” is wrong – they’re both based on false premises and thereby meaningless. I think that you think too concretely.
All the ideas that my algoritm may discover, it will discover.
Quoting Luke
Let EID be an arbitrary idea that someone has found. Since someone has found EID, it must always have been actually possible that someone could someday find EID. So the possibility Poss(EID) that someone might someday come up with EID must have always actually existed. But Poss(EID) is actually defined in terms of EID – it’s the possibility of finding EID after all –, and so, there is an actual, essential, fixed bond between EID and Poss(EID). Hence, EID must also have always actually existed.
Quoting Luke
Firstly, I never meant my algorithm to be used in practice, so scientists, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers don’t have to worry that they’ll be out of work soon. The existence of my algorithm and its ability in principle to find all ideas finitely expressible in the Modern English speech is what counts.
Secondly, even if the understander isn’t perfect, he’ll still deterministically find a great many ideas which you claim to be have to be made creatively. However, bear in mind that any real-life shortcoming of the understander is also a shortcoming of other traditional idea-finders, so there’s nothing that a creative person can do which my algorithm can’t do (although the algorithm needs a very long time). But yep, my understander is idealized nonetheless, though certainly not all-knowing or anything of the like at all.
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
The point is to show that any idea can in principle be found deterministically, so practical issues are indeed beside the point. But even so, my algorithm with the idealized understander will find every idea finitely expressible in Modern English, and even with an imperfect understander, it’ll find a great many ideas that are supposedly invented. Mind you also that any imperfection of the understander is also an imperfection of creative people and their recipients, so creative folks cannot find anything which my algorithm can’t find.
Your arguing against my point is like someone arguing against a determinist that there is no Laplace's demon in real life – he brings up a practical issue which is beside the point (not that I’m a determinist; I just used this as an illustration).
Moreover, I did away with all the practical issues by using the formal, Turing-complete programming speech PASCAL instead of Modern English, so what do you say to that?
Quoting Luke
What do you mean by “virtually irrelevant”?
My algorithm finds each possible finitely expressible idea after a finite time. It works without flaw. That it’s very inefficient because of all the junk is of no relevance, except if your goal is to make creative folks jobless rather that prove a point about the nature of ideas.
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
It won’t ever stop. Bear in mind that the there-is-quantifier ? doesn’t commute with the for-all-quantifier ?, so the proposition that there is a time at which the algorithm has output all finite strings is strictly stronger than the proposition that for each finite string, there is a time at which the algorithm will have output that string. As a matter of fact, the former is untrue while the latter is true. I’ve only ever claimed the latter.
Quoting Luke
Just like the Pascal Compiler doesn’t know every possible PASCAL-program, yet can still compile any and every source-code that obeys PASCAL-syntax as well as check it for syntax-compliance before that.
Quoting Luke
I’m not talking about that practical issue. I’m asking you whether there’s any inherent difference between Rowling’s HP books and my algorithm’s HP books.
Quoting Luke
But my program will also find any similar program that you write independently of you, and likewise, your hypothetical program will find my program.
Quoting Luke
So do you at least accept that all programs already exist?
Quoting Luke
What’s the problem with disregarding junk other than that it gobbles up a lot of time? The process of separating the wheat from the chaff is straightforward and well-defined. In the case of the compiler, there’s even no issue whatsoever.
Quoting Luke
Yep, you do, for though I’m quite certain that there are such ideas, that doesn’t mean that any of them have been discovered. In fact, although I think that some unsayable ideas have been discovered (which by definition only the respective discoverer and hypothetical thoughtcasters can know about), I believe that no only infinitely expressible ideas have ever been discovered. Anyways, they’re not of much practical weight, and they’re likely not what you had in mind when talking about ideas. The Mona Lisa, the toaster, the Van-de-Graaf hight-voltage generator, and all other ideas in science, technology, art, mathematics, and philosophy are finitely expressible anyhow.
Quoting Luke
No, that is untrue. This argument of mine runs thus: The algorithm-argument shows that all finitely expressible ideas must fore-exist. This includes all practially relevant ideas. Hence, why shouldn’t the same be true for only infinitely expressible ideas and unsayable ones (which aren’t of much scientific, mathematical, artistic, literary, or technological interest anyhow)?
Quoting Luke
It is in fact your claim about mine which is false. I never claimed that my algorithm can output all ideas. Rather, I have claimed that all finitiely ideas will come out of my algorithm. If you focus only on the other ideas, of which you can, by definition, not give me an example, that would already be a great retreat on your part.
:cool:
Is this right? What if what is actually possible ( as distinguished form what is merely logically possible) changes in subtle ways that we have no way of knowing about? I mean if the world is not deterministic, then this could be, no?
— Pop
What you call “Tristan’s ideas” are actually mental instances of ideas, and these exist in my consciousness.— Tristan L
Exactly.Tristan's mental instances of ideas are grounded in Tristan's consciousness, and nowhere else.If they were not they could not exist. Where did they exist before there was Tristan, or 10,000 years ago? - Nowhere!
Only nothing can exist on its own. Everything else exists relative to something - including ideas.
So your assertion for ideas :"They don’t need any substrate at all; they just exist." is incorrect, as they cannot exist on their own - only nothing can exist on its own!
Numbers and abstract concepts exist relative to human consciousness.They are expressions of human consciousness. They are inextricably linked, and evolve together. Before there were people they did not exist!
When Human consciousness was little different to primate consciousness, they did not exist - there was no substrate for them to exist on!
...or invent EID.
Quoting Tristan L
The possibility of coming up with the idea might have always existed. But that does not mean that the idea has always existed; someone needs to come up with it first. The possibility of coming up with the idea is not equivalent to actually coming up with the idea. Your attempted collapse of the distinction between possible and actual here is fatalistic.
Quoting Tristan L
You may recall I initially asked what algorithm exists that can help us to discover every idea that supposedly pre-exists. I find it questionable whether your algorithm actually helps us to discover any pre-existing ideas - particularly those which have not yet been discovered. Your algorithm produces only every possible combination of "the printable ASCII-characters". In our talk of ideas, I presume we are talking about useful ideas or ideas of some sort of value or interest to humanity. This is why I question your "understander" and their ability to detect ideas amidst junk strings of symbols, particularly ideas that nobody has previously known.
Perhaps your algorithm might eventually output a representation of every idea that humankind will ever come up with (together with 99.99% junk), but I doubt that it would actually help in finding any of them. This is not to say that those ideas all exist now, either, since I am speaking hypothetically from a perspective at the end of humankind's existence. Anyhow and ultimately, I don't see that this helps to resolve the question of whether ideas are invented or discovered.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
Or ideas generally, not necessarily solutions to problems, I think. Yes, that’s true.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
Actually, I think that it does matter. If the discovery-process is deterministic, the concrete instance of the solution exists from the start, although it only becomes “seeable” at the time that it manifests in a direct shape. Therefore, this is only creation in the broad sense, not in the strict sense. For example, the concrete software solutions that my algorithm will find already exist now, although not in a recognizable shape, so they can’t yet be used right now. They only become usable once the algorithm actually finds them, and that is the moment at which they are created (in the not-strict way). By contrast, if the concrete instance of the solution is found by a not-deterministic process, that instance is created in the strict sense. For instance, if I replace my deterministic program with a monkey banging on a keyboard (with the understander, including compiler, staying in place, of course), then the software solutions are created at about the time that the monkey writes them, and they’re created in the strict sense.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
Yes, I also think that.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
That is also what I think if what you call “possible idea” is what I call “idea” and what you call “actual idea” is what I call “concrete mental instance of an idea”. In any case, though, I think (though I’m not sure) that your position is not too far from mine.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
I agree with you if you mean the following: A mental instance of an idea in Alice’s mind has been invented by Alice, unless it was first invented by Bob’s mind, in which case Alice’s mind only discovers that instance of the idea.
However, I’d like to add that two minds can create different mental instances of one and the same idea. This is what we call “independently coming up with the same idea”.
The mental instances were indeed nowhere and didn’t even exist at all, but the ideas of which they are instances have always existed.
Quoting Pop
You have still not given any justification of this assumption. Moreover, while I also think that everything, including ideas and the other abstract objects, needs something to explain its existence, that something isn’t any individual mind, but likely the all-encompassing godly Hyge (Nous, Mind) and ultimately Oneness, the or-principle (first principle) which gives each abstract entity its wist (essence).
Quoting Pop
That claim is showably false. Let’s look at three Triassic cynodonts who want to equally share two burrows between them so that each cynodont has the same number of cynodonts living together with it. It won’t work, for the number 3 is eternally undividable by the number 2. This shows that numbers and facts about them have always existed. Likewise, seven before-human primates wouln’t have been able to equally share 15 fruits, for 15 isn’t divisible by 7 – then as now.
The same goes for abstract concepts: the possibility of finding ... but I’m repeating myself:
Quoting Tristan L
Why is something possible if it may be possible? Well, if something may be possible, then there is a chance that it will be possible, in which case there is a chance that it will happen.
So, what I say still stands: What is actually possible now has always been actually possible. For instance, it is actually possible (and even actual) in the year 2020 CE that Janus and Tristan discuss the nature of ideas in the year 2020 CE, and it has always been actually possible, e.g. in the year 2009 CE, that Janus and Tristan would discuss the nature of ideas in the year 2020 CE.
... and has therefore always existed, for what may be possible is possible. See my answer to @Janus.
Quoting Luke
You seem to still not understand what I’m saying and therefore ascribe claims to me which are not mine, hindering you from actually talking about my true points. It’s the other way round to what you claim it to be, for it is I who very clearly distinguishes between abstract ideas and their concrete instances, while you seem to still fail to make that crucial distinction.
The idea EID itself is essentially linked to the possibility Poss(EID) of finding that idea. However, a particular mental instance eid(Alice) of the idea has to be invented, created. So far, so good? But since Poss(EID) has always actually existed, so has EID (not eid(Alice) mind you).
Also, you’re just repeating your not-backed-up claim that “someone needs to come up with it [the idea] first”.
Quoting Luke
All of which are finitely expressible (save for ones restricted to e.g. private gasty (spiritual) experiences).
Quoting Luke
I trust that you can distinguish junk from the Harry Potter books without any knowledge about HP before, right? Well, the understander does the same thing.
Quoting Luke
You seem to contradict yourself. On the one hand, you rightly say that my algorithm will in the end find every idea that humans will ever express, but on the other hand, you (falsely) claim that it supposedly won’t help finding them. Which one do you choose?
Quoting Luke
Since it is already fixed and fore-determined now that the algorithm will find the ideas, they must exist now.
In your previous post you indicated that "Poss(EID)" refers to the possibility of coming up with the idea. Now you are indicating that "Poss(EID)" refers to the possibility of finding the idea. I don't know why you even talk of possibilities since it your position that all ideas already exist. Why beat around the bush with talk of the possibilities of finding or coming up with ideas?
Quoting Tristan L
No, not necessarily, and I'm sure I could think up better examples, such as a 12th century person being unable to recognise the idea of a computer algorithm, etc. Your understander wouldn't be able to recognise other futuristic ideas by analogy.
