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PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:42 am 
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Kian wrote:
My mistake. For further posts though, keep in mind I make an argument over a whole paragraph, not sentence by sentence. You starting with "No" and then arriving to the same conclusion I did is what threw me off.


Eh that's alright, my arguments are over a paragraph too, only my point in that one was clearer starting with that 'No'. Just gotta read the whole thing or you'll get thrown off.

Kian wrote:
Ah, but then you're cheating. The first "I" of the sentence does not mean the same thing as the second "I". "I [Mestro] think, therefore I [Mestro, figment of the dream of a sleeping godess, recording of Mestro, whatever] am."


Actually, in absence of contraindicating signs, the assumption is that when the author uses a term in a tract, it means the same thing whenever re-used in the same tract. If A = 3 now and A = 7 later on, you can't have a logical argument. [f(A) = 3 and f(A)=7 is possible but would have been indicated]

The first 'I' and the second 'I' mean the same thing. 'I' (whatever 'I' am) think, therefore 'I' (whatever 'I' am) exist. 'I' do not know what 'I' am, but 'I' can discern the existence of an 'I'

Expanding on the above, from my reading of your posts, it seems that you are conflating 'identity' with the 'hardware' on which it runs. It does not matter whether I am male or female, white yellow brown or black, carbon or silicon-based, born under a yellow sun or hatched under a green one, if I think, I am.

Bloodhenge wrote:
Mestro wrote:
we are all everyone of us including myself a little insane


If everyone is insane, then nobody is sane, and both words are meaningless.


I did not use insanity as a nominal scale. Like all real non-nominal attributes, there varying levels of sanity. From the 'slighty insane' to the 'apeshit nuts'.

It should be clear that I am speaking not of socially constructed standards of 'sanity' but of being rational. That which is rational is sane. I also do not mean being 'rational' as in not feeling emotion. Not acknowledging a thing that I feel is irrational since that is denying the existence of something which exists. I think, therefore I exist. Therefore anything that affects me also exists.

Note that this is not a proof you can use to say that anything (including other people) exists, only that their effects exist. Thats is this cannot prove that, chocolates exists, only the effect of chocolate on me exists. In practical terms, that the sight, smell, touch and taste of chocolate, to me, exists.

We seem to have started down whether AI can exist, took a left through whether we ourselves exist (with KurtDunn saying we don't and myself saying we do) and are now turning onto whether chocolates exist (they don't).


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 10:39 am 
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Mestro wrote:
Note that this is not a proof you can use to say that anything (including other people) exists, only that their effects exist. Thats is this cannot prove that, chocolates exists, only the effect of chocolate on me exists.


So what exactly is "chocolate" then, apart from the sum of its 'effects'?

Mestro wrote:
In practical terms, that the sight, smell, touch and taste of chocolate, to me, exists.


What other sorts of terms are there?

If there is absolutely, in principle, no way for anyone to ever tell a situation where chocolates exist apart from a situation where chocolates merely seem to exist, then what is the difference between those situations?

And if you say you can tell those two situations apart, say because chocolate that doesn't really exist won't nourish you and so you'd quickly starve by eating nothing but imaginary chocolate (more quickly than from eating nothing but real chocolate)... well, aren't those differences themselves mere 'effects'?

Mestro wrote:
We seem to have started down whether AI can exist, took a left through whether we ourselves exist (with KurtDunn saying we don't and myself saying we do) and are now turning onto whether chocolates exist (they don't).


What is it to exist?

To turn to the level of skepticism you seem to be going into, to deny the existence of everything but oneself, seems to simply take meaning away from the word 'existence'. Words are learned by watching them be applied; and the preeminent examples of things which are said to "exist" are things like tables, chairs, rocks, trees, planets and galaxies... all the things we can sense around us. To deny that such things exist is to make 'existence' meaningless. (Especially if, as you seem to be, you also deny the existence of non-physical things like other people and, I would presume from that line of reasoning, gods and ghosts and the like).

What you really want to deny, and I'll get right behind you on this one, is that there is anything to things beyond their appearances. No mysterious 'substances' in which all these sensible qualities 'inhere'. Try to conceive of a substance devoid of all it's qualities - you can't. So wtf is a substance? Of course, by that same coin, try to conceive of just your 'self' and nothing else. Try conceiving of a situation in which you perceive absolutely nothing. You can't do that either - closest you can come is just to stop conceiving. So what are "you", then, if not simply a 'subject-end' bundle of perceptions, just as rocks and trees are 'object-end' bundles of perceptions?

No spooky mental substances. No spooky material substances. Reality is as it appears (though not necessarily how you interpret that appearance), nothing more or less. Physical phenomena are all that there are, and they themselves are nothing but data.

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 11:26 am 
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Mestro wrote:
Note that this is not a proof you can use to say that anything (including other people) exists, only that their effects exist. Thats is this cannot prove that, chocolates exists, only the effect of chocolate on me exists. In practical terms, that the sight, smell, touch and taste of chocolate, to me, exists.