Quoting Tristan L
I didn't say your algorithm would find them; I said it might eventually output a representation of every idea. What I meant was, even if we assume that your algorithm does output every idea (by brute force), it still doesn't help us to find those ideas. It would probably be easier for someone to invent the idea themself than to wade through the mountainous pile of junk produced by your algorithm, and this is even assuming that your algorithm has - at the relevant time - output the idea that might have otherwise been invented, since your algorithm could take an infinite amount of time to produce all the ideas.
Quoting Tristan L
That's my point: it doesn't find ideas. It just endelssly spits out combinations of symbols, which is irrelevant to the question of whether ideas are invented or discovered.
To come back to this, one could equally say that if inventing an idea is possible, then the idea must not fore-exist. It should be obvious that this doesn't prove anything about whether ideas are invented or discovered.
If the discovery-process is deterministic, the discovered solution will necessarily be a solution that existed in a number of spaces long before it was discovered. Two of those spaces are:
1) the space of all possible solutions to all possible problems that can be discovered by following an existing algorithm (this is the space you're referring to)
2) the space of all possible solutions to all possible problems (this is where even solutions that were discovered through a random process existed long before they were discovered)
However, the discovered solution does not necessarily exist in the space of all possible solutions to all possible problems hitherto actualized (by humans, other living beings or machines.) And it is this space that ultimately matters.
One can very easily write a computer program that outputs every possible 32-bit 1920x1080 bitmap. The moment someone does so is the moment the first space (the one you're referring to) becomes filled with EVERY possible painting. If creativity is measured in relation to that set, that would make every subsequent painter an uncreative painter (even if they came up with a painting that depicts something of value that wasn't previously visually depicted.)
I'd say so.
There is the set of everything someone can think of (possible ideas) and the set of everything people thought of (actual ideas.)
I wouldn't say that Alice discovered it. I would say she reinvented it.
How do you define "the end"? :chin:
You’re right, of course. I must’ve gotten something mixed up. I wanted to say that if Alice finds the idea based on Bob’s coming-up, then she only discovers the mental instance created by Bob (as well as the idea itself, which is always only discovered). But if she finds the idea independently of Bob, she “reinvents” it, that is, she invents another mental instance of it, thereby rediscovering the idea itself.
I don't think even a nominalist would say that anyone invented the square root of 2, or irrational numbers generally, in a way that is distinguishable from discovery; even a nominalist would say that we discovered that whatever number it is that measures the diagonal of a 1x1 square, that number is not expressible as a ratio of any two natural numbers. Nobody made that up; it was figured out, and it was always the case long before anybody figured it out. Even if there aren't reified abstract objects beyond space and time that are "the irrational numbers" to make that the case.
Similarly, there is some natural number that is so large that nobody has counted up to it yet, but that doesn't mean that that number "doesn't exist" yet, in whatever sense numbers can be said to "exist" at all.
Likewise with all ideas, on my account. Just because nobody has thought them up yet, doesn't mean they don't "exist", in whatever sense at all it could be said that any ideas "exist" in the first place. My account is neutral toward what that kind of "existence" is; my only claim (on this matter) is that someone thinking of an idea doesn't change the status of its existence.
If it is possible to invent an idea, then it is impossible to invent an idea? Hmm.
Quoting Tristan L
It does not follow. That is your assumption. What does "essentially linked" mean?
There is a vast difference in what can exist in mind and what can exist in the real world.
Basic relational theory states that something can exist only in relation to something else.
Thanks for the chat, and good luck.
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Tristan L
This raises the question of how we know that there is an external world.
Three theories are Idealism, Indirect Realism and Realism.
As for Idealism, as there is no external world, we can only discover ideas in our minds, ie, invent them.
As for Indirect Realism, as what we perceive is only a representation of what is in the world, this means that we discover ideas in our representation of the external world and not in the external world, ie, invent them.
As for Direct Realism, where we have a direct awareness of the external world and objects in the external world have the properties that they appear to us to have, there remains the problem as to how we can ever know whether we are experiencing an illusion or not.
In summary, the idea of squareness being discoverable in the external world is up against Idealism, Indirect Realism and the problem of illusion in Direct Realism.
I mean to use the words “come up” and “find” in a neutral way, that is, as over-terms for “invent” and “discover”. Note that in German, the word “erfinden” means to invent, so “find” doesn’t imply discovery. By the way, it’s interesting to note that the German word hints at the right intuition that invention of instances of ideas involves the discovery (finding in the strict sense) of ideas themselves.
Quoting Luke
I don’t quite understand; you could understand the Harry Potter books on their own, but not when you read a book of junk before or after them?
Quoting Luke
Actually, the twelfth century person would be able to recognize the idea of a computer algorithm, for among the texts that my program outputs, there is a detailed account of all technological development from the twelfth yearhundred till 2020, so the middle-ager only needs to read through that account. My program will also output a text telling in perfect detail all conversations that ever happened from the dawn of Man to the fifteenth yearthousand and beyond, including, for example, all talk that happened in Plato’s Academy about his unwritten Doctrine of Principles, all conversations between computer pioneers and scientists and their before-comers, and all conversations that lead up to futuristic ideas.
Quoting Luke
What’s the difference? To find an idea is to get/make a representation of it, except in the case of the seldom achievement of hygely (noetic) knowledge of the Shapes, which also doesn’t involve any invention whatsoever (indeed, it’s as least inventional as possible afaik).
Quoting Luke
My algorithm is not there to be put into actual practice anymore than quantum field theory is meant to be used to predict car accidents. It’s existence and principle abilities, rather than its practical usefulness, are what count.
Quoting Luke
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Luke
No, for since the understander is part of the whole algorithm (as opposed to just its string-finding part), it does actually find ideas.
Why do you first say that it supposedly doesn’t follow, but then ask what it even means? How can you judge a my statement without knowing what it even means?
That Poss(EID) and EID are essentially linked means that the wist (essence) of one involves the other, in this case the wist of Poss(EID). Poss(EID) is defined in terms of EID, so that (namely its wist) which makes Poss(EID) what it is has to do with EID. Hence, there’s a wistly link tying Poss(EID) to EID.
Did I say otherwise?
I still cannot make out coherent arguments in your posts, and you also don’t give justifications for your claims.
You’re welcome and good luck with that kind of philosophizing.
You raise good points about whether the external world exists, but why do you say “we”? Just as I don’t know whether the external world exists independently of me or is just invented by my mind, I also don’t know whether your mind exists independently of me or is just my mind’s invention.
Thinking about the quote on abstract entities, how can abstract entities exist but neither in the mind nor the world external to the mind ?
Because, if there was absolute nothingness, neither mind nor world external to the mind, there would be nothing for an abstract entity to be expressed in, and in absolute nothing nothing can exist.
Therefore, abstract entities need their existence to either the mind, the world external to the mind, or both,
Unless, however, there is a god that exists outside of both the mind and the world external to the mind, and it is in the mind of god that abstract entities exist.
I agree , I should have written "I". But it was more of a "royal we", as, at the back of my mind, I suppose that I believe that the external world exists, although I can never prove it, in which case I sense that my uncertainty about the existence of the external world is also shared by another person's uncertainty about the existence of the external world.
Well, that’s the definition of abstractness, see e.g. the third section of the SEP's entry on abstract things
Quoting RussellA
That assumes that everything must be either in the mind or the external world.
Quoting RussellA
Here, you assume that abstract objects must be expressed in something. However, that isn’t the case as far as I can tell. For example, if all yellow objects are destroyed and all thoughts about yellowness are no more, the Shape of Yellowness would still exist. In fact, it must exist even in that case, for then, the (hypothetical) very fact that there are no yellow things and no thoughts about yellowness needs yellowness itself to even make sense.
Quoting RussellA
That is likely the godly Hyge (Nous), the first emanation of Oneness.
While the abstract things don’t need any mind (except perhaps for the godly Hyge), every mind needs abstract things. Why? Well, to be a mind is to instantiate the Shape of Mindhood, and the latter is an abstract entity.
Likewise, everything physical needs the Shape of Physicalness.
Quoting RussellA
That’s also what I think, except that it is your (RussellA’s) mind’s existence of which I’m unsure, not that of mine (Tristan’s) :wink:.
The SEP article "Abstract Objects" notes that there need not be one single "correct" way of explaining the abstract/concrete distinction.
A version of Frege's account is what Stanford calls the Way of Negation, where an object is abstract if and only if it is both non-mental and non-physical.
An alternative to the Way of Negation is the Way of Abstraction, where an object is abstract if it is (or might be) the referent of an abstract idea, ie, an idea formed by an abstraction.
For example, the abstract idea of yellowness could be invented by considering several yellow objects and finding what feature they had in common
In summary, I know that I can invent abstract ideas such as yellowness in my mind by observing the physical world, but I know that I can never discover whether or not yellowness is a non-physical and non-mental abstract idea. Following Occam's Razor in choosing the simplest explanation, I can therefore ignore non-physical and non-mental abstract ideas, because even if they exist I don't need them.
When I say “abstract”, I mean not physical, not mindly, not spatial, not temporal, and onefold (simple).
Quoting RussellA
That doesn’t work, for no group of objects only share a single feature. For example, any group of yellow objects is also a group of things, of seeable things, and of colored things. How could you abstract yellowness instead of thinghood, seableness, or coloredness from the group?
Quoting RussellA
We’ve just seen that this can’t be done, and there are other reasons, see below and my earlier comments.
Quoting RussellA
Actually, you can even show that: Every physical yellow thing and every thought of yellowness is what it is in douth (virtue) of instantiating Yellowness itself. Hence, the latter must be abstract. Also, how can a property, such as yellowness, not be abstract? By the way, yellowness itself isn’t a yellow entity, I think, for abstract things don’t have color afaik.
Quoting RussellA
You can’t Occam’s Razor to things that must necessarily exist. For evey abstract idea EID, if EID did not exist, then at least that (supposed) very fact (that EID doesn’t exist) would exist. But that fact is defined in terms of EID and thus is wistlily (essentially) linked to it. Therefore, if EID didn’t exist, then that fact couldn’t exist either, leading to a contradiction. Hence, EID must exist after all.
Also, that there are no abstract ideas means that abstract ideahood has no instances, again leading to a contradiction if the not-existence of abstract ideas is assumed.
You do very much need abstract ideas. As we’ve just seen, if they exist, you need Abstract Ideahood itself, and if they don’t exist, you also need Abstract Ideahood itself. Moreover, you can be sure of the existence of your mind. But to be a mind is to instantiate the Shape of Mindhood. Without Mindhood itself, your mind wouldn’t be a mind – it would make no sense to regard it as a mind. You need mindhood even more if you assume the existence of other minds, for what is is that they all share which justifies us in calling them minds?
I think that I have convincingly shown now and before that abstract ideas must exist. That’s why I can be sure of their realness and existence; after all, I can prove that with logic. On the other hand, I cannot prove that a physical external world or minds other than my own exist. Because of that, I’m much surer that abstract ideas exist and are fully real than that the external physical world or other minds or even both exist.
Furthermore, you can directly “see” abstract entities with your "mind’s eye", unlike physical objects and others’ minds and thoughts.
Quoting Tristan L
I agree that an object may have several features. Given a set of objects each having several properties, I could define a particular object as being yellow, ie, having yellowness, if it emits a wavelength of between 570 and 590 nm, regardless of what other properties it had.
The observer abstracts what is beneficial to themselves and ignores what isn't. A bee abstracts the colours and scents in a flower indicative of nectar whilst ignoring the number of petals which isn't. The bee could have evolved to abstract the number of petals in a flower if it were of some benefit.Though a study by the University of Queensland has shown that bees can count up to a certain number in order to communicate between themselves using the "waggle dance", showing that animals can abstract when of some evolutionary advantage.
Yes, and that property simply exists, as do the other abtract things which it’s closely linked with, like wavelengthhood, lighthood, nanometrehood, 570, and 590.
Quoting RussellA
Exactly; the fact about what’s good for you contains additional info which isn’t contained in the group of objects which you abstract a concept (the mindly image of an abstract idea) from. The fact about what’s good for you is arguably more basic than the concept you abstract, for the latter is created based on the former. But the fact involves the idea of which the concept is an image, so the idea must be more fundamental that the creation of the concept as well.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, and the very existence of this fact depends on the existence of colorhood, smellhood, and numberhood, for it involves these things. How could it be the case that being able to abstract color and scent is beneficial to bees without colorhood and scenthood themselves?
Quoting RussellA
What I’ve said before also applies here. Furthermore, the bees deal with the same numbers as we do. The “bee-numbers” don’t obey any different laws to “human-numbers”, do they? If bees and humans had invented their numbers, they should be able to craft them as they wish, yet they obviously can’t do so. The reason is that both the human mind and the bee mind “see” the selfsame numbers, and in discovering them, each invents a mental image thereof.
And of course: Wonderful and amazing little creatures!
https://youtu.be/sfXn_ecH5Rw
As a songwriter, accident plays an enormous role, and as a musician jamming is the main means of creating opportunities for accidents. This is a semi-guided search of configuration space, where you stop when you find something aesthetically pleasing and hopefully original-sounding (parameters of the metric we're optimising). But sometimes a riff, baseline, melody, chord sequence or drum beat just seems to occur to me. My feeling is that this is a similar kind of search, just in a highly discontinuous way. Sometimes a new starting position is seeded well before it's explored.
The similarity between creativity and numerical optimisation is a subject I'm extremely interested in. Obviously I'm a tad late to join in, but I'm encouraged to see that others think similarly. I raised this on a writing forum once. It was a very unpopular opinion haha!
I think this requires much further justification to avoid your clear contradiction. Does Clavius' Law save you from all contradictions?
The matter seems fairly simple to me:
I doubt that anybody is arguing against the existence of possibilities (i.e. non-substantive, non-Platonist possibilties, as attempted to clarify earlier). I have certainly not been arguing against the mere possibility of invention. What I take issue with is the suggestion or assertion that all of those possibilities have (already) been actualised.
Unless your algorithm has completed producing every possible combination of characters, then those alleged invention ideas (possibilities) have not yet been actualised and do not yet have any substantive existence. Until your algorithm produces a new idea (and someone finds it), then that idea/invention remains only possible and not actual.
As a Platonist, you probably take the view that there is no distinction between possible and actual existence of those ideas. However, this precludes the possibility of human invention from the outset: If all ideas already exist (substantively), then nobody can actualise them.
Clavius' Law says that "if (not-P implies P) then P".
In this case P is it is impossible to invent an idea.
So:
If
(it is [s]not im[/s]possible to invent an idea implies it is impossible to invent an idea)
then
it is impossible to invent an idea
Does it? I don't think so. How is this implied?
Yes, I agree with you. So there are quite a few folks who think like that!
Quoting Kenosha Kid
This video is really great and very relevant. (I’ve already given it a like. Please also do so!) I’ve done the same thing for texts: Here, you can find the source-code of a PASCAL-program written by me, called “AllEndlyStrings”, which outputs each finite-length text written in the alphabet of 2 times 26-bookstaffs (upper- and lowercase), 10-digits, spaces, and the main punctuation marks, after a finite (endly) time. This includes, among so much more, Pherecydes’ lost work, the Iliad, Plato’s dialogues, the Eddas, Twelfth Night, the whole text and music score of Richard Wagner’s monumental The Ring of the Nibelung (including Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond and the well-known Ride of the Valkyries), a proof of the Feichtinger-Conjecture, and a text detailing all human dialogues that ever happened from the dawn of Man till today. Together with a person or group of people who understand(s) English, this program makes up a system which will find every finitely expressible idea after a finite time without any need for creativity. Btw., whether an how can I upload the belonging executable .exe file to this forum?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I’m also happy that others think that way.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Could you please tell me the forum and the discussion? I’d like to add my two cents there, including my program. I don’t get how it could be an unpopular opinion. I’ll give proofs that it is true, and hopefully, it’ll become more popular then. Even if it’s old, I wouldn’t mind that.
:up:
Unless your algorithm can discover ideas via actual practice, then it adds nothing to the argument that ideas are discovered rather than invented. In principle, your algorithm can discover whatever ideas are possible. Likewise, in principle, a person (i.e. an inventor of ideas) can invent whatever ideas are possible.
You appear to assume that any given idea is expressible in the ASCII characters that your algorithm produces. An inventor of ideas must likewise be able to express an (invented) idea using the same characters.
What your algorithm does is simply produce or actualise every possible combination of characters. Therefore - along with an enormous bunch of junk - your algorithm actualises all possibilities. More specifically, your algorithm produces all possible expressions. Since we are assuming that all ideas are expressible within the ASCII characters, and since your algorithm produces all possible expressions, then all ideas will find their expression somewhere in the output of your algorithm. Therefore, there is little difference between the output of your algorithm and all possibilities (i.e. whatever ideas are possible). Your algorithm actualises the expression of all possibilities (and much other junk) by outputting all possible expressions.
However, not every string of characters is an idea. Whether or not all possibilities are actualised (and putting aside the practical issues of doing so), what this overlooks is that ideas - in the sense we are discussing - have some usefulness or interest to humanity. The important part is finding the useful or interesting ideas within the range of possibilities. All of the possibilities already exist whether your algorithm actualises them or not, but the possibilities are not the ideas.
Any example of an idea that you will give is one that humanity has found to be useful or interesting. Deciding what counts as an interesting or useful idea is easily done for all past ideas which have already been found to be so. How does your algorithm decide which as-yet undiscovered or uninvented ideas will be useful and/or interesting for humanity? That is, how does your algorithm decide which expressions are ideas and which are not?
All possibilities exist whether ideas are discovered or invented. It begs the question to assume that the existence of all possibilities (or all possible expressions) implies the pre-existence of all ideas.
This is irrelevant. Every text -- and Tristan limited his purview to texts -- is a string of characters. That is, by searching the entire space of strings of characters, one searches the entire space of texts.
It's completely relevant; we're discussing ideas.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
What do you mean by "text"? Where did Tristan limit his purview to texts?
In a post you responded to, even quoted, but apparently didn't bother to read. I disagree btw with the notion that ideas pre-exist their discovery, but Tristan has defined his terms robustly. You can lead a horse to water...
In the context of creativity, which this must be, my issue is that this is a philosopher's idea of "idea" being conflated with a creative person's idea of "idea". You are free to define your terms as you see fit, of course, but when I "have an idea" in a creative context, it is not some abstract thing, nor is it the output of a creative act.
I think Pfhorrest's description of it as a configuration space is accurate. Your algorithm and that used in the link I posted above is a brute force, unguided trawl through this configuration space, where each dimension is an independently variable (if not uncorrelated) parameter of creative exploration. (In music, tempo could be one, key another, verse melody, verse first harmony, verse second harmony, etc.) There is no means of assessing the success of the search.
When I have an idea for a song, say, it will typically be a bassline, or melody, or an interesting harmony for a section of the song, or maybe the theme of a lyric. This does not pin down the song, but rather it significantly reduces the number and/or range of those parameters. I.e. instead of searching the entire configuration space, I am searching a highly constrained subspace.
But most importantly, an idea comes with its own rough measure of success. If I am to explore an idea, I will have some means of assessing whether the execution, after further refinement, fell short of, met, or exceeded whatever quality made the idea attractive. So an idea, in a creative sense, means to me a highly guided, highly constrained search through a configuration subspace.
Computer algorithms are very good at the searching, but they need to be told what success looks like, something entirely absent from the infinite monkeys approach, and something difficult to conceive a computer figuring out by itself. Generally I think ideas are results of prior searches and some exact solutions (a great song I heard) whose vicinity could be explored with some translation. (What does Stand By Me sound like in a minor key? for instance.)
My contradiction? Your contradiction! I have shown that your assumption that ideas can be invented lets its own negation follow and thereby beats itself. Pfhorrest has already explained Clavius’ Law to you. I honestly ask: Do you understand the basic logical structure of my arguments?
Quoting Luke
An assertion that no one but you has made, so by taking issue with it, you’re attacking a straw-man.
To repeat the gist of my argument pertaining to that again: The mere existence from the start of the possibility that Alice could find (remember that I use both “find” and “come up with” neutrally as over-terms for both “invent” and “discover”) an idea EID means that EID itself must actually exist from the start. However, it doesn’t mean that any mental or physical instance (what you might call “actualization”) of EID has to exist from the start. Such an instance has to be created, invented, made.
Quoting Luke
Yep, of course they do! The fact that Alice thinks about EID exists only from the first moment at which it is certain that Alice would think about EID, but the fact that Alice might think about EID always actually exists. Regarding my algorithm, it is completely deterministic, and so any idea that it finds is found without any creativity. This shows that creativity is not needed when coming up with ideas.
Quoting Luke
That someone is already part of the algorithm, for he is the understander. Recall that my algorithm = my program + understander.
Quoting Luke
The possibiliy itself, th.i. the fact that the idea might be come up with, is actual from the start. The finding of the idea, on the other hand, only comes into actual existence once it is foredetermined that the idea will be found, which is the case from the point at which my algorithm is started. My possibility-argument uses the former truth, namely the actual existence of the might-fact, and my algorithm-argument uses the latter truth, namely that from the time at which my algorithm is started, for every finitely expressible idea EID, the fact that EID will be found exists.
Quoting Luke
Again a great example that you haven’t gotten basic points that I’ve said over and over again, and that even now, you misunderstand my position. Making reference to ’s remark, drinking is needed for living, and likewise, understanding the other’s position is needed to keep a philosophical talk meaningful and working. But of course, to drink or not to drink is each one’s own decision...
The gist of my position is this: Ideas are abstract things, and as such, they have eternal, absolute and pure being. In particular, they cannot be invented or otherwise created, for their existence isn’t time-bound. However, like many abstract entities, ideas have concrete mental and physical instances. Since these exist in time, they can be invented or otherwise created. What we call “actualization” of an idea is the instantiation of that idea, th.i. the making of a mental of physical instance of it. For example, the number 3 is eternal, but the thought I’m having about the number 3 right now is temporal, concrete, and mental. Furthermore, it is my creation, since I could have thought about something else, but freely chose to think about 3. In turn, don’t conflate this with the state-of-affairs that Tristan thinks about 3 on 18/09/2020, which is abstract and eternal, just as every state-of-affairs of the shape “Tristan thinks about n on 18/09/2020$”. Note that some of these states-of-affairs hold and others don’t, and by bringing about the holding of one of them, I create mental information. This concrete info is what we call “instance”.