And this is why philosophy is bullshit.

Does the chair exist? Yes -- otherwise your ass would be on the floor. End of story.

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 12:43 pm 
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Killjoy wrote:
And this is why philosophy is bullshit.


Just because some philosophical theories are bullshit does not mean that philosophy itself is bullshit. "Philosophy" is not a body of beliefs like "Christianity" or something - it's a process and an area of inquiry. Whatever it is that you, Killjoy, hold to be the plain and obvious truth, which I gather to be some sort of scientism (in a non-pejorative sense), that is itself a philosophical position. If you were to defend that plain and obvious truth from people who would doubt it, or if you were to make reasoned attacks on what you consider to be 'bullshit' theories, then you would yourself be engaging in philosophy.

This is largely what my interest in philosophy is, like an atheist's interest in religious studies or an anarchist's interest in political science - I hold that most of what goes on there is bullshit, but that the subject is important enough that someone needs to come in and call people on their bullshit. But in doing so, I'm doing philosophy - and I fully acknowledge that what seems the plain and simple truth to me may in fact be nothing but more bullshit, and if someone manages to call me on it, then that's great, I've learned something. But "calling people on their bullshit" is more than just yelling "bullshit" at them - you've got to give good reasons why they're wrong and/or you're right. That's what philosophy is. Otherwise, you've just living an unexamined life and wantonly insulting people for thinking differently than you.

There's a quote I can't seem to recall or find at the moment, to the extent that philosophy consists mostly of philosophers calling other philosophers idiots, often times even proving this fact, and in doing so, proving it of themselves as well. But since I can't find that quote I'll just leave you with this one:

"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." - William James

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 3:10 pm 
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mestro wrote:
The first 'I' and the second 'I' mean the same thing. 'I' (whatever 'I' am) think, therefore 'I' (whatever 'I' am) exist. 'I' do not know what 'I' am, but 'I' can discern the existence of an 'I'

Expanding on the above, from my reading of your posts, it seems that you are conflating 'identity' with the 'hardware' on which it runs. It does not matter whether I am male or female, white yellow brown or black, carbon or silicon-based, born under a yellow sun or hatched under a green one, if I think, I am.


Which is why I also objected to the use of wildcards. If you don't define what 'I' means, you have the barest amount of information that can possibly be had. Namely, that there is an existance of which you are part. You can't gleam any information of this existance until you start making assumptions about what your senses tell you.

So, I'll grant that you can have that one piece of information you can be sure of. Existance exists. Everything else is based on assumptions.

Forrest wrote:
To turn to the level of skepticism you seem to be going into, to deny the existence of everything but oneself, seems to simply take meaning away from the word 'existence'. Words are learned by watching them be applied; and the preeminent examples of things which are said to "exist" are things like tables, chairs, rocks, trees, planets and galaxies... all the things we can sense around us. To deny that such things exist is to make 'existence' meaningless. (Especially if, as you seem to be, you also deny the existence of non-physical things like other people and, I would presume from that line of reasoning, gods and ghosts and the like).


I think you're misinterpreting what he said. He didn't deny the existance of everything else but himself. His point (and mine, I'm only a little more insistent on the lack of any knowlodge) is that you can't KNOW that they exist. And that believeing one way or the other is crazy, since you have no reason to be sure.

Killjoy wrote:
And this is why philosophy is bullshit.

Does the chair exist? Yes -- otherwise your ass would be on the floor. End of story.


You sure picked the right nickname.

Anyway, philosophy just concerns itself with an aspect of life that isn't practical on an everyday basis. Sure, if you never stop to question yourself or your convictions, it may seem dumb to see people 'wasting their time' doing so. The chair is there, so it must exist.

I'm a big fan of chairs myself. I'm using one right now. And on a practical basis I don't stop to question if the chair, my house, or the car coming down the street are real. I assume they exist and go on with my life with little doubt. However, I do like to stop, on my free time, to think about the nature of knowlodge and the world.

Philosophy is no more bullshit than any other hobby, as far as I'm concerned. And hey, if you can get other people to pay you to do it, that much better for you.

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 4:11 pm 
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Kian wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting what he said. He didn't deny the existance of everything else but himself. His point (and mine, I'm only a little more insistent on the lack of any knowlodge) is that you can't KNOW that they exist. And that believeing one way or the other is crazy, since you have no reason to be sure.


He said "...and are now turning onto whether chocolates exist (they don't)." I guess maybe that was a joke, but it seemed to me a good indicator of some sort of solipsism. (Of course in practical life nobody is really a solipsist, but plenty of people will say that on a strict technical level nothing but themselves exists, just, that doesn't really make any practical difference to them; it still hurts when I-the-solipsist unwillingly dream that 'I' get hit by a bus).