Remark: I don’t use all terms here in the way I should use them. For instance, the talk of instances is metaphorically powerful but unaccurate in the end, and I use the word “fact” differently here from my right usage. In my philosophical theory, these issues are addressed and the terms used in the right way, but of course, this thread is hardly the place to discuss this not-so-small theory.
0. If ideas can be invented, then they cannot be invented. (premise)
1. If it’s not the case that ideas cannot be invented, then ideas cannot be invented. (from (0.) by Double Negation)
2. Ideas cannot be invented. (from (1.) by Clavius’ Law / consequentia mirabilis)
of my argument is logically valid?
If yes, then let’s check the truth of the primise (0.). I’ve shown it e.g. here:
Quoting Tristan L
In risk of repeating myself, you can substitute “invent” (or “discover”, but that’s unrelevant here) for “find”/”come up with”.
But it can discover them through actual practice, at least as much as quantum field theory can in actual practice be used to describe cell division. However, just as describing cell division with QFT is extremely difficult, complex, cumbersome, and resource-intensive, so is finding ideas with my algorithm. (Note, however, that some simple ideas will be discovered by my algorithm in reasonable time.) This is what is meant by “impractical”. Another good example is Karl Fritiof Sundman’s solution of almost all instances of the general three-body-probem, which, though exact, would likely need more years when used in astronomy than there are particles in the observable universe. In fact, applying Sundman’s solution would take much more time than using my algorithm to find LOTR, for instance.
Quoting Luke
I do not make that assumption, as I’ve already said. However, any idea of any practical significance can be expressed in the ASCII-characters: all novels, all movies, all technological inventions, all theories, all pictures, and all pieces of music. In fact, they can even be expressed in nothing but 1’s and 0’s. For example, this talk that we’re having right now is represented by a long string of 1’s and 0’s. Only unspeakable ideas, like ones related to personal mystical and gasty experiences, cannot be expressed in ASCII, but these are hardly what most folks (including you, judging from your right claim that ideas should be somehow useful) have in mind when they talk about ideas. Also, my possibility-argument even applies to these unsayable ideas. And what about only endlessly expressible ideas? I strongly doubt that any such ideas have ever been found, for our brains are finite, and our minds use our brains as reckoning-machines. And the possibility-argument, as well as the independent-finding-argument, apply also to them anyway.
Quoting Luke
...and map each such string to the corresponding idea. Don’t forget the understander!
Quoting Luke
Thus showing that the space of all possibilites is actual.
Quoting Luke
Even more: no string of characteres is an idea (actually, it technically is an idea, but usually not the same as the idea which it represents); rather, it represents, stands for, an idea.
However, conversely, as I’ve explained above, every idea of practical relevance can be expressed/represented/stood for by a finite string of symbols. The very history of all brain states of all humans that have ever lived can be expressed by a (albeit very long) finite string of symbols over a finite alphabet and therefore ultimately a number. (Here, I recall that guy Pythagoras’ doctrine that all is Number. Just a little food for thought...)
So...
Quoting Luke
No worries, rest assured that all useful possibilites are really actualized.
Quoting Luke
True, except for the “overlooks”-part (see below).
Quoting Luke
With the help of its understander, of course. He will read all the texts, and once he finds a meaningful one whose content is useful, he’ll recognize it as such. For example, just as I recognized that the descriptions of the high-voltage VdG-generator which I read online mean a useful idea (and a very interesting one at that), the understander will see that a description of the VDGG output by the program refers to a useful and interesting idea.
Quoting Luke
Of course they do; that’s my point! The deterministic nature of the algorithm just drives it home.
Quoting Luke
How often are you going to reiterate this point which I’ve been agreeing with all along?
Quoting Luke
True (namely that each of idea-discoverableness and idea-inventability lets existence of all possibilities follow). At the same time, the existence of all possibilities is incompatible with the inventableness of ideas. What does that mean? That ideas cannot be invented.
Quoting Luke
No, it doesn’t, for the possibilities are essentially defined in terms of the ideas, so if the possibilities exist, so must the ideas.
If ideas exist after their discovery, but they can’t be created, then they must also exist before the discovery. Otherwise, the discovery would actually be an act of creation.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You’ve got a point, so from now on, let’s try to use “widea” (from the Or-Indo-European root “*weid-” (“to see”), which “idea” and “eidos” are drawn from) for the philosophical and especially the Platonish concept and “idea” for the artistic one.
I think that when you say “I’ve got an idea”, you mean a mental and thereby concrete instance of an abstract widea. This instance is what the artist calls “idea”. However, I think that the idea, unlike the widea, actually is the output of a creative act, which at the same time is an act of discovery of a widea – unless that discovery is deterministic, in which case the idea exists from the start, but only becomes directly seeable later on. Take two dice for example. Alice throws her die and gets a 5. The number 5 itself is abstract and eternal, as is the state-of-affairs that Alice’s throw would lead to a five. However, the piece of information corresponding to the making-true (“actualization”) of that state-of-affairs is created by Alice’s throw. Now if Bob throws his die and also gets a 5, then his piece of info, what we call his “instance”, is different from Alice’s, although both involve one and the same abstract entity 5. By contrast, if he puts his die on the table with “5” on the upper face on account of Alice’s die showing a “5”, then his instance is basically the same as Alice’s, and his activity doesn’t make any new info. Rather, it only copies existing info.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
As do I. The possibilities in the space are real, abstract entities, as are the wideas to which they are linked. I don’t understand why Pfhorrest and you unneededly seem to back down from full-fledged platonism, though. This is one point where I likely agree with Luke; he seems to understand Pfhorrest’s position as platonist, and I don’t see any way in which Pfhorrest cannot be interpreted as such.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
In the case of my algorithm (= my program + understander), there is, namely the understander.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
According to this definition, the widea also fore-exists, for just as the original possibility-space just exists, so does the space of all possible searches through it. However, instantiating one such possible search by free will creates mental information, and in this way, the process is creative. But again, we can make an algorithm which brute-forces all possible searches (and thus conducts a brute-force meta-search), another one which brute-forces all possible over-searches (meta-searches), and so on to infinity (and beyond?).
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, and that’s what the understander is there for. The crucial point is that the understander only needs to have the mindly ability to understand, but no creativeness whatsoever. For example, if you take the role of the understander, you’ll get the same feelings, emotions, and thoughts when you hear "Winterstürme" and "Du bist der Lenz" regardless of whether the information stems from Wagner’s mind or from my deterministic program AllEndlyStrings.
On the whole, I like your and Pfhorrest’s ideas, but
1. I don’t see why you unneededly hold back from platonism,
and
2. I think that there is a clearly definable discovery-aspect and a clearly definable creative aspect to finding ideas.
Your supposed argument assumes the conclusion. I asked you earlier what "essentially linked" meant in your argument: "Since Poss(invent EID) is essentially linked to EID, it follows that EID must also have always existed". I didn't ask you this because I didn't understand it; I asked you this because I was trying to get you to see that it's problematic.
Your position is that ideas do (pre-)exist and people discover them. My position is that ideas do not (pre-)exist and people invent them. Your argument can't be that if it is possible to invent an idea then that idea must have always existed! That's the position you're meant to be arguing for, not simply assuming. I obviously don't agree that if it is possible to invent an idea then the idea must have always existed. That's absurd. It is entirely your own assumption (i.e. "essentially linked") that leads you to the contradiction that if it is possible to invent an idea then it is not possible to invent an idea.
Quoting Tristan L
Pfhorrest gave the following explanation:
If
(it is possible to invent an idea implies it is impossible to invent an idea)
then
it is impossible to invent an idea
Again, I do not agree to the bracketed statement, which is based on your own assumption. Therefore, I don't agree to the rest/whole.
Quoting Tristan L
I don't see how an idea exists before anybody thinks of it. I agree that "the fact that Alice might think about EID always actually exists". because what Alice might do or think is whatever it is possible to do or think. But that doesn't mean that she has actually thought of it, or that the idea already exists before she has actually thought of it. Let's not conflate possible ideas with actual ideas.
Quoting Tristan L
Your "understander" seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting for your algorithm argument. They will have a lot of reading/sifting to do. How do they decide which string of symbols represents a new idea? Do they require any specialised knowledge or do they learn it as they go?
Quoting Tristan L
Ideas both can and cannot be invented? That's very confusing.
Quoting Tristan L
Is the thought of the number 3 the same as the idea of the number 3? When you think about the number 3, you consider this an instance of inventing the idea of the number 3?
Quoting Tristan L
I agree that when someone has found/invented an idea then it was possible for them to do so.
Quoting Tristan L
Why must the idea have always actually existed? It was always possible to come up with the idea, but that doesn't mean the idea always existed prior to someone coming up with it. It is always possible that I could break my leg, but that doesn't mean that my leg was always broken prior to my breaking it. Please spell out the part of your argument re: the "fixed bond" or "essential link" between EID and Poss(EID).
Quoting Tristan L
Is a long string of 1's and 0's something that your "understander" understands?
Quoting Tristan L
I agree. But Poss(EID) is not EID.
Quoting Tristan L
Isn't it possible that an understander could overlook an idea and judge it as a random string of meaningless symbols? How does the understander decide what is an idea and what isn't?
Quoting Tristan L
But you don't really agree, because you keep repeating:
Quoting Tristan L
That is, you make no (or only an artificial) distinction between the existence of possible ideas and the existence of actual ideas.
The creative idea is created. It is information: coordinates in configuration space. When I vary those coordinates, I am trying a new idea (a new vector).
Quoting Tristan L
That is not how it seems to me. The output of the creative act is a piece of art, or a piece of a piece, or a draft. I can read it and know how it reads or hear it and know how it sounds, etc. The idea might be: how would it sound if, instead of everyone singing the same thing, half the people sing the fifth note up in the scale? Et voila: rudimentary harmony us invented. But you still need to evaluate a cost function -- you near to hear the thing and measure it against expectations -- to know if the idea was good and, if so, if you've nailed it. This is the extra thing that ideas have above the bland coordinates that a brute force, unguided trawl through the space of possible ideas must have to be creative.
As the OP says, this expectation must be derived from experience, even if the parameters of the idea are derived from genius. In the case of fifths, perhaps someone heard the effect of someone trying and failing to sing along, with that failure sometimes producing a nice effect. This provides both a narrowed search and a measure of success.
Quoting Tristan L
I think that both of us are distinguishing between an act of creativity and systematic permutations of coordinates. I'm not sure the question of the ontological status of those coordinates is particularly relevant. They correspond to arrangements that could be made, be it if sounds, words, colours, etc. They don't strike me as any more or less compelling a case for idealism than anything else, making it a separable discussion.
It's analogous to the distinction between going on holiday to Florence and the coordinates of, say, the peak of the Duomo. I am saying that a molecule of oxygen that eventually drifts from Tokyo to Florence has not gone on holiday, because it is not a guided trip with intent and expectation. And you are asking whether the position that the peak of the Duomo occupies is real and eternal.
Yes, this is my stance on the ongoing argument in this thread. My view on creativity is not anti-platonic, it’s just platonism-agnostic: it doesn’t matter whether platonism is true or not.
My point in the OP was that an algorithm like this AllEndlyStrings does not count as a creative process even though it will eventually come up with every product of a creative process; BUT that adding randomness to that (making it non-deterministic), or even making the search process completely random jumps around the configuration space, doesn’t help at all, its still just as non-creative. What matters is the details of the algorithm, how it identifies new (undiscovered) possibilities in relation to old possibilities. That relationship between the known and unknown is reality what I’m getting at.
A lot of creative works of our age would seem completely off the wall (“random”) uninteresting nonsense to people from a thousand years ago, because they lack the context of all the intervening works.
Well, philosophers have to worry about getting INTO work as soon as possible. Not many positions as resident philosopher at Walmart or General Ford.
However, it does mean that the state-of-affairs and the proposition that you would break your leg has always existed, as has its negation. Take e.g. the proposition B that you break your leg tomorrow (on 21/09/2020). That proposition is as of yet (today, on 20/09/2020) neither true nor false (at least for argument’s sake; whether the universe is deterministic or not is a different matter), but it will be either true or false after-tomorrow (on 22/09/2020) (and then stay so for ever after). Now I already hope today, on 20/09/2020, that B will be false on 22/09/2020. So B has the property today that I hope it to become false after-tomorrow. So B must already exist today. Indeed, how could I possibly hope anything about something not-existent? Also, the proposition that you break your leg yesterday (on 19/09/2020) is false today (on 20/09/2020) (I hope), yet to be false, it must exist in the first place. The only thing that would come into existence should B become true (which I strongly hope not to happen) would be a piece of information, which is what we might call “the breaking of your leg on 21/09/2020”. If B becomes false, then the opposite piece of info, which might be called “the not-breaking of your leg on 21/09/2020”, comes into being. Information and propositions are not the same thing. The proposition B is defined in terms of, among other things, your leg, as is the proposition MAYBE(B) that you may break your leg tomorrow. Therefore, since the former exists today and the latter not only exists today, but is (unluckily) even true today, your leg must also exist today.
It’s exactly analogous with the finding of ideas.
Quoting Luke
Indeed we shouldn’t conflate things, but that’s just what you’re doing here:
Quoting Luke
You’re mixing abstract ideas (called “wideas” henceforth) up with concrete instances thereof.
Quoting Luke
Of course not! That’s just what I say in the paragraph to which you’ve given the above answer. A thought of the numbers 3 is (in a way) a mental and therefore concrete instance of the widea of threehood.
Quoting Luke
No. When I choose to think about 3 today (on 20/09/2020), I bring about the truth of the proposition that I think about 3 on 20/09/2020. The piece of info which I thus create is not that impressive, though. To discover 3 by myself is to bring about the truth of the much more impressive proposition that I think about 3 at some time in my life (and thereby create and invent the belonging impressive piece of information). This proposition has already been true since at least my early childhood, and I don’t really know what brought about my first thought about 3. Maybe I brought it about with my own free will, in which case I’d really be an independent discoverer of 3, or perhaps my parents did, or maybe knowledge of numbers is “hardwired” into my (and others’) mind(s) so deeply that the proposition that I would think of 3 at some point was always true by the nature (wist) of my mind.
Not without reason did I ask you whether
quote="Tristan L;453377"]you now see that the following part [...] of my argument is logically valid[/quote]
(the boldface is new). The crucial part of my argument is obviously not this trivial application of Clavius’ Law, but my proof that if wideas can be invented, then they cannot be invented. I clarified the point with Clavius’ Law only because you said:
Quoting Luke
That’s as if you had said, “It’s impossible to invent an idea? Hmm.”, for (A => NOT A) is logically equivalent to (NOT A). However, even after I mentioned Clavius’ Law, you seem to still think that (A => NOT A) is a contradiction, as seen here:
Quoting Luke
My statement that if it’s possible to invent a widea, then it’s impossible to invent one, which I have shown to be true btw, is logically equivalent to the statement that it’s impossible to invent a widea. Hence, your claim that this my statement is a contradiction is logically equivalent to the claim that wideas can be invented, a claim for which you have yet to give a justification.
Quoting Luke
Right, you did here:
Quoting Luke
and I have also given you an answer:
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Luke
I didn’t ask you whether you understand this point; I asked you whether you understand the point about Clavius’ Law.
Quoting Luke
In what way is this problematic?
Take the (false) proposition that 3 is an even number, for example. This proposition, by its very essence (wist), involves the number 3, so if this proposition exists (which it obviously does as we’re thinking and talking about it right now, and as only existing things can have properties, like falsehood), then 3 must exist, too (which it obviously does, of course).
Quoting Luke
Well, as I said above, that isn’t my argument, but rather only a trivial application of Clavius’ Law which I wouldn’t even have bothered with hadn’t it been for your belief that the conclusion (widea-inventability => widea-notinventability) of my real argument is a contradiction. This real argument does show, conclude, that if it is possible to invent a widea, then that widea must have always existed.
Quoting Luke
My argument shows, rather than assumes, that if a widea can be invented, then it must have always existed.
Quoting Luke
It is indeed absurd to assume that wideas can be invented. However, to assume (which I btw. don’t do; rather, I show it) that if it is possible to invent a widea then the widea must have always existed is logically equivalent to assuming that wideas cannot be invented. How is that absurd?
Quoting Luke
How is this my assumption? Poss(EID) is defined in terms of EID. How could there not be a wistly (essential) link?
Quoting Luke
You seemingly still fail to see the simple logical fact that (A => NOT A) is not a contradiction, but rather logically equivalent to (NOT A), for every proposition A. How is it my assumption that Poss(EID) and EID are essentially linked when the former is directly defined in terms of the latter?
Quoting Luke
You’ve made that evidently clear, meaning that you don’t think that this (trivial) part of my argument is sound, yet...
Quoting Luke
...you have to concede that this trivial part of my argument is valid.
Quoting Luke
That’s not the case, as I’ve explained.
Quoting Luke
I’ve already spellt it out above, but I’ll do it again: The possibility is defined in terms of the widea, so it couldn’t be what it is without the widea any more than B could be what it is without your leg (or the widea of breaking).
Quoting Luke
In turn, I agree with that. In fact, there are many other possibilities beside Poss(EID) (the possibility that a thinking living thing would come up with EID) that do the job just as well, such as Poss(EID, human) (the possibility that a human being would come up with EID) and Poss(EID, Andromedan) (the possibility that a being from the Andromeda galaxy would come up with EID). Since each of these is different from all the others, at most one could be identical to EID, yet they all do the job equally well.
Quoting Luke
I certainly do make real and substantial distinction between wideas and associated possibilities, for as I’ve explained above, there are several essentially different possibilities associated with the same widea EID which are all essentially linked to the widea (and to other things, too, e.g. Poss(EID, Alice) to Alice and Poss(EID, Bob) to Bob) and so do their job equally well. On the other hand, the existence of the possibilites is indeed equivalent to the existence of the wideas because the former are defined in terms of the latter.
The understander neither needs nor uses any creativity at all. That’s the whole point. How is that heavy lifting?
Quoting Luke
By knowing English syntax and semantics; by knowing the English meaning-mapping (the function which sends each meaningful English expression to what it means, e.g. the word “six” to the number 6); just like you can check that the LOTR-books are meaningful and understand them without creativity.
Quoting Luke
The only knowledge the which the understander has at the start is knowledge of the English meaning-mapping and perhaps some very basic stuff like fundamental logical laws. By mapping strings to the abstract things that they mean (e.g. the expression “e^ix = cos x + i sin x”, Euler’s Formula, to the deep law about complex numbers, the exponential function, and trigonometric functions), he can, of course, learn, and then apply that knowledge later on in the text. (After each text, he can even forget all the new stuff he learned, because for any texts T1 and T2, there’s a further text made up of T1 followed by T2.) For example, he can use his knowledge of basic logic to check whether a text is a valid proof. He’ll thus find the proof of, say, the Feichtinger-Conjecture by just reading and understanding and thinking logically, but without any creative thinking.
Quoting Luke
Yes, because for any string of 1's and 0's, there’s a text containing that string along with a before-going English explanation and/or description of how to interpret that string, e.g. containing a definition of the mp4-format and the png-format.
Quoting Luke
Nope, in the same way that no English-speaker can mistake this forum discussion for a meaningless string of symbols.
Quoting Luke
By knowing the English meaning-mapping, just as a compiler can judge whether a text is a valid compilable source-code or just a meaningless string. Tell me, in what way is your creativity needed for you to understand the LOTR-books? And more weightily, in what way is Tolkien’s creativity needed for you to understand the LOTR-books?
It may be that you call actual abstract wideas “possible ideas”, and actual concrete mental instances of wideas “actual ideas”. It might also be that you call not-yet-existing pieces of information about wideas “possible ideas”. In such a case, you’d be talking past my point all the time. (More on this in my next comment.)
I think that when the platonist talks with another person about the existence of wideas, he (used gender-neutrally) doesn’t try to prove the existence of wideas. Indeed, it is self-evident that wideas must exist, for if any widea W did not exist, then that very (supposed) fact NOTEXIST(W) would at least exist, but NOTEXIST(W) is defined in terms of W, so W must exist after all. Another way to see it is this: NOTEXIST(W) is the state-of-affairs that W-hood doesn’t have an instance, so NOTEXIST(W) needs at least W-hood. But the widea of W is the thing which underlies W, W-hood, W-hood-hood, aso. to infinity and beyond, so the widea of W must exist after all. Furthermore, the proposition that no ideas exist is the proposition that wideahood has no instances. So this proposition needs at least one widea, namely wideahood, if it is to be what it is. Hence, it defeats itself and is thus false.
So what is the platonist trying to do? I’d say that he’s trying to show the other guy the wideas. He isn’t trying to show him that they exist, mind you; he’s trying to show him the wideas themselves. He isn’t trying to help him get propositional knowledge (knowledge-that, German Wissen-dass), but rather knowledge by acquaintance (knowledge-of, German Kennen). You see, wideas are so fundamental that just as the Laws of Self-Identity (each thing is the selfsame as itself) and Self-Implication (each proposition follows from itself), we might not be very aware of them. Similarly, the self is so close to itself that self-knowledge is perhaps the most marvellous of all knowledge. It’s a bit like it’s easier to see your hands and feet that your own belly, which in turn is easier to see than the top of your own chest, because these things get progressively closer to your eyes!
At least regarding platonism of the kind I hold, when someone who espouses such platonism talks about wideas as ideal prototypes or as floating around in the above-heavenly world, they’re just trying to help the more concrete-minded become aware of the wideas by using concreter terms. But these terms are just metaphors, and even wrong ones in the end, leading to things like the Third Man Argument. Then, when the against-platonist seems to argue against platonism, what’s really happening is that he still isn’t consciously aware of the wideas and in particular wideahood and thus can’t even so much as negate platonism; rather, he misunderstands the platonist as claiming the existence of concrete-like objects whose existence really is dubious, such as a perfect chair hovering above the sky. In other words, he thinks that the platonist says that there exists an object which has chairhood in a perfect and ideal way (th.i. that 1 has chairhood perfectly, or 2 has chairhood perfectly, or Mt. Everest has chairhood perfectly, or ...), without being consciously aware of chairhood. But the platonist actually has that very Widea of Chairhood itself in mind, a fully abstract thing of which the against-platonist only has underconscious awareness.