Either way, my point stands to epistemological skepticism as well as it does to solipsism. If you accept that reality just is that which is perceivable (that body of experiences available to be had), and quit all this nonsense talk about the spooky 'substances' or 'external' reality that those perceptions represent, then knowledge just becomes a matter of correctly identifying patterns in your perceptions, where "correctly" just means that if a supposed pattern predicts that such-and-such will be perceived in some context, then it will be, for all values of such-and-such. Of course some sort of skepticism still survives, inasmuch as you can only ever falsify, never verify, that you have correctly identified a pattern; but this weird skepticism about "maybe there is no 'real' world and all is just phenomena" goes away. The phenomena are the real world.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:31 am 
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Killjoy wrote:
Mestro wrote:
Note that this is not a proof you can use to say that anything (including other people) exists, only that their effects exist. Thats is this cannot prove that, chocolates exists, only the effect of chocolate on me exists. In practical terms, that the sight, smell, touch and taste of chocolate, to me, exists.


And this is why philosophy is bullshit.

Does the chair exist? Yes -- otherwise your ass would be on the floor. End of story.



It's not all bullshit: I suggest you look at Wikipedia for the Enlightenment, or the Renaissance. Diderot, for example, helped lay the foundations of a secular science by removing God from natural philosophy. Scientists were once called "Natural Philosophers" - the term Scientist dates from the 1830s.

I think philosophy has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to discussing the brain and our existence. I think it's hard to tell the wood from the trees, but mostly because I think philosophy tends to deal in large abstractions, ways to live etc.

One problem that does interest me is that of phantom limbs which I think will tell you more about how the brain operates in the specific, rather than the generics this thread keeps circling around. My limited understanding of the phantom limb is that amputees will feel the pain of the missing limb, will almost feel as if it's still there. Does this mean that the brain keeps a "model" of the body? What does this mean for perception? Do we actually directly percieve anything? Does it go through this "model". Is the model an internally held simulation? Where does it reside? How much does it add to our own internal idea of self?

How about "reaction-times": it's well established that the brain - the zombie element as I've seen it called - acts faster than conscious thought. Say, for example, reacting whilst driving a car. Is this the model again? Does it have sentience?

How about the use of the mind to control artificial limbs? the signals are re-routed via the *shoulder* f'ercrissakes. Is this the model operating again? How does this connect with the rejection of whole-hand transplants? What about the scientist who connected an electronic memory card to a rats brain - the signals only go one way, what happens when they go both ways? Augmented memory? If this happens we could find out a whole lot more about how the brain works.

To me, these are the interesting questions.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:48 am 
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Although I know that the classical philosophers generally tended to devolve into arguing about ultimate reality and coming up with terms like ectoplasm and ether to provide a 'material' upon which to hang their arguments over reality, no one had brought in those notions before you started scolding us for doing it Forrest..

As Kian said, I don't deny the existence of everything but myself, I'm saying that the only certainty is that I exist and that I can know that with certainty.

The chocolate joke didn't seem to work all too well, some of you got it, some not. Since everything I have written other than the chocolate joke was about not being certain about the (non)-existence of anything, the statement that chocolates do not exist is logically meaningless.

Kian]You can't gleam any information of this existance until you start making assumptions about what your senses tell you. [/quote]

Getting information based on assumptions is well, not totally rational since an assumption can be based on anything and if the foundation of a argument is not rational, then nothing else in the argument is rational and you cannot make any statements. The only type of statement which are truly rational are those that are founded on the assumption that you exist and nothing else but that assumption.

I can only know the taste of chocolate, the touch, the smell and the sight of it but I cannot by those be certain that chocolate exists and is not a simulation I am experiencing. I can however treat the pattern of the taste, the touch, the smell and the sight indicating chocolate as real. Treating a pattern of real effects (the effects affect me so they are real) as real is perfectly rational and sane. Thus, the pattern of [taste(C) + touch(C) + smell(C) + sight(C)] or effects(C) is real and for convenience sake, can be addressed with the label of 'chocolate'.

Chocolates do exist.

I am not a solipsist, that is an insane position. (cough) The assertation of an unprovable thing, such as the idea that I am the only thing that exists and that everything else is a figment of my imagination, is irrational.

[quote="Killjoy wrote:
Mestro]Note that this is not a proof you can use to say that anything (including other people) exists, only that their effects exist. Thats is this cannot prove that, chocolates exists, only the effect of chocolate on me exists. In practical terms, that the sight, smell, touch and taste of chocolate, to me, exists.[/quote]

And this is why philosophy is bullshit.

Does the chair exist? Yes -- otherwise your ass would be on the floor. End of story.[/quote]

We use examples such as chocolates, and chairs, in our arguments because they are easy to manipulate. Philosophy comes into its greatest use in other ways, the social contract, 'democracy', individual rights, religion, science itself, these are technologies that only philosophy or sub-disciplines of it can create. So philosophy is not 'bullshit'. Questions over ontology and epistemology are the foundations of philosophy and it is from them that everything else derives.

[quote="Forrest wrote:
"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." - William James


Since the subject matter of philosophy are arguments, philosophers are of course always arguing with other philosophers.


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