Your argument boils down to the claim that since the possibility of inventing an idea has always existed, then the idea has always existed. That is, if inventing a thing is possible then that thing is (and has always been) actual. That's your absurd assumption.
Clavius' Law can only be applied if "the idea must have always existed" follows from "it is possible to invent an idea". It doesn't follow. You tried to smuggle it in via your "essential link" between the possible and actual existence of an idea, on the basis that they both relate to the same idea.
Allow me to try and clarify my disagreement.
As Pfhorrest explained:
Quoting Pfhorrest
Before Clavius' Law can be applied, you require the bracketed statement (not-P implies P).
In order to arrive at the bracketed statement, you have argued:
Quoting Tristan L
However, I disagree that the implication holds, because I disagree with your second sentence: "Since Poss(invent EID) is essentially linked to EID, it follows that EID must also have always existed."
I have asked you a few times to clarify what "essentially linked" means here, but I have found your explanations to be brief and opaque. You initially explained:
Quoting Tristan L
and more recently:
Quoting Tristan L
I take this to mean that the possibility of (inventing) the idea is defined in terms of the idea itself. Even if this were the case, you still have not explained how this "essential link" relates to, or assists, your argument: that the possibility (of inventing the idea) has always existed, therefore the idea has always existed. How does this "essential link" of definition provide actual existence to what is merely possible?
It seems your argument must apply not only to ideas, but to anything, since the possibility of any thing's existence can be defined only in terms of that thing. Does the possible existence of unicorns also imply their actual existence?
Also, are you arguing that my leg has always been broken? (Hint: it's not.)
I think that things stand as follows: All things are abstract and therefore eche and uncreatable, but information can be created (though not destroyed). When it becomes certain that an idea EID will be found, the proposition that EID would be found becomes true, which is equivalent to a corresponding piece of information’s coming into being. If the proposition is true from the start by deterministic must, or if it becomes true by chance, the piece of info doesn’t get its existence from a mind; in the former case, it exists by forced necessity, and in the latter case, it springs into existence from nothing, without any maker. If and only if the proposition’s truth is brought about by free will does the belonging piece of info get its existence from a mind, and this is thus a case of true creation.
In short, when someone finds an abstract idea by only his own free will, he (used gender-neutrally) only discovers that idea, but be makes, creates, invents a piece of information belonging to a (likewise abstract) proposition about the idea.
Quoting Luke
How could that not be the case? Likewise, how could the proposition that your leg is broken, as well as the proposition that your leg isn’t broken, be what they are and exist without your leg?
Quoting Luke
Well, if something actual F is wistlily tied to something Þ through a wistly link U, then Þ must be actual too, for F is actual by premise, and U is actual since it is wistly. In my argument, Þ is a generic idea, and F is the possibility that someone might think of Þ (or any proposition about Þ for that matter). F and U are actual, so Þ is actual, too.
Quoting Luke
There is no such thing as a merely possible thing. All things are eternal, abstract, actual, and soothfast. Moreover, my argument for the actual existence of all ideas doesn’t even need possibility. Let’s take any idea EID which is fully, completely, totally and absolutely unthinkable. Then it’s not possible for anyone to ever think of it. Still, the very fact that EID is unthinkable exists actually, so EID must exist actually, too. Indeed, not-actual existence leads to a contradiction: Assume that some thing x doesn’t have actual existence. Then that very (supposed) fact has actual existence (as does its negation). But this fact is defined in terms of x. Hence, x must be actual after all. Likewise, if any thing þ didn’t exist, it would have the property of not-existence, but since having properties needs existence, þ must exist after all.
Quoting Luke
Well observed! Indeed, a broader shape of my argument is that all things are actual and eche, and its original purpose is to serve as part of an argument that all things are abstract, th.i. not-physical, not-mindly, not-spatial, not time-bound, and onefold (simple). In this thread, though, only its application to ideas is of relevance, which is why I’ve restricted myself to ideas here.
Quoting Luke
Certainly it does.
For one, unicornhood certainly exists. In fact, it must exist so that the very proposition that unicorns don’t exist even makes sense.
Moreover, each individual unicorn actually exists in the sense that the property of being a unicorn with a rainbow-colored horn and through-seeable wings exists, the property of being a unicorn with a 1-metre-long horn and a scorpion-tail exists, asf.
Each genome is a finite sequence of A’s, T’s, G’s, and C’s, so there’s an actual, fixed one-to-one mapping between the set of all genomes and the set IN of all natural rimetales (numbers). Hence, all genomes exist. This includes genomes that code for unicorns. Also always existing is the property of being a genome that codes for a unicorn, as well as its extension, the set of all genomes that code for unicorns. However, not for every genome g is the proposition E(g, Universe, 2020) / E(g, Earth, 2020) that at some time not after 2020, some physical nucleotides in this universe / on Earth are arranged according to g true. If we substitute a unicorn’s genome for the generic genome g, it happens that E(g, Earth, 2020) is (as far as we know) false in 2020 and ever after because no unicorns have yet (as of 2020) evolved on Earth. So there’s no piece of info belonging to E(g, Earth, 2020). That’s what we mean when we say that unicorns don’t exist on Earth. On the other hand, if we replace unicorns with elephants, the belonging piece of info does exist, which is what we mean when we say that elephants exist. See also my answer to “The meaning of the existential quantifier”.
In short, all things, including all ideas, exist and are abstract, actual, and eche (eternal), and only information might not exist or only possibly exist. The assumtpion that a thing doesn’t actually exist directly leads to contradictions, for how can the not-actual be actually thought about, and how can the not-actual actually be not-actual? The existence of a piece of information is equivalent to the truth of a proposition. The falsehood of that proposition is equivalent to the existence of a piece of info belonging to the proposition’s negation. If neither piece exists, the proposition and its negation have truth-value UNDETERMINED. Our speech isn’t well-suited to talk about info, though, so it’s better to only talk about (abstract) things and the truth-values of propositions. However, I can’t explain my whole theory here.
Quoting Luke
No, as I’ve said here:
Quoting Tristan L
It’s only the case that the corresponding piece of information, which would be concrete, thankfully doesn’t exist.
My attempted translations of your "wistlily" language into standard English:
=>(1) If the actual possibility that someone might think of an idea is essentially tied to the idea through an essential link (U), then the idea must be actual too, for the possibility that someone might think of the idea is actual by premise, and the essential link is actual since it is essential.
=>(2) If the actual possibility of an idea is essentially tied to the idea via an essential link, then the idea must be actual too, for the actual possibility of an idea is a premise and the essential link is actual since it is essential.
Sorry, I still don't follow. The possibility of an idea is tied to its actualised counterpart by an essential link. Therefore, the idea is actual? Because the essential link is actual since it is essential?
How does the "essential link" facilitate the leap from 'the idea is possible' to 'the idea is actual'. And how do you distinguish between possible ideas and actual ideas?
Quoting Tristan L
I suspected this to be your position, which is why I asked you pages ago why you even bother with possibility. You may also recall my more recent observation that you only draw an artificial distinction between possible and actual existence.
Quoting Tristan L
A fact about x exists, therefore x is actual? Sorry, I still don't accept it. E.g.:
Facts about dinosaurs exist. Therefore, dinosaurs are actual.
Facts about the extinction of dinosaurs exist. Therefore, the extinction of dinosaurs is actual.
How can it be both?
Quoting Tristan L
Unicorns certainly do actually exist, but also unicorns don't actually exist?
Quoting Tristan L
Quite easily: myth, fiction, make-believe, possibility.
Quoting Tristan L
If there can exist "a piece of info belonging to [a] proposition's negation", then "[t]he existence of a piece of information is ((not necessarily)) equivalent to the truth of a proposition".
Quoting Tristan L
Are you drawing a distinction between actual existence and concrete existence? Because (otherwise) this appears inconsistent with your claims about possible existence (of my broken leg) implying actual existence.
Why is this? Non-linear causality.
The word “wistlily” (“essentially”) is an adverb, while “wistly” (“essential”, German “wesentlich”) is the belonging adjective (how-word), and both belong to the nameword “wist” (“essence”, German “Wesen”). You might want to brush up your English grammar. Also, my speech is better and righter English, whereas your so-called “standard English” is sadly a pretty messed up language which
– to name some problems. Old English is such a fair tongue, like German (Theech), Arabic, and Gothic (Gotish). But I digress.
Your questions have forced me to reveal more of my theory, making some of my answers rather lengthy, but I think it’s worth it. I find this talk very interesting indeed.
Let me swuttle (explain) the main possibility argument I’ve put forth so far. Let EID be any thinkable idea. Consider the proposition IsThoughtAbout(EID) (that for some mind m and some time-point t, m manifests in the concrete world at t and thinks about EID at t). Now regard the proposition PossIsThoughtAbout(EID) (that IsThoughtAbout(EID) is possible at the start). This one is true from the start (as you have admitted). Like every proposition, including IsThoughtAbout(EID), PossIsThoughtAbout(EID) is (abstract and) actual anyway, but the fact that it’s true will hopefully show even the hardest-boiled skeptic that PossIsThoughtAbout(EID) is actual. Now, PossIsThoughtAbout(EID) is defined as the proposition that EID has property PossIsThoughtAbout; by its very wist, it says something about EID. So the actual entity PossIsThoughtAbout(EID) is tied by a wistly and thus actual link to EID. It neededly follows that EID must be actual, too.
I could have used a property other than PossIsThoughtAbout, such as the property ideahood of being an idea, the property of abstractness, the property of being the selfsame as onesself, or the property PossiblyExists of possibly existing. I just found using PossIsThoughtAbout to be particularly convincing. Note that PossIsThoughtAbout doesn’t work for an unthinkable idea EID, in the sense that PossIsThoughtAbout(EID) is false in that case, but that the other properties work even in that case.
Let’s now try to understand how things likely really stand:
Mindhood is eche (eternal), abstract, and actual (echeness follows from abstractness, of course). Every idea EID is eche, abstract, and actual. Every time-point is eternal, abstract, and actual. Every mind is eche, abstract, and actual. All properties, including IsThoughtAbout and PossIsThoughtAbout, are eche, abstract, and actual. All propositions, including – for every idea EID – IsThoughtAbout(EID) and PossIsThoughtAbout(EID), are eternal, abstract, and actual. However, IsThoughtAbout(EID) (for some idea EID) isn’t necessarily true at all time-points. In particular, it needn’t be true from the start. When it isn’t true (yet), but only undetermined, the belonging piece of info exists only possibly, but not actually (yet). As soon as IsThoughtAbout(EID) becomes true (and obviously stays true forever after), the corresponding piece of info gets actual existence (and holds on to it forever after). If IsThoughtAbout(EID) for some reason becomes false (e.g. because some demon permanently blocks minds from manifesting in the concrete world), its belonging piece of info loses even its merely possible existence. But Mindhood, all minds, all time-points, all ideas, all properties, and all propositions stay in actual existence, of course. The only beondes (see above for the meaning of “beonde”) which are actualized are pieces of information. All the others are things and so simply actual.
Where does invention come into play? Well, for every idea EID, every mind m, and every time-point t, regard the propsition IsThoughtAboutByAt(EID, m, t) that EID is being thought about by m at t. Now let EID be an arbitrary idea. If a mind m brings about the truth of IsThoughtAboutByAt(EID, m, t) for some time-point t by its own free will alone, it is the only maker of the info-piece belonging to IsThoughtAboutByAt(EID, m, t). In that sense, the mind m is a full inventor of that info-piece. If another mind n does the same (and therefore in particular does it independently of m), it is also a full inventor, but of another info-piece. The two minds are co-inventors of two different pieces of information involving one and the same idea EID in similar ways.
Quoting Luke
You accuse me of confusing PossiblyExists(EID) with EID, which I clearly don’t as the former is a proposition and the latter isn’t, when it is in fact you who seems to mix EID up with the (always existing) piece of info belonging to PossiblyExists(EID), or (much likelier) even the (not always existing) info-piece belonging to IsThoughtAbout(EID). You even seem not to be fully aware of EID itself, strengthening what I wrote here.
Quoting Luke
An essential link is actual, and it links an actual thing to another thing. Hence, this other thing must be actual, too.
Quoting Luke
All ideas are actual (and possible too, of course). What you mean by “actual idea” seems to be a piece of info associated with a proposition about the idea (more on this above), or perhaps you mean an idea for which info belonging to a certain kind of proposition about it (namley propositions that say that a mind has thought about the idea) exists.
Quoting Luke
What I mean is that for every proposition Þ, the proposition TRUE(Þ) that Þ is true is logically equivalent to the proposition that the info-piece belonging to Þ exists. Accordingly, the proposition FALSE(Þ) that Þ is untrue (“un-” ? “not-”) is logically equivalent to the proposition that the info-piece belonging to the negation ¬Þ of Þ exists, and the proposition UNDETERMINED(Þ) that Þ is undetermined is logically equivalent to the proposition that neither the info-piece belonging Þ exists nor the info-piece belonging to ¬Þ exists.
Yes to both, as long as you replace “actualised” with “actual”.
Quoting Luke
For things, I’ve shown that possible existence necessarily lets actual existence follow. In the case of info, that’s not the case, but as I’ve said, thinking and talking about info is tricky.
Quoting Luke
Firstly, dinosaurs are still alive and kicking and can even be very smart, as can be seen in this video, for instance. What they would have to add to this discussion, I wonder ... :wink:
Therefore, let’s replace dinosaurs with sauropods in your example. I don’t see where the contradiction lies. Are you doubting the actualness of sauropods in earnest?
Here’s my account of the situation:
Sauropodhood is abstract (and thus eternal) and actual, as is the proposition than sauropodhood manifests in flesh and blood in this universe at some time. This proposition became true when sauropods first evolved, so at that time, the info-piece belonging to that proposition came into being (and would stay there forever). The existence of this info-piece is what most folks likely mean when they say that sauropods exist (in contrast to unicorns, for instance), probably including you and certainly me. All of this is in accordance with the fact that facts about sauropods exist. Likewise, the proposition that the sauropods go extinct, that is, that after some time-point, sauropodhood no longer manifests in this universe in flesh and blood, is abstract and actual. It’s even true, so the corresponding piece of info exists. All of this is in accordance with the fact that facts about the proposition that sauropods go extinct exist.
Quoting Luke
Myth and fiction are both about soothfast (real) things. It’s just that those things don’t manifest in a certain way, th.i. certain propositions about the abstract things involved (such as unicorns) aren’t true (at least in our world) and often even false. We call myth, fiction, and the like “make-believe” only insofar as you treat them as asserting the truth of those not-true propositions (for example interpreting LOTR as assering that Frodohood manifests in flesh and blood on this Earth in our world). As I’ve discussed above, possible existence belongs in the realm of info, not the world of things.
Of course I am. How could I otherwise claim that abstract things actually exist?
But don’t get me wrong: I certainly think that abstract and thus not-concrete being, which is always actual, is not inferior to concrete being. While I don’t follow Plato in regarding abstract being as superior – indeed, I’m spellbound by time and therefore the temporal and concrete world, leading me (in part) to develop a new logic and a new theory of time and chance –, I do hold that abstract being is purer than concrete being. Concrete being is being-at/in/..., whereas abstract being is just being. The info that sauropodhood manifests in flesh and blood on Earth in this world exists at time-points, in a possible world; the info that Alice thinks EID comes into being in her mind (again in a world at a time); but sauropodhood and EID simply are.
I didn't accuse you of anything. I noted the apparent contradiction in your statements that unicorns both do and do not actually exist.
I suppose by Clavius' Law, you could deduce that if black is white, then white is black, therefore white is black.
In response to your comment, though, if EID is not itself a proposition contained within 'PossiblyExists(EID)', then what proposition does 'PossiblyExists(EID)' express?
And btw how do you explain your contradictory statements that unicorns both do and do not actually exist?
Quoting Tristan L
Clear as mud.
Quoting Tristan L
When I say "actual idea", I mean an idea that someone has actually thought about or thought up (invented). But also something that is transferrable and that anyone (any mind) can think of/about. For example, E=mc^2.
What you mean by an actual idea seems to be particular to one mind at a given time, and so indistinguishable from an actual thought.
Quoting Tristan L
I'm sure if I broke my leg it wouldn't be so fuzzy or meaningless.
Quoting Tristan L
Clear as mud.
Quoting Tristan L
Shown? Where have you shown that the possible existence of unicorns lets their actual existence follow? In fact, you've stated that unicorns both do and do not actually exist.
Quoting Tristan L
I'm not doubting. I'm noting the widely accepted fact that dinosaurs (or sauropods if you prefer) are extinct and no longer actually exist.
Quoting Tristan L
I'm not talking about dinosaur-hood or sauropod-hood. That's something you've introduced.
Quoting Tristan L
I doubt it. Ask most folks and I'm sure they will tell you that dinosaurs (or sauropods if you prefer) don't exist, unlike the "info-piece".
Quoting Tristan L
I'm not disputing that facts about x exists. I'm disputing your assertion that facts about x exists implies that x exists.
Quoting Tristan L
They don't "go" extinct at some point. They are extinct.
Quoting Tristan L
Are you suggesting that actual existence does not belong in the "realm of info"?
Quoting Tristan L
They "simply are" now -- after they have happened or someone has thought them up. Many ideas are possible, and many may go without being thought up (actualised), just as many physical arrangements are possible and many may go without being actualised. You expect me to believe that all possible ideas and physical arrangements are already actual even though many may never be actualised? I'm sure many people have survived life without breaking a leg.
By your logic, the possibility that all possibilities will not be actualised is itself actual (and therefore, all possibilities will not be actualised). But the possibility that all possibilities will be actualised is also actual (and therefore, all possibilities will be actualised). Just like the actual existence and non-existence of unicorns, how can both be true?
Although what one has shown may be brightly seen and crystal clear,
it’s useless if the other did his eyes with mud besmear...
The problem is that you seem to obstinately refuse to understand the quite simple matter of distinguishing unicorns themselves from pieces of information involving them. Let me try to help you understand it better: The number 5 always actually exists, but when a die is thrown and shows a 5 on its upper face, the piece of info belonging to the (also eternal, abstract, and actual) proposition that the die-throw would result in 5 being shown comes into being, which is equivalent to the proposition becoming true. On the other hand, if 5 doesn’t show up on the die, the piece of info loses the possible existence that it originally had, which is equivalent to the proposition becoming false. Yet even then, the number 5 goes on to happily and actually exist. Has the matter now gotten a bit clearer to you?
Quoting Luke
That argument is indeed valid, but it is not sound, because the premise is false. Why are you still talking about Clavius’ Law? I only brought it up to explain a trivial logical matter to you which you seemingly didn’t (and still don’t?) understand.
Quoting Luke
The supposed contradiction is not mine, but yours, and results from your failing to distinguish two quite distinct “things”, making you misinterpret me. See above.
Quoting Luke
I’ve really understood that you don’t understand what I mean, believe me. How many more times do you mean to show your failure to see my meaning?
Firstly: So you do doubt the actual existence of sauropods after all.
Secondly: You must be severely misinformed if you think that dinosaurs are extinct in 2020, or that this false proposition is widely accepted.
Thirdly: Do you really think that sauropods don’t exist in 2020? Do you really think that Arminius doesn’t exist in 2020? I’m afraid that if you do, you subscribe to an absurd belief. Since facts about sauropods and Arminius exist in 2020, so must sauropods and Arminius themselves. The matter is quite simple: Saurpods and Arminius simply and always exist. Sauropods live from about 215 mya to about 66 mya, while they don’t live from 13.7 bya to 215 mya, and they also don’t live from 66 mya to 0 mya. Likewise, Arminius lives from 18 BCE to 21 CE, while he doesn’t live from 13,700,000,000 BCE to 18 BCE, and he also doesn’t live from 21 CE to 2020 CE.
Quoting Luke
They are extinct in 2020 CE, and they aren’t extinct in 100,000,000 BCE. That they go extinct 66,000,000 BCE means that before 66,000,000 BCE, they aren’t extinct, and afterwards, they are.
Quoting Luke
Actually, you’ve introduced them. The moment that you even think about dinosaurs or sauropods (which you clearly did), you introduce dinosaurhood and sauropodhood, though you may be (and apparently are) not aware of it.
Quoting Luke
Here:
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Tristan L
Let me elaborate on the latter point further: Let OH be an arbitrary unicorn. OH possibly exists. That very fact MaybeExists(OH) that OH may exist actually exists (the same goes for its negation, the state-of-affairs that OH certainly doesn’t exist). Obviously, MaybeExists(OH) is essentially connected to OH, so this link is actual. Since MaybeExists(OH) and the link between MaybeExists(OH) and OH is actual, OH must be actual, too. This doesn’t just work for unicorns, but for all possibly existing things, and shows all of them to be actual. The same goes for NOT(MaybeExists(OH)).
Regarding unicornhood, it must actually exist in order for the proposition that unicorns exist, as well as the proposition that unicorns don’t exist, to even make actual sense.
Quoting Luke
How can you dispute such a fundamental and obvious fact? Since the fact exists, and the connection between the fact and a thing which the fact is concerned with exists by the very wist of the fact, the thing must also exist.
Quoting Luke
Firstly, those people who tell you that dinosaurs are extinct in 2020 might want to have a biologist or paleontologist correct their false opinion. Secondly, most of us aren’t highly aware of what we mean when we say things, and in everyday life, we very often use technically wrong speech. I myself am no exception, and in a paleontology forum, for example, I’d have no reservation about saying, “It’s a shame that T. rex no longer exists” even though the statement that this magnificent animal no longer exists is technically fully false.
Does the same apply to what you mean my “actual rimetale”? If yes, does that mean that you regard all the endlessly many numbers which no one has (yet) thought about as merely possible and not actual?
If that’s what you mean by “actual”, then it’s something quite different from what I mean by “actual”. What is abstract is at least as actual as the concrete, using my meaning of “actual”.
Quoting Luke
But the fact about the physical realm expressed by “E = mc2” has always existed, regardless of whether anyone would ever think of it. Also, how can Alice independently of Bob think about something that Bob invented?
Quoting Luke
No; since I’ve shown that all ideas are actual, what I mean by “actual idea” is the same as what I mean by “idea”. I’m just trying to find out what exactly you mean by “actual idea”. It seems to be a chimera of information and (abstract) things. Some pieces of info are indeed particular to one mind at a given time, such as the info belonging to the proposition that Tristan thinks about the rimetale 2 in 2020 CE. Other pieces of info are not, however, such as the piece of info belonging to the proposition that for some time-point t and some mind m, m thinks about 2 at t. What you mean by “actual idea” seems to mostly be an info-piece of the latter kind.
Quoting Luke
As am I. However, I haven’t said that the notion of concrete beonde is meaningless, but rather only that the notion of concrete thing is meaningless. The notion of concrete information, on the other hand, is very meaningful, though still hard to grasp. If you broke your leg, the easiest way to think about it is in fully abstract terms: The proposition that you break your leg now is true now.
Quoting Luke
The proposition that EID possibly exists, just as “PossiblyExists(6)” refers to the proposition that the rimetale 6 has possible existence, and as “PossiblyExists(Luke’s leg)” means the proposition that your leg has possible existence. Is your leg the same as the proposition that it exists?
Quoting Luke
Not at all. I hold that actual existence belongs into both the world of the abstract and the realm of the concrete, whereas merely possible existence only belongs in the latter.
Quoting Luke
That’s a contradiction. If something simply is, it just is, without having to merely be-at or be-in or be-after.
Quoting Luke
Yes. However, mind you that you’re conflating two things here by your use of the words “actual” and “actualized”. All those ideas are actual, yes. Of course they are! However, what you mean by “actualize” isn’t really actualization of the thing of which you predicate actualization; after all, what’s actual cannot be actualized. Rather, for every idea EID, you likely mean by “EID is actualized” the proposition IsThoughtAbout(EID) that the proposition that someone thinks about EID at some time is true. This truth constitutes the actualization not of EID, though, but of the info-piece belonging to the proposition IsThoughtAbout(EID). Likewise, for every physical arrangement PhAr, you probably mean by “PhAr is actualized” the proposition that the proposition that the Universe takes on arrangement PhAr at some time is true. In truth, this truth constitutes the actualization of the info-piece corresponding to that proposition. It may very well be that you aren’t fully aware of the ideas or the states themselves, leading to your misunderstanding.
Quoting Luke
Can you still not see the difference between a proposition and a belonging info-piece? For every person, the proposition that that person breaks a leg always exists. However, not for every person does the corresponding proposition ever become true (and in such a case, it becomes false when the person dies).
Quoting Luke
And... the misunderstanding goes on... :roll:
Your use of the word “actualize” is unaccurate, see above.
Here, it’s very obvious that you conflate propositions with info-pieces.
Quoting Luke
That’s wrong. If it’s actual that some proposition A might be the case (th.i. if we have TRUE(MAYBE(A))), it doesn’t automatically follow at all that A is actually the case (th.i. TRUE(A) doesn’t follow). You incorrectly inferred TRUE(A) from TRUE(MAYBE(A)). When I say that some possibility is actual, I mean that it’s actual that the thing in question is possible. It isn’t essential that the proposition MAYBE(A) has truth-value T. What counts is that MAYBE(A) is an actually existing entity, which it is regardless of whether it has truth-value T, F, or U. However, that it has truth-value T shows in a particularly convincing way that it actually exists.
What you call “the possibility that all possibilities will not be actualised” is the propposition that no proposition is true, and while it actually exists, it’s not only not true, but outright false. You’re confusing actual existence with truth. This confusion underlies the rest of what you said and leads you to absurd and contradictory conclusions.
No. Is a unicorn? Or a dinosaur?
Quoting Tristan L
Merely possible existence is concrete and not abstract? I would say it's the opposite. What is abstract then?
Quoting Tristan L
Unlike facts, ideas don't exist if nobody ever thinks of them.
Quoting Tristan L
Quoting Tristan L
Except you are arguing that if facts about x (or if the possibility of x) actually exists, then x actually exists. Therefore, how can you maintain any distinction between propositions and info-pieces, or between possible existence and actual existence? By your logic, if my broken leg possibly exists, then my broken leg actually exists, and if unicorns possibly exist, then unicorns actually exist. If the possibile existence of x implies the actual existence of x, then whatever possibly exists actually exists.
Given your affirmation that the possible existence of unicorns implies the actual existence of unicorns, then how can you also maintain that "no unicorns have yet (as of 2020) evolved on Earth" and "That’s what we mean when we say that unicorns don’t exist on Earth"? If unicorns don't exist on Earth, then they don't actually exist, right? And if they don't actually exist, then you can't affirm (without contradiction) that their actual existence is implied by their possible existence.
Please tell me, if unicorns don't exist on Earth, then what type of existence do they lack if it is not actual existence? Alternatively (or additionally), what do you mean by "the actual existence of unicorns" if not that unicorns exist on Earth?
No, they aren’t, either.
Quoting Luke
What I mean is that everything abstract exists actually, and the only stuff that could have merely possible existence is concrete.
Quoting Luke
Whatever is not-physical, not-mindly, not-spatial, not-tidesome (not-temporal), and onefold (simple).
Quoting Luke
I have repeatedly asked you to provide justification for that unsubstantiated claim, and you have repeatedly repeated it without giving any justification whatsoever.
Quoting Luke
Yes, if a fact about x actually exists (which it does), or if a false or undetermined proposition about x actually exists (which it also does), then x actually exists. I don’t see where the problem lies. I can perfectly maintain a distinction between info and propo. Can you?
Quoting Luke
No; “Luke’s broken leg” in not a technically right noun-phrase. On the other hand, “that Luke’s leg is broken” is a right name-phrase, and it refers to the proposition that Luke’s leg is broken. This proposition actually exists, though it is false. Its negation, the proposition that Luke’s leg isn’t broken, also exists, but is true. Aren’t you mixing truth up with actual existence again?
Quoting Luke
Unlike “Luke’s broken leg” and like “that Luke’s leg is broken”, for all features F1, F2, F3, ... , “being a unicorn with features F1, F2, F3, ...” is a proper name phrase which means a property.
Quoting Luke
True, if “whatever” refers only to things. With info, things stand differently, but as I said before, I think that our minds aren’t very well suited for thinking about info, and in the very workings of our speech seems to be hidden the assumtion that we’re only talking about things.
However, not all propositions are true. Some are true, in which case the belonging info-piece actually exists; some are false, in which case the belonging info-piece doesn’t exist at all; and some are undetermined, in which case the belonging info-piece exists possibly, but not actually.
Quoting Luke
Because the property of actual existence is something very different from the property of having evolved on Earth by 2020. Similarly, the actual existence of the number 2 is very different from the truth of the proposition that a certain die-throw reasulted in a 2. The sentence “That’s what we mean when we say that unicorns don’t exist on Earth” uses the word “exist” wrongly, for its means something very different from existence.
Quoting Luke
No, that’s not true at all. Unicorns themselves exist actually as abstract entities, but certain propositions involving them aren’t true, such as the proposition that unicorns have evolved on Earth by 2020. Therefore, your next sentence
Quoting Luke
starts from a false premise.
Quoting Luke
Unicorns don’t lack any kind of existence. What we call “existence on Earth” isn’t existence at all; rather, it’s the property of manifesting on Earth in flesh and blood. And as it happens, the proposition that unicorns have that property isn’t true. Like all things, unicorns have possible and actual existence as abstract objects. By “the actual existence of unicorns”, I mean the fact that unicorns are fully existent and just as actual as numbers, properties, functions, souls, and all the other actual beondes (which includes all things).
Simply look up the word "idea" in the dictionary. But perhaps you think that what we call ideas aren't ideas at all.
Quoting Tristan L
All of the above implies that my broken leg actually exists. My leg isn't broken! I don't have a broken leg that could exist anywhere.
Quoting Tristan L
"What we call existence isn't existence at all"? If you don't see a problem with this, then there's not much left to say.
1. An intelligent approximation (e.g. based on prior experience of searches, prior experience of outcomes and/or theoretical knowledge) as to where to begin a search;
2. An approximate characterisation of the goal (e.g. a tonal quality);
3. A search method.
These are more or less constrained in each case. The instruments at hand, for instance, constrain (3) heavily.
One tries a trial solution based only on the initial approximation (1) and compares to the known character of the optimal solution (2). Then one amends the trial solution according to the difference based on a method of incremental improvement (3).
A random or brute force search only constitutes (3), and badly, since it is independent of (1-2).
See here (1.), for instance. This gives you the original meaning of the word “idea” and its philosophical definition, and it’s therefore the one we’re interested in.
Quoting Luke
I don’t know how much crystal clearer I can be in order to help you understand this very simple matter. The proposition that your leg is broken has actual existence, but it doesn’t have truth. Truth is not the same as existence. Has it become clear now?
Quoting Luke
There would not be much left to say indeed, but not here, but rather in the point before if you still can’t see the gaping difference between existence and truth.
Regarding this point, let’s look at another example. When we say “The number 3 exists in that room”, we mean that there is a group of three items, such as three humans, three balls, or three ants, in the room. What we mean, of course, in not really the existence of the number 3, but a particular way of manifesting in the room. The same goes for “existence on Earth”. For example, when we say “Such and such genome exists on Earth”, we mean that it manifests as a physically articulated sequence of physical base-pairs. But the genome itself obviously exists regardless of that – it’s an abstract string and therefore corresponds one-to-one with a natural number.
You seem to have suddenly changed your definition of the phrase “actual existence”... or did you really think that I was arguing for the manifestation of unicorns on Earth in flesh and blood?
The reason I might want to step out of the way is because the idea of horses has combined with some other perceptions I've had of people being run down by running bulls, so I create a second order idea that combines 'the danger of large animals running' and 'horses are large animals' in order to draw a conclusion that 'a running horse could cause me danger'.
The idea of a horse is an abstract entity as it resides in my head. And I could just as well embellish it with other first-order ideas that I also have, created as a result of perception, such as 'horns' and 'rainbow colours' to create an idea of a unicorn. But this would be a second-order idea, not a first-order one. I've never actually seen a unicorn (except for that time when I drank that green liquor, but I 'saw' many other odd things then too).
Quoting Roy Davies
That can’t really be the case, for abstractness lets not-mentalness follow by definition: to be abstract is to be not-physical, not-mental, not-spatial, not-tidesome (non-temporal), and onefold (simple).
Yes. Now let us hypothesise a zeroeth order: an underlying object that is as it is whether perceived or not. What would we expect of a word in which horses we perceived also had objective realities? One thing we would expect is great similarity in first-order impressions. How can we detect this? In similarities between my vocalisations regarding horses and those of others, such as having both an impression of a horse that is beautiful and an impression of someone saying, 'Oh, what a beautiful horse'.
If we agree on our impressions of horses and that therefore horses have objective realities, my second-order idea of 'horse' is likely to be very similar to your second-order idea of 'horse', such that I may vocalise my second-order idea and have an impression of you making a very similar vocalisation. We would be able to speak of this idea as if it were real, maybe even fall under the illusion that it had primacy over first-order impressions and zeroeth order extrapolations.